Winter returned temporarily, and not that it should have stopped me from going out for a long stroll, but I’ll honest: I imagined this thing, at least the first few iterations, as some kind of romantic spring stroll as I shred the bonds of winter and embraced the last summer of my forties. 

Then it got miserable for about ten days again, and well…

The Route

I’ve calculated (in the vaguest sense of that word) that I can probably log about ten of my fifty walks from my house inasmuch as I intend to follow my own loose rules. The Kid pointed out that I have a few more options if I don’t limit myself to loops and instead do some point to point walks and carry a bus pass to get back home from the other end.  Walking from home was not always the point, though, and the very nature of adventure implies something further afield. 

Yet, I walked out my front door once again and started for the wilderness of the Transportation Utility Corridor (TUC) just beyond the suburban fences that guard this weird strip of highway adjacent, oil pipeline obscuring, transmission cable traced route towards the general direction of the river. 

I had a sense of something unknown at the far end of that path.

And indeed, when I’d crossed the river and climbed part way back up the neighbourhood on the far side of the valley, I veered sharply into some single track trail and carefully maneuvered around the remaining patches of ice and wet muddy slicks as I wend my way to the far end of the asphalt trail I’d just escaped.

Mission accomplished, I did an about face at the top of the hill, the same place where we’ve been meeting to run our hill training runs recently (though on a different hill another klick further down the path) and descended a fairly familiar running route back towards my own corner of the suburbs.. and home.

The Effort

I alluded to the remaining patches of snow on the trail and by far this was what marked the worst legs of the trek. The snow was not longer, strictly speaking, snow and had turned to a crusty layer of slick pack ice that had been worn smooth by previous adventurers. Many of these were, of course, on little bits of decline in the trail where I found myself clinging to the branches of nearby trees as I tried not to topple myself.

I also cannot neglect to mention the hilliness of my chosen route. For a huge part of the walk I was going up and down hills, be those familiar asphalt paths that we often run or struggling through the woods on sketchy trails in (what turned out to be a stupid choice of footwear) an old pair of sneakers-turned-everyday shoes.

I brought along my proper camera this time and (despite temptation to pull out the phone camera once or twice) I stuck to my choice of lens and nabbed a small selection of interesting shots. I haven’t mentioned this previously, but I have been limiting myself this year to a single SLR lens for reasons of Pointless Creative Struggle(TM). My choice was a 40mm pancake prime lens that I have been enjoying. It was the only lens I took to Japan last year, for example, and I got a lot of great shots there while simultaneously saving my back from carrying too much equipment.

At the end of the walk my watch was just a hair over 10km in 2 hours and 23 minutes. 10.15km in fact. Making my grand fifty walks walking distance total now 21.15km in 4 hours and 52 minutes. I’m gonna need to build a chart or something. 

The Highlight

Of course when you go on these walk you really expect to find the normal strangeness: interesting views, odd people, and weird constructions in the woods. I always seem to, at least. 

This time the oddness came in a vehicular form—or lack thereof. Car parts were scattered along the diverted path I travelled. I came first upon the axel of a car, and then a radiator. A couple hundred steps further the panels of an old car were being used as a kind of makeshift fence along the side of the path. Certainly the snow was hiding more. And at the very top of the trail, perhaps no more than a hundred meters from the road, an entire engine block rusted and settled was set like an eclectic old stone marking the way home.

Someone—or someones—had taken the effort to carry bits of an old car into the woods and scatter it along the trail in some meaningful way.

All I was carrying was a camera, and that was enough for me.