Morning Walk
An hour a day, two miles, mostly for my head.
The walks came out of the pandemic. Summer of 2020, and at the start they were just a way to get out of the house.
I walked with audiobooks and podcasts going at first. Somewhere along the line I stopped, and walked alone with my thoughts instead, and that turned out to be the whole thing rather than a detail of it. It’s also what made Hadrian's Wall possible a few years later. Eight days of walking is eight days alone in your own head, and by then I’d had a great deal of practice at it, an hour at a time.
I walk for exercise too, and I feel the days I don’t go. But I tell people I walk for my mind more than for my body, and I mean it. It’s a ritual and it grounds the day. It makes me slow down, notice things, and think.
What Happens Out There
I find myself touching the old stone walls in the neighborhood, or stopping to look at the wildflowers coming up through the cracks in the alley. Most of what I turn over while I’m walking isn’t work: life, relationships, family, dreams, fears. Some of it is business. A fair amount of it is a programming problem I couldn’t solve while sitting down.
In Practice
I go early when it’s hot, which in a Missouri July means very early. I’ve put on snow boots and a heavy coat and gone anyway. I’ve walked while visiting family, purely to get some space. I’ve been lazier about it lately than I’d like.
The walks are also what makes the wandering work when I travel. An hour in a neighborhood you know is practice for a whole day in a city you don’t. In some ways they’re the nexus for everything else I do, which is a great deal to hang on a pair of shoes.
It’s the same neighborhood most days. Some old stone walls and an alley where the wildflowers come up through the cracks.