Even our first, unspectacular steps are a wondrous experience. Typically, a parent or parents are urging and cheering us on as we make our first journey on two feet, so it can be a social event of high order. And even though we quickly end up grounded again, the arc of the struggled rise to our feet and tenuous traversing even a small distance before falling back to the safety of the horizontal, one of the early dramatic arcs of our lives, gives us a sense of power, with all manner of things beginning to come within reach. The vision of the longer journeys ahead, offering escape from our safe but small worlds, keep us trying until our skills are up to the task.
It is difficult to imagine the number of walks I have taken. Perhaps assuming it is slightly less than the number of days I have lived since I was about 1 or 2 years-old is a good starting point. Subtracting for some days of too much desk work, horrendous weather or illness in bed keeps the number realistic, although on many days I there were more than one. By using the term, “a walk,” I am referring to those experiences in which walking itself was a primary motivation or the central activity. This includes not only walks or hikes just for the joy of walking—the sights they enable, the physical exercise, the contemplative state of mind they engender—which we will come back to, but also those with a targeted destination, like school, work, the library or museum, a restaurant or movie theater, where walking may have been either an optional or mandatory mode of travel, but became an event of its own.
For example, I recall my walks to and from school from 1st to 9th grade as distinct events, not just necessary transitions. These short journeys, for a time as much as two kilometers one-way, often in challenging weather, included some momentous mind-wanderings as well. Whether through introspection or conversations with friends, my habits of thought and disposition of character grew during these walks. Because they were repeated so many times, I can almost envision, no, experience them still, with their still-vivid milestones, including the green parks, painted homes larger than my own, and busy streets creating a familiar daily pattern not unlike a favorite song one can listen to every day. These walks were an important part of the texture and rhythm of those days, as well as sources of inspiration.
Touring an unfamiliar city on foot is another type of targeted walk--destination or no destination in mind. Becoming acquainted with a place from the ground up, the unevenness or smoothness of its surfaces, the labyrinthine nature or predictability of its paths and street crossings, the encounters with its buildings and artworks, the natives who walk by us with other things on their minds, with purposeful speed or bedraggled slowness. Walking allows us to use all our senses to expand the experience of the tour—the sounds and smells in the air and textures beneath our feet are as much a part of the “there” of a place as the visible structures, paths, and plants. Most will agree that walking a place is the only real way to get to know it.
We typically place limits on what qualifies as a walk. Distance is relative to our speed, which depends on our level of health and abilities, but since time is more directly correlated with effort, it makes the most fitting measure. And like the temporal distortion described in Einstein’s
Theory of General Relativity, the increased experience of gravity we struggle against when climbing a steep hill makes time expand. Walking in a city like Lisbon or on a mountain trail might make shorter walks satisfying. But there are minimums.
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| Photo by Patrick Parrish |
Five minutes is not “a walk,” and 15 minutes does not qualify for most of us. It takes at least twenty minutes to make a walk. This is the average time a person needs to walk a mile, but physical distance is not as important as mental distance. Not coincidentally, twenty minutes is also the recommended time for a session of transcendental meditation, the time it takes to calm the mind and receive the benefits. Many might prefer much longer walks—even hours, to make the experience more impactful—but twenty minutes is enough to allow a walk to come into its own. In this time, the mind can go through a transition from the ongoing noise of internal deliberations, mental replaying of annoyances and outrages, and worries of upcoming demands, and shift to more free-flowing, creative thoughts. It is enough time, with practice, to lose oneself in the moment—where the mind is free to play without the constant claim for our attention from the past and future. The arc of rising to one’s feet, traveling, and then coming to rest again becomes also the luminous, electrical arc of creative connection.
This is not to discount the physicality of walking. The rhythm of two legs propelling us forward, two arms swinging to keep the balance and provide further momentum. For such a simple activity, walking is invigorating, and can be a critical part of any healthy life. The choice to take regular walks has been shown to be
a marker of good health, especially for older people. Unlike other forms of exercise, walking requires no equipment other than comfortable shoes and clothing to suit the weather, no special skills other than a bit of endurance, and no special location in which it needs to be conducted, other than a safe footpath. Even many of those with mobility limitations can engage in a form of walking.
