I took
a walk today. Is that crazy or what?
I mean,
seriously, is that crazy?
Before
we consider that question with sincerity, I’ll say right off that I love taking
walks. I take them all the time – every
day if I have the chance. Sometimes my
walks are long and at least a little rugged, sometimes way up in the mountains
or on the shore of a lake. But usually
my walks are not very far – maybe a mile or so – and cover familiar territory
in my neighborhood. In fact, I have, in
essence, a very well-worn path between my house and the nearest store where I
do all my routine grocery shopping and whatnot.
I don’t have all the leisure time required to take walks every day, but
I find if I combine my walks with errands, that allows me to take more of them,
and, at the very least, not feel as if I’m “wasting” my time doing so.
It
started over twenty years ago, when I had a suspended driver’s license (another
story for another time.) I wound up
moving to a different state during the period of my license suspension, and was
unable to get any limited driving privileges at all. So long before it was at all trendy, I’d every
few days grab my heavy-duty canvass shopping bags and walk a mile or so to the
grocery store, buy as much as I could comfortably carry, and then hoof it home
again. And I grew to enjoy those
outings; enjoy them so much that I continued taking them after I got my driving
privileges back. Since then, I’ve lived
in a dozen or so different homes in different parts of the country, some in big
cities, some in sprawling suburbs, some in remote rural areas, but wherever
I’ve lived, I’ve tried to establish a routine in which I can take frequent
walks and do my errands at the same time.
At a couple of the remote places I’ve lived this was pretty impractical;
but most of the time it’s been great.
I’ve actually come to dislike driving my car – at least on short trips
around town – so much that I do as much of my commuting and errands as possible
without using my car. And, I say with
all sincerity, I love it. I don’t do it
because I have to or out of guilt, I do it because it’s enjoyable and good for
my body and spirit.
Oh,
yeah, did I forget to mention that today was pretty cold? We’ve had some snow, which has melted and
re-froze, leaving patches of ice everywhere.
And there’s a winter storm warning in effect advising us that more heavy
snow is on the way. One more good reason
– in my mind – to walk instead of drive.
One
thing I love about walking is that while I’m doing it I can let my mind
wander. I’ll sheepishly admit that
sometimes I even start talking to myself, and I have no idea how many people
driving by in their cars see me doing so.
When I’m walking, I don’t really care.
That’s what I was doing this morning on my walk – not talking to myself
but simply letting my mind wander. I
took a slightly longer route to the bank to avoid a narrow stretch of road
where there is no sidewalk and the snow is likely piled up right next to the
road. This alternate route takes me
through an area with some relatively small commercial buildings – some
healthcare facilities, businesses, etc. As
I was walking, stepping over the various piles of ice-covered snow and trying not
to slip on the flat icy spots surrounding them, I noticed one business on a
corner that I hadn’t noticed before. It
was a land surveying business, which in that moment as I navigated my way down
the edge of this non-sidewalk-adorned street (of which we have way too many in
Yakima) stepping up onto the curb when the snow let me and when it didn’t being
careful not to walk too closely into the
route the cars would take (fortunately this was not a very busy street) it
suddenly struck me as funny – or at least ironic – that I was, in that very
moment, walking on a street designed only for cars past a land surveying
business. I mean, who surveyed this
land and decided there was no room for a sidewalk? Who decided to cut this land up into paved
streets, paved parking lots, and box-like buildings, with pathetically small
and un-natural looking little strips of grass between them? Who, in other words, decided that this land
should be developed in a way that is deliberately designed to discourage one of
the healthiest and most time-honored activities of the human race:
walking?
I had
to emerge from this little non-neighborhood and cross one major thoroughfare in
order to get to the bank. As I
approached, and saw all the cars and trucks whizzing by, and pushed the button
so the light with the little walky-guy would turn white so that scores of large
metal vehicles would all come to a momentary stop to allow one crazy pedestrian
to cross, I thought about this weirdness.
I thought about how weird it was that we design buildings,
neighborhoods, even entire cities with the assumption that people are incapable
of transporting themselves more than about fifty yards without the aid of
automobiles.
