
A Need to Walk (2014) - Tomte
http://craigmod.com/sputnik/a_need_to_walk/
======
PaulRobinson
I yearn to walk like I once did.

As a child I grew up in a corner of England much loved by walkers, in the
shadow of Kinder, where ramblers first seized the right to walk on its sides.

As an adult I lived in a compact but vibrant city (Manchester), and each
evening I would cross it and see new things.

In March of this year I walked from my then home near Hammersmith Bridge in
London, down to Putney, the reverse of the first quarter or so of the infamous
Cambridge/Oxford boat race course.

On getting home, I felt a little funny, went to bed, woke with a fever and
over the course of two weeks slowly lost the ability to walk. Eventually, I
was diagnosed with a spinal abscess which was causing some neuropathy. It was
removed. I spent a month in rehab learning how to walk a little again, but
left in a wheelchair.

I now have daily physio, I walk with a stick for 10-15 minutes max at a time.
My goal is to be able to walk as I once did, and then further: into the Lake
District, into the Cairngorms or Alps, perhaps - and I've played with this as
a charity gig to raise money for the unit that helped teach me how to walk
again - across Europe.

Yesterday I managed to walk the shore of the Thames near Twickenham and
Richmond a little - a spot Alexander Pope called home, and was once considered
a latter day "Arcadia". It was glorious, but hard work.

If you have the ability to walk, do it. If you must take an audiobook or
headphones, fine. But I encourage walking and thinking and noticing and
looking.

Then tomorrow, repeat the same path, and notice how everything is slightly
different. Become connected to those differences.

Repeat the next day/night at the same time, and the next, and the next. After
a while you will become connected to a tempo for your environment. It doesn't
matter if you're in the middle of nature, at the heart of a throbbing city, or
what was until now a banal suburban sprawl: change is everywhere, and through
walking we become connected to it.

Nothing makes me want to learn how to walk again well, than my memories of
walks past prompting the opportunity for future walks.

Go walk, you'll thank me for it one day.

~~~
johnny_reilly
Thanks for sharing. You're completely right; walking and seeing enriches life
no end. As it happens I'm fortunate enough to live near the Alexander Pope
spot you mention and regularly spend dawn walking around the bend of the River
Thames from Twickenham to Richmond. Beautiful. I wish you a speedy recovery
and much walking in your future.

~~~
PaulRobinson
I live near there too, on Richmond Road. I'm @p7r on twitter if you ever want
to meet up and talk HN! :-)

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ThrustVectoring
>Yet the ability to safely walk alone, especially at night, is, for most
cities, largely a luxury available only to men

AFAICT, this is more of a luxury available to folks with low trait
neuroticism. It's like saying that motorcycle riding is a "largely a luxury
available only to men". No, it's a luxury available to folks who are more
willing to take risks with their personal safety. The gendered difference in
risk exposure is much smaller than the one in how people respond to perceived
risk (that is, women tend to have higher trait neuroticism).

~~~
callinyouin
I don't understand how your example is comparable. On one hand we have
motorcycling, a mode of transportation that is fairly risky I suppose but is
largely gender agnostic. On the other hand, walking alone at night in a city
leaves you exposed to whoever might be around while you're walking. For men,
the risk is mostly in getting mugged or maybe being struck by a car. For
women, the risk is that plus the risk of being creeped on in a myriad of ways,
ranging from uncomfortable, creepy comments down to full on sexual assault and
rape. So no, the risks are not the same. And relating generally higher levels
of neuroticism in women to a higher perceived risk seems more overtly sexist
than scientifically sound to me.

~~~
peoplewindow
Stranger rape is extremely rare though. Most reported rapes are by people the
victim knows. You seem to be saying that walking at night is definitely hugely
more dangerous for women than men, but that seems to be an assumption rather
than something definite and concrete.

I sometimes walk at night. Many people view it as weird or slightly deviant
behaviour. But where I live it's very safe. Their loss.

~~~
callinyouin
You should talk to more women. I've heard stories from women who have
experienced very scary things while walking alone at night. Thankfully none of
them actually ended in rape or assault, but they were dangerous situations
that rightfully changed their perception of what is and is not safe for them
to do alone at night. I've dated people who have had numerous sketchy
interactions with men at night, sometimes involving men trying to lure them to
a vehicle. It's disheartening and frustrating to hear, and possibly more
disheartening that people don't see a problem because the rape numbers aren't
high enough.

~~~
peoplewindow
Men experience scary and sketchy things at night too. I've been walking with
male friends in a well lit area when a car of yobs drove past yelling at us
from the window. Bad start, but then an idiot in my group yelled back, the car
pulled over, and the yobs started to attack us. Fortunately other people
turned up before anyone got seriously hurt and they scarpered. I bet they
wouldn't have attacked a group of girls - not gonna do much for your
reputation as a tough guy if you pick on a group of women.

Your original point was that there's some sort of imbalance in how dangerous
things are to walk around, and that it's categorically worse for women than
men, but you didn't substantiate that. You just sort of assume it must be
true.

But males are much, much more likely to be the victim of murder and robbery,
and slightly more likely to be threatened verbally. There are stats on this,
look at the "Sex differences in crime" wiki page.

"Talk to more women" is a worthless response by the way, I see this answer way
too often when someone making an unsubstantiated argument about gender is
asked to back it up or faced with contradictory data. It's like saying that
data should be subservient to the random opinions of whoever happens to be
nearby at the time.

------
marsrover
Whenever I'm very engaged in a conversation I like to walk back and forth. It
always made my parents mad.

To this day, I can't sit if I'm on the phone. I walk around my apartment in
circles the entire length of the call. Only now, my parents don't know I'm
doing it.

~~~
abakker
I work from home and do the exact same thing. I carry my laptop around, too
when I'm on a conf call or Webex. I've had to modify and improve my wifi
network to handle ever last corner of my house.

------
sevensor
After I had left my job, and before I left Austin, I was trying to sell my
condo there. The realtors would give a two or three hour window during which
the condo might be shown, and I had to get the dog out of there. So I walked.
I must have walked up and down every alleyway between Dean Keaton and 2222,
Lamar and the interstate. I got to know the city better in a couple of weeks
than I had in the years I'd lived there.

~~~
hexis
I hope that wasn't during the summer. That's a big rectangle!

~~~
sevensor
It was May. I carried water!

------
whipoodle
I walk a lot, always have. But stuff like this, I prefer not to get bogged
down in the "what does it all mean" of it. You can just walk because it's
nice. No need to have a big philosophy or elaborate reasoning about it.

------
tw1010
Minor comment, but isn't the whole trope of starting an article on "we need to
do X more" with "famous person A did X, and famous person B did X" a bit
played out?

