Walking at the supermarket.

It was too cold for the salt to melt the ice on the roads so even in slow motion I slewed on the curves and slid a little at the stop signs, but the day of the storm I didn’t get out at all.  In this season the pathway for my walk is the supermarket.  I estimate seven times around to be a mile.  This is not the transcendental saunter into Nature idealized by Thoreau, but neither is it a gym. 

The supermarket is better in a number of ways, the first being you get to use it for free.  The smells aren’t as sublime as the autumn woods or the summer beach, but the deli department, the fish counter, and the bakery are better than the stink of a jock on an adjacent treadmill.  As for comradery, I’m greeted by a friendly deli man, the checkout ladies, and the fellow who stocks the shelves. 

I’m not as easily lost in thought as I early on a summer morning am at the beach. In the supermarket I have to watch for carts emerging from aisles, oblivious shoppers pondering labels, and slowpokes of various ages, but it’s safer than crossing the street.   Visually, there’s nothing like sunlight filtering through forest leaves or the flight of a tern with a sand eel in its beak, but supermarket colors are bright and varied, and the displays change from week to week. 

I like being among foodstuffs, even those I don’t buy.  I pass the cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli and remember childhood suppers on winter evenings after sledding.   I don’t want to go back to Table Talk Pies either, but somehow I’m glad they’re still there.  I check prices as I go by, and if I see solid pack white tuna at 10 for $10, I stock up. I do my shopping when my walk is done, rounding the store one final time. Being almost a daily shopper, I don’t usually have more than I can take to the express checkout, but over the winter I pay for the use of the heat and light and the wear of my shoes on the supermarket floor. 

My walk isn’t as soul-healing as one of Thoreau’s but it gives me a change of scene, raises my heartrate for the prescribed amount of time, and fills the pantry too.  I don’t get nailed at a crosswalk by a skidding car or slip and break an aging hip. We fogies deal with winter as best we can.