The Freedom of Walking

Walking is an act of freedom.

Taking a break from writing, I go out for a walk. This time I’m not heading into the woods. I’m walking on the streets of the neighborhoods around me. Literally. Some have no sidewalks. Some don’t even have a shoulder, and I have to step in the ditch when cars approach. 

I don’t know what the housing developers were thinking. There are elementary schools here. How are children supposed to walk to school safely? How are people who don’t have cars expected to go shopping? How are people in wheelchairs to navigate curbs without ramps? Crosswalks are half a mile apart, if there are crosswalks, and often the time allowed by a “Walk” sign is not long enough for the elderly to get across the street.

Antonia Malchik expresses many of my frustrations trying to walk in the city in her new book A Walking Life: Reclaiming Our Health and Our Freedom One Step at a Time. She talks about the evolution of walking in human culture and details the social, health, and community problems that began when people were forced to stop walking in the city. 

Why did we give up our right to walk in our own communities? 

Walking has been part of my life for a long time. When I’m walking, it’s easier to clarify my thoughts, untie life’s knots, and figure out what I wanted to do next. This was never more evident when my wife died and I frequently went to Yosemite to hike through grief. I wrote about this journey in my book Mountains of Light.

It’s as if the developers were paid by auto makers to not put in sidewalks so that everyone had to use a car to get anywhere, even to the corner grocery store. Of course, there are few corner grocery stores left where we can buy milk and bread, hang out, and catch up on neighborhood news. Many of them closed because everyone thinks they have to drive. When the Nimitz Freeway was built through the middle of the vibrant West Oakland community, its community ceased to exist.

My neighborhood has a sidewalk on one side of the street, and people walk by in the evening for exercise or to walk their dogs. If I’m working in the yard, we often share a few words and sometimes we chat, learn more about each other’s lives, and build up trust. Without the sidewalk, I wouldn’t know most of my neighbors, because everyone gets in their car and drives away.

Walking is an act of building community.

We used to be a walking society. Now we drive everywhere, even if it’s just a block away, and end up isolated from each other in the hard, protective shells of our cars. It’s no wonder that we don’t know, or trust, each other, or why we’ve lost our sense of community. We can’t converse honestly with people who have different opinions because we haven’t taken the time to know each other first and build up a foundation of trust.

I grew up walking to school in all kinds of weather, and I walked to classes across the huge UW-Madison campus. This led to my love of hiking. When I moved to the Bay Area, I walked a mile to the BART station, and walked half a mile at the other end to work. The time spent walking gave me time to connect to nature and unwind from work so when I arrived home I was ready to be social.

Walking is an act of defiance. It says that people are more important than cars.

John Muir complained about people arriving in Yosemite by stagecoach because, at that speed, 14 miles an hour, they couldn’t see nearly as much of nature as he did by walking. 

On my walk today, birds are chirping, chortling, and singing. I feel energized being outdoors, getting exercise, breathing fresh air, and watching the trees sway in the breeze. I’m reminded that I am part of the natural world and not the other way around. As my walking settles into a rhythm, body and mind reconnect, and my thoughts slow down to move at the pace of reflection.

Walking gives us time to remember who we are, and think about who we might become.

Today I walk without a destination, walking simply for the joy of movement. I walk without worrying if I’m moving fast enough for this to count as exercise. Muir would call this sauntering. When I see people, I say hello, and if they seem open, I linger and we share.

I take time to marvel at the balanced architecture of an oak tree, bend down and examine the pink and lavender colors of flowers, see a hollow at the base of a tree and imagine a hobbit or a Keebler elf living there. When I notice a squirrel watching me, I stare at it until one of us blinks. 

It’s irresponsible, I know, to walk with no purpose. But I do. People wave as they pass by in their cars, some who are wondering what’s wrong with my car. They have no clue that I’ve escaped the confines of machines and I’m on the loose.

Walking keeps us human.