The WALKING podcast Jon Mooallem

Here, in the darkest, dourest, deadliest, bleakest doldrums of Winter 2020, I don't feel like making any more podcasts, because what's the point, but I thought I'd slip last year's holiday extravaganza episode back into your feeds, in which we exploded the usual format of the show to bring you a star-studded, Yuletide spectacular that harkens back to the homespun, holiday podcast specials of days gone by! With special guest appearances by: Decemberists guitarist Chris Funk, fine arts photographer Meghann Riepenhoff and friends, TV producer Jesse Ziebart, Grammy-nominee Korum Bischoff, and restauranteur and businessman Harvey Wolff from Proper Fish. Come along on a wintry ramble around the island, chasing away a case of the holiday blahs! 
The WALKING Podcast Holiday Special is brought to you by Dresden Stollen Bakers. When Irmgard Maron came to the United States in 1928, she brought a cherished recipe for stollen from her native Dresden. She began baking for friends and relatives during the holidays and, at their urging, started a small bakery business. Ninety-one years later, three generations of her descendants still gather to bake this deliciously rich holiday bread once a year and sell it to families like yours around the world.
It has been a comfort these last couple of months, during the pandemic, to pass by the Maron homestead on my walks and see the silhouettes of various Marons, all masked up, still busily packing stollen in the outbuilding to ship around the world, their long tradition undeterred and unstoppable.

Walking on the beach, in a contemplative mood, I gaze out on what used to be an undersea minefield and discover an atrocious-looking jelly fish, oozed haphazardly over the rocks at my feet.
This week's walk is sponsored by The Wild Wine Club, a new online wine shop based in Portland, Oregon that exclusively sells natural and organic wines from around the world. Choose from a monthly subscription box or select your own bottles to enjoy. They offer free delivery in the Portland area and shipping to select states in the U.S. Check out their selection of orange, skin contact and funky reds.

I accidentally walked into a creek.
This week's walk is sponsored by Chris Funk's new solo record, "Songs for Dog Fitness." Pandemic music for walking your dog, or for not walking your dog. 
(You may know Chris as the creator of the WALKING podcast theme song from last season, or as the guitarist for The Decemberists. Check out his new record on Bandcamp and you can even buy it on purple vinyl.)

I see many funguses. I encounter a massive buck hopping improbably high out of the ferns. Isaac tells me about someone he just met while walking, and I tell him about my imaginary friends. I walk home, in a tiny bit of a rush.
 

Four hours, 10.4 miles. I had to stop at a bakery in the middle. 
This election night special coverage special is, as always, just a recording of me walking. I hope you'll come along as a way to relax or be distracted. As special coverage theme music, I used "Fanfare for the Frontier" from Mike Verta's Hollywood Masterclass.
This walk is dedicated to Wendy Macnaughton, who will be hosting an election night drawing party / birthday party for herself on Instagram live at 5pm pacific/8pm eastern. Why not draw with her if you need a calm, restorative place to be online?

While investigating mushrooms at Yucky Pond, I lean over, somehow unleashing the voice of Matthew McConaughey from the phone in my pocket. Then: off to the harbor, where I confront two of life's awe-inspiring and unknowable phenomena: marine mammals and behavioral economics. Special guests: dolphins! Accidental guests: Matthew McConaughey, Dax Shepard.