I started walking again in a time of great need: I was depressed, I was anxious, and I needed to do something, anything, to feel better. I started by going for a walk on the trail outside the hospital. Every day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I hadn’t been taking my legally mandated breaks - a problem, I think for many people, so let me say it here: TAKE YOUR BREAKS. ALL OF THEM. Making myself go for two walks a day, doing a 2km loop each time, helped bring me back to life.
At first, it wasn’t obvious that it was helping me. I still struggled every moment of every day, and things got worse before they got better. But slowly, surely, I began to climb out of my pit and start looking at things around me. The walks were on the same loop, every day, but the world changed around me as I plodded along. Seasons changed, weather changed, trees fell, different plants grew more from one year to the other. I met colleagues on the walking trail at different times; quietly, I was ushered into a club of walkers, the people who escaped the hospital for some fresh air and daylight, on all of the days we could manage. We nodded at each other. We chatted about the weather. Once some of the staff from physical resources started going on daily walks, the trail was plowed at the beginning of the winter, before parking lot snowbanks overtake it. (The outdoor walkers modify their loop in the winter, loosely following the trails as best we can from the road).
Then the pandemic happened.
I’ve talked a bit about what it was like inside the hospital during the early days of the pandemic, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to convey the crushing anxiety. And certainly, as a non-clinical member of staff, I was still removed from some of the more acute problems. Everything changed so quickly, and we still had to come into work and somehow act like it wasn’t happening but also act like it was happening. The pressure snapped a lot of people, and none of us will ever be the same again. And in the spaces between worry, we had the threads of bureaucracy binding us together. Staff were screened every day before going into work, and in fact every time we left the building and came back in. To alleviate the time spent on screening, a memo suggested we reduce the breaks we spent outside of the building.
I wept in my office when I read that, and promptly went outside for a walk. On my way back in, the person who was assigned to screen just waved as I walked by.
I didn’t stop my walks, and in fact saw more people out on the trail than I had before. We were all desperate to feel something other than panic and fear, and at least out on the trail, we could take off our masks and feel the sunlight on our faces. We could be alone. We could forget for 20 minutes, the length of time it takes to get all the way around and back inside. In the shattering of the world as I knew it, I doubled down on my daily walks. I ordered hikers off the internet, so I’d have proper shoes to change into for my little walks. I booked them into my calendar, so I could hold myself accountable, and I wouldn’t get lost inside my work (or spirals, during that period).
Somehow, I was alone inside a building where 1500 people work, but when I was out on the trail, I was never alone. As I walked along, swinging my mask from my hand in summer, hands in my pockets in the fall, bundled up in the winter, I walked with birds, squirrels, deer, rabbits…I watched the geese eat apples from the trees on the front lawn. One time I came around a bend to find a doe and two fawns. I held my breath in my suddenly frozen stance to watch them watch me, before they ran back into the woods.
I went for a walk on the trail after a fight with my director. I went for a walk on the trail after winning a hair dryer at the employee breakfast, I went for a walk after I finished a search and needed to clear my mind. Sometimes I went for a walk with my office neighbour, the wellness lead. Sometimes with the nurse educators. One of the library technicians came to work with me in my library for a day, and I dragged her outside for a walk too.
My walks have not always solved every problem; usually they wait for me to burst back inside, rosy-cheeked and breathless from the brisk pace I keep up. Sometimes my walk helps me unravel a problem. Sometimes my walk is just a moment of respite, the only time of day where no one can contact me, because I rarely bring my phone with me. That twenty minutes is one where I can’t be found. It belongs to me alone.
I love this sentence: "And in the spaces between worry, we had the threads of bureaucracy binding us together."
This is beautiful Alison and I can relate so much 😊. Thank you so much for putting your experience into words, it certainly was a time and getting out every day helped me too but my options at SJRH were loops of parking lot “H” or busy and noisy university Ave. I envy your peaceful trail setting. Hugs to you!