Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

By Rory McClannahan

The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy; walk and be healthy.

Charles Dickens

There is a bunch of scientific evidence that walking is good for your body. If we look at the strictly physical things, walking is good for your joints, helps keep your heart healthy, strengthens your bones, boosts your immune system, and – this is especially important as you age – helps you poop better.

Everyone knows about the physical benefits, but we don’t think much about the mental benefits of going for a stroll. Whether you walk by yourself or with a friend, it forces you for a brief amount of time during your busy day to slow down and pay attention. Each of us is assaulted day in and day out with a buttload of stress. A walk will help you sort these things out.

Not only are you moving your body during a walk, but your mind also gets a good work out. It’s easy for a mind to get cluttered. We have a lot that is dumped onto it during the course of a regular day. Do I look for a new job? Is my wife having an affair? Are the kids doing okay? Who’s the better captain, Kirk or Picard? Life moves so fast that many times we don’t get a chance to slow down and actually think these things through. Or worse, we ignore the nigglings in our brain, not wanting to confront the unpleasant aspects of life. Many people use other things – like drugs and alcohol, or video games and other media – to mask the real feelings they have.

I’m not judging, I do the same thing. When life is handing you a shit sandwich, you do whatever you can to relax and work things out. Sometimes ignoring a problem or thinking about something else can give you insight. Not always, though, and it is easy to lose who you are to meaningless bullshit.

A walk, however, calms the mind. There is a line from the Desiderata that always strikes me when I’m out for a walk: “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

I realized the value of a walk during the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. At the time, I lived in a house in the Jemez Mountains, miles from anyone my own age – no friends around and my parents spent their days working. It was only me and Cleo, our basset hound, walking in the woods and chasing after squirrels. It was during those walks where I determined what kind of person I wanted to be.

From then on, I became a believer in walking, and as I got older, I would always spend a portion of my weeks on the hoof. It was a form of exploration when I moved to a new place or an escape from the office for just a little while. It helped me see myself as a child of the universe and let my brain gently remind me of my place and importance in said universe.

The building of my last place of work is located next to a Walmart. You might think that would be a less than ideal area to walk around. But behind the Walmart was a concrete ditch that started miles to the east at the Sandia Mountains and ended miles to the west at the river. Someone was smart enough to create a trail along the side of the ditch, so people could take in a little bit away from the city.

As I left the office, I could go east and walk a bit around the middle class neighborhoods in that area of town. If I turned right, it would take me west through some tunnels under a busy boulevard and over to the park where more times than not older retired guys were flying their radio-controlled planes. Regardless of the direction, I would encounter other people, UPS drivers, lawn maintenance guys, mothers on a walk with their children, folks taking their dogs out for a stroll, people playing frisbee in the park and much more. Sometimes I would stop and chat, but most times I would offer a kind greeting and a wave.

Now that I’m working remote, I have the opportunity to walk out the front door of my house and up a hill. It’s a nice workout to reach the top of the hill, which ascends about 400 feet from where my house sits. The reward, though, is to turn around a look out across the valley in which I live and beyond.

Granted, during the daylight it isn’t all that impressive. My valley, named Pleasant Valley, is filled with the kind of homes you would expect from people who don’t make a huge amount of money and who don’t want to live in the city. Our streets are dirt roads and the heating in our homes is fed by propane tanks. There is the occasional house that wasn’t brought in by a truck, and you might be struck by the fact that many people have better barns than houses. For the most part, though, people care about their homes and keep them up.

First thing in the morning, though, you can appreciate why our little spot in the world was named Pleasant Valley, because while it may never be a paradise, it certainly is pleasant. I like the morning because it is the time when the humans are still locked away in their homes and the critters are either coming out after a night of rest or going to bed after a night of hunting.

The birds are chirping and cawing and it’s not unusual to say hello to a pair of crows chuckling at each other from their perch on the power line. We have several hawks who will screech a warning and who are shy when it comes to a camera pointed at them. The hawks, along with the owls, hunt for mice, moles, squirrels and prairie dogs that make their homes in our valley, especially in the pasture across the road from my house.

The crows, and especially the turkey vultures, like it when a prairie dog or rabbit fails in its attempt to cross the chip-sealed road that take drivers down to the highway. They are pretty good at keeping things clean, but you should always make sure to have a good lid on your garbage container.

On my walk, I can, from time to time, see the evidence of larger predators. Coyote scat isn’t unusual or surprising – you can sometimes hear them yapping at night. It has been some time, but I once found bear scat on the property, but they usually only come this far from their mountain homes when they are really hungry.

Early in the morning you can also see and hear the domestic animals come awake. There’s always a dog barking somewhere and you have to make yourself aware to the dogs not firmly fenced, although, it should be noted, that hasn’t been much of a problem lately.

On my walk up the hill, there is a house in which four beautiful German shepherds live. They always come to the fence to tell me that they mean business, but I can tell that they are probably friendlier than they make themselves to be. They just have a job to do and I take no offense at them doing it.

It takes me about 30 minutes to get to the top of the hill and back home. I’m not usually in a big hurry, I’m not training for anything. I’m just getting the blood pumping.

My favorite part is when I reach the top of the hill and turn around to come back down. If my timing is right, I can see the sun rise up over the ridge to the east. If the sky is clear, I can see out beyond our valley and to the terminus of the Rocky Mountains miles to the north.

By then, whatever is troubling my mind doesn’t seem as concerning. For a moment, I see that I truly am a child of the universe, no less than the trees or the stars.