I saw this Paris Review piece about “walking while reading” go up and got all excited. A kindred spirit, I thought. Someone else who knows that the best way to relax is to pick up a book and start walking. But it’s only inviting you to read about the subject of walking, not to read while walking. Which is what I do, that latter, I mean.
I think the habit began because I grew getting to the “good” library was actually a complicated undertaking. It involved a thirty-minute bus ride, preceded by a twenty-minute walk to the relevant stop. You could take another bus to the stop but it was a bit indulgent to do that. The streets were wide and green and pleasant in the carefully calibrated way that wholesome Canadian suburbs just are. Another kind of child might have become intoxicated, and chosen to stay outside. But I’d barely notice the weather. I had taught myself to read while walking there, and usually would barely look up from the moment I stepped off our driveway until the bus pulled to the curb. You memorize a route; I feel certain I could walk it this minute, blindfolded, if I had to.
In those days I was gunning for the title of Most Ostracized Kid in middle school, reviled for general strangeness, incorrect wardrobe choices and poor social skills. Summers in particular were not looked forward to; they were vast expanses of time to be filled. Long walks reduced the time spent sitting in my room, which felt like my only other option in a world where hostile classmates occupied the woods and the docks and the bike trails. But I wanted to be in the world, too, whatever small parts of it were safe and claimable, and so I wanted to venture out.
I could have been one of those child-adventurers, of course. I knew where some refuges were, where I could not be found, and the central fact of the Ontarian childhood I had was that there were so many ravines around that you could lose days to, just wandering. But it wasn’t simply that I wanted to be outside, either. The key of the whole affair was that it be a distraction from the things I’d wonder about. These crucial issues, and it seems such a shame now all the hours I spent thinking about them, included why no one had yet complimented the Birkenstocks I had specially bought because everyone else started wearing them, why I had not been invited to this or that sleepover, why no one seemed to like my shrinking and, I thought then, harmless self, what I could do to make them like me better.
People talk about walks clearing their heads but I think they and I must not have the same kind of brain. The neurons that fire when I am relaxed function just fine, but they chatterboxes; they require input to displace other topics of conversation. And so rather than wring my hands and mutter to myself when I had to get to the library, or to anywhere else, I’d read. I learned that if you keep an eye on the pavement you’ll be fine, and others will skirt you
Of course, now I live in New York, where people who are not making a beeline from place to place are nuisances. To expect every unhappy lawyer and racing gofer in Times Square to skirt me without my involvement in the dance is to court disaster. But I still do it, every once in awhile, walking with all the people in Queens out walking their dogs at night. I haven’t run into anyone else doing this yet but I can’t be the only one — can I?
