walking, unnerved.

I hadn’t realized how much I’ve come to take for granted my ability (in a city) to walk everywhere. It feels natural and obvious, and there aren’t many obstacles. Even when we traveled last February to Prague and Istanbul, we never really questioned each other - we would walk everywhere. Three or four miles was nothing. If I could see my way there on the map, I was fairly sure my legs could get me there.

There isn’t a highway in Wellfleet, exactly, but there is a main highway-like road. Route 6, the path through the center of the entire Cape. In Wellfleet, the speed limit is 45 MPH (although cars certainly drive faster). The house we are staying at is perched right on this car-filled non-highway. To get into town or to the post office, I have to walk a short distance on the sandy/grassy shoulder, all the while listening to the near constant hum of cars passing me. It’s surprising to me how it unnerves me. The difference between 30 MPH on the city streets of DC and 45 (really 50, or 55) MPH on Route 6 is great. The cars are fast and inhuman. I feel like an alien or an ant or some other creature trapped where I don’t belong, looking out of place and small.

It’s hard to ease into the rhythm of walking with that constant rush of traffic at my shoulder. I walked to the post office today in the beautiful sunshine and salty air, but I felt unsure. What ordinarily would have given me a burst of energy, gratitude, and life, instead gave me a burst of uncomfortableness.

But. If I walk the other direction, opposite the post office, and brave the oncoming rush of traffic for a few minutes, I can turn left down a quiet road lined with a few houses and many trees. The road splits off, turns into gravel, and then into sand, and suddenly you are standing smack in the middle of the marshy extension of Wellfleet Harbor - Duck Creek. Decaying horseshoe crab shells and muck from the tide are under your feet. Fiddler crabs are scurrying everywhere, in and out of their perfectly round holes in the mud. There’s a hill, a small forest of scrubby pitch pines and poison ivy and, right now, sedately blooming lady slippers. It smells like salt and marsh and air and wildness and life. It is fucking amazing.

So I’m trying to make sense somewhere in the middle. The whole world can’t be a beautiful bubble of coastal wildlife. The speeding cars, the discarded bottles along the sandy/grassy shoulder of the highway - they’re here too. Everything is perfect, nothing is perfect. The contrast makes everything come alive.