I don’t get to walk everyday, though I almost always want to. The urge is less peripatetic than the thing that pushes me out on the road but I’m certain they’re related. I think I started walking because my feet have always conspired against me. As a kid, I was a lousy athlete. Couldn’t run well between chronic asthma and bad feet. As I got older, all my feet did was hurt and so I think I was just heaping hurt upon them. I was walking through Bond Hill – a neighborhood in Cincinnati – on my way to my tutoring gig in 2005 when I felt my left Achilles tendon splinter. It didn’t snap, and I didn’t find out that was what it was until a few years later when I had insurance. I just kept walking.

Last summer injured my right hip by accidentally stepping into the sump pit on our basement. For those of your unfamiliar with sump pits, basements in formerly swampy areas tend to have them to take on water from the soil around the house and pump it into the rain water or septic system. In our house, we think it was actually built to be a water source… which is a pretty good gambit as long as you can boil it first. This happened early in the pandemic, which meant I didn’t go to the doctor. I did a telehealth call about my ankle, which had swollen to the size of two really large grapefruit, but I wasn’t worried about the hip. I figured it was just sore from the impact of going down into the 4 foot pit, touching bottom, and bouncing back up onto the basement floor. I was lucky I didn’t snap my leg, so I didn’t complain.

I didn’t walk much last summer because I was actually working a temporary COVID staff in a day shelter for homeless men. And when I tried to walk the 40 miles from Savanna, IL to Moline this past May, I hit weather and my Merrells blew out, which made me decide to not do the walk… a decision I have since been bothered by.

Lately, I walk around the neighborhood. Pre-pandemic I was able to cross the city, though at a much slower pace than most of the mapping/GPS programs. I’ve lost some of my distance and am still building back up; I like walking around my neighborhood, though. The South End. Beechmont. Beechmont is the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the city; when I first moved here, we had three different ice cream trucks to entice the children from 3 different ethnic backgrounds. The pandemic shaved those down to one, creepy truck that plays a plinky tune and screams “HELLO” like a Pee Wee’s Playhouse reject. The neighborhood butts up against several industrial areas, the train yard, and is relatively close to the airport. And because it’s an older neighborhood — and because Louisville is a river city with streets that tentacle out and around and on top of one another in an organic mess — it’s not difficult to find out of the way turns and find previously unexplored alleys and back streets.

On my last walk — this would be Monday August 1st — I wasn’t out of my block when I found the orange dinosaur. Some toy dropped or lost or otherwise abandoned. It’s the sort of toy that comes in a box with a flavorless burger and weepy fries. It wasn’t sitting up when I found it, but it seemed important to put it on it’s feet.

I don’t know why.