Reflections on Issue Ten

Why Walk?

Thank you to everyone who had a chance to read Issue Ten over the past week. For those who have yet to read it, the reflections from other readers below may be a good starting point, or you can read “Why Walk” first.

The Understory reflections between issues are intended to share thoughtful comments from readers that expand upon and challenge parts of the previous issue. I am immensely grateful for the comments added this week, and hope they provide further value in affirming your own commitment to walking. As for me, I was more deliberate in my walks this week and am thankful for the long walks with my wife and two dear friends despite the smoky conditions.

As Shared by Anne-Marie Brest

“I have missed walking these past months: first I had to cancel my pilgrimage to Japan which curtailed my determination to train and go for long nature hikes very regularly, then many parks closed because of COVID only to reopen with limited trails to avoid the overcrowding, then the heat prevented any long hiking, now we have the fires and the bad air quality limiting us to indoor spaces only.”

For a bit of context, Anne-Marie is a coach in the Bay Area who for years has led regional and international walking experiences as a practice for connecting with nature and oneself. We met last spring as co-participants in the Climate Change Coaches Circle. To read her struggle to consistently walk despite the integration into her life and practice shows just how challenging it can be to maintain. Anne-Marie’s comment also recognizes that walking is a practice of dependencies, many of which are out of our control. The frequency, environments, and ways that we walk are relational to not just our current state of being, but also to the condition of the world around us. Perhaps it is in this acknowledgement of the relationality of walking that we find greater awareness in the health of ourselves, our communities, and our natural and urban environments. When we walk (or are stifled from doing so), it can bring each of those into sharper relief. 

“Your mention of Rebecca Solnit's text makes me reminisce of a blog post I wrote almost two years ago titled, ‘On the Wisdom of Walking in The Woods.’ While the quotes I chose for that blog are slightly different from the ones you selected, we both agree on the depth and beauty of her book.”

I enjoyed reading Anne-Marie’s post, and encourage others to do so as well. I wanted to comment on one of the Solnit quotes that I had not included, as I felt conflicted about its underlying meaning. “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord.” 

What does it mean to say that the world is aligned with us when we walk? Does this create a more profound significance than is possible for the individual in authoring narrative and meaning? 

I see the quote as relational to the one I included by Michel de Certeau: “a walker makes possibilities exist as well as emerge.” De Certeau's careful use of “possibilities” is in stark contrast to the scale of a term like “world” that Solnit uses. Part of walking is to recognize an interconnectedness or a disconnection from place. One could just as well walk in an environment and feel apart from it as to feel one with it. The “conversation” that Solnit alludes to could be one of disagreement or harmony. The presumption of harmony seems to exclude a way of making meaning in our environment through discord. 

“And, there is another book I would like to mention that resonates with your statement about walking as a resistance act: A Walking Life: Reclaiming Our Health and Our Freedom One Step at a Time by Antonia Malchik. In her book, Malchik advocates for making our cities as walkable as possible to restore our health, communities and democracy.”

I had a good chuckle upon reading Raymond’s review of A Walking Life on the Amazon page which gave the book one star noting, “Be forewarned this is not about walking...It is about anti-government civil rights protest.” Raymond must have presumed that a walking life was one of pleasantries. As another reader, Noah Russell pointed out, what we are walking away from is often just as significant as what we are walking towards. Urban walking can offer a different relationship to the walk away and towards due to being situated within a community and positions of power. Considering how we walk in cities with intention is just as important as having intention in walking in nature. Making history by walking rather than suffering through it (Solnit) is an incredible privilege and responsibility. By acknowledging the spatial representations of power when we walk, we can better understand a place and our role in helping shape our cities into what we hope they might become.

See Anne-Marie’s comment in its entirety and add your reflections to hers

As Shared by Peter Tavernise

“What is interesting for me to reflect on is that most of what I did in my 20's and early 30's when visiting a new city was to simply walk aimlessly and see what I might discover. I did this in San Francisco back when it seemed like another planet (as I was at the time an East-coaster). In London many times I walked miles and miles of the city and its park-lands, taking a meal wherever I found myself at each mealtime. And how I loved to walk in New York City, especially in May, in the rain—often I'd be the only person moving at my pace, a slow reflective walk. I felt I was moving through time, not just space. All that to say I don't think this attitude of walking to restore the self to the self must happen in a 100% natural landscape, indeed part of reclaiming our space as civic is that we spend time out in the open, and in it, as per the public square.”

