How We Started The Walk That Ended In Art

When Alvin and I started walking in 2004, it had been 17 years since I had broken my neck. Chronic pain had turned into chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and I wasn't able to walk even as far as a few blocks. But that year, I found a pain medication which changed all that. One evening, we walked from the Board of Education where our daughter was at play practice down to ADUC so Alvin could show me some flowers. We walked on to the Old Courthouse for more flowers, then on over across the bridge toward City Park. That's when I realized what I had done: I had walked farther than I had in years without landing in bed the next day. I went home resigned to a few days of excruciating pain and misery -- and the household chaos that comes from missed chores plus two kids. But the next day, something strange happened: I got up. I was hurting, but was not too fatigued to raise my head off the pillows. That evening, we took another walk. Again we walked slowly and stopped frequently to look at flowers and rest. The next day, we did it again. For the first few weeks, I could only walk five minutes before I had to stop. But I kept at it, ever so slowly, and by the middle of July I could make it from the Old Courthouse to Wendy's and then back, then all the way down to Family Dollar and back again to the Old Courthouse. So that became our ritual walk. Almost every day, after supper or at lunch time. By fall, I had become stronger. Muscles were emerging in my calves, seeing the light of day for the first time in years. Walking that street was healing my body. I was very busy homeschooling then, and Alvin and I didn't have much time to just talk. So our walks became our time to talk, as well. Realizing that our children would soon be grown and gone, we talked about what we wanted to do in that next stage of our life. We started out together working side by side at a newspaper and had shared several offices over ten years. We knew we wanted to keep working as a team when our parenting job was complete. So we bounced around ideas for writing and other projects to do together until Alvin's retirement when we could head off into a new sunset. As we were picking up interesting archeological finds, our current project of reclamation art was taking shape a bit at a time. Ironically, we hadn't even considered moving into art in the early days of our walking Main Street. But one day, Alvin said, "We have to save this and make art out of it someday," and I joined in, spinning stories of how this piece of trash fit with that one. Eventually it was a plan, then a grant proposal. By the beginning of 2005, we were walking 2 1/2 miles a day and my dad, who had come to live in Morehead, was diagnosed with lung cancer. On Valentine's Day, he went into the hospital, never to come home again. Alvin stayed most nights with Dad, then went to work. I stayed there a lot of time during the day. During lunchtime, a friend stayed with Dad and Alvin and I walked. It was our time to decompress, to figure out what to do next, to discuss what changes in care were needed, to cry. Later, it would be our time to grieve. Since then, our walks have served many purposes. Exercise. Talk therapy. Nature appreciation. Worship. And art. We have had so much fun finding objects to turn into art. We have made up stories about the people whose names were on the papers we collected. We have sifted through our findings and come to conclusions about what it means to be part of this town and this main street. We made art. And we kept walking.