Chapter 7: On the road again

 At the end of my street, turned right and followed the Spur Line trail along the railroad tracks. On our left was a high concrete wall lining Uniroyal Goodrich Park; on our right the tracks and the long yards of Victorian houses on Waterloo St. I walk on this path all the time and I felt a strange sense of being deeply in routine and also experiencing the extraordinary. We turned left and headed east again where the path met Guelph St., and we followed this street for a long time, path rows and rows of large and small houses, a gas station, a park, a fire station. We had just crossed Lancaster and were nearing the industrial era where the road dips under Highway 85 to come out at Bridge St. Before we reached the underpass, Jennifer made a left turn into North Ward, a small, older suburb with pretty Victory houses mixed with industrial buildings, embellished and made unique over decades of varied ownership. 

A couple blocks in, she stopped at a small house with blue siding and a wooden porch. A young person was sitting on the porch wearing hiking gear, looking a bit nervous. Jennifer repeated to the words she had said to me and the young person got up and joined our group. I smiled at them and they smiled back. We continued east along a side street, turned right onto Union and then shortly after, back onto Guelph, and entered the underpass. It was cool and damp in there. Someone had parked a bizarrely decorated car which included a huge stuff lion secured to the roof. We all looked at it curiously.

We re-emerged into the sunshine and climbed the steep hill. We crossed Bridge at the top of hill and soon turned east into a parking lot that wasn't much more than a patch of dirt, and then got onto an upper access trail to the Walter Bean Trail. On our right were the familiar abandoned machines that rose like dinosaurs from the ivy and grape vines clinging to the trees. We rounded a corner past the junkyard and down the hill into the conifers, meeting up with the main trail. It was shady in here, cool and pleasant and aromatic. 

I felt happy, a specific feeling of happiness that was completely new to me, or perhaps one I hadn't felt in so long I had forgotten. I felt strong in my limbs, clear in my mind, curious about my surrounding, and deeply content to be 'on the road again.' 


 

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