For years (pre-kids), my wife and I also used to visit cities precisely the same way. While sometimes we would have a Michelin Green Guide in hand so we could reference a place that from its exterior seemed significant, we found many of the greatest joys in walking through residential neighbourhoods where we got a better feel for how people lived there. Once while in New Orleans, we walked into a hotel to ask for directions to a restaurant we knew was very close by. The front desk attendant pointed across the street saying it was just one block away. His recommendation was to take a cab the one block as he felt it unsafe for us to walk there.

I continue to wonder whether this kind of urban walking was one of cultural oblivion, or whether we became more aware of culture because we had no preconceptions of where we were walking and often what we were walking around.

Peter's comment about “reclaiming our space as civic” within cities also reminded me of the city as places of historic memory. At the Holocaust Museum in Berlin, I viscerally remember the sound from the sea of metal faces animated by walking across them. The installation, Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) by Menashe Kadishman, was situated by Daniel Libeskind in a kind of architectural between space known as The Memory Void.

“I will always be grateful that my first 8 years or so of life was lived in the shadow of Pikes Peak, and included hikes up to some of its streams and lakes. That formed the first and likely deepest experience of what it is to have an Axis Mundi that felt like it took up half the sky on some days. The comfort even as we lived in the Valley of always knowing its fields full of enormous grasshoppers, jackrabbits, trout, pines and lichen-covered boulders were within reach. Moving to the Washington DC area from there was frankly a shock to the system, and never felt quite natural until I discovered the joys of swamping at 11-12 years old. I know my mother was beside herself when more than one pair of brand new sneakers came back home absolutely drenched in the muck of the Potomac's many tributaries and wetlands. These spaces do restore ourselves to ourselves.”

Thank you for sharing these memories from your childhood, Peter. If we take the time to reflect, we can find great meaning and significance in our childhood relationships with nature that opened or closed pathways for us as adults. As shared in Issue Five, I am convinced that it was in the contrast between the world I knew growing up in the southern United States against the majesty and foreignness of the Colorado wilderness that created the life-altering awe experience at fifteen years old that I still carry with me.

See Peter’s comment in its entirety and add your reflections to his

As Shared by Doug Capelin

“Living in rural Colorado, I can perambulate many places ... all on public lands, though. Not so easy in the urban and suburban zones where most of us live. As an outdoor educator, I guide people to a deeper, more conscious connection to Self and Community by 'walking' in Nature. These are hard times in our country and elsewhere. Let's keep putting one foot in front of the other. Sitting down is good for rest and contemplation, but if we sit too much we may lose some of those footpaths ... and some of our freedoms.”

Doug is the owner of Deer Hill Expeditions, which is where I participated in the Colorado experiences referenced above. I wanted to add a note about the mythology of place that also contributes to the consciousness that Doug mentioned in his comment. It was in walking around the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde and other sites that I first experienced the architecture of a different society. It was in the meadows and rugged wilderness that I read Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, and Terry Tempest Williams. Their first-hand experiences, as well as fictionalized characters navigating southwestern landscapes nuanced my own journeys. I am quite certain I walked differently many days because of what I was reading.

A very special thanks to Doug, my leaders at Deer Hill, and the others who were with me on the expeditions (some of which are reading this). 

See Doug’s comment in its entirety and add your reflections to his

As Shared by Monique Morden

“I have the benefit of a dog who reminds me to walk him and me. On these walks it is truly a walking meditation where I am connected with nature and subconsciously connecting with whatever is percolating in my soul. Most of the time I purposely don’t listen to anything so that I can be present to effortlessly observe and absorb. If we all could unplug and slow down and connect with nature, we no doubt would have the stronger connection with humankind and nature resulting in us all caring for our community, region, province, country and world.”

I love that your dog encourages a continuous practice of walking. Solnit writes of how Wordsworth used to write his poems aloud while walking. Wordsworth gives credit to his dog for ensuring he didn’t look like a lunatic in his community, by queuing him to silence himself as strangers approached. It just goes to show that dogs can reinforce positive walking behaviours in myriad ways. I also thought “a walking meditation” was a lovely phrase. Thank you, Monique. 

See Monique’s comment in its entirety and add your reflections to hers

As Shared by James Tyer

“One of the frustrations I've experienced in the past six months is the lack of walking meetings. For brainstorming, knowledge sharing, and emergent creation, they are so much more effective than sitting in an office. I've taken a few meetings walking by myself while talking (on my headphones)...it's not quite the same, but not bad!”

As Rebecca Solnit notes in Wanderlust, “I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness.” Solnit calls on us to reduce the “false urgency” of our cultures oriented around production. It is precisely in this modulation of our speed, or the synchronicity of thought and our feet, that can make walking more fruitful than sitting.

See James’ comment in its entirety and add your reflections to his

I hope this week between issues provides the space for further discovery and reflection. Go forth and make a difference in the week ahead. See you next Saturday with Issue Eleven.

Adam