Walking

By Joanne Epp

And, we pray, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful...

This line is from one of the prayers at the close of the Daily Office; it’s familiar from St. Margaret’s evening prayer services. That phrase about thankfulness stops me every time. These days my inner state is often not gratitude, but a reflection of the current atmosphere of anxiety. 

But here’s one thing I am grateful for today: I’m thankful that I can go out for walks, and especially for walks along the river. This is one of the benefits of winter: the river becomes a walkway, a path you can only gain access to when the water is frozen. From it, you get a view of the neighbourhood you don’t otherwise get, and although the traffic noise is never entirely absent, when you’re down below street level on the river ice, the traffic noise is temporarily far away. You’re still in the city, but somehow it feels like you’re in a different place. From down on the river I see the sky in a way I don’t see it from our windows. In the late afternoon, I can see the sunset colours, which are otherwise mostly hidden by houses and tall trees. I see trees leaning out from the riverbank, and geese walking on the frozen water.

I am also grateful that my mother can go out for walks. She lives in a care home now, but is still able to get around on her own. She goes out twice a day whenever possible—the only one of the residents who does this, she figures—and won’t stop as long as the sidewalks are navigable and the temperature is above minus 40. These walks, I’m sure, do a great deal to keep her healthy and sane. She and I understand each other well in certain ways: “I don’t know how people can just sit inside,” she says, and I answer, “I don’t, either.”

I suspect that when Archbishop Cranmer wrote those lines praying for hearts thankful for all God’s mercies, he was thinking of bigger and more momentous things than going for walks, whether on a frozen river or along the streets of a small Saskatchewan town. All the same, walking is something I’m unfeignedly thankful for these days. It brings pleasure and beauty; it’s restorative to body and spirit. It is a gift.