Wandering from day to day
Almost every day for over three years I’ve done the same walk: up the path down the hill over the railway through the park past the garage along the river past the station under the railway past the trafficlights up the path and home. Every evening across the year, so I’ve seen the same route in sunlight and sunset-dusk and darkness, with blossom, leaves and barebranches, snow and wind and rain and warming sunshine.
Each day things are almost the same, the cracks in the path like whales’ wrinkles, the bikechains locked forever to the fence, blocking branches I need to swerve round and duck beneath almost-acrobatically, house-ends that are cinemas for headlights and brakelights in long winter nights and waving tree shadows in summer, and the man in the room on the corner, all familiar waymarkers on the route; when I get to the school with its summer evening playground exercise class I know I’m halfway there, and halfway home.
Yet after all this time new details sometimes catch my eye, wave at me cheerily and whisper a metaphor. It is often details, and how they slowly change, that gnaw into my consciousness, linger in brain-nooks, ready to whisper sweet nostalgia at unexpected moments of an unknown future: the textures on the wooden slatted fences going down the hill, the way the sun angles itself to pick out the brickwork on the street where the pavement leaps above the road, and the park-trees with their proud, prominent ligaments lining up along the old railway; the security light painting intense fence-shadows under the gaze of a security camera, the bell-ropes of weeping willows along the river, the strange geometry-lines in empty carparks abandoned for the day, and the pigeons hunkering down for bed on the flat-tops of lampposts; traffic cones stand round characterfully in groups gossiping, while their permanent cousins the bollards line up rigidly. And the rivers forever bubble along, their fiercesomeness a measure of rainfall, their endless strolls criss-crossing under mine. Dandelions and poppies stick heads out of walls and verges, and watch and grow and change as the year passes them by.
Cyclists and runners with their lights and fluorescent intensity overtake me, and dog walkers nod greetings while their companions chase throwners manically round the park - in winter-dark sometimes wearing undignified illuminated collars, dancing in the distance to imaginary cartoonmusic.
I look up and see layers of life - telegraph poles and chimneys, drainpipes and solarpanels and aerials, each with their bonus birds and decorative spiderwebs; and sometimes there’s the waxwaning moon, or strange clouds or distant planes heading to unknown places winkingly, or Venus brightly. Those views over the town as I down the hill, the distant church peering evocatively through sunset-flecked mists, serenaded by sometime distant bells; and the evening sun seen through crepuscular trees from the footbridge, painting patterns in the fading sky.
When I started this walk, one form of lockdown, I got to know the eerie empty streets, the painted distance markers appearing on walls and paths, and trains and buses which still made their lonely way to sudden unthinkably faraway places. The markers have faded now and streets buzz and passengers have returned but the memories - that strangest year, with time in tangled churn - linger uneasily in every cranny beside my path.
It’s almost the same each day, almost but not quite: something changes every time, sometimes subtlely, the light a little different or the leaf hues altered or new blooming weeds overflowing the path. A pothole appears or is filled in, a skip arrives and is loaded, a fence has been proudly painted; something a person or a tree or a bird has dropped has been picked up or blown away; leaves and twigs and apples take it in turns to carpet the paths I walk, while feathers quill their footnotes. I get to see daily progress as houses are built and extensions completed, part of the evolution of the street which changes slowly to its own gradual timescale, just as I watched the serialised installation of the railway wires, now gleamingly waiting for use, and the melodramatic stickers on the bridge warning of new electric danger below.
I walk in the rain and see puddles dancing, and leaves clutching pearls, while avoiding snails as they come out to play on the path. On a lucky day I see a bus boasting that it’s a-ketter or replacing rails, or spot a long lorry contorting itself improbably into a short loading bay. I see the Tuesday runners who tie tracksuits to lampposts and turn the quiet road up the hill into a runtrack, an open air fitting room; ambulances and trains sometimes speed past, making their presences noisily known. When I see pavement chalk-marks from fading unscreened children’s games I pretend to dance along; and if I blink at the right time I can catch a lamppost flickering on blearily, ready for a busy night’s light-work.
Occasional roadwork dramas with temporary lights muttering silently to each other let me speed slowly past stopped cars. And bin day brings new obstacles, pairs waiting as if to dance on the road while the people are asleep. I sometimes see cats prowling along walls through the jungle of their imagination, making clear from their looks that I should be honoured just to be in their presence in the wild.
Some sights are seasonal and narrate the stately progress of the year: icicles on the underside of the brick bridge, the bowl of water by the cottage for passing hot dogs - a kind sign of summer - or slightly competitive Christmas decorations starting soon after Bonfire night; and bunting grinned across many houses for those Royal days.
Some times of the year, sliding down into summer or up into autumn, the shadows ahead of me as I walk up the path with the setting sun behind grow to impossibly comic lengths, legs magnified right along the length of the path. And the golden-hour sun haloes dogs and walkers and trees in a way only memory can capture, and pours through the copse to create underwater patterns on the path. The bench by the playground magnetises summer teenagers, who see me as invisible, while in winter, ghosts play on the deserted night-swings, and ignore me.
No matter: I’ll keep wandering and watching the seasons and the streets rolling by, and writing the route as it changes fast and slow, so the details I see become part of me: life and my legs will go on round.