Marketplace of Ideas Blog

On Sunday — even though summer actually starts Memorial Day weekend — summer officially begins at 12:34 a.m.

I will celebrate some time this week by going for a walk.

Walking is better exercise than some people think, because it’s more endurance exercise with less potential harm to your joints than, say, joggling or biking. Walkers get to see more than joggers, who, at least based on outward appearance, appear to be focusing more on the next plate of sidewalk than their external environment.

I’ve used walking to drop about 25 pounds without, happily, changes to my diet or a new diet. (The first three letters in “diet” are the key for me.) At a previous employer, there was a person in town who could be found walking everywhere, a person who, according to the newspaper’s employees, had lost about 100 pounds by walking.

The payoff for Wisconsin’s 14-month-long winters is our summers. On this weekend particularly, there is something to going for a walk starting around 8:30 p.m. and, as late as 10 p.m., being able to see a hint of sun yet in the northwestern sky, particularly if you can find a hill outside the city lights. Even though days start becoming shorter after the first day of summer, this isn’t noticeable in this latitude until after Independence Day, the reason fireworks don’t start until well after 9 p.m.

I’m not planning on seeing the sunrise (did that already recently), but, weather permitting, I will see a really late sunset and post-sunset twilight sometime this weekend, a real signal of summer. That is, a real signal of summer for those who didn’t notice how someone threw a switch to start the heat and humidity earlier this week.