Walking the rails

Walking the Oaks Park Railway line.

It occurred to me this morning that I have written a lot about the places I’ve walked, but little about walking itself.

This thought occurred while I was walking on the railroad tracks below Sellwood Park. It’s a private railway line that runs between Oaks Bottom Nature Preserve and the Willamette River. Around Christmastime, a cute little steam train runs up and down, carrying mostly children and their adult companions. The train makes a wonderful nostalgic tooting sound we can hear from our neighborhood, which is situated on a plateau above Oaks Bottom Nature Preserve and the railway line.

I started walking the railway tracks last winter. I would get up and balance on one rail, and then, when I inevitably fell, I’d move to the other rail and walk that until I fell again. Then I’d switch back.

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When I started out, it was pretty difficult. Even then I realized that for some reason, when I walk on the left-side track, it’s a lot easier for me to cover distance without falling. So these days, I try to walk the right-side track more of the time. , and more persistently. When I get tired of falling, I go back to the left-side rail for some relief. I’m sure it will improve over time.

Of course, each rail has a slight camber, tilting down towards the inside of the rail. I’m sure the camber isn’t perfectly regular or even equal on both sides. I’m also sure that the difference between walking one side and the other has something to do with my body’s natural asymmetries.

When I get the flow and can walk for a while without falling, it feels wonderful; a kind of soaring elation rises up inside me. Filled with joy and confidence, I try a different challenge: Instead of looking at the rail about six feet ahead of me, I train my eyes further up the rail, perhaps 15 feet ahead. Then when that’s working well, I take my eyes off the rail entirely and look at the scene ahead of me, changing as I walk forward.

Walking the rails is good for proprioception and improving balance, and it’s good for my brain in other ways too. Research has shown 1 that working on balance can improve both memory and spatial cognition. Now that I’m in my 67th year, balance, memory and other cognitive skills are important to me – I want to enjoy a long and healthy life. But honestly, the real reason I continue walking the rails is that it’s just plain fun.  

Footnote

Rogge, AK., Röder, B., Zech, A. et al. Balance training improves memory and spatial cognition in healthy adults. Sci Rep 7, 5661 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06071-9

Urban hiking: the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve

Mansions of West Hills, Los Angeles, California, visible from the east portions of hiking trails in Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve.

Early spring is a wonderful time to visit Los Angeles. I congratulated myself on my foresight as I began my hike in the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve, a 3,000-acre open expanse of hills and views networked with trails — enough for even the most ardent hiker to roam for hours.

This trail was a new discovery for me. I was visiting family in Woodland Hills, and kept glancing up at the hilltops above their neighborhood. It looked like good hiking country, so I pulled up Google Maps, and lo and behold, there were several trails up there. I chose the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space because it looked like there were loads of trails up there — and there were.

The land in the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve has been owned by a few different families and entities, starting with a grant by the king of Spain in 1795 (!). Several recent owners wanted to turn it into a subdivision or mini-city with golf courses, but this beautiful land was saved from that fate 20 years ago when its last private owner, Washington Mutual Bank, agreed to sell it to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, with the support of environmental activists, including movie director Rob Reiner. It was a great change of ownership: The Upper Las Virgenes Canyon is a real treasure, and I’m so grateful it’s available to hiked and enjoyed by the public.

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Normally I like to hike with my husband midweek, because the trails we like in Oregon are less crowded then (and parking is easier to come by). But I was on my own for this visit, so I chose a Saturday morning for my walk — it seemed prudent to hike on a day when someone would be pretty much guaranteed to arrive in the unlikely event I got hurt on the trail.

On this day, I was lucky enough to have my cake and eat it, too. Though there were plenty of hikers at the beginning, the trail split quickly into several different directions. I chose the path less taken, and within a short time, I had outpaced most other walkers, and ascended the hills to open skies and vistas.

The day was much warmer than I had expected. Pretty soon I felt comfortable shedding my sweater, and after a quick survey of the trail ahead, my shoes and socks, too.

Over the past year I’ve been hiking barefoot much more often than in the past. I’ve always loved the feeling of earth or sand beneath my feet, but the soles were always sensitive to small rocks — not to mention the obvious hazards of thorns, bee stings and whatever else you can think of.

I really wanted to desensitize my feet enough to enjoy barefoot hiking, so last summer I took every opportunity to hike without shoes or sandals. At first it was difficult, and I’d put my footwear back on after perhaps 30 minutes or so. By the end of summer, I was walking routinely for at least two hours without footwear.

I wasn’t sure if I could do that again so soon after winter. My first barefoot hike of 2023 proved I could, though — it was in March, at Catherine Creek on the Washington side of the Columbia River, on an unseasonably warm day. The dried mud of those trails offered a fairly easy surface for my winter feet, but the Upper Los Virgenes trails were even better. It had rained very recently, and the trails were a mix of mud and dry earth. The dry parts were covered in a soft, light-textured soil that was welcoming to the skin of my soles.

It’s hard to describe just how different it feels to go barefoot on natural surfaces. I was careful to avoid bees as I veered onto grass to avoid the mud, and careful to skirt any sharp-looking gravel. Yet even with this extra caution, I felt lighter, freer and much more connected to everything around me. Feet have a lot of nerve endings, and as they experience the varying temperatures and textures that greet them, the soles channel extra energy upward into the rest of me. My entire body feels more vibrant, my breathing deepens, and everything around me becomes clearer, more detailed, full of color and light and sound.

There was also a social benefit to going barefoot. Lots of people commented on my bare feet during the three hours I was on the trail. Some were almost shocked, others clearly approving. I welcomed these conversations; they let me ask the people about themselves. I got to talk with a lovely woman who moved to California from Iran a few decades ago; a father and daughter enjoying special hiking time together; a young father whose son and puppy both got excited at the sight of a rabbit hopping across the trail; and several runners who seemed happy to discuss the merits of barefoot exercise.

It felt a lot like being a tourist, and how wonderful to feel like that in part of Los Angeles, the city where I was raised. When my husband and I travel, we’re always so obviously foreigners, we get a lot of people wanting to talk with us. This is one of the nicest parts of traveling — it’s how you get to learn about a place, about how people live. I didn’t expect to get so much of that on a Saturdy morning hike, and it was a nice extra.

The beauties of Upper Las Virgenes Canyon unfolded themselves as I walked on. Rolling landscapes with a brilliant blue sky setting them off, delicate wildflowers, bird calls and insects were all there for the discovering. There’s a big loop trail that takes about two hours to walk, starting from the parking lot and ending there, and off that trail are many small side trails. I enjoyed taking some of these, just in and back to the trail. Some led me down steep hills into small clefts where I was surrounded by grasses, wind and bird calls — I couldn’t hear voices or anything mechanical at all.

Of chitons and cuttlefish: exploring the beaches of El Quseir

I keep finding new-to-me and fascinating forms of marine life on our walks up and down our stretch of Red Sea coastline. Two life forms in particular have caught my attention: cuttlefish and chitons.

Two chitons with my index finger for scale.

I first encountered the chitons when we visited a snorkeling and diving camp on the coast – one of those places that’s fenced off to the low-tide mark to discourage anyone from gathering sea life there. The tide was going out, and I was picking my way along the rocks and emerging tidal pools when I spied a creature clinging to a wet rock face that looked almost exactly like a sowbug.

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Font of knowledge: the Black Lions Library of Siwa Oasis

Carved stone sign for Black Lions Library
This charming stone sign for the Black Lions Library is actually located inside the library compound, and is not visible from the street.

We’ve been spending time in the Black Lions Library over the past couple of weeks. It’s a real treasure: a quiet, relaxing little library, with a good collection of books about Siwa Oasis in various languages. You can also find books on other Egyptian topics: history, archaeology and the geography of this vast and varied country.

Black Lions is not a lending library, but you can sit and read for as long as you like. Alan has been reading “Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians” by Edward Lane, published in 1836, while I’ve been reading “Oasis: Siwa from the Inside, Traditions, Customs and Magic.” Written by Fathi Malim, it’s the only book about Siwa Oasis written by a Siwan person.

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Getting a PCR test at the airport in Istanbul

This is the card that shows you how to check your Covid-19 test results. I covered my personal bar code with a bit of paper.

We’ve been through our share of bureaucratic processes in Turkey. Sometimes it’s easy and fast, sometimes it’s more complex and not so fast. So imagine our delight to find that getting a PCR test at Sabiha Gökçen Airport is quick, simple and very well organized. (Bet that’s the first time you ever saw the words “delight” and “PCR test” in the same sentence!)

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Ikamet: how to get your residence permit in Turkey

Turkey is a wonderful place to live. That’s what we felt after just a few weeks in Finike, a small city on the Aegean coast. So we decided to apply for a residence permit, also known as the ikamet. (İkamet means “residence” in Turkish.)

Though the process is fairly straightforward, there are a lot of details, lots of opportunities to make mistakes, and none of the information we found online was 100% complete or 100% accurate. That’s why I decided to write this post – to provide a complete list of documents and an accurate list of the steps you need to take, in the right order.

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Bazlama and the quest for garlicky perfection

Small bazlamas the size of English muffins. Plus tomatoes, Asian pears and the wifi router.

Bazlama is my favorite bread in Turkey. It’s round and can range in size from English muffin (or what we Americans call an English muffin) up to about 10 inches across. Sometimes bazlama can be made even larger, like for a party or event.

Bazlama resembles English muffins in texture, too. The outer surface is a little chewy, and the inside is light, almost spongy, with a delicate flavor. It’s made with yeast, with olive oil and yogurt to lend moisture; the yogurt also helps it rise more and gives bazlama that wonderful crumb, so perfect for holding butter or melted cheese.

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New Year’s Day in Finike, southern Turkey

We celebrated New Year’s Day in Finike, a small town on the southern coast of Turkey, with a walk to Limyra, the ruins of an ancient city located between a couple of rural villages.

Lycian ruin at Lymira

It was just our second day in Finike, and after a week in Istanbul, we were eager to take a long walk of the kind we like best: quiet roads, open vistas and a few discoveries. We had the added pleasure of being accompanied by a friendly and adorable dog for much of our explorations.

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Coronavirus diaries: It’s so quiet

The clean water of the Willamette River reflects the clear blue, clean skies that are one of the effects of the coronavirus shutdown.

Have you noticed the quiet? I certainly have. Every morning, as the pale-peach tinge of dawn displaces the slate-blue night lying between dark silhouetted tree tops, I lie in bed and listen to birds calling. There are so many of them, and their calls are so varied, each distinct from the next.

I can’t remember many places with such bird-filled dawns. Papershali, Uttarakhand, where we lived too far from the road to hear any traffic. Vancouver Island, just a few minutes’ walk from the shoreline of Haro Strait. The Olympic National Forest, the summer my sister and I went backpacking together. There may be other places I’m not remembering just now, but one thing I do know: It’s rare to wake up to the complete absence of sound from cars, trucks or trains.

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Coronavirus diaries: Yes, I’m baking

Look at this texture!

Like everyone else, I’ve been baking since we stopped being able to travel, meet with friends, go to coffee shops, go to bookstores or do much of anything else outside the home (other than taking long walks). I just invented a new muffin recipe (based on one I found online) that I think is absolutely delicious, so I’m sharing it here. It contains no eggs, because I can’t eat eggs, so I hope anyone else who avoids eggs will find and enjoy it. I’ll also provide some notes on how to make the recipe completely vegan.

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