Read chapter 36 here
View of Picnic Point from Observatory Drive (photo by Retiring Guy)
JoAnna and I were on our own as far as a long-distance weekend walk is concerned. Margaret’s son and daughter-in-law recently purchased a house on Madison’s west side, in the vicinity of West Towne Mall, a hilly neighborhood of comfortably roomy though not palatial homes developed in the 1970s. The previous occupants had grown too old to maintain the yard, so Margaret and Ron have been helping them get things in order. Sounds like quite the onerous project, based on Margaret’s descriptions of the extensive overgrowth.
“At one time, it was a beautifully landscaped yard,” she noted last weekend.
Margaret's son and daughter-in-law have only the most rudimentary knowledge of plants and gardening. Neither of them, for example, knew that daffodils are spring flowers. They thought they would remain in bloom all summer.
JoAnna and I decided on an urban destination for yesterday’s walk: the UW-Madison campus. As we approached Observatory Hill, our designated starting and ending point, we noticed a surprisingly long line of cars approach from the opposite direction.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” I said.
Even though it was graduation weekend, no in-person ceremonies or any other formal campus ceremonies were being held. (A pre-recorded virtual commencement ceremony is being distributed to all candidates.)
False alarm.
The parade of vehicles turned out to be a Corvette car rally, perhaps the same group of enthusiasts we encountered three weekends ago during our first visit to Brigham Park in Blue Mounds. After the cars passed, the dozens of people I thought I had seen walking along both sides of Observatory Drive vanished. The cars were real, but the people were a mirage.
At the beginning of our walk, we saw graduates in caps and gowns posing for pictures with family members at various campus sites: the Carillon, Bascom Hall, Memorial Union. The last two locations, though not crowded, still gave JoAnna pause.
“They certainly don’t look like they’re social distancing,” she observes warily.
I thought back to my visit to the protest rally and thought, No comparison.
View of Capitol dome from Picnic Point (photo by Retiring Guy)
From the Union, we followed the lakeside path to Picnic Point and walked the entire length of the finger of land that sticks nearly a mile into Lake Mendota, according to a signpost at the halfway mark. The trails, if not busy, were certainly well trod. If there were any class of ‘20 graduates by the time we reached Picnic Point, they had shrugged off their robes by then.
Registering nearly 15,000 steps on JoAnna’s Apple watch, it was one of our longest walks of the pandemic era. Our daily exercise helps us to avoid the so-called ‘Covid 15’.
Read chapter 38 here
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