I have made a habit of taking a walk around my neighborhood just about every afternoon. I have a couple of different routes I take, but generally I do one loop that�s about two miles in length that allows me to walk through the woods, along the ponds and streams, around the horse pasture, past the community gardens and down to the river. I either return in reverse or I loop around the pasture and up the steep hill past the pool and along the street that marks the perimeter of the village. I usually head out right before I need to start dinner, around 4 or 4:30, leaving AJ with his dad.

It�s my little Walden Pond moment of the day. I get to check up on any natural developments. Is the Great Blue Heron fishing in the pond or by the river? Have the kingfishers returned yet? Are the daffodils blooming? Have the skunk cabbage and Virginia bluebells pierced through the topsoil?

But I am no Thoreau. I�m not sure a woman could ever have written such a book anyhow (Annie Dillard is probably the closest I can think of). Women walking alone here are usually met with suspicion. Women are supposed to go for walks with their husbands, their children, their friends. A woman walking alone is a social failure. I�ve always particularly enjoyed walking alone at night, which may also be construed as amoral, or at the very least, the shirking of one�s duties. In the city, I felt no such judgment, but I also didn�t feel as safe. I was always insanely jealous of the friend who I would regularly pass on the way home from the library at 1 a.m.. I was protected by the company of my colleagues, he was striding rapidly through the streets of Hyde Park solo, able to think and be alone in the night.

It both amazes and pleases me that I seem to have achieved a role on the social margins of my neighborhood without any effort whatsoever on my part. It�s as if my lifestyle, which is far from adventurous at the moment (or, indeed, at just about any moment), is viewed as an alternate organization of the universe. How dare you have only one child. How dare you have a husband at home to help you with him. How dare you do something so selfish as write? How do you dare to not only voice the wish to be alone but to actually do it?

Welcome to Lake Stepford, where all the women are tired, all the men are absent and all the children are numerous.

I will probably regret the vindictive tone of this entry later. It is rather out of character and reflects a rather paranoid assumption that my neighbors give me any thought whatsoever. But for now, I let it stand.

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