Walking Therapy

Every week I walk the hills behind Stanford along a path that winds up to a large radio telescope that is still active (in 2010 it was one of several devices that tried to contact the missing Mars rover). People here refer to it as "walking the Dish," and it's such a popular spot that finding a parking spot at the main gate can be a challenge most mornings.

But I almost never walk the Dish alone. Usually there is a friend with me, and we join the hundreds of other people, mostly pairs of women, who walk or job along the steep, winding path seeking exercise, conversation, and the pleasure of reaching a vista that lets you see from San Jose to San Francisco on a clear day.

Today, however, a new walking partner called to cancel because she felt under the weather, and I found myself facing the prospect of walking the Dish by myself. Watching all the other pairs of people setting off chatting and laughing, I felt disappointment fill my chest, but I reminded myself that being on my own meant that I could walk at my own pace, stop to take photos without annoying anyone, and challenge myself to work out a little harder.

In fact, I decided to walk the entire Dish, including the mile-long path that leads over the crest of the hills and descends towards Interstate 280 on the other side. The whole walk would

total six miles, and I had no more than an hour and a half to complete it.

But I wasn't thinking about that when I started up the loop from the steepest end which ascends among a grove of trees. I was thinking how I was going to keep myself from getting bored along the way. Exercising alone feels like work. You feel every muscle ache, and pretty soon you find yourself looking at your watch to see how far you've come and how much longer you have to go.

So I decided to eavesdrop on the conversations of other walkers as I passed them and amuse myself by trying to figure out the story behind these snippets of conversation.

We'd been going there for years, but we then realized it's never going to happen. If we had known...

so Ivory Tower. There was such an aura of privilege...

He said it's your duty, not just your fiduciary responsibility...

This time I have the maps...

When Suzy and I were first married...

My mother thinks it's a sin, but I wish that she'd....

You could construct a whole book of short stories just by paying to the conversations going on around you.

As I listened, I stopped paying so much attention to the strain in my legs as I climbed a particularly steep stretch, and time began to pass almost as quickly as if I were walking with a friend.

I thought about the snatches of conversation I was overhearing, and I realized that for me, and perhaps for most of the people walking the Dish, this experience is as much a form of therapy as it is exercise.

Walking with a friend gives you the opportunity to be excited, to confess your anxieties, to complain about your children, your boss, or your spouse, and to just plain pour your heart out to a sympathetic person. And the only price you have to pay is listening in return to all of your friend's joys, sorrows, and discontents.

"No wonder I never notice the time passing," I thought, "when I'm up here with a friend. It's like going to confession, only without needing to do penance afterwards."

And then I stopped to look over the South Bay and the wide expanse of the valley on one side and the eastern hills on the other, and I felt the peace that always steals over me when I've reached the highest part of the loop and can stop to enjoy this familiar prospect. I looked all around me and took in the shimmering beauty of the morning, with the sun halfway through its ascent, casting a warm light over hills that seemed etched against a cloudless blue sky.

"Now this is therapy," I thought, "balm for the soul." "If only my friend were here to enjoy it with me."