A cold winter day and a walk up a hill….
IT WAS A day to rediscover a couple of truths.
I had cabin fever. Bad. This was not Vermont, where we spent 11 wonderful years, and winters; winters filled with cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, snowshoeing in the woods. This was the Mid-Atlantic, where winter has no useful purpose other than tormenting those it traps inside.
I was looking for a cure and then, as I sat in my one-bedroom apartment late morning on an overcast and cold day with a storm coming, the truth reappeared. The only cure for cabin fever is to get out of the cabin.
So, I did. I put on my winter gear and drove out to Stroud’s Preserve. Chester County has more land in public-access parks, preserves and agricultural protection than any county in the state. How little I have taken advantage of it.
I wasn’t planning a big walk this first time out. Maybe a couple of miles. There were not a lot of other walkers out. The clouds had come in high and gray and now they were low and gray and the wind was picking up.
I hiked the gravel trail across the Brandywine then up the hill. The last time I had been out here, I realized, was before Connie’s dementia and a knee replacement and we had hiked 100 percent of the trail. I thought briefly about trying that then laughed at myself.
When I got up the first long stretch of trail, to a bench under a tree, I was short of breath and feeling it in my legs. I sat down and asked myself what was happening.
The second buried truth re-emerged. I go to the gym several times a week. I can do four miles or so on an elliptical, three miles on a tread and follow it up with weights. That ought to make for a pretty fit old man nearing the 80 -year mark. And it does. It makes for a “gym-fit” old man.
TRUTH: The only way to get into trail shape is to get out onto the trail. The trail doesn’t care how many hours you spend in a gym, beneficial though those hours may be. The trail says “you’re in my world now, my rules.” Unsteady ground, up and down, no machine to help you move along, a strong wind pushing you around.
I got in about a mile-and-a-half, all of it up and down except the flat trail in and out. Not much in terms of distance but plenty to remind me that I need to get serious.
I am heading out to Big Bend National Park at the end of February for a reunion with my Sierra Club work group. The last time I went I was coming off a knee replacement and had forgotten that second truth and I realized on the first day I could not take on trails I used to hike without a bit of pain or loss of breath.
My winter outing this week told me if I don’t get out of the cabin more, I’ll find myself sitting in camp out in Big Bend cursing my lack of fitness.
So, I am going to get out of the cabin at least three times a week, maybe more, between now and then and hike the trails. Winter be damned. Maybe a pass if there is snow or ice, but otherwise, winter be damned.
Oh, there is a third truth. Nature is beautiful. Maybe that should be the first truth. The beauty struck me 20 yards onto the trail.
Rich Heiland is a retired journalist and semi-retired consultant, trainer and public speaker. During his journalism career he was a reporter, editor, publisher, college instructor, part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team and a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year honoree. He lives in West Chester, PA and can be reached at [email protected].