Day 3 – Waverly to Elm Grove, OH – 16 miles

The routine reasserts itself with the ease of a dilettante. It’s only day three, but it could be any day. After all, any day of a walking trip is simultaneously Groundhog’s Day and a unique item, broadly consonant in the plot points, but–hopefully–cherished for the finer details.

Like most hotel mornings, this started in a hotel breakfast buffet, seeking to achieve that golden mean between under-capitalizing and over-indulging. Since it’s only day three, that mean had a lot less heft to it. A packaged, plain bagel with cream cheese, two packets of Quaker oatmeal, a chocolate chip Otis Spunkmeyer muffin, water orange juice, and coffee. On day 12, I might double that.

Departing Waverly, the walk followed a busy road, with pre-rush hour stepping up to the plate to earn a name of its own. Most town exits follow the same script. Soon enough, we forked onto a quieter road, winding tightly along the grasping tendrils of Lake White. What the route lacked in straight lines it more than made up for with constantly shifting vantage points, the early morning light refracting off the lake’s shimmering surface in a lovely display. We started in what must have been a newer development, with well-kept houses perched immediately over the lake. Later, as we doubled-back along a separate tendril, we looped around a ramshackle mobile home park and more rundown homes. Small, personal docks probed surreptitiously into the lake, rarely daring to push more than ten feet.

Lake White is to locals here like many of us are to our families: valued within a narrow context, but largely unknown beyond it. It’s no Lake Tahoe, any more than I’m Nelson Mandela. In a week, I’ll probably forget its name, much as I’ve forgotten the names of so many of the lakes I’ve walked past, enjoying them briefly for what they are, while ultimately disregarding them for what they are not.

Every day of walking, one forms transitory relationships with the places they pass through, imagining what it would be like to live in that house, or trying to anticipate where would be the best place to shop for groceries, or envisioning the different kinds of hobbies one would pursue in that location. I have memories firmly embedded in specific places from nearly every day of the trek.

And those memories, too, like Lake White, are special only insofar as they are special to me, small slivers of my life that are preserved with such pristine verisimilitude as to weld the past securely to the present. But the Lake White I describe here, for all its temporary vividness to me, is just another anonymous lake to you, and you’ve seen a lot of lakes. They’re nice, but they’re no Lake Tahoe.

And since you’ve seen a lot of lakes, you probably won’t be too surprised to learn that the departure from this lake involved an ascent. This being hill country, it was quite a sustained climb, too, pushing through a heavily wooded area until emerging in a higher-level agricultural area. Despite being late-March, it feels like fall in Ohio. Most trees are completely denuded, with nary a leaf in sight. The fields are barren, with only occasional, infantile stalks of wheat poking through the soil. In the distance, whispers of red and yellow creep from the hills. And yet, for all that, the weather certainly lends credence to the calendar; the sun shines down, framed by cherubic clouds, and a pleasant warmth offers promises of growth.

Of course, you’ve seen a lot of fields, too. Eventually, these gave way to a matching descent through woods, interrupted in this case by a construction project that shut down one lane for a considerably distance. While cars were thus held up for extended delays, the walker proceeds undeterred, waving and smiling at those many consternated faces. The walker is never appropriately appreciated, but he is, at least, rewarded with a shady church parking lot to flop down in for a break, celebrating the halfway point in his journey.

And since this is hill country, another hill soon followed. And more fields. And a crushing descent–free this time, at least, from construction and cars alike. It was purely pleasant and utterly unremarkable walking. I will, I suspect, forget it entirely; I can’t even bring myself to describe it here in any detail. For all that, I’m glad I walked it.

The day’s destination, an Airbnb near the hamlet of Elm Grove, lay just ahead across the valley and across Highway 32. This is a pretty barren section of the walk, so it’s no exaggeration to say that the Airbnb we rented was the only viable accommodation option for perhaps 45 miles. It provided a great rationale for taking a recovery day today, though, requiring only a 15-mile walk. And it delivered an equally excellent reward–a gorgeous, fully-renovated farm house, surrounding by all kinds of original out-buildings.

Fritz and I packed in food, since there were no options here or anywhere after Waverly, so we settled in and enjoyed a quiet afternoon. I cocooned in a fleece blanket in a recliner, not because I was cold but because I could, and managed to finally churn out the first blog post. We ate dinner on the porch, in the warm spring air, listening to the birds and the faint hum of the highway in the distance.

There was nothing noteworthy about the day. Each component is a component I’ve encountered countless times before, and at this point everything I have to write about those is inevitably derivative of something I have written before, or read from someone who captured it better. But those flashes, those tiny fragments of life that cohere in kaleidoscopic fashion, make it unlike every other.