Our son is often a chatter box, a never-ending stream of language made up of well-worn bits from favourite TV shows or DVDs, requests for information you just gave him, general complaints about what is currently happening, expressions of desire (or dislike) for whatever comes next. It's not a quiet household when he's around and although I recognize that some portion of this chatter (maybe all of it) is anxiety-related, it's not always easy to live with.
We've always been a family of walkers, and are lucky enough to live within walking distance of the lake, grocery stores and fruit markets, even (back in the day) a Zellers that is now a much-less-interesting (to him, anyway) hardware store. We often walk in the city, typically getting off the subway one or two stops away from where we need to go so we can just explore the neighbourhoods we encounter.
A number of years back we discovered, pretty much by accident, the joys and benefits of walking on more challenging surfaces. I'm not talking about proper hiking, with special equipment and backpacks and camping out and such (and let's not talk about that near-vertical stretch of the Bruce Trail my husband steered us on last year on a visit to North Bay). Our quest is for paths that are not only not paved, but not even groomed, that are pitted with rocks and roots and are uneven underfoot, preferably with intermittent light and shade that reveal and obscure the landscape and footing. And although the health benefits are undeniable, here's the benefit we truly treasure: in those conditions Devon is utterly silent for extended periods of time. When you live with a chatterbox, you treasure any silence you can enjoy while sharing his presence. I think of those walks as enforced mindfullness: he is simply forced to focus on every step and, presumably, think of nothing else. He has to be mindful just to stay safe and comfortable: there's nothing abstract or theoretical about it. He never articulates how these walks make him feel, but he also doesn't complain when we embark on one. It's like walking meditation, but again, and I can't stress this enough, the meditation comes from the ruggedness of the terrain.
We've begun collecting a list of some of our favourite rough paths, like the conservation area north of Ball's Falls in Hamilton where you are often walking on a bed of rocks, the north end of the Rouge River park in Toronto where you get lots of different conditions, and Starkey Hill, a conservation area that is pretty much up one hill and down another, right next to a farmers field outside Guelph. To say nothing of the Oakridges Moraine, yet another place where you can be in close proximity to a city but seem to be in the wilderness.
These walks are that rarest of things: a win-win-win situation. We get some much-needed exercise plus a bit of a break from our son's often relentless chatter, and he gets both exercise and what I like to think is also some respite from whatever activities are happening in his brain that leads him to so often verbally seek validation, clarification and, heaven help us, repetition. In fact, if the day is coming to a close and we haven't gone for a walk, he'll remind us to do one, even if it's just one of our standard in-town routes (code-named "school", which is a neighbourhood walk that takes us past, yes, a school; "baby park", so named not because there are babies in the park but because the walk takes us through a small park that is stocked with toys and activities even when there are no children there, "ravine", which takes us through the Glen Stewart ravine which, depending on whether you go from south to north or vice versa, can be quite a little workout, or "Fallingbrook", which takes us through the streets of that fancy neighbourhood to the south of us.
I use a free app "AllTrails" that uses my mobile phone connection to identify nearby treails, which is helpful when travelling. Also check out Ontario Trails.
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