Suburban Zen?

Question of the morning: Is it possible to enjoy a walk in the suburbs on a weekday morning during peak school and work departures?

I awoke around six a.m., my hubby headed out for his first day of what is hopefully a new exercise/stress-reducing program: going for a bike ride. My goal was to shower and be ready when he returned so that I could begin my new (or renewed) routine of walking our dogs in the morning, sans children.


While I was showering, I began to think about the timing of my walk: it would be between seven and eight a.m.: PEAK school bus pick-up time for neighborhood children. I had forgotten about this. My walks of late with my dogs have generally been late afternoon or evening-sunset is my favorite time. There are two lakes I pass on my favored dog-walking "loop." The second lake is perfect for sunset: pink and purple skies glow above, while their reflections glimmer in the lake. I walk very slowly during this portion, breathing in the air, gazing at the sky, absorbing as much nature and meditation as is humanly possible while others pass by on bicycles, walk by with their dogs, or sit and talk on benches.


So, the question I posed to myself this morning was, "How do I take the dogs for a walk during peak school bus and work commute and still enjoy it?" (This would be my only window of opportunity before Rich left for work-I didn't want to leave the girls home alone and I wanted to go alone). I recalled walks in the past during this time of morning that just totally killed the Zen quality of my exercise and nature fix. I don't know-something about huge yellow LOUD school buses plus LOUD school children waiting to board them plus accompanying chatting parents at bus stops equals meditative buzz kill.



What to do? Even though I don't have a child that attends public school, I am fully aware of the schedule (hard to miss when the bus stop is just outside your bedroom), not to mention I used to have a child who rode said noisy buses. I knew that the first bus would pick up the elementary kids at approximately 7:15 and the next one would be at about 8:00 for the middle and high-schoolers . I had a 45 minute window. However, I thought of another glitch: those times were just for my neighborhood. There would be buses all along my planned "loop!" Aargh!

How could I experience morning bliss through all this? Here is what I did: I waited until the first school bus had picked up its victims, uh, I mean students, and then I cut over to the park across the street. Instead of just walking through it to the next neighborhood, I stayed there, taking my dogs around the first lake. At first, they pulled me in our usual direction, but with a little tugging on my part, I convinced them of the different route. As we headed around the lake, I recalled how two Springs ago, Lauren and I had discovered a nest there-a goose nest. It was rather large-about 2 feet. We began taking daily walks to check on the progress-first the female sitting on said nest for several days, then sure enough, one day, when she was scared off as we walked by, she left her nest, which surprised me, and we saw several large goose eggs. There is a reason why, when a child is hit on the head with a baseball, mothers remark, "Oh, my you're going to have a goose egg there!) Because goose eggs are BIG! Well, a lot bigger than the robin's tiny blue eggs we'd seen and certainly larger than the chicken eggs we ate. Eventually we got to see little baby geese! Soooo cute!

I have to confess I was hoping for some great nature discovery or experience today. Some sighting of a rare bird, a turtle sunning on a rock-anything. (I am currently reading E.B. White's Trumpet of the Swan to Lauren.-no writer describes nature more eloquently than White does). Sam has discovered the trumpeter swan nest and has just watched the babies swim over to him. Louis, who cannot "beep" at him, pulled his shoestring. So I am living with E.B. White's fantastic imagery and story telling of nature in my head, totally spoiling me for the suburbia in which I live.


We passed a section, which, until today had been blockaded with a pile of stumps that had made a crude wall, blocking a view of a "private" lake at the opposite end of my street. Though I felt a bit like a peeping Tom, I enjoyed the view of this lake I hadn't seen in years! It was huge! It wrapped around this one person’s property on the one side, stretched down along several houses, ending at a house and neighborhood I do not know. It was not particularly beautiful, but I enjoyed the "private" viewing. Molly and Baxter did too. I thought, "Ok, I guess that is my discovery for the day, like Sam’s discovery of the swan's nest." Hardly life changing, but I was content with this experience-I take my nature fixes where and when I can get them.



After this little detour, we continued our circle around the lake. So far I had not heard a school bus, nor seen a human being. So far, so good. As we passed by the entrance to some woods, I thought of how I would like to take the dogs in there, but memories of paintballs and paint spray kept me away. After circling the lake once, I thought I might walk a bit through the neighborhood near this park, but the sight of a man dragging out his trash can inspired me to turn around and make a second circle around the same lake. Off I dragged my again confused dogs back around the lake.



I resigned myself to a repeat of the walk around the lake, but this time in reverse, looking forward to another view of the now "unhidden" third lake, hoping no human would come along and take away my fantasy of being alone near the wilderness. Alas, no such luck. A few short steps into the return trip, I spotted a person and a dog. Damn. As we each neared each other, I saw it was a new neighbor, an Asian woman, whose English seems a bit shaky. She does not say much, but she is friendly. She has a beautiful Akita puppy -all white, soft fur, full of energy, looking like he should be pulling a sled in the snow of Alaska, not walking here on the flat grassy land near a lake on a warm, sunny spring day in Virginia. We had a friendly exchange (well, mostly our dogs did) and I forgot to stop by the "new" lake. However, just as I passed it, thinking I'd missed my moment of Zen before returning home to the drudgery of my daily routine -saying good bye to my hubby, feeding the kids, doing the dishes, teaching the kids, driving to co-op, teaching more kids, etc., I turned around and saw a mother duck and her six little ducklings.

There: my moment of Zen in suburbia during peak morning rush hour. One friendly person, one furry dog, six little ducklings and NO noisy school busses!

The answer to my question of the morning: YES!!!