Show me a writer, late in the afternoon, and I’ll show you somebody stir-crazy—someone who’ll seize any pretext for a break. Virginia Woolf, for instance, after hours at the desk, would tell herself, “Really, I must buy a pencil.” Only with this excuse could she “indulge safely in the greatest pleasure of town life”: a walk.
My excuse for such a break is warm-blooded. After a day at the computer, my eyes are strained. My wrist aches from its tango with the mouse. My shoulders have stiffened into a hunch that would tie my yoga teacher up in knots of alarm. Then—jingle, jingle, click, click—comes the shake of dog tags, the tap of toenails on a wooden floor: canine throat-clearing.
She cavorts as I lace up my sneakers, knocks me sideways as I clip the leash to her collar. Joined by that loose restraint, encumbered by only the poop bag in my pocket, we hit the streets.
The air is cool on my bare arms, but who needs a coat? The light is as soft as a well-worn sweatshirt and warms me with its leafy tints. It smells of wisteria, jasmine, dirt turned over, winter’s mat of humus pushed away.
Up sidewalks broken by tree roots, the way ice floes in colder climates are broken up by spring; around first a kid’s bike, abandoned at the call of some friend in a neighboring yard, then a planter overflowing with greens; down a brick-bordered sidewalk, then along the winding boulevard that tracks an old streetcar route, the dog and I make our halting progress. She stops to sniff every mossy, jutting rock, every clump of grass. I’m not one to hustle her along: these are her inboxes, chemical messages by which she breathes in the status updates of the canine world. She deserves time to read, to leave her reply-all comments.
Down the street there appear another dog and a figure we can’t make out. Just one? Not the two-corgi couple from the next street over… Could it be the collie mix and his ponytailed companion? Like sailors on approaching ships, we squint to see who’s coming. Oh, it’s that retriever with the red-bearded man. The humans nod. The dogs strain, quivering, at their leashes, nose-first, then relax their tails into wags.
Next we meet a panting runner, an older couple drifting arm in arm and a plump woman with a stroller—the upturned face inside steadfastly regarding the jogging branches overhead. We reach a park, turn in to make our circuit. A promontory affords us views of downtown: office towers, the river, barges sliding under bridges…and far below, the sweep of traffic, neon chains of headlights and brake lights.
My companion and I have a less frenetic route. We head back uphill under a trellis of limbs and emerge into the neighborhood, where bungalows and villas line the streets, comfortably close, their porches like laps aslant, their roofs like so many hat brims. Behind the windowpanes glows a piecework of yellow light: rectangles that fan into the dusk and wobble toward the street as paler, crazy trapezoids.
By the time we turn the last corner, I’m loose and limber, my writing daze dissolved. We hike the last rise and cross a familiar thatch of lawn. As we approach our own doorstep, our pace quickens. The dog, I imagine, inhales that most satisfying bouquet—home. If we’re lucky, someone has turned the porch light on.