Last year, when my daughter had band practice at an awkward time on a Friday-too early to go home after school, too late to go directly from school-we would take walks, always on the periphery of town, seeking those places where the sidewalk ended. Surrounded by fields of corn and wheat, I would throw myself into the grass at the side of the road and listen to the crickets until I regained my equilibrium, until I could face the city again. When the streets and noise became overwhelming, I would hop on my bike and ride blindly until I reached the edge-the place where the sidewalk ended. It was old and ugly, but it was my ticket out of town. When I was a student at the University of Michigan, my most prized possession was my bicycle. We could walk for hours, and always returned calm and refreshed.
State College has no black smoke, and the streets are bright and lively, but the presence of the poem was magical, the sentiment perfect as one stepped away from the cars and buses and the music booming from student flats, and into the fields beyond, where grasshoppers and bees formed the loudest chorus.
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,Īdd watch where the chalk-white arrows go Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black Many years ago, when my husband and I lived in State College, Pennsylvania, before children, we used to take long walks out of the neighbourhood and into a wild patchwork of agricultural fields and scrubby woods that stretched between the University and the sprawling suburbs of town.Īt the edge of the neighbourhood, where the sidewalk gave way to a gravel path maintained only by the steps of those who walked their dogs there, someone had poured a small section of concrete containing a brass plaque inscribed with Shel Silverstein’s famous poem, Where the Sidewalk Ends.
And there the grass grows soft and white,Īnd there the moon-bird rests from his flight
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