And
then I began to wonder if maybe I was the crazy one. Maybe, I surmised, there is something in
human DNA (“normal” human DNA, anyway) that compels us to find the least
physically demanding mode of transport possible in whatever time and culture we
live in. Maybe it’s crazy to consider
the burning of fossil fuels, the leaching of toxic chemicals from radiators and
tires and every other device on your typical automobile, the spewing of exhaust
and greenhouse gases into the air we breathe, the positive and negative health
aspects of sitting on your butt versus walking, the effects of adding more cars
and fewer pedestrians on human communities and the attendant alienation we
suffer by seldom encountering other human beings but all too frequently
encountering other metal boxes (how many times have you found yourself saying
“I hope that car doesn’t pull out in front of me!” as if the car was a sentient
being?) Maybe it’s simply unnatural to
consider these things. Maybe the
rational thing to do – and that’s how we define “crazy,” i.e. “not rational” –
is to simply take the path of least resistance:
Gee, I’m out of milk – I’ll go get in my car, apply several hundred amps
of electrical current to some metal magnets surrounding a long coil of copper
wire and simultaneously combine a combustible liquid that was distilled from
oil buried thousands of feet below the surface of the earth half a continent
away with lots of that free, invisible stuff called air and inject this
concoction into a collection of metal cylinders assembled in some other distant
part of the earth so that this fuel explodes several times a second in each of
these cylinders, creating the power of dozens (or, better still, hundreds!) of
horses so that my three-thousand pound box of metal complete with a heater, air
conditioner, stereo, satellite navigation system, theft detection system,
four-way adjustable seats and passive restraint systems (in case I become one
of the thousands of people every day to get into an “accident”) can transport
me through a blizzard of dozens of similar contraptions the whole mile to my
nearby grocery store to get a gallon of milk that came from a cow. Oh, that’s so much easier than walking to the
store – especially when it’s cold outside!
So yes,
walking allows my mind to wander. Just
yesterday a friend wrote something about mental illness on that all-too-common
social media network, something that had prompted me to think about this idea
of who’s crazy and who’s not. Even if
there’s no objective answer to that question, this I knew as I walked to the
bank this morning: some people think I’m crazy to walk to the store as much as
I do, in whatever weather; and I, for one, think that most people who are
unable to imagine life without their car are crazy.
Anyway,
I got to the bank, went inside, and approached a familiar teller. We bantered about as we usually do, chatting
about the weather and joking about how she wants a cut of my withdrawal or
something like that, and inquiring how the other’s day is going. Then she looked at me, noticed my
fully-zipped winter parka, my hat, and, I’m guessing, my slightly enhanced
breathing, and said “Are you walking?”
To
which I replied “yes.”
To
which she replied – and I swear I am not making this up – “Are you crazy?”
I want
to pause here for a digression: I don’t really want people to think I’m
crazy. I guess I don’t care if they do,
so long as I don’t know about it (like when I’m walking and talking to myself
and people are driving by seeing this crazy guy plodding through the piles of
snow on the side of the road babbling away to himself – so long as I don’t see
them see me, then I guess I don’t care.)
But when I’m face-to-face with someone, I don’t want to do anything that
will raise suspicions in their eyes that I’m a little beyond weird or eccentric. That creates uncomfortable social
situations. So in that moment the only
thing I could think of to do or say in reply was to not laugh out loud. I stifled my laugh, and retorted with some
nonsensical but seemingly non-offensive reply.
Then, after a moment or two as she processed my transaction, I said what
I probably shouldn’t have if my goal is to avoid uncomfortable social
interactions. “Not as crazy as people
who drive on days like this.” I said.
I
expected her to giggle, or to at least roll her eyes and say something like
“Yeah, right.” But she didn’t. She simply looked at me like – you guessed it
– I was crazy.
Another
digression: Did I mention that the bank
I go to is not really a bank? It’s a
credit union. And not just any credit
union – it’s the smallest, friendliest, most community-centered credit union
I’ve ever belonged to. I mean, I think
it might be the smallest, friendliest, most community-centered credit union in
the whole world. There’s only one branch
– less than a mile from my house – and I think they have only about three
employees or something – one of them being this teller. I’ve long been a supporter of credit unions
and small banks, but I joined this one only about a year ago in response to the
Occupy Wall Street movement. I joined it
not only to take my funds out of the relatively small regional bank I had been
at most recently, but in the effort to try to make cash – remember cash? – my
primary means of financial transaction.
