Tag: walking

Margerumalia – Five Year Anniversary

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – March 28, 2025

PHOTO: Angel wearing her festive holiday sweater on a winter walk. She’s wondering why we’re not jumping over the fallen tree limb.

Could it actually be five years from the start of the COVID epidemic? And do you know where you stashed your masks to pull them out for the upcoming Bird Flu epidemic? No? Hopefully we won’t need them.

I have a surreal and haunting memory of the spring blossoms and the budding trees from 2020. 

Angel and I continued to take our morning walks every day, keeping all of our trail buddies at a discrete distance if we stopped to say hello at all. This was before the vaccines were developed, of course, and I remember walking about fifty yards behind another hiker, smelling her shampoo and thinking, “If the virus is carried through the air and I can smell her scent, is six feet of social distancing even enough?” 

I developed a strong sense of self-preservation during that time and will admit that I consciously stood upwind of people who stopped to talk to me. The world was in lockdown, after all, and still people were dying by the hundreds, the thousands, every day. 

Then suddenly Mother Nature shook off her winter lockdown and started to run headlong into spring. My logical mind understood the natural state of things but my emotional mind couldn’t process this. We were on hold! Nature shouldn’t be breaking the the rules. No one should!

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” 

I guess I passed the test, but not before processing those opposed ideas. That required me to lean into my mixed feelings as well as the unnerving pull from two directions.

I remind myself to let my characters have such contradictory experiences as well. It makes for weighty moments in their lives, which is always a more interesting read.

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles, is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – Christmas from Japan 

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – December 13, 2024

Last year I got an unexpected gift for the holidays. It was a Christmas card (pictured above) handed to me by a woman from Japan.

Every morning I take a walk after breakfast, enjoying nature as I wind my way through the ravines that lead to Happy Hollow Park. The abundance of trees, squirrels, deer, and humans starts off each day with joy, especially when those humans are walking their dogs because I get to indulge in some puppy love. Some of those dogs recognize me from a distance and run full tilt to greet me like a long lost friend. Because, of course, I am. 

I also greet many other morning walkers who return my smile with a shared “Good Morning!” One of those walkers in Happy Hollow was a Japanese woman named Junko. At first she was quite shy about returning my smile and she clearly didn’t speak much English. The local university has many foreign students and visiting professors so that wasn’t uncommon. After several weeks she made eye contact more readily and shared a “Good morning” each day. 

In December Junko approached me with a Christmas card that she was carrying in hopes of seeing me again. That’s when I learned her name and that she was from Kyoto. Using the translation app on her phone, we exchanged several written messages and got to know each other a bit more.

At home, Junko had spoken Japanese into her phone and copied the English translation letter by letter on her card. This is what she wrote:

I have been here for three months and will be returning to Japan this weekend.

I was happy to be able to greet you every morning. Thank you greet.

To you it may ordinary, but to me it was special.

I’m sorry for the sudden, but I would like to tell you you that.

It’s getting colder. I hope you and yourfamily have a wonderful Christmas season.

12/6 / 2023

Junko Hotta

Years ago, when I was living in Los Angeles, I would drive my VW Rabbit across the desert for eight hours to see my grandparents who had retired in Sun City. On one visit my grandfather and I talked about greeting strangers and I was pleased to discover that he and I had the same habit of wanting to bring a smile to the faces of cashiers, wait staff, and passing strangers. He had been a lawyer in Iowa, very stoic and socially cautious, and I was an actor in LA, very outgoing and creative, but we shared the same impulse to brighten someone’s day.

I think Grandpa would have nodded amiably and approved of my card from Junko. I hold it dear in my heart and hope she’s happy and healthy in Kyoto.

I wish you all the joy of the holiday season and hope you get to share a piece of it with someone you don’t know. 

TTFN

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