I'm tired of being sick in bed, so yesterday I headed out for a long walk. I ended up heading east along Burnhamthorpe Road, admiring the swaths of tulips in the centre islands, noticing Eastern Redbud trees in bloom, until I got to the overpass over the Credit River. There are a couple of lookout points where you can rest your arms on the railing and look down at the gorge. The sound of the river has to compete with the sound of traffic at that height, but if you take the steps down to river level, it's like entering a different world. Stone, soil, filtered sunlight, green growing things---and the hum of traffic is subsumed under the rush of water.
If you turn north, you enter the paths of the Riverwood Conservancy, where you can choose easy or more difficult routes. All lead eventually back up the hill to formal gardens and the art centre. Or, as I did yesterday, you can turn south and walk along the Credit River.
I met a handful of people walking the trail, but for the most part I was by myself. Nothing but peace and beauty and the satisfying feeling of walking on something other than pavement. There are occasional footbridges over branching rills, and they've placed handy benches here and there if you need a pause. I was taking a moment to remove pebbles from my shoes when I looked up and saw two deer placidly walking along the bank directly opposite me. Deer. Smack in the middle of a city of over 700,000. So I sat on the bench a while and watched them. One of the deer was so unthreatened by my presence that she stopped to poop, which I confess I took as a compliment. A few other walkers paused to watch for a while too.
When the deer finally moved on, we all wished each other a nice day, and I resumed my stroll (the path is level and easy enough that it can't be called a hike) and emerged in Erindale Park on Dundas Street, where---happily---there are public washrooms. I'd already been walking for 2 hours, so I caught a handy bus back to South Common, via the University, and then walked home from there. About 2.5 hours in all.
One of the disadvantages of not having a phone is that I also don't have a lightweight camera. My digital camera weighs too much to want to carry it with me on my walks. But one day I'll see if I can capture some views from the overpass, looking down at the river.
I'm excited to know that all this loveliness is within walking distance of my house, and I regret that I didn't realize it sooner. I feel like I've wasted the past 25 years, missing out on this beautiful scenery when I could have been walking here every day. But then I remind myself that no, until relatively recently, I was running for the bus to get to work, and I wouldn't have had time to take a leisurely two and a half hour stroll in the morning. Instead of marching along under picturesque white pines, I would have been hunched in a cubicle, wrangling numbers into their little slots in Excel sheets. What a waste of life! How glad I am to be free of it, even if only for a while.
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