The Emotional Payback of Walking

It was only when I hurt my knee this year, and had to stop taking my morning fitness walks, that I felt truly constrained by injury. The other physical activities I had enjoyed before-aerobics, hiking along the Pacific coast-also left me with a piercing pain in my knee that even a cold compress couldn't totally heal.

The frustrating thing about the injury was that it hadn't happened while I was pursuing a strenuous sport-so I couldn't brag or get pity for it-but when I simply crouched down low to clean out the cat litter boxes at home. As I bent down, I suddenly felt a sharp, knife-like pain go through my knee.

After six weeks of enforced rest, the knee didn't feel any better, so I returned to my doctor. He probed my knee with a gentle hand and looked at me skeptically.

"How old are you?"

"Forty-nine," I replied.

"The knee is the weakest joint in the body," he said. "And when we get older, it just takes longer to cure an injury there."

But I was impatient, and wanted to get back to the demanding "walk aerobics" videotape I was using to control my weight, one I hoped would sweat inches off my butt and hips. On the VCR, the instructor would demonstrate quick marching steps and kicks as I followed along in my bedroom. "You can feel that in the hip and thigh," she said as she did energetic knee lifts.

I also missed my challenging walking tours up the steep hills of my town. Those walks gave me energy and a sense of purpose. Even on the worst of days, a morning walk lifted my mood high- once those endorphins kicked in. "Exercise is my antidepressant," my best friend told me once, and after taking up daily walking two years ago, I found that I agreed.

"But no aerobics," my doctor told me, disregarding my frown. "And you can walk for exercise, but slowly, and not up steep hills."

It was difficult, but I finally found a suitable walking path that traveled mostly over flat land in my hilly town. During my first practice run, being forced to take it easy made me decidedly grumpy.

The path I walked was hardly scenic. It would toward the BART station, behind a tire store, and through a trendy shopping center with a popular J.R. Muggs coffee shop.

Each morning I would see senior citizens walking for their health, and commuters hurriedly rushing toward the railroad on their way to work. Young men with earphones and older people with helmets careened around me on their speeding bikes.

After a few weeks, however, I began to feel free and easy while taking a leisurely stroll to accommodate my painful knee. As I rambled, I enjoyed scanning the faces of each person I met, imagining the story of their lives. My "aging" and injured knee had a hidden benefit: It was making me slow down to notice the life around me.

Some days I stopped at the coffee shop for a cup of cappuccino or an apple juice and watched people there as they gossiped animatedly with friends or scribbled in notebooks. I stopped to give directions to strangers, and to trade remarks on the advantages of walking with senior citizens.

Six weeks later, I found to my relief that my knee pain had decreased considerably. I decided to try one of my old routes in the hilliest part of town. Yet when I reached the top of the highest hill, I slowed down to take in the view of the San Francisco Bay, and the golden hills nearby. And instead of picking up my pace to increase my heart rate on the remaining flat and downhill stretches-as I did before I hurt my knee-I sauntered slowly home, totally absorbed by my thoughts.

Months later, I walk as much for the scenery and the emotional payback as for fitness. My morning walk is a mix of brisk pacing and slow strolling. I may pause to share local news with neighbors, admire a bed of beautiful colorful flowers, or the bright blue San Francisco Bay, visible on clear mornings.

And as for that walking video? I haven't gone back to it. It just doesn't seem like the real thing anymore.