One stretch of our pre-breakfast walk this morning. We don't have big hills on this route, but it's definitely not flat.
I'll tell you one thing: walk 5 miles a day, and you will SLEEP. Like the baby you will sleep. I still take Unisom, as well as magnesium, mainly to ensure that I stay asleep. A 3 a.m. wakeup time will not dispose you to walk very far in the coming day. But I have no trouble falling asleep when I walk like that.
My goal today, though, is 3 miles, which would take us handily into Ely for our Sunday stopover. I keep considering how friends in Cambridge would walk to Ely, all 16.8 miles, as a day hike, and what a wimpy little thing I am, to break it up over four days. But wimpy little things can still get there in the end, and so Dora and I shall. Mind you, Dora's not that wimpy. She'd walk the 16.8 miles happily, I suspect, and look around for more. I meanwhile am trying to build back up to something like the daily miles I used to walk in Cambridge. It's hard, because I'm not walking people to and from school, not walking to and from the supermarket, not taking hours-long jaunts along the towpaths and the backs and through the little streets. Cambridge isn't that big, but what with one thing and another, you can walk all day with pleasant sights before you, things of interest to fill your vision, and not get tired of walking. My current town, too, is a nice town and not too big, but somehow the opportunities for walking it feel more limited. I should also keep reminding myself that even in Cambridge, I didn't generally just leave the house and walk 8 miles without stopping. I walked children to school. I browsed in charity and antique shops coming back up the way into the city centre. I stopped in coffee shops to laze and write. I went home. I went out to the supermarket. I maybe took the long way around to get to the supermarket. I walked back down to fetch children and up again home. And so on. That would fill a day, and I didn't even consider, most of the time, how far I was walking. I just did it.
Here I have to be a little more deliberate if I want to walk many miles. But I'm learning how to make it work (hint: I got in an extra mile just walking to and from the coffee shop yesterday, so maybe I should add more frequent lattes to my Lenten rituals . . .).
Now I'm home, Dora has had her breakfast and is napping in her crate, and I'm eating my breakfast. I was starving coming in from my walk, which I think is a good sign. My metabolism is working. Often in the mornings I'm not hungry, just sluggish, even after I've walked. I had some rye crisps with cream cheese and jam while I waited for my breakfast/lunch to cook: fried-rice-style quinoa, cooked in chicken bone broth (we're eating meatless every day but Saturday night/Sunday, BUT not entirely vegetarian, e.g. cooking grains in bone broth, using collagen, etc). I cooked the quinoa, added garlic, onion, ginger, two beaten eggs, and some green peas. It's pretty good for a knocked-together meal, when I'm out of both soy sauce and sesame oil.
We have been eating lots of beans and eggs, as well as vegetable soups. Again, our meals aren't always strictly vegetarian, but we aren't eating meat. I do want to ensure that I'm getting enough protein, though, as I've had a lot of hair loss this winter. I don't have "before" shots, but today I did take some shots of the regrowth at my hair line, where it had been thinning kind of alarmingly.
There's probably more brushed up into the front of my hair, but I am encouraged to see this. The side where I part my hair was a lot more obviously thin, and there the regrowth has been a lot more obviously silver:
Charming shot, but you get the idea. You can still see where the hair has thinned the most. A certain amount of hair loss is normal in certain seasons: our hair naturally goes through cycles of shedding and regrowth. But I was losing big clumps every time I washed, and it was a little . . . unsettling. I wasn't thinning on top, thank goodness, but my hair felt thinner overall, and that too was unsettling.
Some of this regrowth would have happened anyway, probably, but I attribute its vigor to daily collagen (in my coffee, in my oatmeal, in soups) and other protein sources, as well as a good-quality multivitamin. So, during Lent, while we're eating very simply and a little sparingly --- one reason I was so hungry this morning is that I went to bed a tiny bit hungry last night, after a small supper --- I am paying attention to my protein sources. I don't need the satiety of meat. It's good to abstain from that regularly in this season, and I do feel the pinch of that abstinence. But I can do that and still support my body with enough of the nutrients it needs not to go into stress mode.
UPDATE: I did wash my hair this afternoon, a thing I have to goad myself to do because I dread the hair loss so much (partly it's a sensory thing --- wet hair is gross as a feeling, like wet hair sticking to my skin, especially if it's not stuck to my head in the normal, supposedly permanent way). And I had far less shedding than I had even last week. This was encouraging, not to mention way less gross.
