Treasure … if you can find it

Our travels started — delayed a week by icy conditions on the route — at the end of December on a trail alongside an abandoned train depot.

I wondered what stories it could tell.

The year (mostly) gone by — 2020

I spent a lot of time in 2020 … walking.

Almost every day it wasn’t raining or snowing or freezing cold, Suzi and I walked.

Getting an early start

This week, I talk about walking first thing in the morning, along with other things I like doing early in the day.

Here are all the places you can listen.

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Anchor

RadioPublic

Pocket Casts

Google Podcasts

Breaker

Come inside, come inside

Open the first gate … just make sure to close it behind you.

Open the second gate. Be sure to close that one, too.

Now that you’re inside, start walking.

When there was nothing else, there was walking

I’ve always been more of a banana bread guy, but remember when making sourdough bread was a thing?

And toilet paper!?!? People were literally obsessed with finding toilet paper. It actually felt like a triumph to score some.

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Taking whatever you can get

For weeks, months even, they stood as symbols of “oppression.”

Barriers connected by yellow police tape blocking off four parking spaces at the entrance to our normal walking trial taunted … people who couldn’t get into one of the two or three parking spaces that were available?

But then, they were gone.

The only four people in the world

Maybe it’s not happening in Boston — after all, it’s a fairly big, crowded city — but where I live, people largely know proper walking etiquette these days.

Furthermore, although there are signs at trail entrances, it seems common sense was enough for people to figure out that they should stay away from other groups, walk single file where possible, stay on one side … and so on.

But not everyone.

Time to leave the house, everybody!

And … exhale.

When your only recreation outside the house is walking, chilly, gloomy days make you feel cooped up, held inside the four walls.

However, when the sun comes out and the temperature is warmer, it feels like a release … like you and the world are breathing normally again.

Looking for a little adventure

We’re going to Lowe’s.

Because we actually got the leaf guy to come last fall, we don’t need him now, but when he comes in the spring, he also cleans up the yard and puts down mulch.

Instead, Suzi and I going to do it, but we need mulch.

Hence the trip to Lowe’s. (We’re also going to order takeout from the nearby Cheesecake Factory.)

Stepping out into the world

Seven cars … Suzi counted them.

Normally, the parking lot at the train station near our house is full by 8 a.m., but there was just us, the seven cars and a woman pushing a stroller.

I didn’t say anything, but she realized I noticed her passenger.

”Elderly dog,” she said.