Going for a walk

Recently in class a group did a presentation on British Columbia. They were given the task of selling a province as a tourist destination to the rest of the class, the idea being that this allows for a focus on being persuasive and that connects to the four kinds of writing required for the written side of the assignment…. The point I am meandering toward is that the video they showed had so many images of the coastal landscapes I love that I felt an ache; a longing to walk through a B.C. forest, stroll on a Haida Gwaii beach.

This year a typical weekend walk features the local creek. One thing I have grown to appreciate in Ringsted is the reminder of childhood that comes when walking by the creek (which was a river growing up). While the walk is usually to the same place and often follows the same direction there is always something different, largely owing to the recent seasonal changes. We have finally had some cold weather and snow and this has created much of interest to look at on the route along the creek. This weekend I walked the creek 3 times, once with Leanne, once with Gus, and once with Jesse.

It was Jesse who got me writing. I told him that it had been awhile since I last wrote and that I couldn’t think of anything to write because I felt like I was just waiting for the next school break. Who wants to read about my bus trip to work again, or my progression (or complete lack of) in the Danish language? I think he was joking when he suggested that I could write about my walks with my family, but he was onto something.

One thing that we knew going into this was how much we as a family would need to rely on each other, we knew the language differences (despite the high level of English) would be somewhat isolating, but we probably didn’t understand what it would be like everyday. Walks have become really important to us, I think a big part of it is the comfort found in walking, but we can also be anywhere when we walk. When we walk we are just walking together, we aren’t walking in Denmark, well we are, but we walk together everywhere we go, walking is not place specific. When we are walking it becomes easier to go anywhere in our thoughts, and in our conversations. I know that boys are better at talking when they are doing something and never is this clearer than when I go for a walk with the two of them. They are often so eager to talk that I have to tell them whose turn it is and have a hard time getting in what I want to say while letting them have their turn too.

On our walk Jesse and I talked about his writing too, he doesn’t write a lot this year, writing in English just doesn’t happen as much in a Danish classroom as it does in a Canadian one. I have been encouraging them to write a journal, to put their I-pads to a use in a new way, but as Jesse said, “What should I write? ‘Today I went for a walk’”. Not necessarily a bad place to start, you never know where a walk might take you.