The best walkers build the habit of noticing so firmly into their being that they can’t help it. No walk is too simple on which to not notice. Noticing being one of the core attributes of a good walker. “My favourite Kyoto walk begins at a half-hidden temple called Gesshin-in,” he begins, taking us contemplatively through the city as an insider. Pico Iyer fell in love with an entire country because of a walk through Kyoto. Farmers woke like this every morning, at the break of day, milked cows, sloshed around in the heat or cold, fed pigs who were more intelligent than they were, grew wrinkled and weather-beaten, and their wives cooked heartbreaking breakfasts, shriveled under the sun, nursed belligerent youngsters or died in childbirth. The halls were even bleaker in the middle of the night. Still, that doesn’t keep her from traveling in the mind, small details blossoming into panoramas:Įlizabeth opened her door and walked down the stairs. NakasendoĮlizabeth, the protagonist in Lynne Tillman’s No Lease on Life limits her walks to a few blocks in the East Village of Manhattan. It’s one of the few, true, metropolitan spaces where the right to a safe walk is a nearly universal, indiscriminate, day or night, red light or financial district alike. Which is why Tokyo night walks are especially alluring and evocative, seemingly a societal miracle - a city nearly devoid of violent crime, almost no back alley or poorly lit path is off limits. Yet the ability to safely walk alone, especially at night, is, for most cities, largely a luxury available only to men (and even then, there are always parts to be avoided). Mysteries sometimes answered, more often serving only as ballast for the flitting narratives of the walker mind. Mysteries are presented to the walker - the floating sound of a guitar above, screen door murmurs, cats frozen, baths splashing, the far off buzz of a motorcycle.
Rebecca Solnit writes in Wanderlust, “Cities have always offered anonymity, variety, and conjunction, qualities best basked in by walking.”
But a night walk in a city also brings with it its own great pleasures. He was speaking of countryside walks beneath the stars. “To walk for hours on a clear night is the largest experience we can have” writes Thomas Clark in his poem, In Praise of Walking. There is an art and history to walking and walking well. Moses famously parted an entire sea to take a walk with a few friends. Steve Jobs tore up the streets of Old Palo Alto in deep conversation. The French contemporarily frame the literary walker with flâneur. Aristotle is well cited as a peripatetic lecturer. “I can only meditate when I’m walking,” said Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Walking moves or settles the mind - allowing for self discovery.
We romanticize it, but do we do it justice? Do we walk properly? Can one walk improperly and, if so, what happens when the walk is corrected?
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