No Gord (not feeling well) and no Sheila (shopping) this time, just me but I feel it’s worth a telling.
I had to go to the Runnymede library today (It’s back open now that COVID-19 has settled down.) to drop off a book and pick up one I’d reserved lo these many months. I’m impressed, the library kept track of it and let me know when I could venture into their sanctum to retrieve it. As an aside, the library is almost empty. A COVID-19 forced change from my recent memory when it was awash with, among others, the great unwashed who looked to it to satisfy their free newspaper reading needs and welcome warmth or comforting cooling depending on the season.
I was struggling with the choice of walking to the library or taking my bike. The bike, an e-bike, is the obvious choice but you can’t carry anything on it. It’s a male gender version which forbids baskets woven, wicker or otherwise. It would be a balancing act at best that seniors don’t take to well or too well. So Sheila solved my dilemma, “I’ll drop you off on my way to wherever.”
I confess to changing my male determining decision making. The thought of being driven up the hill and then walking down to home was pure pleasure. I highly recommend it. You cover off your guilt of ‘not getting out and doing some physical activity’ and make it home in one piece with breathing to spare.
The library is at the top, the north west corner, of High Park. High Park, for those not in the know, is close to being Toronto’s version of New York’s Central Park. If it were, it would be separating the Toronto towers with greenery but it’s further west than downtown. Its purpose, though, is the same as Central Park’s – to provide humanity with an oasis of nature almost completely shielded from the look and noise of civilization.
While cars can use it, only going one way to the south, the 20 kilometer speed limit keeps them to a safe crawl which leaves the roads and pathways open to cyclists, walkers, walkers with dogs and wanderers like me on this marvelous morning. And what a morning for mid September – a forecast high of 23, sunny and dry.
When you have time on your side you get to see what you’d miss from a moving car or speeding bike. For example, you get to read all those signs that tell you what you didn’t study in school. My first lecture tells me that not so long ago, Grenadier Pond, the body of water that keeps High Park attracting water fowl and ice skaters was once an open body of water connected to Lake Ontario. Now it’s land locked but has a man made connection with the Humber River to the west to handle any runoff.
The signs continue to educate you along the way on the fish and fowl that abound. I didn’t know that there were two types of Canada Geese (Branta canadensis – aren’t you glad your parents forced you to take Latin?) and the type Canada loves is the one that migrates so that we can share the treasures the bird leaves when it leaves for places as far away as Europe.
Speaking of fishes (yes, this plural refers to species; fish would mean the same darn fish, singular and plural.) and one of the species is the northern pike, a sporting angler’s favourite.
I take a moment to test a bench that hopefully hadn’t lost a ‘fresh paint’ sign and page through the book I picked up at the library. This is indeed a pleasurable moment; only the bench’s hard design forces me to move prematurely.
The rest of the walk home takes me around the southern perimeter of Grenadier Pond and west along the Queensway to South Kingsway and off at the first right to Ripley Avenue.
When you walk these routes that border runways for racing cars you not only feel the traffic rushing by you but also the comfort of probably not getting run over, an obvious bonus over biking which makes you wonder if cycling, even with its own lanes, even with all this effort made nowadays to win over the cyclist, is the way to go.
So I’ve added three kilometers to our walks. When Gord gets to read this I’m sure he’ll say with mock indignation, “Well, you really haven’t walked High Park,” which is what I hope he’ll say. Then we can get together again and he’ll show me the way.