Teresa Vanderhorst, who celebrated her 80th birthday on July 5, has walked every single street in Medicine Hat 13 times and is now working on her 14th.--NEWS PHOTO LAUREN THOMSON
lthomson@medicinehatnews.com
Teresa Vanderhorst, who turned 80 on July 5, has walked every single street in Medicine Hat 13 times and is now working to complete her 14th “city walk.”
Vanderhorst, who drove school bus for more than 30 years for Medicine Hat Christian School until she retired at 72, can now be found five or six days a week helping to sort and pack vegetables at Rolling Hills Greenhouse, which is owned and operated by her son in law.
“I’ve always enjoyed walking, and I was walking all over the place,” said Vanderhorst. “All of a sudden a brain wave hit me, it was maybe 25 years ago: ‘Why don’t you walk all the streets in the city and mark them down?’ That’s where my passion started. It’s also an addiction, probably a good addiction because I can’t wait to get out and do it.”
Vanderhorst says when she completed her first full walk, she asked herself, “Well, now what are you going to do?” She didn’t think of doing it again right away, but soon decided to.
She gets a new map for every city walk and distinguishes each completed route by marking it off with a coloured marker and writing the date completed.
“I have my old maps, they’re all bundled together. I’ve saved them all. I said to my husband, ‘what’s going to happen to my maps when I’m not longer here?'” Vanderhorst laughed as she recalled.
Vanderhorst says she always walks with her map and every once in awhile, someone stops to ask her if she’s lost.
“I usually walk about 45 minutes, about 3.6 kilometres. My pace is 120 steps a minute.”
Vanderhorst says when she was a bus driver, she would ask the kids on the bus to point to the map and tell her where she would walk that day, during school hours or a field trip. After she retired, she slowed down a little on her walks but realized how much she miss it.
“So a year ago, I picked it back up and I was gung-ho,” Vanderhorst said. “That’s when I did it in one year and now I’m just right back into it. It’s really interesting to walk parts of the city, just enjoy the landscape, the flowers. I don’t just blindly walk, I do take notice of things. I can tell you where the pots are and what the landscaping is like and how many garages they have. I really really enjoy it and it motivates me to get out and enjoy the city and just walk.”
“I’m very particular, I must get all the streets,” she explained. “It wouldn’t work in my mind if I didn’t.”
She doesn’t have one area of town that is her favourite, but says she loves the Flats for the old, unique houses and many beautifully landscaped lawns. She does however, have a least favourite location.
“My worst area is downtown, all the hills. I do hills really bad,” said Vanderhorst. “I am 80, I know, but I’ve never been good at hills and I’m getting worse as I get older.”
Vanderhorst usually walks on her own, but says her daughter joins her occasionally. Her husband George helps her by dropping her off and picking her up on her routes.
“I have been so blessed with health, the Lord has given me the strength to do this so many times already.”
She says it has been interesting to watch the city change through her walks over the past two decades.
“Of course the city has grown so much in the time that I’ve been walking. I definitely know this city well.”
