I grew up in a renovated Michigan farmhouse on a sidewalk-less country road that was anchored by a strip club, which meant that, as children, we almost never left the yard except in a car. What gifts can walking offer us? A Sense of Place So, it’s time to close the front door behind us and to step out to enjoy this simplest and cheapest of activities. Pick up that penny and drop it into a jar when you get home-the pile grows over time, marking your walks. You may be pounding out a half-hour of race-walk cardio, but let yourself stop and look at that strange beetle. (You may not even need shoes.) You don’t have to wear a watch, you don’t need spandex, and you probably don’t need a bottle of water. Consider enjoying one each day around the same time, if you can. Think of your walks as daily breaks.ĭiana Rosen calls a cup of tea “a metaphor for peace,” and aficionados of afternoon tea know how nice it is to orient one’s day around that ritual. Let the point of some walks be simply to walk. If I intend a walk to combine exercise, dropping off library books, and identifying trees (fun though it is), the checkboxes can overwhelm the experience, turning it into a chore. Resist the temptation to load every walk with tasks. Not being reachable for a time can be a fine thing. So unless safety is a factor (read on), consider leaving your phone at home.
Let your walk trail a little community behind it, the way a spider trails silk. Not convinced? Read Andrew Sullivan’s lament about oblivious pedestrians wired to earbuds-people you might as well not bother greeting, as they don’t hear you and don’t reply.ĭon’t be that person. Though walking can be a good time to catch up on podcasts or bliss out to music, leave your devices at home, at least some of the time. If you’re not there yet, here are a few suggestions: 1. But those who can enjoy this privilege-or who can do the equivalent with a mobility device-may find that it becomes a cherished habit. Not everyone has the ability or time to step outside and walk.
Walking helped me learn to read the language of this foreign landscape. I wanted to feel a connection to this strange place, to feel that I knew something about it, even if only that lots of the neighbors owned yappy guard dogs or that pecans in fact grow on trees. Shortly after we moved here from the Northeast, I began to take morning walks. We live in Austin, Texas, in a neighborhood of elderly people, jog-stroller parents, mockingbirds, clapboard houses, cats, cacti, and shade trees.
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