“We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return – prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.”
- Henry David Thoreau
“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
“Destinations are downers.”
- Author Ken Ilgunas, after walking 1,900 miles across the Great Plains in 2012
The resurgence of walking – the ancient exercise that requires no gym membership, no special equipment, not even consultations with a personal trainer – appears to be a spinoff of our current plague.
If indeed the COVID pandemic is helping us appreciate anew life’s basic pleasures, let’s give a shout-out for walking and for a world that makes room for walkers with sidewalks, footpaths and crosswalks.
Walking’s comeback became clear to me during a recent stay in Media, Pa., the leafy Philadelphia suburb where I grew up. At all times of day, people were on the roads there, walking.
Many were surely COVID shut-ins, unable to get into commercial gyms. Others were only out to walk their animals. But the sheer volume of walkers was exponentially greater than the number I’d seen in the neighborhood less than a year previous. It was an encouraging sight, similar to ones I saw on a recent, cross-country bicycle trip.
For reasons that are not important, I didn’t learn to drive until age 24. For the first six years of my adult life, I relied on taxis, buses, trains, hitchhiked rides and my own two feet. The experience demonstrated starkly that most of the development of the 20th century did not take into consideration a person on foot.
Many times, even in cities, I was forced either to dodge cars and trucks or to travel through sketchy neighborhoods to get to where I was going. Cars came first.
The destruction of the atmosphere we breathe and the possible extinction of species, including our own, by automobiles, has caused us to reconsider walking, both as a form of transportation and as a healthful activity. It’s about time.
During most of my lifetime, walking was overshadowed by its more strenuous and glamorous cousins like hiking, power-walking, speed walking, jogging and running. Walking was relegated to bagging the Appalachian Trail or for spiritual quests across America, not for getting across town.
But in the past 20 years, that’s changed, including with new medical information that a daily walk might be just as healthful and less risky and damaging as running great distances.
According to a CBC news report Jan. 2, “around 30 minutes of walking a day, whether all at one time, or in multiple sessions has been shown through studies to help people lose weight, improve their heart health, increase endurance and improve mental well-being.”
The report also cites a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association last spring that found that the more steps a person takes, the less the risk of dying from any cause. It quotes a veteran exercise scientist saying that “people who often live to 100 haven’t necessarily done so with intense exercise as part of their daily lives but have had lots of movement, such as walking.”
A friend of mine who has walked or hiked thousands of miles told me walking is one of the best treatments for back injuries. As my friend also prescribes whiskey for many ailments, I was skeptical. Then last year I took a wicked fall on an icy hill and something cracked, either in my back or pelvis.
A wicked pain shot through my side, making it difficult to get off the ground. But when I did, instead of heading straight to my car, I walked about a mile, including up a forested hill. For months after the accident, rising from a prone position was difficult and painful, but eventually something healed and the pain subsided.
Did my post-fall walk put broken things into place for eventual healing?
A half-dozen books in recent decades have sung the praises of a walk, including as inspiration for creative types.
It seems that in a world full of cars, walking can also be a powerful statement. In her book, “Walking: One Step at a Time,” Erling Kagge says, “Sitting is about the desire of those in power that we should participate in growing the GDP.” Walking, she describes as “among the most radical things you can do.”
So go for that walk, even if it’s just to the post office. And don’t forget to lobby your elected representatives for more trails and sidewalks.
SOME WRITING ABOUT WALKING
“Walking,” an essay by Henry David Thoreau
“Trespassing Across America: One Man’s Epic Hike Across the Heartland,” by Ken Ilgunas.
“Walking: One Step at a Time,” by Erling Kagge
“Wanderlust: A History of Walking,” by Rebecca Solnit
“Beneath My Feet: Writers on Walking,” by Duncan Minshull
“The Vintage Book of Walking: A Glorious, Funny and Indispensable Collection,” by Duncan Minshull