My last job was managing a store at a mall. It was my introduction to mall walkers. I had heard of them, but never paid them any mind.

I walked into the mall each morning at 7 am, cringing at the volume of the endless classical music and thinking about what needed to be done that day and wondering if anything got missed at clean-up the night before. Mall walkers strode by, walked, shuffled. The escalators were off at that hour, and they became hills for those trying to exercise in sheltered comfort.

One morning, there was a tall, gray haired woman stopped halfway up the escalator, trying to get up enough strength to finish the trek to the top. She was dressed in pale pink sweatpants with a matching jacket, probably purchased for this exercise routine. I assumed she was in recovery of some sort, and nodded encouragingly as I walked quickly down the other escalator towards my job. A couple power walked passed the bottom of the escalator, and I felt like I was seeing human mortality, in all its stages of suburban health and decay, walking around Green Hills Mall.

We have been hiking nearly every day. The fall is gorgeous. Kurt's work schedule is sporadic. I am working at my old restaurant job this week, but it is all evenings, filling in for somebody who had a death in the family. So we hike a few miles every morning at Beaman Park, a beautiful, nature park with a creek and some mountainous trails. Most aren't terribly long, but we can combine them if we want a longer hike. Since I was working tonight, I just wanted to do the Henry Hollow Loop, which is 2.2 miles, and follows both a creek side trail and attains a steep ridge.

And I realized, as we set out on our daily jaunt with the dog, that we had become the nature equivalent of mall walkers.