Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit

Most weekends I walk.  It’s a form of meditation that clears the mind and opens my eyes to new things that have always been right before me.  Some days I choose to meander around the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, an excursion that often ends up with me in the dirt trying to capture a moment with my camera or lugging home yet another plant and some soil.  Other days I prefer Prospect Park with its many paths leading to new discoveries and the calm or chaos that comes with different weather, people, a zoo, and fences that get in my way.

It is surprising to find a book dedicated to the history of walking.  No one talks about walking just as no one talks about breathing.  Walking and breathing are simply things we do.  Unless you are trying to become healthier by improving your stride or folding into a pose during a yoga class, walking and breathing just happen on the periphery.

I have walked (to the dismay of my mother) through a good portion of Brooklyn late at night.  There comes a point when you realize that the amount of time you will wait for a bus and the ride stopping every two blocks to a transfer bus will take longer than to just walk home.  What could take over an hour in vehicular travel ends up taking forty minutes on foot.  That is forty minutes of free time with no obligations, free time to explore your surroundings without worrying about bumping into other pedestrians.  The streets of the city, especially late at night, are scary because we imbue them with fear that festers after news reports.  But we only hear of the occasional crime because it is more interesting than the many times crime does not happen.  By refusing to give into the fear we are able to take back our walks and the night.  That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t be alert at all times and judge which blocks or neighborhoods are safer to walk along. 

Vehicular travel has changed our perception of space.  A destination of a few blocks seems so much further when we debate the time it takes to get there by foot or by car.  But what we are comparing is not two equal scenarios.  What we are comparing is the worst of cases on foot to the best of cases in a car–no traffic, no lights, no one way streets.  By foot we have more options and our time is controlled by our own pace and not by others on the road or city planners. Walking is freedom.

In college, I was laughed at for suggesting we walk to the grocery store rather than drive.  A small town along a busy road from large place to large place, the walk would have taken approximately 15 minutes as campus and store were on the same side of the street.  The trip by car took close to half an hour when you included the time it took to walk from the dorms to the student parking lot, maneuvering through the parking lot, waiting at the light to join the traffic on the busy road, passing the grocery store to get onto the other side of the median, and then finding a parking space and walking from car to store.  On foot (a trip made alone), I would cut between two dorms, across the football field and a small side road up to the motion sensor activated doors of the grocery.

Solnit started her book Wanderlust:  A History of Walking in the manner that is almost tradition amongst writers–with a walk.  And walking isn’t just relegated to the process; it often finds its way into the pages of some of our most beloved authors as they use walks to showcase thoughts or social standing or environment.  Even lyrics of music are littered with walking terms:  life is a journey, not a destination–it’s also a highway, Otis Redding walked 2000 miles to make this dock his home, while others have gone walking after midnight.  We’ve even destroyed our ability to walk by paving paradise and putting up a parking lot.  Our language is filled with terms and metaphors of walking, and periodically Solnit lists them in relation to the chapter.

A great deal happens when we’re walking.  Writers often explain that they aren’t wasting time staring out a window or taking the dog for a walk; that happens to be where the magic lies, not in front of a computer screen.  Walking is where disparate ideas start to take shape into something tangible.  Walking lets us think through problems, reaffirm faith (pilgrimages), return to nature (hiking), and share our opinions (protest marches). 

There’s a reason we add the word “lust” to “wander.”  Walking awakens new desires and passions in us.  Reading a book, a good book, does much the same and becomes a mental walk.  Looking at the social and cultural implications of walk, Solnit talks about the various taboos and world changing events that have come about due to walking such as the Million Man March or the first ascent of Mt. Everest.  From a sign of poverty to an aristocratic pastime, walking has been a way to show off, to court, to be alone, to observe. 

Walking is a way to analyze a culture–what does it say about past societies where women were restricted to walking around the living room, where blacks are afraid to leave urban centers, where minorities are licensed and restricted to where they are allowed to walk “for their own safety” only to be pushed further into crime and punishment for the unenforceability of the illogical laws, and tanks will run over walking students asking for change?  All are things that have happened within the past two centuries.

Some of the chapters are fascinating, such as the look at why man came down out of the trees (one theory suggesting that it lead to the eventual quest for the booze), while others are horrific in describing the things achieved by walking and the atrocities along the way (civil rights movement, suffrage, revolutions) and eventually Solnit looks into the future of walking as more and more public space is lost to roads and unwalkable city planning.  The reading is a bit dense and slow going, but well worth a look.

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Tagged as: Contemplation, freedom, thoughts, walking