Mall Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Mile Markers moves the cardio indoors

Mercury-wise, North Jersey has resembled a commercial meat locker for most of this winter. No record-low temperatures, but a sustained chill that’s been in the single digits for weeks, with more snowfall than in any of the last several years. I never get enough of the fluffy precipitation and I have a high threshold of pain for the cold, but I’d reached my limit with the latter by mid-January.

Which sucks. Cardio establishes the energy for my day, but it’s dangerous to be outdoors in Arctic conditions. The weather was demotivating, so I decided to go on hiatus and use the hours in other ways. I stayed on top of personal stuff. Caught up with friends. Picked up the writing pace. But as the body will do, mine screamed to move, that it needed the routine again even if not first thing in the morning.

Not like I hadn’t walked in malls previously, I did it a lot to keep my now defunct streak alive, but never to this recent degree. Willowbrook Mall in Wayne is a few minutes’ drive from the office in Fairfield, and the spoke-like layout with department stores at two of the endpoints is conducive to laps. It’s not sprawling, but still has size and diversity so boredom doesn’t set in. And it’s proven its weight in gold, from any number of the jewelry shops that line Willowbrook’s halls.

Yeah, I’m old. Or on the path.

The first enclosed mall in the United States opened in 1956 in Minnesota. Through the next two decades, walking in these new shopping hubs diversified into the casual and the exercise forms, as people sought safe havens to get their steps in before getting your steps in was a thing. During the second half of the ’80s, formal groups and programs took shape…and with construction on the rise during the Clinton administration, the continuing trend of cruising malls boomed like the USD. Post-2000, subject matter research was conducted while health agencies promoted broader adoption. Thought you might want to know.

I park in the south lot. Starting the stopwatch on my phone, I hustle to the entrance, navigate the food court, and attack the corridor opposite grease heaven. Macy’s is at the end, and the scenic route inside helps me increase my blood flow. Back to the middle of the mall, I turn right onto the next spoke, past the guy at the shoe cleaner kiosk who, every time, tries his best to convince me to accept a free product demo on my ASICS Gel Kayanos. All the way in the other direction now and a loop around the bottom of Bloomingdale’s, where the smell of hide in the bag section has become an olfactory memory more so than the perfume. The escalator brings me up a flight and propels me into a higher gear for an undulating, askew oval as well as a jaunt around the top of JCPenney. Back downstairs, I return to the center with a fulfilling breath: lather, rinse, repeat.

Frankly, I’m impressed that there aren’t many empty storefronts. I’m also impressed that I haven’t gone into a single shop to browse, not even for graphic tees or hats. Business missions, that’s what they are, with structure and purpose. “The best ability is availability,” and Willowbrook Mall, an unexpected resource, has pushed me to restore the routine with benefits to body and mind. For this not quite senior citizen mall walker, I don’t take it for granted. Not anymore.

I laugh when people tell me New Jersey is the land of malls. Hate to break it to you, but you have the same deal as we do—strip malls too, I’ve been to plenty of states. Maybe not as concentrated as in Bergen and Passaic counties, but such is life in a densely populated area in the most densely populated state.

The pavement, that’s one piece I miss. These concrete corridors just won’t cut it for much longer. Also, I’d rather see houses than stores and whiff the outside instead of scented candles and lotions and scrubs. Chimney smoke in early darkness seems more appealing and less manufactured. And the lakes, their surfaces frozen for weeks, with tiny volumes of water underneath fighting to bust out like weighty secrets from a safety deposit box.

No different for me. I’m hitting the streets. Soon.