Yesterday, for the first time in years, I very nearly joined a gym. It would have been a total impulse buy, and I talked myself out of it at the last minute. “You’ll feel differently in about a week,” I told myself, and I hope that’s true. Right now I am afflicted by this peculiar variant of cabin fever that I never knew existed. I haven’t been stuck in my house exactly, but I have been unable to move freely about the neighborhood for about a week.
The options for a pedestrian in Richmond this past week have been unsatisfactory: take your chances in the middle of the street, or take your chances on the sidewalk. The city has been encrusted with with a sheet cake of ice since Sunday’s storm, and while the main roads were cleared right away, the so-called side streets (where we all live) were left to melt at their own pace (glacial). The sidewalks downtown vary from block to block—door to door, even—according to how responsible the responsible parties felt.
Here in Church Hill, it’s even patchier. We have not been blessed with sidewalks on every block to begin with, and if there is a dry patch of road, it’s often only wide enough for a single lane of vehicular traffic. I consider myself very lucky that I don’t have to walk to work, to the grocery store, or to the bus. I’m sure this has been a very trying week for those without cars. But since walking is purely for my own enjoyment, I’ve been skipping it most days, and on days when I do brave the hazards, the experience is not purely enjoyable. I long to move freely—to swing my arms, elongate my stride, fill my lungs with fresh air (none of which was ever going to happen in a gym either, I suppose). This longing to move freely runs deep in all of us, I think, and I wish it for all of my neighbors, even after this ice is gone.
This is an excerpt from my “Letter From Ellen” (Jan. 31, 2026), sent to all monthly donors to First Creatures.
Note the lack of footprints leading to the chair I’m sitting in.