I hate exercise. Not that I mind a bit of snow shoveling or digging of potatoes or cutting the grass. The thing is that after I have engaged in one of these training exercises I may be hot, sweaty, and out of breath just as if I had spent the time on the StairMaster, but in addition I have actually achieved something, something I can stand back and admire, congratulating myself on what a fine wide path I have sculpted through the two-foot drifts or what an impressive heap of potatoes I have grown to sustain me and the vermin in the basement through the short cold days to come.
However, exertion for its own sake holds no allure. So when I had finished planting my bright red peonies back at the end of August, and after I had gathered in the last of the butternut squashes, and after I figured the grass was as short as it needed to be until next spring, I flopped down into my La-Z-Boy with a large bowl of popcorn and haven't moved since except to heave to my feet occasionally to explore the possibilities of the fridge or waddle off to the store to replenish my dwindling supply of sausages or cupcakes.
The thing is, there has been no snow. In times gone by I was saved from atrophy by the need to relocate a ton or so of snow at least once a week, or failing that the opportunity to shuffle down to the creek on snowshoes once or twice a season. But alas, this year there has been nothing but sleet, drizzle, mud and frozen, lumpy terrain. To be honest these conditions are not sufficiently appealing to lure me out from in front of the stove except for a quick foray in search of a snack.
The result of this unfortunate diet and exercise program was made tragically manifest shortly after New Year's when I went shopping for clothes. Garments offered on the small/medium/large spectrum have always been rather whimsically sized. I believe I still have a shirt I once bought not because I liked it more than average but because the one that fit me had an S stitched into the collar band. That did not happen on this particular trip to the shops. Unfortunately the numerical spectrum of sizes is way more rigorous, and what I took away that day were items in sizes I thought I would only see lined up at the Italian sausage booth at Field Days.
I was so depressed by this that I went straight home and flopped into La-Z-Boy with a large bowl of popcorn and wallowed in the warm embrace of self-pity and specious rationalization. When this became tedious I stared out the window at the bleak, dead spectacle of a snowless winter – bleached-out grass, tangled brown weeds, frozen mud, skeletal black trees against the murky sky. I needed a plan.
I could stop eating everything I enjoy eating and replace it all with saltines and weak tea. This was so far into Fantasyland that it lacked the power even to depress me.
I could respond to one of those fliers inviting me to join a “health club” for the low,low price of way too much, and drive 10-20 miles to an underventilated facility smelling chronically of sweat, dust, and sneakers for the pleasure of stepping up and down on a box, lifting shiny metal objects, doing energetic things on a contraption that looks like a huge mousetrap. Tempting though this option might be, I put the idea aside in favor of wistfully hoping for snow.
The bicycle option, so attractive and effective when I lived near an actual bike path as opposed to the long, narrow gravel pit known to the state cartographers as Shacksboro Road, is another distant dream. In fact it has drawn yet further from the realms of possibility since I ripped the sidewall open on one of my new and costly winter tires on one of the razor-sharp stones that are a constant feature of the two miles of roadway before you get to the pavement.
Then one day I strolled out the back of the house to the greenhouse to tidy it up a bit in case this endless horrible winter ever ends. There were some tools underfoot that were of no immediate use, so I picked them up and headed off for the barn. From the barn I could see something down in the field I couldn't make out, so I went to see what it was. It was just a tangle of hay left from the last cutting, but there were some deer tracks nearby which headed off for a brambly clump further down the field. I went to see where they went after that. They continued into a thicket of prickly bushes that were tearing my coat to shreds so I backed off a bit and listened. There was a pretty loud running water sound from the creek so I thought “Ooooh, otters!” and went down to see. There were no otters, but there were definite reminders of Hurricane Irene in the form of washouts and downed trees even after all these months, so I picked my way among the flood-flattened grass and half frozen puddles alongside the creek to where there is a huge old willow that I was happy to see appeared untroubled by the extra water. The spring water that wound among its roots looked the same as it always had and then I was past the bend in the creek and could see down the next stretch to where there was a beaver dam.
This vision should have excited me more than it did, but by now the wind was picking up, my feet were wet, and my hair was full of burrs and twigs. Therefore, I resisted the impulse to thrash down through another prickly thicket to have a look and instead retraced my soggy steps back up the hill to my nice warm kitchen, puffing and sweaty. Once safely ensconced back in my La-Z-Boy I realized with surprise, over a collation of hot milk and Oreos, that what I had just had was a whole lot of healthy, wholesome exercise of a sort that I am hard-wired to avoid like a high colonic. While I was pretty sure I was the same size as before, and my fondness for grilled cheese sandwiches raged unabated, still I had moved more than the length of myself and it had done no lasting harm, it gave me pleasure, it smelled nice, and it involved no driving. These are the characteristics of a perfect exercise plan.
For my next training exercise I went back down to the creek from the other direction and had a look at the beaver dam. But that is another story.
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