I very seldom use my credit and debit cards any more. Instead, I take my paychecks to this one
branch of this little credit union (often walking so I don’t use the
drive-through) and give them to a human being (this teller) and request cash
back after depositing those funds I need for the bills I can’t pay with
cash. And I swear, after doing this for
over a year I can say that I’ve never once had to stand in line waiting for my
teller. On only a few occasions have
there been any other customers in there, and when there is more than one of us,
one of the other two officers who sit
behind desks opposite the counter quickly runs over to help the other customer. Except for the look of the building, which
resembles most other suburban bank branches, this is my grandfather’s
bank. This is the Bailey Building and
Loan. And I love it. It’s even better that I can walk to it
easily.
I don’t
think that this teller knows any of this about me, about why I have my account
in this credit union. Maybe she doesn’t
really care about that; to her, I’m just another customer to whom she offers
her service whenever I walk in the door.
I don’t know very much myself about why she chooses to work there, but I
suspect, based on my varied history working in a variety of institutions large
and small, and based on what I know about the seemingly turbulent banking
industry, that if I worked in a “bank” which only had one branch, three
tellers, and hardly ever a line of customers, I’d be worried about my job. And yes, given that the vast majority of
people in our community choose to zip around in their three thousand pound
metal boxes going to the countless drive-through ATMs owned by Bank of America
or Chase or what have you, if I were in her shoes I’d probably wonder why people
like me choose otherwise; why her customers choose a different path, a path
that is more human than mechanical; more community-centered than individual;
slower, smaller, and kinder than the path that the multitudes choose.
This is
the digression that went through my mind as I speechlessly stared at her after
I made the remark about people who drive being crazy. It just didn’t compute to her; she couldn’t
relate at all, or see any irony in it.
And this made me wonder whether she could see the connection I’m trying
to make here: that the reason I walk my errands on cold December days is
exactly the same reason I keep my money in the credit union that she and
precious few others work in. If I’m not
going to walk to the bank, I might as well just do what everyone else does and
drive to any one of the thousands of drive-through ATMs around town and around
the country, seldom touching cash or speaking to another human being to make my
financial transactions. Her job can be
replaced by a machine, and, unfortunately, probably will be someday – unless
enough of us decide to forsake modern conveniences and efficiencies and take
the time to slow down, walk the streets, support local businesses, and work
with one another to maintain compassionate human communities right where we
live.
I hope
she understands that this is not crazy.
I will share this post with Tacoma Mobility. This is what they work on, but Tacoma, has channeled them (used to be 2 employees, now 1) into their Sustainability Group, due to extreme budget cuts. The Tacoma Bike Pedestrian Action Committee has tried to ensure improved walking/biking conditions for now into the future here in Grit City. Some federal groups are behind this movement too, League of American Cyclists, Safe Routes to Schools, for example.
ReplyDeleteMany times, in a day, the only thing that feels sane is the bike ride or walk. I walked in the rainy dark on Friday to Antique Sandwich Company (where I bought some gifts) and had to tie my dogs outside. Some folks expressed that I was cruel to them. Yesterday, we three walked to Rite Aid, and I tied them inside the auto doors to a bench.
My mother always walked with me and expected me to walk as well. On a rare snowy day, we would take the sled to the grocery store and pull our staples home. Both my kids have taken on this habit; neither owns a car nor posesses a license. When I drive, I feel a grave responsibility and discomfort. A bike, by comparison, is unlikely to hurt another creature and walking is even more harmless.
People react to me as they do you, especially my high school students. And I reply that driving is a very modern behavior that is wrecking our planet while walking is an ancient one and part of health. Need fulfilling as you describe!
Liza says I advised her to walk five miles a day. I don't remember saying this, but I believe she moves herself about double or triple this on a daily basis! Add running and pedaling to her daily dose.
Our movement sets us free--it calms agression, provides Vit D, lifts our spirits, helps us to know our neighborhoods, provides a multi sensory experience at a human pace.
Keep up your crazy SANITY, Ken!