New Year's Day

There are times when life forces you to try new things, even when you'd prefer to stick with your old routine. Back in my teens, my younger sister, Jane, started me on my life-long walking routine. I was a reluctant walker at first, pushed into service by my mother who was worried about Jane taking evening walks solo. We'd set out from the family homestead on East 27th Street, walk uphill to East 38th, traipse through the lovely Mercyhurst College campus, and then hit Parade Blvd. where the guy Jane had a crush on lived. I think we wandered past Frank's house every single time we walked, and we walked regularly, but I never remember seeing him there. Hope springs eternal in the heart of the love struck, I guess. Our walk took us past the mayor's house, past a gorgeous lake view at a distance, and back downhill to E. 27th. It was a really good walk, with or without a Frank sighting. I have to say, I came to love those walks.

Times have changed. Jane has been married to Frank for 28 years now--thus proving the benefits of teenage heart-healthy exercise--the family home is no longer in the family, and I haven't taken a proper walk since summer. Because of my knee and back problems, my physical therapists tell me I need to put off walking for a few more weeks, at least. I don't think I ever realized how that habit, started in my teens, had become one of my main pleasures in life. Walking was always just something I just did: I didn't realize how much I needed it. Exercise, anxiety relief, socializing, nature fix: walking is good medicine. Without it, I've been struggling to find other things to do. Forced out of my routine, I've taken to driving through nature instead of walking.

On New Year's Day, I drove to Ross, Ohio, a short jaunt from my College Hill home, to have a look at Fernald Nature Preserve. Do you recognize the name Fernald? The Fernald plant operated as a nuclear production facility, processing uranium for many years, and in so doing, they turned the place into a big, bad superfund site. The plant closed down in the late 1980s, and the cleanup included a plan to reclaim the land and turn it into both a nature preserve and a kind of historical park, complete with placards on the history of the cleanup and reclamation.

Visiting former superfund sites is not on my new thing to-do list, but I needed a nature fix. My usual New Year's Day excursion involves a hike; this year, that was impossible. I had knee surgery in mid-December that resolved my torn meniscus issues, but which contributed to my back problems (limping and walking with crutches resulted in some bad sciatica). So on January 1st, I drove through the nature preserve, stopped to read about the ongoing remediation connected to ground water pumping, and the successful efforts to bring birds back to the wetlands there. The place is lovely and haunting somehow. Even though I couldn't hike the trails there, it felt good to be out in nature for awhile.

I have to admit that I felt a little nervous about my potential to glow in the dark after my time at Fernald, but the jaunt also gave me some hope. I tend to "catastrophize" about things sometimes, so I've been thinking a lot about a future where walking for pleasure is impossible. My rational side knows this is just a temporary problem, but I'm not always rational. My visit to Fernald was proof in action that things do change, sometimes dramatically. If a superfund site can become a nature preserve, I suspect anything is possible. That's a good reminder for a new year.

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