In 2018 I moved to a walkable city. I probably have driven an average of once a month since then, but I walk about 40 minutes a weekday at minimum. I realized abruptly last year that all this walking is changing what I notice. And because thought is made of noticings, walking is changing the way I think.
1. An uneven sidewalk by my house has meant that I watch my step when walking to work, and I keep my head down from habit, long after the concrete has turned to flat slabs of granite and carefully-maintained brick. I fail to notice the sky and the sun because I am too busy stepping over sidewalk cracks.
I also watch my step for trolley-rails, construction markers, and the metal plates that cover below-street work. The signs and fences block my path at three separate points in my commute, so I have to hop between orange cones or take the long way around. My campus’ ambitions are built at a bigger scale than human footsteps. Maybe that’s as it should be, but I suspect it is not. I think about how Rome’s ruins lie beneath ruins upon ruins.
2. Walking is also a reminder of my frailty and mortality, for I notice that the drivers sometimes do not care to see each other, much less me. They force the e-bike couriers onto the sidewalks, and the e-bike couriers are too harried see the perambulators. Protected bike lanes would make the pedestrians safer, too.
Speaking of safety, jaywalking is sometimes safer than crosswalking. Too many drivers believe they have right-of-way at the crosswalks, and that ambiguity is more dangerous than making my own crossing at a time when the street is empty. “Jaywalker” was an insult invented by the automobile industry, gaslight that the streets did not belong to feet.
3. I used not to know (or care about) the difference between 60* and 55*F. When I spend 40 minutes in that weather, that 5* difference is enough to send me back indoors for a heavier jacket, or a scarf, or gloves. My stride lengthens in proportion to the forecast. When I drove every day, I didn’t bother with the difference between “partly cloudy” and “chance of rain”, either. Now I will go back for an umbrella. Yes, we moved north, but even if we hadn’t, walking would have sensitized me to the year’s seasons.
I leave work early in the winter, so my walk is still lit by the sun — grey and weak as it is, it still beats streetlight. My great-grandparents in their red-clay dugout weren’t faced with this choice, nor were any humans before the petrochemical revolution. How odd it is to walk at night, the stars snuffed by the streetlights!
4. Most wonderfully, I have begun to notice wildlife. Most birds are away on their southern sojourn, but some species are holdovers even now. A female cardinal nesting in the bushes on 37th and Spruce sings in the mornings, sometimes. Her dun feathers don’t stand out from the fallen leaves, but her strong beak is a lovely crimson gradient. She shares the greenery around the plaza with several grey squirrels and one anomalously black-furred male. Really, pure black! Can you imagine?
If I were driving to work, I wouldn’t notice him a million years, unless he went underneath my tires.