High Achiever: Stepping out

Stepping out

By David Hill

I’ve given up long walks. In fact, I’ve pretty much given up most walks.

Up till two months ago, I was doing my usual 40-minute strides up the hill from New Plymouth’s CBD to home, through Pukekura Park’s tall green-grey avenues of kauri.

Then my right knee began to hurt. I kept walking, through the park or on my other daily circuits, which may not have been wise of me. After a week, I was limping.

Another week, and I was hobbling around the house, wincing and gasping as pain stabbed. Suddenly, I was semi-crippled.

A doctor’s appointment, an X-Ray, a diagnosis. Osteoarthritis: cartilage worn away, bone starting to scrape on bone. The knee is stuffed. A replacement seems inevitable, which means either seven months on a waiting list (gulp), or $40,000 for private treatment (double gulp).

I’m doing knee exercises. I’m cycling. I’m learning to move so I minimise the discomfort. I use a stick where necessary. But I miss the walking – hugely. No other exercise carries the same pleasure and satisfaction as putting one foot in front of the other. Walking brings mental as well as physical fitness.

The tread of boot or sneaker on ground is great for releasing those endorphins which maximise wellbeing and minimise stress.

Few other activities bring such a blend of closeup and panorama. One moment, you’re seeing a beech seedling at ankle-height beside you; fifty paces later, you’re staring across a vista of ridges where that seedling’s great-grandparents tower like cathedral pillars.

And few other activities bring so many narratives, whether it’s the pitbull on the corner that snarls and froths as you stride past, or the flooded river where three of you with linked arms had to wallow across, hip-deep. (And of course, each time you tell those narratives, the pitbull grows more fangs, while the river depth rises from hip to waist to chest.)

So yes, I’m missing all those pleasures of vigorous walking

But I’m finding compensations. As well as a daily bike ride, I take my stick, limp 80m to the reserve at the end of our street, lurch around among its trees, then peg-leg home. And I’m surprised, relieved, even excited at how many rewards I’m getting from that small space. I’ve come to know almost every detail of the little reserve. I notice ferny epiphytes in the forks of big pohutukawa; the glint of tiny crimson puriri berries on the ground; a miniature totara shoving its way out of the ground and heading for the sunlight; the tracery of individual branches. I’ve started touching things: lichen-patterned trunks, green or golden leaves, sculptural roots curving from mossy banks.

I’ve also been listening, to the slow creak of trees in the wind, the scrape of bough on bough, tui fluting, fantail piping, kereru thunping from perch to perch like flying sandbags.

I’ve even been smelling – fresh leaves, kowhai flowers, that cool, damp cleanness which even the smallest stand of native bush gives.

My 80m limp to the reserve has its own pleasures as well. Frank, whom I sometimes meet on the way, agrees. “I don’t know what I’d do without my daily outing,” he tells me. Frank’s daily outing is a 10-minute shuffle to the corner and back, on his walking frame. What determination. What guts.

I’ve come to know Frank, and several other local faces, through my own hobble to the reserve. We pause, chat, learn a bit about one another. My suburban street is starting to feel like a real neighbourhood. Even the pitbull now just gives a grunt as I pass.

I guess I’m trying to say that all walking, no matter how limited, brings rewards. The poet William Blake wrote about being able “to see Infinity in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wild flower”. Substitute karaka berry and miro leaf for sand and flower, and that’s what I’m enjoying right now. Age or accident mean that nearly all of us will have to give up our striding at some stage, temporarily or permanently. We’ll feel bereft and bewildered at first. Something that delighted, invigorated, even defined us has gone.

But even when your range has shrunk to 80 metres, and your pace to that of an athletic slug, there are still so many satisfactions to be found. Remind yourself of that. Feel reassured. Walk on!

Have a smile!

I don’t get it. The trail looked so flat on the map.

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