In my vision of a perfectly ordered life, I work on my fiction on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and go to appointments or do errands on Thursdays. Friday is my gallivanting day, a day to go about for pleasure, for self-care, for the pure joy of being out and about. In April the local newspaper started "Hot on the Trail," a weekly series outlining planned hikes in some of the state's more natural parks and wildland conservancy areas. The intent is to get people off their chairs and on the road to better health. There will be twenty, and I plan to do them all. 

I'm convinced that water and walking are the keys to weight loss and improved fitness for me. When I was sick last month I noticed again how bad I feel when I don't get enough water -- I know that at one point I was nearly on the verge of dehydration. (That was the week my mouth hurt so much I couldn't eat and could barely drink enough to down the $10-a-pill medication that was taking its sweet old time ameliorating the condition. I lost four pounds. "You had a great week!" exclaimed the weigh-in lady at Weight Watchers.) 

I like walking. When the kids were little my neighborhood friends and I walked every summer night at 9:30 for about an hour. Now I walk the neighborhood alone, often in the early morning. I like the river front near the neighborhood I grew up in, the campus of the community college (all flat through beautiful formal plantings) and the nature trails that adjoin it. When I was in Thoreau country last August I walked the perimeter of Walden Pond twice, and by the time I got to Vermont I was walking four hours a day (a practice Thoreau considered normal).

Winter, though, tends to curtail walking. Our cold is a damp cold, and the winds sweeping down over the river can pick up enough ice to sting your face even two miles up the hill where we live. Walking in a mall (the indoor kind, not the village green Thoreau meant) quickly gets boring and, because of the crowds, counterproductive. Walking my usual haunts is good, but to really change my attitude I need changes in latitude and altitude as well.

Today I visited Boyd Big Tree Conservation Area, a heavily wooded area just off Route 443 only five miles from my house. A conservation area is a large tract with few services or facilities and natural trails cut and marked but not heavily maintained. These 914 acres were donated to the state in 1999 by a local real estate developer. The tract is intended to be a sanctuary for mature trees and to invite birders, mountain bikers, cross-country skiers, and saunterers like me who want an experience of the wild without having to travel far from home nor acquire and learn to use sophisticated wilderness gear.

The area was, as advertised, wild and seemingly removed from civilization. It's reached by turning off Route 443 and driving up a winding dirt road. The approach is cleared, and when one gets to the parking area at the entrance to the forest one can turn and see the rooftops of the few houses that dot the north face of the next mountain. It is absolutely silent except for the natural sounds one might expect -- no whoosh from the highway, no wheezing from heat pumps and air conditioning units.

This walk was rated "easy" -- 1 on a scale from 1 to 5. "Hiking boots are suggested, but not required," the article advised. "A pair of sneakers and a bottle of water should get you through the experience."

Add some bug spray. I chose the 1.9 mile pond route that passed a tarn about half full of muddy water, what one should expect in this season after our long drought. The trail went up hill, and it wasn't long before I wished for more sturdy hiking boots, since the surface was dotted with small rocks and other bits of forest debris. The incline was gradual enough that I didn't get winded or feel the need to stop, but the descent made me wish for my walking stick. It took me fifty minutes to complete the circuit, a good pace considering the terrain and my fitness level after a long winter and a bout of illness.

Even the longest journey begins with a single step. I want to be healthier, clearer-headed, more in touch with the natural world. I took that first step today. There will be more.