Walk the Walk

It is not museums or concerts. It is not leisurely crosstown busses, sunset skylines or even reasonably priced excellent restaurants. It is certainly not crowds or subways, or crowded subways.

What I have missed most during the pandemic is walking. But I am not just talking about the biomechanical act of bipedalism. I mean walking with an unstoppable, get-away-from-me-I-am-going-somewhere-without-you, purpose: towards an imaginary anywhere, but via, everywhere.

Although walking through New York is a “hike in the woods” of sorts; it is not a hike in the woods. It is not a stroll around the suburban block to peek at the neighbor’s yard. It is more like hopscotch than it is like a treadmill. It is dodging and weaving: over sidewalk irregularities, under scaffolding, avoiding cyclists wooshing by. It is safe until suddenly, it isn’t really, but then quickly, it is again.

It is a series of darkened circles of old gum atop the intermittent glitter of concrete. Who chews so much gum? It is the mini rush of relief after I avoid stepping in something. It is a little past life so gone and dried that I can’t tell if it was a mammal or a bird: 300 million years of evolution flattened into an indiscernible urban pancake. Poor thing.

I did not grow up in New York City. I got my driver’s license at sixteen in the suburbs. But I was always an anxious driver. My mother was also anxious, especially in snow, and my father was sexist. So driving was a much bigger drama than it had to be, and I felt trapped. Thankfully, I was surrounded by a group of independent young women friends and they drove me everywhere. I was a B+ front seat companion. I talked too much and if I was supposed to navigate we were 100% going to be lost. But we would be laughing. 

Coming from this suburban situation, walking in NYC was downright practical. But it was also a rebellion. I didn’t need to pump gas and I didn’t need anyone’s fucking help. I walked so the anxiety, the sexism and the horrendous sense of direction were behind me. But it gave me more than just a means of getting around. It calmed me down, I saw things, I felt full of purpose and strong. Walking in NYC is a smorgasbord of people-watching but also – a flagrant spree of ignoring everyone. It is Mary Tyler Moore, and it is environmentally green. But mostly, it opened my mind to the thought landscapes you cannot access while sitting around — probably via endorphins disguised as hope. 

I am certainly not the first human to celebrate walking. In fact, walking is perhaps the oldest human story out there. Poets, writers, artists, scientists and philosophers have been living and breathing the secrets of walking for centuries. And our hominin ancestors have been walking on two legs for at least 6 million years. When we examine the past, searching for scientific evidence, we cannot know if walking gave Homo erectus the courage and the vision to travel farther than any other hominin had before. We just know they had the long legs. But which came first: the vision or the legs? 

I know for me that walking is not simply a form of locomotion, it is a way of life which began as protest and ended up being a drug — one that despite being the most humble and hackneyed human behavior out there, still sometimes convinces me that I am going places.