A Walk in the Park

On completing and quitting

Last Saturday I participated in the Great Saunter, a 32-mile walk around Manhattan. Back in February, my friend Leslie asked if I wanted to do it - it sounded fun, I’d never heard of it and I will say yes to almost anything that is far enough away (not a sound planning process). I got my friend Tanya to sign up too, and then ignored the whole thing until a few weeks ago, when I started dreading it. I joked about Rosie Ruiz, the marathon winner who was found to have taken the subway for part of the route in the ‘80’s, and I kind of hoped the walk would get rained out.

It did not rain. The walk started at Fraunces Tavern, near Wall Street, at 7:30 in the morning. We walked up the West Side of Manhattan in the cool and sunny morning - through beautiful Battery Park, and even New Jersey looked lovely across the water. The feel of the lower Manhattan water line is so different from the city of my youth. We saw little kids playing soccer, happy joggers with their dogs passed us and it all felt very much like a shinier, upscale, sanitized version of my hometown.

As we made our way up the west side of Manhattan, earlier layers of my life came into focus. Once we got up to the Upper West Side, I was flooded by memories of growing up in Riverside Park - the smell of the cherry blossoms makes me think of grimier days playing running bases in the playground, cooking out on our little hibachi - which must have been illegal - and lying on blankets with my brother and parents. I tried to find the apartment building I grew up in, but the newly green trees hid it from view.

We got up to Inwood and Ft Tryon, parks I had rarely walked through during the first 18 years of my life when I lived in Manhattan, or the last 27 years of living in Brooklyn. It was all so pretty and the walkers around us were excited and we were feeling good. Leslie, Tanya, our friend Lem and I stopped at an Irish-Mexican (?) restaurant, and the coke with lemon and ice that we ordered was amazingly delicious.

But we weren't even halfway done. 32 miles is long. Like so long that I didn't even know how to think about it. I mean, walking is easy. It may not be a fun spectator sport, but it’s one that I really have down. Left, right, left, right. How hard could it be? Spoiler alert - it could be really hard. 32 miles is so long that when we hit a milestone: 10 miles, the halfway point, then 20 miles - the elation of having achieved it quickly turned into fear at how much was left. The whole time I was both sure I would quit, and certain that I would finish.

We turned the horn of Manhattan, and started down the Harlem River Drive Greenway, and I was hurting. I had a blister on my left big toe, my feet were throbbing, and the front of my legs were starting to hurt in an entirely new way. We cheered when we passed 200th street, and then grew silent as the fact that we had more than 200 blocks left to go sunk in. At 5:00, we were on 138th street and 2nd. I was out in a gorgeous warm spring evening with people I loved, watching New Yorkers enjoy their town. But there were more than 3 1/2 hours left to go - if I moved quickly, which I could not.

At that point, all I could think about was whether or not to keep going - as Tanya said, just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you have to do a thing. Truthfully, I wasn't even sure I could do it. The crowds had thinned a lot. I was sweaty, filthy, and smelled terrible. What would quitting mean? What would finishing mean? This was such a low-stakes decision, it truly did not matter to anyone what I decided. I wondered whether I could I call it early and feel proud of what I had done, or would I just feel like I had failed at the goal?

The question took on extra weight in my mind as I have been thinking about what will happen when I finish my job in 4 weeks. I am leaving an organization that I have been part of for 8 ½ years. As I organize things to step away, I have been torn between these two feelings: pride at what I have accomplished, and regret at what I did not get done. I hear my narrative change as I talk about leaving with different people - in some tellings I am feeling good and ready to go, in others I am sad and hung up on where I failed. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. I don't know that I will arrive at a single feeling about leaving. I don't know if I succeeded at this job, or even really what success would look like. 8 ½ years of my life is a long time. 32 miles is a long walk. But I am not a perfectionist.

And here’s what happened with the walk - Tanya and I finished 25 miles, got on the subway and went home. Leslie and Lem kept going, and finished the whole thing. The 4-block walk from the Q train stop at 7th avenue to my building might have been the hardest part of all. But by 9:00 I had showered, drank a huge beer, eaten some delicious Thai food and fallen asleep on the blue couch in my living room. I woke up on Sunday morning sore but happy, and did not feel especially sad that I had not completed the circuit and gotten the certificate. Maybe I would have woken ever sorer and even happier if I had finished it. I don't know. Will I ever do it again? I had a second kid - so we know memories of pain can fade. Stay tuned.

Maria paints the NYC waterfront: