As the mother of a small child, I decided to give up my car in favor of a more economical and ecologically sound mode of transportation. Saving a few bucks and my son’s future environment by walking seemed like a reasonable decision. However, I didn’t anticipate that the perfect preschool for my son would be more than four miles from our home.

 

Between parking fees and rising gas prices, it occurred to me it would cost an extra hundred dollars a month just for the school trip. In a year, this could pay for one of those island-vacation packages from the newspaper’s travel section. So with no more investment than a decent pair of running shoes and a stroller, both of which could be put to good use in general, I thought I’d defy physics and walk myself to the Bahamas.

 

My city had constructed a 16-mile recreation path, allowing a myriad of bicycles, rollerbladers, and jogging strollers to get from one place to another. Using my trusty online map, I found the path that ran right in front of our house and also came within a half of a mile of the school.

 

It looked lovely, running along the river and passing through four different parks. Fresh air and exercise on an enjoyable, scenic walk? My plan was perfect. What the map did not show was that in our otherwise flat town, there was one giant hill that the path went up and over in order to reach the other side.

 

The first time my son and I came to the hill, I was sorely tempted to take the five bucks we’d saved on the car trip and bribe a passing cyclist to tow us up. I had to lean at such an angle to inch the stroller forward that I worried I would end up flat on my face. The vision of the stroller running over my prone body as it bounced back down the incline was chilling as I stared at the rough asphalt a mere foot from my nose.

 

I believe at one point I panicked and yelled for my son to toss anything overboard that weighed us down. Sippy cups, crayons, and die-cast metal cars flew past in my peripheral vision and littered the path behind us. It was tragic, but the sacrifice had to be made.

 

The downhill trip was no easier. The smell of burning rubber wafted up as I skidded down, wearing the soles of my tennis shoes to nothing from the friction. While terrifying to me as the pusher (or rather, the desperate hanger-on) of the stroller, it did save the price of admission to the local theme park’s roller coaster for my son, who laughed his head off and stuck both chubby arms straight up in the air the whole way down. He was even more delighted when he thought my subsequent huffing and puffing was a rendition of the Three Little Pigs.

 

The rest of the trip was a dream. It was warm and balmy; the ducks and geese swam past, followed by little lines of their babies; and my son’s never-ending questions about things we passed led easily to discussions about nature. We talked about the rivers flowing to the ocean, covered a rudimentary lesson on plants versus people in regard to carbon dioxide and oxygen production, and discussed the fact that, no, if he were to cut mommy in half, he could not tell how old I was by counting my rings.

 

 

Story by Sascha Zuger. This article originally appeared in Plenty in April 2007.

 

Copyright Environ Press 2007

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