Across a long life, the woman in Risa Bear’s “Learning to Walk” has been walking—but rarely with the attention she later finds. She walked to school past buses “oozing screams,” crossed a creek by building her own path, hiked north from Springer Mountain, replanted clear-cut hills, and trudged to a job beside houses with “eyes of black glass.” Those walks carry defiance, weariness, and anger. Now, late in life, she keeps a small dog marked by loss. The dog shows her when to stop and sniff, how to give her whole being to the business of squirrels. Tethered by a leash, the two move as one, taking in the arrivals and leavings of living things. The mood shifts from strained and restless to calm, curious, and tender. Learning to walk, it turns out, is less about movement than about staying present with what is.
Learning to Walk — Summary
It's not that she hasn't been doing this all along: She'd walked to school as yellow lozenges, oozing screams, fumed past her along hot asphalt. She'd splashed the creek, anxious for a path, then built it herself, kenning to use her father's axe without lost blood.
She'd walked from Springer Mountain north, chatting in her offhand way with bears, a big cat and a ghost. She'd walked the halls of academia and then the hills, big ones, bringing seedling trees to snug up to the raw stumps of firs machines had eaten.
She'd walked to a job for decades, block after block of homes with eyes of black glass inching past her tired, angry shoes. Now, late in life, she keeps a small dog bereft by her parents’ breathing stopped. The dog has taught much:
when to stop and sniff; how to attend with one's whole being the business of squirrels. Bound by the leash, that necessary thing, they two as one take in, absorb, imbibe, inhale, entaste all the arriving and leaving of living things.