may 3, 2017 / 3.15 miles / 54 degrees
Today I read the first chapter of A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros, then wrote something about it, partly because “I love walking almost as much as I love running, but for different reasons. I’m interested in pushing at what those reasons are and how running and walking are beneficial and harmful to me.”
Walking is not Running/Running is not Walking
Walking is not running.
Running is a matter of techniques and rules, scores and competition, necessitating lengthy training: knowing the postures, learning the right movements. Then, a long time later, come improvisation and talent.
Running also obviously means cultivation of endurance, of a taste for effort, for discipline. An ethic. A labor.
Walking is not running.
Walking is the best way to go more slowly than any other method that has ever been found. To walk, you need to start with two legs. The rest is optional. If you want to go faster, then don’t walk, do something else: drive, slide or fly.
Running is not walking.
Walking is a matter of moving without a useful purpose. Meandering. Wandering. Getting lost.
Walking, especially when done at the glacial pace best suited for paying close attention, doesn’t demand endurance or require too much effort. It’s undisciplined and prone to unruly wandering off the path, dawdling.
Running is not walking.
Running is the best way to deplete excessive energy and restlessness that I have ever tried. Run for only 30 minutes, not even that speedily, and your body feels grateful for having been used.
To run, you need to start with two legs and a urge to fly, not fast, but free. The rest is optional. If you don’t want to fly, then don’t run, do something else: sit, watch or sleep.
may 3, 2019 / 6 miles / 54 degrees
2 things to note: First, I chanted, “there’s a bridge/there’s a bridge/at the top/at the top/look at it/look at it/never stop/never stop” to keep me running up the hill. And, second, this exercise:
First, I want to think up a bunch of 3 syllable phrases (down the hill, walk to work, eat down town, out the door, sunday best, monday worst, turnip greens, climate change, just say please, in and out…). Then I’ll write these on small slips of paper and put them in a hat or a bowl or a bag. I’ll randomly pick out 8-10 and turn them into a poem (either in the order I select them or in an order of my choosing). Maybe the phrases should be a mixture of things from the run and popular or whimsical expressions?
may 3, 2021 / 4 miles / 54 degrees
Look!
Near the old stone steps, I heard a deep hollow drumming from a hidden woodpecker, then saw 2 older women standing at the edge of the bluff peering into the trees and trying to find the source of the sound. This reminded me of a passage from Margaret Renkl’s essay “Seeing” in Late Migrations:
One of the nicest things about the lake where I like to walk is that there is nearly always someone on the trail saying, “Look!” Thanks to that natural human urge to share something wonderful, even with a stranger, I have learned this lake’s terrain over the years and know where to look for the well-disguised secrets I would miss on an unfamiliar path. I know that a barred owl frequently perches in a dead tree near a particular bridge. I know that a great blue heron often stand as still as a photograph on a submerged log in one cove. I know the rise whee wild turkeys drag their wing feathers on the ground and blend in with the leaf litter, and I know the bank where beavers climb soundlessly out of the lake. One summer I knew where to look for a hummingbird’s nest because of a stranger with better eyes than mine.
“Seeing” from Late Migrations/ Margaret Renkl
When I read this passage a few days ago, I decided that I want to believe that the strangers on the trail that I encounter could be as generous as this, and I want to take the time to stop and to look or try to look or at least listen to their description of what they see. I want do this instead of assuming the strangers are irritating or clueless or selfish space hoggers. I want to be open to the world instead of closed to it.