The two story building on the corner down from us houses an expensive French restaurant we’ve never eaten dinner at and a small grocery where on rare occasion, usually when someone is visiting, we’ll get a coffee and sit inside and chat, or sit out at one of the sidewalk tables, or carry a cup home, sipping up the hill. The reason we’ve never had dinner at the restaurant isn’t that we don’t like French cooking; it’s the maximum costly flair, yet it’s very popular, as evidenced by its reservations only habit. It’s a small place, the tables close together and the chairs uncomfortable looking (for years the space was a dry cleaners). Or you can sit at the bar. Maybe we’ll have an excuse to dine out with a visitor or two come some warm summer evening, on the sidewalk under the amber bulbs, partaking in the Parisian mood of a sensory rich urban terrace, imagining ourselves Jake and Lady Brett and just as lost.
We’ve been walking around the block daily lately, about as far as we can go in the cold, winter’s cold now requiring a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, long sleeved flannel shirt, vest, jacket, raincoat, a watch cap pulled down over the ears, thick jeans, wool socks, and waterproof boots. At a quick cold clip, it takes about ten minutes to walk around the long route. A shortcut route through the alley takes only four or five minutes, still a long walk if the east wind is blowing through your multi-layered clothes and turning walkers into icicles after only a few cold steps. The word of the week is the Mpemba effect, the term given to hot water freezing more quickly than cold – under certain conditions; but in our experience walking around the block we have confirmed the effect: the hotter we are upon leaving the cozy pad, the quicker we seem to freeze up walking.
She likes to stop and go through the neighborhood library book box on the next corner, at the edge of the vacant lot, just before the bus stop bench. No matter how cold it is. He does not like to stop at the book box in winter. Summer yes, winter no. The bus rumbles by, no riders.
Sometimes there are cats slinking along the way, sidling up to our legs, arching their backs, meowing, wanting petting and stroking, their waggling tails sending threads of conflicting messages. Not too many warm cats in the cold winter though, not too often are they out and about. And last week one came into the house, the orange tabby, cold and in a hurry, the door open as monsieur reached for the mail, but scurried back out and down the sidewalk, looking for some French cafe miettes and no doubt sensing she wouldn’t find any at our place.
After the book box and around the bus stop corner comes the lovely hedge of lavender bushes atop a stone wall, and in keeping loosely with the French theme an essential part of the walk to rub a sprig between the fingers to release the scent, aggravate the fragrance, stir the stained memory of odor. Alas, again it is winter, any memory of summer smells weak and thin.
Now we must decide to take the long hill or switchback and walk past the apples and raspberries and mints and roses. What a surprise this week to see a rose in winter. And a white Christmas camellia in bloom. The wind hurls up the east-west streets. Better to take the long hill north to the top, warming up for the turn east again and again wind-chill freezing, now five hundred feet high and facing the open Gorge winds as free as any breeze on an open sea. Then turn south again now descending and if it’s a Thursday afternoon hearing the jazz band up in the big green house, thumping and brittling in turns with frowns and smiles.
If you’ve read this far, we’re still on the walk, and your read time was 4 to 5 minutes, just over 700 words, maybe only half as many steps, we’ve not been counting, probably we’re still at the book box, maybe just past the lavender. The post seems to have taken the shortcut. Or it seems one reads faster than one walks, a surprise in winter.
Afternoon walk close in and find a cafe with sidewalk tables to sit out with an espresso, on watch and wait.
In his November 14, 2016 Financial Page article for The New Yorker, “
It’s fall, and soon winter will come in, and most of the cafes locally will move their sidewalk tables and chairs indoors, and it will be harder walking and wandering to find a place to sit out with an espresso in what might remain of the afternoon light (in the Northwest, the world is also cracked, but in winter, that’s how the water gets in). A certain discomfort is a necessary good for some kinds of writing.
The Coming of the Toads 