Grandfather's Walk

Recently on American Public Media, WVXU radio I got to hear the program called "The Story." At the end of this episode they played a recording of Robert Macfarlane reading from his recent book The Old Ways which I promptly ordered from the library. I could not wait to share this wonderful clip, so I downloaded it and transcribed his reading into the blog.

He began by noting this is about "Walking and Memory and Aging."

 

"Towards the very end of his life even the walk down to the stream gorge became impossible for my grandfather. His legs, which had carried him so far over so many countries, lost their vigor. His center of gravity rose and his stability diminished. Stride shortened to shuffle, shuffle to dodder, dodder to step. The walking sticks that he and my grandmother had for years kept by the back door, used for whacking down nettles or pointing out landscape features, became crucial auxiliaries to movement. During the same years that my grandfather was losing the ability to walk, my children, his two first great-grandchildren, were gaining it. Step lengthened to dodder, dodder to shuffle, shuffle to stride. Five days after my grandfather died, my three year old son and my five year old daughter reached the summit of their first true hill, called Darling Fell, near Loweswater in the Lake District.The final slopes of that Fell are sheep-cropped grass into which previous walkers have imprinted a series of deep and distinct foot marks. My children went on ahead of me to climb that last slope fitting their feet into the marks, following the invitation of the print trail. I watched them go and thought of having been one of those children myself watched by my parents and of my mother having been one of those children in turn watched over in turn by my grandparents. When the summit had been reached we all sat together, drank cups of sugary tea and looked across at the mountain ridges receeding into the distance, too many to count."

 

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