Walk the walk

Sammamish River Trail (former
rail right of way)

Blyth Park in Bothell, Wash.

Whenever I begin to feel even a little bit sorry for myself, I only have to look out the window to realize I am one of the luckiest people on earth.

Because the coronavirus has changed so much of how we live our daily lives, many of my friends are severely limited in the ways they can exercise. In contrast, I have easy access to a variety of outdoor areas suitable for walking. My neighborhood has a plethora of wonderful places literally right outside my front door.

Former Wayne Golf Course
has yet to be named as a park.

The Sammamish River Trail is plenty wide enough to maintain social distance.  Blyth Park is across the river from my house and with a bridge that connects to it just two blocks from my front door. And, if the ground is squishy from recent rains, Blyth's parking lot is a great place to walk! Four times around the loopy parking aisles is one mile. 

Blyth Park is closed to cars
      but open for pedestrians                       

On some days, I walk through Blyth and cross over to the former Wayne Golf Course, now parkland belonging to the city of Bothell. Social distancing is not a problem there. It sounds corny, but I feel blessed.

Putting myself in another world

 Recently I pasted a photo of my face on a Renoir note card and sent it to a friend. Her reaction was so positive, it inspired me to try it with other works of art.

Well, the project of looking through an art book to find paintings I wanted to inhabit was a real freedom event. It took me away from the world of solitude and isolation into an all consuming place for a little while, staving off the corona-virus blues.

The results (just two of them) are shown here . . . maybe you will be inspired to do the same. I took selfies, then shrank them to what seemed 'about right' in terms of scale, snipped them off the paper and laid them onto the art book page. Unlike my original note card experiment, no pasting necessary on this project.

I wasn't striving for perfection, just entertainment. Thank goodness there are ways to escape the suffocating presence of COVID-19.

The godsend of parks

Thanks to 'you-know-what,' local parks are getting a lot more use than they normally would during the work week. I've been walking in my neighborhood and feel lucky to have interesting places to meander in while keeping six feet away from others.

Red Brick Road Park is less than two blocks from my house. It's just a little segment (.2 miles) of a once four-mile-long road that connected Bothell to its neighboring communities. I've walked it occasionally since we moved to Bothell ten years ago. But only this week, when I stopped to look at the sculptures that represent the old-time transportation one would take to Seattle, did I realize the models were created by Bothell high school students in shop classes!

What a lovely thing it is to have a handsome school project on permanent display in a local park! One of the sculptures has some interesting graffiti on it now, which might have been added by a current Bothell High student. The graffiti isn't obscene or rude, but a radical commentary about life--maybe even directed at Covid19.

I am not alone in hating this confinement we're all living with, but at least I am able to enjoy fresh air daily. And that is a privilege not everyone in my age group is enjoying, so I am filled with gratitude to be able to enjoy the freedom and fresh air of a local park.