Walking to Canada
by Barbara Jean Briskey

My friend Gail and I have walked the same three-mile route down Commons Road in Clermont most weekday mornings for over ten years. On good days we make it to the bridge on Pleasant Vale Road that overlooks the Roeliff-Jansen Kill. There we check out the condition of the creek as we stretch our legs on the steel girders, taking care not to disturb the spiders' magnificent webs. Now, some might think that the same walk each day, there and back again, might become boring. They would be wrong.

We have walked through 43 seasons, noted the changing quality of daylight, the lengthening and shortening shadows, the migration of birds and the march of the turtles. We've assisted so many tiny orange efts making their way across the road. Several years ago, a peacock appeared in all his plumage at the end of the street. Once we panicked over a raccoon that was stumbling about and screeching discordantly; that day we hitched a ride home. And I still pinch myself remembering the time 20-or-so huge black steer broke through a hole in the fence on the Jansen farm and followed us up the road. We were the Pied Pipers of Beef; for the rest of the morning could hear mooing throughout the neighborhood as their owners rustled them back up. For weeks afterward we laughed at how, from a bovine perspective staring at our middle-aged derrières, we must have been mistaken for very attractive cows. Before stricter leash laws, dogs—most often Buddy—would wait for us in their yards and then tag along. Tragedy struck one summer morn when Lady followed us. An independent old dog, she fell behind while sniffing a particularly aromatic culvert where a pickup truck fatally struck her at the sharp turn in the road.

Each season offers sensation in the truest meaning of the word. Winter, dead quiet, iridescent sparkles on the snow, bitter winds braising my face so hotly red that we now exercise indoors on frigid mornings. One warm January day after a caustic cold spell, a resounding boom (really, almost like a sonic boom!) echoed through the neighborhood. Daily we had checked as the Roe-Jan backed up into the cornfield, knew that an ice jam down-creek had finally burst.

And glorious Spring, with busy birdsong and bullfrogs, the smells of warming earth and blossoming trees, the wild flowers— delicate pink geraniums, nodding red columbine, deep purple irises along the swampy areas, sweetly intoxicating roses—and the animal babies (geese, ducks, deer, two-inch turtles, efts, and one year eight guinea hens in a row behind their mother).

Spring's end brings the startling welts of the deerfly, so we whack each other with undeserved stinging slaps to shoo the flies. Summer offers us its pungent grasses, sweet hay, noxious decomposing animals surrounded by scavengers, wild daisies and black-eyed Susans, with reminders to pick up the pace (isn't the purpose to get some exercise?) on hot humid mornings.

As summer wanes, purple loosestrife steals the show, covering large swaths of low-lying wetlands with its regal robe. Then autumn mornings beckon, chilly and breezy with the promise of bits of warm sunshine by noon, cool rains, the riotous last hurrah of the leaves preceding their descent onto the musty ground. Geese honk overhead, admirably cooperative in their formations, sometimes heading due west towards the Hudson.

Gail and I have walked through our children's teen years, through their triumphs and their tortured struggles. While we have happily celebrated each triumph, talking about teen torture was sometimes punctuated by uncoordinated leaps and sharp expletives—witnesses may have been tempted to call for immediate psychiatric assistance. We've walked through our own joys and discord, through the milestones, births, illnesses and deaths of friends and family members. A few years ago I calculated that we had collectively walked the distance to the Canadian tree-line where we would be able to see the Aurora Borealis. Little by little, we go a long way.

Each day, each season, each year, our walks evolve with the new turns in our lives as our planet makes its turn around the sun. Twice a week now Gail's grandson accompanies us, holding out his little hand for me from the stroller. I skipped the morning walk a short while back to help my son move to Albany. For the first time this September, the early school bus will not signal our departure time; instead we wave goodbye as our children head off to work or transcontinental adventures. But still each morning, as we hustle back up the hill towards home, one of us will pronounce, "We are GOOD!" And all it takes is a walk with my friend to feel very, very good.