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| Photo by Patrick Parrish |
Despite the long tradition of dualistic thinking, the mind and body are not easily separated, and taking a walk, like all physical activity, engages the whole person. This proposition is more than a philosophical one—
medical research also widely recognizes the mind/body connection. Nonetheless, dualism is especially common in applications of aesthetics, which are typically reserved for objects of beauty or stories and melodies. But a close analysis of the attention to form, ritual and the deep engagement people feel when participating in, or even just watching
sports and other physical practices like martial arts and yoga throws this assumption out the window. In fact, it is precisely the rhythmic physicality of walking that makes it so compelling and conducive to thought.
Short walks, let’s say 20 minutes to one hour, can be fit into about any day, and can be one of the most important parts of it. A change of scenery, whether to the street or park, is liberating, but even an indoor treadmill brings rewards. Not unlike swinging or rocking, the rhythm of a walk alters our perspective, puts us more inside our body, but also inside the outside world. No longer static, the world moves by us and through us--it becomes animated through our movement. We take it less for granted. We might find new nuances in its objects, perhaps, as
Charles Baxter puts it, even handing over our “feeling and thinking to the objects that constitute (our) environment,” attributing sentience or even wisdom to the world’s objects. Perhaps it is the trees and grass or stones that have something to say about existence that we have not been privy to lately. At the same time this worldly connection occurs, the mental focus on our inner world blurs, and we might become more creative or open to new trains of thought. Solutions might appear to us that would otherwise stay hidden, and new perspectives on a situation are almost certain. These changes usually emerge in a predictable pattern-- the period of slow disengagement, a renewing emptiness, and then the glow or brilliant arc of the unpremeditated. But an epiphany is not necessary for a walk to be worthwhile. A subtle change of mood is sufficient.
Some feel that twenty minutes is barely scratching the surface, and are only satisfied with a hike. While hikes were a necessity of life in the past for most people, to conduct commerce or for gathering food, water or other critical goods, hikes are these days performed by people determined to escape their too-sedentary lives in urban or suburban areas. Hikes can enhance the common qualities of walks, but also allow other dimensions to emerge. Hikes are set off more clearly as aesthetic experiences.
Several qualities come together to achieve this. First, hikes are usually associated with walks in wilderness areas. Where nature is more raw, unadulterated, we are more likely to find beauty and what we are willing to accept as truths. Nineteenth century Romantic period literature and painting dramatized this, attributing to the wilderness an equivalence to our underlying emotional potential and granting its superiority over human powers.
Research has shown that experiencing the outdoors, even in small-scale parks, has very positive physical, mental, and emotional impacts. On the large scale, like wilderness areas, this effect is perhaps magnified. Panoramas of natural environments are almost universally loved, but even the details in a wilderness, unusual to those of us living most of our time in urban habitats, draw our appreciation—a mushroom patch, colorful lichen, wild animals, a rushing stream, towering or thick stands of trees, the expanse of fallen leaves in autumn, and the wider expanse of green leaves in summer.
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| Photo by Patrick Parrish |
The length of hikes and their typical elevation gain make them more physically challenging, raising our heart rate and creating the pleasurable burning sensation in our muscles. Our body is telling us we are achieving something, that we are building stamina to bring to all aspects of our lives. Hikes are usually more destination-oriented than “walks.” Like other aesthetic experiences, we set a challenge to reach a place with a rewarding sight, such as a panorama, waterfall, or other landmark, or we aim to traverse a variety of ecosystems for the cumulative effect these differences have on us. This challenge compels us, offers resistances to overcome, and finally brings physical and emotional rewards when met.
The things that make good Art are also the things that make a good walk. The opportunity for new sights, sounds, and sensations beyond our mundane experience. The ability to make us think in new ways or perceive things differently, including our own bodies. The chance to change ourselves a little, enabling new conclusions, ideas and emotions, as well as physical improvements. And the potential for a good story, or at least a dramatic arc of departure and return.
