Casual

...An older man wearing a Cubs hat raises it to me in salute, and we sometimes exchange a quick word on the pennant race when we pass...

...As a boy and even young man, I owned light barbells and put up chinning bars, but never to any avail...

...I'd rather be sweating in the sun, which at this point in my walk I usually am, when, with slightly slowed stride, I head for home...

...Occasionally an obese man or woman will give the path a shot...

...A pleasant enough looking woman walks a Weimaraner with such haunting eyes and so elegant a taupe coloring that I have formulated the rule that a woman makes a mistake to travel either with a man with a more ambitious hairdo than hers or a dog with a more impressive hide...

...Estimating how much weight they have to walk off, I think, how hopeless...

...I do not greet many people on these morning constitutionals...

...I take these walks in the belief that they are good for my health...

...Traveling in Europe, Henry James spoke of his "detested fellow pilgrims...

...Haze often blocks out the Chicago skyline to the south as I walk past the long grassy spaces set aside for soccer, lacrosse, and field hockey...

...I don't envy them...

...I own no pedometer, but would estimate the walk to be roughly three miles...

...I think of the companions I encounter along the path of my walk as my weary fellow health nuts...

...So with these people—just imagine if they didn't walk...

...Four or five times a week, I take the same walk, beginning somewhere between 7:00 and 7:30 a.m...

...I use the time to think about problems connected with stories or essays I am writing, or to rehearse the lyrics to "Flying Down to Rio," or— ultimate luxury—to let my mind float...

...I have until now never been good at calisthenics, or at any program of exercise that calls for regular application...

...And then I remember that Evelyn Waugh was once asked how, given his rude and generally unpleasant behavior, he justified calling himself a serious Catholic...

...Every so often a real runner zips by, reminding me of how far from a serious athlete I have become...

...On this path, small women show over-developed bulging calves...

...A variety of birds— ranging in size from Canada geese to wrens—are aloft...

...I head down to Lake Michigan, thence around what is known as the landfill behind Northwestern University, and back to my apartment in Evanston...

...Lots of old flesh has been jammed into spandex, always a mistake...

...Casual A WALKER OUTSIDE THE CITY In 1951, the literary critic Alfred Kazin published a schmaltzily sentimental memoir called Walker in the City in which he was able to demonstrate his sensitivity and superiority to his family, his friends, and his contemporaries...

...Although nearly impervious to nature, even I am impressed by the immensity of the lake, which some mornings is a placid, Matissely blue, some mornings menacingly choppy, and some days calm but rippley, believe it or not...

...I glimpse them through the windows of the center's dining room, packing away a heavy breakfast before having to stuff down an even heavier diet of social-science jargon about organizational behavioral strategies, or behaviors of organizational strategies, or possibly organizations and their behavioral strategies...

...On my way back, I pass something called the Allen Center, run by North-western's Kellogg School of Management, which holds what seem like perpetual seminars for rather logy-looking middle-managers with cell phones holstered on their belts...

...Very satisfying, it may even beat bowing before the royal box at Wimbledon...

...Young mothers jog briskly along, pushing dazed children in a droshky-like conveyance...

...Another man whose legs seem to be growing quite as short as those of his Welsh corgi keeps his own counsel under a scowling countenance...

...A man walking his Airedale always says hello...

...JOSEPH EPSTEIN...

...I don't justify it," he is supposed to have replied, "but just imagine what I would be like if I wasn't a Catholic...

...These morning walks seem the exception, perhaps because they leave the mind free for what passes, at least for me, as thought...

...Invigorated though I do feel at the end of them—endorphins speaking here, I'm sure—I should not be at all surprised one Tuesday morning to open the science section of the New York Times to discover that regular exercise, combined with the low cholesterol intake of careful eaters, hastens dementia...

...Joggers, bicyclists, and the occasional Rollerblader pass on the left...

...Once a boy athlete in whose mind played every sports fantasy—from the Rose Bowl to Madison Square Garden to Wimbledon, all in living color—I have been reduced to being a walker, and not all that fast a one at that...

...A man ten or so years older than I, the trunk of whose body is twisted and one of whose legs seems shorter than the other, has been known to pass me up...

...They grunt and glisten with sweat, some of their faces showing real pain...

...I have myself become a walker outside the city, with none of the benefits of self-esteem that Kazin's walks seem to have brought...