Winter Walkers

If you see us walking through the snow don't say hello

Winter is hard for the walkers.

It’s not like summer, where the night can be a reprieve from the relentless heat of the afternoon. It’s not like fall, where any time of day you can steal off the porch steps and hit the cool air and jog shirtless or stroll in a jacket across the neighborhoods, past the porches, past the dogs that bark once and decide you aren’t worth it.

No, winter is much harder for the walkers. Winter is perhaps the one time of year where walking is not the best antidote to those many vices and sins that plague mankind.

Or at least it’s not so easy to swallow.

I have seen many an alcoholic and many a chronic masturbator flourish in the summer. They can, when the working day is done, leave their screen door smacking and run out onto the city streets or the country byways and lanes, amidst the trees or the skyscrapers, and walk in the shade or walk in the sun.

They can sweat out their desires and sin and make a way for themselves that is just one foot after another. There is no cure to the kind of sickness they have, but there is a balm and that balm begins in the soles of the feet, the beat of the knees as they go up, down, marching-band style, down the streets, across the crosswalks or the jaywalks, wherever the light permits.

It is not a cure, but it is something like it.

It is not a cure, but rather a cause.

A cause to get out.

A cause to move the legs.

A cause to move the body when the spirit refuses to do so.

I have seen addicts and violent angry men save themselves and their families this way, by walking.

Just walking.

Not because they became saints.

Not because God reached down and rewired them. But because they left the house at the moment when the comfort was about to win. Because they chose the street over the trap.

Better to be a walker than to be an addict.

Better to be walking than to go to AA and suffer the gaze of God.

Better to be a nomad out here than anything at all inside.

Better to be a walker than to be a user.

Better to be a walker than to be an abuser.

Better to walk away than to sit inside the trap one’s own hands make.

But winter is hardest for the walkers.

Instead of warm spring air or blistering summer wind or even a chill fall upon leaving their warm, seductive homes, the walkers go out into the truly maddening cold.

Teeth-chattering, cheek-flushing, nose-running, snot-freezing cold.

The kind of cold that doesn’t just exist around you but enters you, fills you up and shakes you. It gets in the cuffs of your sleeves and the seams of your jeans and it makes a home in your palms and fingertips.

And we must walk there, and it is hard and it is challenging and it is painful. Every step not running away from something, but running into something worse. Running away means cold. Running away means freezing. Running away means the kind of pain they write about in Shackleton, except you don’t get a medal or a book deal, you just get numb toes and a quiet mind for an hour.

Winter is hard for the walkers because for once what is at home is far more seductive than what running away provides. For once, the house has teeth. The house says: Stay. The house says: Warmth. The house says: Screens. The house says: A drink. The house says: Just one more hour in the filth and excess and soft blankets and easy pleasure. And winter backs the house up. Winter presses its face to the window like an enforcer and says: You sure you want to come out here with me?

But we must.

I see one now as I pass by the tenements.

There he is, dark little shape inside his big coat. Porchlight on behind him, spilling that warm little triangle onto the steps like a benediction. Before it goes off he’s going to have to make a decision. He either comes out to join us in this cold or retreat back inside to face it all alone. You see his keys in his hand? He’s thinking of driving. He’s thinking he can outrun it on four wheels, keep the heat blasting, keep moving without actually moving. That won’t save him. I know where he’ll end up parking.

That will only delay the medicine.

Because the medicine isn’t fleeing fast on a road. The medicine is the old, dumb, holy act of putting a foot down and putting another foot down and letting the body tell the mind:

Not today. We have steps to take.

Driving can only delay the reckoning. Walking meets it. walks with it. The Walker says, Yes, it’s cold. Yes, it hurts. Yes, I would rather be inside. And then they take another step.

Then they begin to wonder how far they can go.

Still, walking is hard this time of year.

The outer dark begins so early at five p.m., as if the day is already done when the working man comes home.

Now there is only darkness and night time and unforgiveness. There’s only the cold, and the pain, and the suffering, and there’s only the pain that one can subject oneself to that is better for them than the pleasure they derive from their addictions.

Winter makes you earn it.

Winter makes you endure.

Winter makes you prove you want to be clean more than you want to be comfortable.

The others will get christmas, and eggnog, and fireside storytime and central heating and they can have it.

We have our steps.

Walking is hard this time of year.

But it’s good medicine for you. It’s good for me. It would be good for him.

Oh look. . .his porch light’s gone out.