The Walk

Last summer, I went to Seattle to have some time to explore, write, and walk. I did a lot of walking because Uber is expensive in Seattle. When I wasn’t on the Link or a city bus, I walked and walked and walked. On my last day, I spent time at a coffee shop typing to kill time. They say good writing practice is to just free-write and do it badly. Don’t even think about grammar or style, just whatever pops into your head. This is one of the things I wrote that morning, and it kind of just stayed with me. Maybe because walking is one of the few things we can really do now. I try to put it on our to-do lists each day. Sometimes we get to it and other times we don’t. It’s a way to redeem the day when so much feels closed up.

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Pit–pat–pit–pat–skip, skip, skip.

Her clean rose and thistle printed canvas shoes danced on the roller coaster ride of crooked pavement. Wonderfully jacked up like authentic life full of excited screams, ugly cries, and drama for the sake of drama. Cracks and caverns, ravines and weeds — a terror for most but an excuse to play hopscotch as an adult. 

Grow up, grow up, grow up — too tall to be tangible, too revered to be relevant. 

Give me the whimsy of an 18-year-old venturing into the layered abyss of city tides but with the confidence of an old soul who never overanalyzes common conversation, never takes the small sparks for granted, and always piff-piffs the empty atrocities.

Days are tick-tick-ticking. Her purpose, our purpose, was never a mystery, just fogged up by distraction. Residue of soot that is too bothersome a job to clean up. We’ll stay in the cabin a little longer, stoke the fire in comfortable fear for another day, week, year, decade.

WAKE UP! Embrace the ache to appreciate the rest.

The real worry would be smooth pavement. Miles and miles of engineering perfection. A greenway in the City of Destruction.

Pit–pat–pit–pat–skip, skip, skip.

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On my three days walking around Seattle, I met an older gentleman that swims multiple times a week at UW. He was actually a Whitman alum and knew Walla Walla fairly well. Unfortunately, Seattle was getting very expensive for him, and he didn’t know for how long he and his wife would continue to live in the house they had made a home for decades.

I also met this fairly attractive guy that started talking to me about “hidden knowledge” and a mix of mysticism and Christianity. I made sure to move to a high traffic area before answering his “enlightened” interrogation. In a nutshell, the conversation didn’t end well because I am rather direct in my disagreements. I hurried into an posh stationery store to avoid his tirade. (I also bought a really cute reusable bag on clearance in said store, so thanks, well-dressed possible-cult leader transient.)

After attending a predominantly Asian Southern Baptist church (and when I mean predominantly Asian, I mean I was the only non-Asian in the service but they still treated me like family), I had the pleasure of listening to the surface-y conversation of four “bro” guys on the way to SeaTac on the Link. This conversation was more like a friendly competition of “Who Has Traveled More on Mommy and Daddy’s Dollar.” I set my head against the window reminding myself that Jesus loves them too. (One of the guys looked like a shorter version of my husband and played the annoying game less than the other three, so I figured he had the most potential to turn his life around. Jesus, take the wheel … or the Link train.)

I have a feeling I won’t be able to go to Seattle again this summer which is a super bummer because my goal is to go each summer and stay in a different neighborhood each trip. But many people don’t get to do that, so I should just be thankful to have gone and interact. (That sounds like a good Mom thing to say, right?)

For now, we’ll keep our treks close to home with that one annoying dog that ferociously barks around the corner. We’ll pass the home we put an offer on before this one that we thankfully didn’t get. Our mouths will hang open when we ogle at our neighbors’ yards who can grow anything when we can’t. We walk because you never know what you will find or what will find you.

That just got creepy. Sorry.