WALKING OUTDOORS

I started walking around Durand when we moved here in 1966. I had no choice–Ken drove our car to Rockford for his job with the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Police. Our house was only two blocks from the main drag where we rented a post office box for our mail and I shopped. Small businesses included a hardware, a women’s clothier, a drug store, a bank, a furniture store and two grocers. Prices may have been a little higher than big city establishments, but a portion of the sales taxes I paid went toward fixing our streets and keeping the sewer running.

On snowy, winter nights, after I covered a civic meeting for the newspaper, it was quicker and no colder to walk three blocks home from the village hall or the school than to clear off the car and drive.

I no longer attend board meetings and only the post office, a pharmacy and a grocery store remain downtown, but I still walk after our mail, do what shopping I can and follow the paved path in Saelens Park.

If the benefits of walking outdoors could be bottled, a snake oil salesman would be hawking it on a busy corner. An afternoon stroll makes me happy, boosts energy, strengthens my heart, lowers disease risk and helps prevent dementia. A brisk walk keeps weight in check and tones legs, stomach and rear. Speed walking tones arms. Swing my arms faster and walk faster. The sun has been named a villain causing skin cancer, but I need its vitamin D.

The weather needs to cooperate for me to do my daily constitutional. Walking in the rain may be considered romantic, but I don’t do it. I’m not taking a chance that getting wet brings on a cold. In the winter, the thermometer has to reach at least twenty degrees for me to venture outside.

If you can walk, do you?