I do some of my best writing in my head while walking the dogs. Whether ruminating about the Long Way Home, a Facebook comment, or an angry email to someone who failed to deliver on a promise, by the time the dogs have done their duty, the best writing has started to fade away. By the time I sit at my keyboard or have a notebook in hand, that passage of marvelous writing proved to be just an all-too-brief visitation.
Some of you may be thinking, based on my weak efforts that you read here, that the words and ideas that escape me probably weren’t perfect anyway. Maybe you’re right. But it bothers the you-know-what out of me. If losing good ideas hasn’t been true my whole life, I might attribute it to my advancing years.
I’ve tried almost every trick in my attempts to capture those lightning-in-a-bottle ideas and wonderfully profound sentences. I’ve carried recipe cards, scribbled on the back of business cards (remember those?), pocket notebooks, and note apps on my phone—result: A string of nonsensical words or scribbles that make no sense later.
Our dogs get outside four times each day. It’s supposed to be a low-stakes 15-20 minutes of fresh air, nose-to-ground scenting, and canine waste management. Now that winter is on us, I attempt to focus my thoughts on SSSS, my Senior-Short-Stride-Shuffle. It’s slow but minimizes the harm to the 71-year-old hips.
Inevitably, in the middle of an icy Duluth sidewalk, handling a leash with a sometimes high-strung, 65-pound rescue with a curly tail, I become an eloquent genius in my head. The universe decides to unlock my brain’s true potential.
Maybe there’s something about the routine, the repetitive tug of the leash, the simple, primal satisfaction of movement—that bypasses the stressed-out, deadline-chasing part of my mind. Out here, my ideas aren’t just good; they’re magnificent. Ideas arrive as fully formed paragraphs, complete with perfect metaphors, airtight logic, and a punchline to make my publisher weep with joy. The only witness to this profound intellectual awakening, of course, is the dog focused solely on something in the snowbank.
This weekend, during one of my walks in the darkness with Fiona, an idea that had some staying power made its presence felt. Thinking it’s sad that I too often forget my best stuff, the connection with SAD made me think of my mother. Years ago, she claimed to be suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, which I now see as a reflection of how winter can affect mental health. She bought a fancy light to sit in front of in the doldrums of winter in our northern climes. It may be hereditary, but she’s no longer here to ask.
SAD is a recognized type of depression, often referred to as “winter depression” because the symptoms typically start in the late fall or early winter and improve during the spring and summer. The exact cause is linked to the reduced exposure to sunlight during the shorter winter days. Reduced sunlight disrupts the body’s internal clock, leading to feelings of depression. SAD is more common among people who live in northern latitudes, such as Duluth, where the change in daylight hours between summer and winter is most extreme.
So I did some digging. Here on the North Shore, we get about 4,420 hours of daylight each year. We can’t save any. It’s standard.
The summer solstice here, June 20 or so, dumps almost 16 hours of sunshine on us, nearly twice the sun we’ll see in a week or so. I compared this with Las Vegas, where we lived for almost 12 years. The summer solstice there shows nearly 90 minutes less of sunshine than Duluth. The winter solstice has more than 90 minutes of daylight.
One of the symptoms of SAD is difficulty concentrating, feeling hopeless, or having feelings of guilt or worthlessness. That sums up my life, in summer too. When my energy and motivation are already battling the “Black Dog” of winter sluggishness, the effort required to reconstruct a magnificent, lost idea often feels too heavy a burden to lift.
This column is about that struggle: the inspiration we find in movement, the despair of its instant loss, and the silly, desperate hacks we invent to keep a single good idea alive long enough to make it past the front door. The struggle is part of the process.
The walk is essential, even if the transcription is imperfect. The dog doesn’t care if my ideas are good; Fiona cares that we’re moving. Keep moving, keep walking, and the ideas will keep coming.
