A Very Treacherous Walk

"This walk is a lesson on the perils of following the beaten path," Rubob said to Tine as they inched their way up an icy incline on a trail along the riverbank this afternoon. It was a cold, raw, snowy New Year's Eve, and not many people were out enjoying the beaten path, as it were. One might almost say that the beaten path was off the beaten path today.

"Who would have thought we'd encounter such an icy trail today, Tine," Rubob said. "Did you think it would be so icy before we set out?"

"No, Rubob, I didn't," Tine said, clinging to the edge of the path, where her tiny feet could gain some purchase in the leaves.

At the start of the walk, the trail looked inviting enough, covered as it was with a dusting of fresh snow, but the hard-packed snow beneath, which had melted into mush during last week's thaw, had frozen solid today.



"It's a lesson on the variability of New England weather, too, Tine: sunny in the morning, stormy and gray in the afternoon," Rubob said.

"Where was the sun this morning, Rubob?" Tine asked.

"Coming through the window," Rubob replied.

Tine didn't see any sun that morning, but Rubob must have found his own patch of sunlight, and that's a good thing, Tine thought.

Tiny didn't do a whole lot of thinking on the walk, because she was too busy looking for safe places to plant her feet, and besides, she was cold.

In fact, Rubob commented, "Seventy percent of our brainpower on this walk is dedicated to walking carefully so we don't fall. There isn't much left for other thoughts."

"It's true," Tine thought, when she had time to think. Much of the time, she shivered and trembled -- and took very tentative steps. She kept going, because a walk is a walk and that's the whole idea on a walk, to keep going.

They crossed a treacherous footbridge over a stream with steep embankments. "Keep low," Rubob said, stooping over cautiously, with his hands close to the ground, like a chimp in the forest. Tine kept low, though she is in fact always quite close to the ground.



The bridge brought to mind -- the thirty percent of Tine's mind that wasn't otherwise occupied -- "Mind Over Matter," one of Rubob's favorite books. It's about two Englishmen who cross the Antarctic, each tugging 500-pound sledges with all their supplies for the unsupported journey. "At least we don't have 500-pound sledges," Tine thought. "But still, this is a bit more like matter over mind," she mused, seeking some suitably soft matter in which to secure her very shaky right foot.

"It's the opposite of when I was crossing a bog on the Pennine Way," Tine was thinking of telling Rubob, but Rubob was far behind, dilly-dallying for some reason or other. "Then the whole idea was to avoid stepping on a soft spot that might swallow me whole," Tine thought. "Here, it's the solid patches that might just be my undoing."

Rubob was in fact engaged in a foolhardy attempt to reach the summit of a small rise by the riverside. He'd wandered well off the path in his zeal to avoid the ice.

"Come down, Rubob," Tine called out. "You'll never get down from that hill."

And Rubob did indeed have a hard time returning to the true path, Tine's little trail on the edge of the beaten path.

Rubob must be braver than Tine, because sometimes he allowed his mind to wander away from the demanding path to loftier matters.

"Have you looked up, Tine? The tree canopy reminds me of that news story I read about a botanist who explores the canopy in South America -- maybe it was in Bolivia. He finds a whole world up there, one we'd never suspect existed. He swings around in the treetops making discoveries all the while, and he even falls once. I think he broke his shoulder."

Tine looked up and thought about swinging in the treetops.



If you've been following Tine and Rubob on their daily walks, you might recall that only yesterday Rubob seemed to express a desire to live as Charles II once did and as squirrels still do, in a tree. "What a curioius mind Rubob has, to be sure," Tine thought to herself. She quickly reoriented herself to the matter before her, the edge of the beaten path -- an ever-narrowing edge, in fact. Sometimes the edge vanished entirely, and one was forced onto the slippery surface of the beaten path.

But Tine and Rubob were able to make their way up another hill to the old railroad bridge, where two runners emerged in the snowy haze, floating effortlessly along on the ice.

"How are they doing that, Rubob? Why aren't they falling?" Tine asked.

"I don't know Tine."

But there was more traction on the bridge, as it turned out, and Rubob and Tine were able to make their way along it quite nicely.



Rubob walked up to the middle of the bridge and found something unexpected to show Tine.

"Come here, Tine," he said, and Tine, though eager to turn back, caught up with Rubob and saw what he'd found.



Lots of walks have high points like that. Tine and Rubob found a gold nugget on one of their previous walks, or something emblematic of a buried gold nugget at least. "The wreath will be our gold nugget today," Tine thought, "our gold nugget on New Year's Eve."

They walked back along the railroad bridge the way they'd come, and then rededicated the larger portion of their minds to staying upright on the icy trail back along the riverbank. They faced the footbridge once again with trepidation, and Tine gingerly led the way. Rubob lost a footing briefly and cried out, but nothing greater than a little snow and a little pride was lost over the side.

Tine and Rubob then hastened back through the darkening woods to the parking lot, where their vehicle, as Rubob likes to call it, had all but vanished in the haze under a fresh coat of snow. It appeared to have blended in with its surroundings and to have achieved a peaceful, resigned state of incorporeality.

"The vehicle must have enjoyed the afternoon," Tine thought, dusting the snow off herself, "because I feel much the same way after my winter walk." She wasn't quite sure she could feel her fingertips in her thin woolen gloves, but she knew she was feeling content.

There was a sign by the road in the gloaming on the way home, and Tine thought it might have been sensible to have such a sign on the trail, too:



The gloaming tends to leave the world looking a little out of focus, don't you think?

It was an icy afternoon walk today, and Rubob summed it up thusly: "All in all, a very treacherous walk."

But Tine, thinking of the trail they found off the beaten track, thought, "All in all, a very pleasant walk."

Tine and Rubob wish you a very Happy New Year.