I was thinking, this morning, in fact, about correlations between physical and spiritual health. As we all know, we can be in poor physical health and still flourish spiritually. I think, for example, of Stuart Rogerson, a Catholic convert in Scotland, who died last November of esophageal cancer. Almost to the end, he was on Twitter, giving daily "dying updates," which were so unbelievably grace-filled and beautiful, even (or especially) when he admitted to great suffering, that believing hearts, following him, were converted to greater faith. Mine was, at any rate. He was a light in this world, in the short time that I knew of him, and I feel assured that he stands in light before the throne of his Beloved. He had periods of spiritual darkness and despair, as one naturally would. He wrote of the grief of giving his wife what he knew would be the last birthday card, the last Valentine. The sense of an impending goodbye was often bitter. Yet in his illness and frailty, and even in his moments of darkness, he was moving toward greater and greater flourishing.
BUT I think there's something to say about the physical health we do have, when we have it, and the way that that can be correlated, in a positive way, with spiritual health. That is to say: yes, we have a tradition of physical mortifications in the Catholic Church, but I think it's entirely possible, and maybe even preferable, to view caring for our physical health as a part of our overall spiritual discipline.
For example, yes, I'm making this virtual walking pilgrimage, stretching myself to walk more miles every day than I've habitually been doing (even as a reasonably active person), as a spiritual discipline. I'm actively offering my steps for intentions. I'm actively offering them as reparation for my sins. I'm taking them on as a penance, and using the time to pray. That's really what makes this a Lenten practice.
But there is the inescapable fact that I also benefit physically. If I keep this up, I'll be a lot fitter than I was. I do keep recalling that the fittest I've ever been in my life was when I lived in Cambridge and habitually walked 8-10 miles a day without even thinking about it. If I said that I didn't have that in mind, that this current walking practice was purely spiritual, I would be lying. I do have the physical benefits in mind. They're not primarily why I'm making this pilgrimage, but yes, they're there as a reason, and a motivation, and a benefit.
And I don't think that's wrong. I don't think that deriving a physical benefit from a spiritual practice invalidates the spiritual benefits of that practice. We are body and soul together, after all. I suppose, in a way, that to offer these steps, these miles, that I'm walking is to offer my body to be remade in whatever way God intends, even as I offer my will and my soul to be remade. And I suppose a healthier, stronger me is probably closer to the unfallen me that would have existed in Eden, and will only exist in Heaven.
Of course, the healthier, stronger me is something of an illusion. Healthier, stronger me could drop dead on the spot. Healthier, stronger me could get sick. Healthier, stronger me could lose all this hair she's been worrying about to illness and treatment. Healthier, stronger me could be in a car accident or fall down the stairs and break her neck. Healthier, stronger me could see her life changed in an instant to a wasteland of illness and suffering. And in that case . . . well, see "spiritual benefit," above. That's why the spiritual benefit has to be primary, even if connected. I can break my neck and still be all right. The thing I don't want to break is my soul.
But while I have it, I do rejoice in the health and strength of my body. I rejoice in all its natural functions when they're working well. I rejoice in feeling good.
And I'll rejoice, a little later today, in walking another 1.6 miles, to make 3 altogether, which will bring us to our destination for the weekend and a welcome sabbath rest.
MEANWHILE, of course I got dressed.
I'm wearing Sierra for the second time this week. Already I've broken my "no dress laundry" challenge for March, not because anybody had gotten dirty, but because when I wore Sierra on Thursday, she felt really stretched out. I couldn't remember the last time I'd washed her, either. So I washed her on hot, with the rest of my Friday laundry, and put her through the dryer as well. As you can plainly see, this did not result in any extreme shrinkage, but I think the hemline has drawn up some. The fit is a tad closer. No regrets.
Here you can see the outfit colors more clearly:
My purple leggings are so muted that they almost read as gray from a distance. I do love these leggings, even though they're totally synthetic. They're soft, comfortable, tough, reliably well-fitting . . . I imagine they'll be a Lent-and-Advent staple of my wardrobe for some time to come. Today I did wear my EVA Birks for real---they make a nice contrast with both my dress and my leggings. AND I love my alpaca cardigan, which felt good for the first block of my walk, in the fresh, rain-washed spring air. Then I had to take it off and tie it around my waist.
As you can see, for the moment the rain is over and gone. That, of course, leads me to think of this poem by Wordsworth, which begins as a catalogue of pastoral details, but ends in the Song of Songs.
We have houseguests coming tomorrow night, so I had better look at the upstairs bathroom and sweep up some dog hair.
MUCH LATER:
Today's total miles: 3.38. Welcome to imaginary Ely. We have had a nice pub night, some tea, and a rosary. Tomorrow is for Mass, rest, and houseguests. Monday we'll strike out again for Walsingham.