A version of this story appears in the Spring 2015 edition of Our Big Backyard, a quarterly magazine about parks and nature. Read more stories, plan an outing with a field guide, and find out more about fun nature events and classes.
Sunlight filters through 100-year old Douglas fir trees that dot the fitness trail at Glendoveer Golf and Tennis Center. Circumnavigating the two miles around the golf course, the path weaves and straightens, rises and falls. The trail still smells of the fresh cedar chips that Metro Parks staff recently used to resurface it.
In 2013 trail users made 156,000 trips around the course. Young and old, they run, jog and walk. Mothers push children in strollers, people walk in pairs chatting as they go, while others walk or run alone with their headsets on lost in their music.
Those who use the trail do so almost religiously. It’s not uncommon for people to walk it every day and to do several loops. There are people who’ve walked the trail for years, making the journey part of the daily fabric of their lives.
If you’ve walked the trail in the mornings with consistency, no doubt you’ve been greeted by 78-year-old Lloyd Daniels. With his trademark brown felt hat, wide grin and warm greetings to all, Daniels has been a daily trail fixture since 1999. But it wasn’t until recently that I learned the inspiring, personal story behind Daniels’ journeys around the Glendoveer trail.
Early one Friday afternoon, I met him for what Daniels calls “a round.”
“I already put in a couple rounds this morning,” he says. “But it’s a nice day and I don’t mind puttin’ in another.”
We started out on the southwest side’s gradual descent along the driving range and wound our way through a stand of fir trees. He walks at a comfortable pace with a gait that defies easy description. It’s something between putting one foot out to feel what’s in front of you, and stumbling. It’s different, but he has perfected it and it doesn’t slow him.
“I do at least two rounds every day and very often three,” he says. “I walk in the sun, the rain and the snow. My doctor says that because of my walking, I’m more like a 50- or 60-year-old man than a 78-year-old. He told me a while back I could get away with walking less, but I’d have to watch what I eat, and I’m from the South and still like my eggs and ham for breakfast.”
Halfway down the west side, the trail opens up and fir trees are replaced by a couple of gnarled cherry trees and small mounds of brambles. Farther down we are completely in the open, large swaths of the green golf course that seem to tumble toward us.
“Walking does everything for me,” Daniels says. “I feel better, eat better and sleep better.”
It’s a wonder Daniels can walk at all.
Daniels suffered a shattered back and five broken vertebrae from getting run over by a car twice and getting into two motorcycle accidents. Instead of sliding into immobility, Daniels finds it hard to miss a day on the trail.
“Sometimes I think to myself ‘Ya know, I think I will give it a pass today,’ and I tell my girlfriend I’m not going to go,” he says. “But I get in my truck and inevitably find myself out here walking.”
As we turn the northwest corner, waves of golf course green seem to slide toward us.
In a study of color psychology, Judy Scott-Kemmis writes that the color green renews and restores depleted energy: “It is the sanctuary away from the stresses of modern living, restoring us back to a sense of well-being. This is why there is so much of this relaxing color on the earth and why we need to keep it that way.”
Everyone walking the trail seems to have found that “sense of well-being.” We stop many times on our walk so Daniels can catch up with fellow walkers.
“Talking to people is half the fun,” he says. "Every day I can’t wait to get out here and see how everyone is doing.”
As we leave the clearing, we come upon a Douglas fir that was designated a Portland Heritage Tree in 2007. Metro Arborist Howard Rasmussen estimates the tree started growing around the time the United States was becoming a nation. With limbs bigger than most trees, this special heritage tree seems to invite a good climb, or at least to wrap your arms to see how far around they’ll go.
In his recently published book “Blinded by Science,” Matthew Silverstone writes about scientific data that show trees improve health conditions such as mental illness, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, headaches and depression.
As we keep walking, the trail changes again. Douglas firs share space with sequoias, cedars, vine maples and big-leaf maples, along with salmonberry, snowberry and a Salal and Oregon grape.
“I love the way it always changes,” Daniels says. “You go up and down, then across flat ground from open sky to walking through a forest.”
The final stretch is uphill. From the bottom it looks like something out of a story book. The trail is wide and gold, twisting and turning. In the spring, as if by magic, the floor on this eastside slope is decorated with flowering trilliums.
We stand for a moment beneath the big-leaf maple that commands center stage at the northeast corner. Leaves as big as platters are starting to blanket the ground. Daniels stops for a moment and grabs the bicycle rack for balance as he stretches his feet.
“You may have noticed the way I walk,” he says. “After my last accident, I spent two months in the hospital. I was put into a body cast and had to relearn to walk. I walk like this because my feet are completely numb. I walk with my eyes. I can’t look away for any length of time. Fell a couple times early on, but after 15 years I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”
It took me a moment to process what I had just heard. After some simple calculations, I realized that in 15 years of walking the trail, Daniels had walked far enough to travel clear around the earth on feet he couldn't feel.
“Come on, we have to keep movin’, this uphill stretch is one of my favorites,” he says.