Finding clarity, one step at a time

I do my best thinking when I’m walking. All the ideas bumping around in a disconnected mess in my head start to line up and make sense. I often start working on new things to write. 

The walk can be anywhere. But there are two special walks in Cincinnati that really inspire thoughts. I mean big thoughts. Like the mystery of time. That we’re all going to die. That human beings are specks in the greater scheme of things. 

One of them is the Frederick Hauck geological timeline at Bicentennial Commons on the river. It starts just west of the I-471 bridge, and begins 45 million years ago. Each paver laid in the sidewalk represents a million years. You stride across time, leaving behind the warm shallow sea that covered this area 45 million years ago, walk over a lot of million-year squares, as the continents begin to drift apart and small fish appear and disappear and the dinosaurs do too, and the mammals appear until you’ve walked almost to the Purple People Bridge, a quarter-mile of million-year segments. Finally you come to the last paver. During these last million years humans developed, crossed a land bridge to North America and invented nuclear weapons. 

At the end is a tiny sliver of metal across the width of the walk. Into that fits all of recorded human history. It’s incredible how much is crammed into that space. But it’s a tragic half-inch when you consider it in light of all the natural history that came before. How quickly we’ve squandered the great riches millions of years left us: the timber, the air, the species, the coal and oil. It makes me desperate for us all to do more to stop that squandering. On the other hand, it gives me a sort of fatalistic fall back position. Dinosaurs came and went and so will we. The universe of space and time is immense and inscrutable. 

In the meantime, I’ve learned a lot about local geology. And have enjoyed hearing the carillon ring in 15-minute increments, and walked another 100 million years into Smale Park, which shows up on my phone as steps. 

 All human philosophies begin with the acknowledgment of how tiny we are. And with the reckoning of the inevitable fact that we will all die. 

The other big-thought walk is Spring Grove Cemetery. A walk here delivers a message that’s something like “Yes, we will all die. But look how beautiful the world is right now. Appreciate it and don’t take it for granted.” 

Spring Grove is the third-largest cemetery in the United States. Its naturalistic curving lanes were laid out in 1844. On a long walk here, it’s easy to feel that you’re getting lost, that you may never get back, and it’s just you and a lot of dead people from now on. 

That can be creepy. But the cemetery is alive and gorgeous, any time of year. Huge trees shade the graves with their branches. Some part is left wild for wildflowers to grow, landscaping crews keep other parts mowed and planted with daffodils. There are ponds and swans. Last fall I ate a couple of persimmons from a loaded tree.

And the mausoleums and gravestones are works of art. 

The final for the AP Art History class my daughter took requires finding built examples of historic architectural styles. They’re all there at Spring Grove. I drove her and a friend of hers around, finding peristyles and flying buttresses and all the kinds of columns. The friend, who’d never been there, loved it. “Do you think it would be OK to just … hang out here?” 

It is. You should. Best is a nice meditative walk. I’m not sure I can explain all the big thoughts I’ve had there when I’m not walking, but, for example, once I realized that when you’re dead, you’re no longer an age. You are all the ages you ever were. I decided to live as if that was also true while I’m alive – I am a cute kid and I am a sardonic teenager, a cool young adult and my current wise self, all at the same time. 

This is also a great place to learn Cincinnati history, if you do a little research. That’s what Michael Griffith, a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, did with his book “The Speaking Stone.” It’s a great read, uncovering lots of coincidences and oddities based on what he noticed while walking and what he found out when he looked further. The human output of all the people buried here is astonishing. I myself have tried to conjure up lives, based on birth and death dates and epitaphs and the complicated arrangement of first and second spouses and children who are buried together. You can’t say it brings history to life, but it makes me aware of a great continuity between our forbears and us. 

You don’t have to walk; you could drive slowly around. No bikes, though, and no dogs. This month, public tram tours start, with people who know a lot about the history and nature of the place. 

Keep your mind open and see what big thoughts come to you.

Polly Campbell covered restaurants and food for the Cincinnati Enquirer from 1996 until 2020. She writes monthly on a variety of topics, and she welcomes your feedback and column suggestions at editor (at) moversmakers.org.