Each Sunday, The New York Times Book Review asks an author what three writers she would like to invite for dinner. And each Sunday I wonder: Does it have to be dinner? Can’t it be a walk instead?
Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking...”
Thoreau reportedly walked 20 miles a day in his beloved Concord, Massachusetts. I’d love to have accompanied him as he sauntered, turning footsteps into art.
I begin every day with a long walk. Often it’s the same route, but it’s never the same walk.
There are always surprises. Last spring it was a batch of fox babies, the pups tumbling over each other like socks in a dryer, making me swoon. Other times it’s a red-tailed hawk, a swallowtail butterfly, or an eastern cottontail.
People surprise me, too. Hiking up Mount Greylock, 65 miles to the west, I pass a woman and her son.
“I know you,” she says.
“Do you?” I respond.
“Yes. I drive by you walking every morning after I drop my son off at school.”
I’m part of her commute and didn’t even know it.
Walking around a campground on Cape Cod, I hear someone shout, “Hi, neighbor.”
I turn and see someone I don’t recognize.
“You walk by our house every morning,” he explains — meaning his house in our town 130 miles west of the Cape.
I’m part of his community and didn’t even know it.
This happens repeatedly. Once someone pulled over on a busy road and said, "There you are!" He used to see me walking by his house, then he stopped seeing me.
"I moved," I tell him.
Many people stop to ask me how far I walk.
"I have no idea," I tell them.
It’s not about counting steps. It’s about getting out and about.
One older man who can’t get out and about any more told me, “I watch you walk by my house every morning. In the extreme cold, in the extreme heat, you’re out there.”
I’d like to think I help him get through his day. Perhaps he envisions walking with me like I imagine walking with Thoreau.
There’s no destination, just walking for walking’s sake, an excursion — for as Thoreau says, “There is a... fire in nature that never goes out...”
Susan Johnson teaches writing at UMass Amherst.
