By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t enjoy walking, or, at least, being on my feet. It started as a child. Short distances, longer distances… or simply nervously stepping around as I watched TV or talked to Mom while she sat in the living room or kitchen.
It often annoyed my mother, and her words, “Steve, QUIT your prancing!” ring clearly after almost seven decades.
So, when my most personally stressful time in a few years arrived a few weeks ago (due to identity theft, a gut-wrenching story for a later time), I immediately grabbed my trusty Omron pedometer and sought relief by walking the neighborhood lane with increased vigor, and also among other places available. I’m currently walking more steps than usual and doing new walking trips more often. As always, it’s helped. It’s at least dropping my stress level from a 9 to an 8 or even seven and a half, though that’s an unscientific guess.
Walking benefits me in the following ways, much as it has in the past. First, it’s fun and scenic, with a couple horse farms to observe around my neighborhood. Always looking to lose weight, I feel good about each calorie I burn, hoping they will add up significantly as I continue. For my perennial goals of studying Spanish 100 hours per year and Kentucky history 200 hours, my phone with internet supplies me with plenty of YouTube material to chalk up lots of study hours, making my time less sedentary.
Walking gives me time to think, usually without major distractions. The fresh air helps. Ideas for this column often percolate on a walk, then are manifested at the keyboard when I get back to the house.
The exercise helps me spiritually, too. I whisper prayers to uplift others, and sometimes that spurs me to make a phone call to one of them while keeping my legs moving and raising my heart rate–the good kind of heart rate. Let’s consider it a good use of time, a true win-win.
And oh, did I say walking helps relieve a little of that dang awful stress?
Before moving to Versailles in 2016, I developed a friendship at a Lexington local gym with someone about half my age who lives life on the autism spectrum. We spent many hours talking and walking around an oval track. In 2013, I dedicated my then latest Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes book volume to “Morgan . . . my walking buddy.” Yep, walking is important to me.
Years earlier, I was into hiking, or as I might term it, “walking on a sometimes-rough terrain.” On a memorable hiking day at Cumberland Gap, I arrived early and started my hike to the Hensley Settlement, some 10 miles away from my starting point at the Pinnacle site. It was a taxing hike there, but I made it, took a quick tour of the Settlement, and started on the return trip.
Tired and sore, I was motivated to get back to my starting point—in haste — for two important reasons. One, I knew the gates closed near dusk and if I was late, my car would have been trapped overnight, with me needing to endure sleeping in the car until morning. The second, more compelling reason, was the fact that outside Hensley Settlement stood a group of bears. Though they didn’t appear to be of a belligerent mindset, I considered the “flight or fight response,” and I made the flight choice. It didn’t matter that my legs felt heavy and my bones were aching.
I DID make it back, and on time. I spent my night in a comfortable Holiday Inn in Middlesboro after devouring huge amounts of food at a local steakhouse. But this would not be an entry under the “walking to relieve stress” department that I mentioned earlier.
But most of the walking I do these days nibbles away at the stress I feel, and I sure hope that I am able to continue this “soleful” passion for many years. If Mom can see me now from a safe distance, she just might be thinking . . . “Steve, keep up that prancing!”
I hope so, because I’m gonna do it regardless.