A Walker in the Suburbs

The front-page headline caught my eye, and I couldn’t stop reading. In 1999, Britain’s Karl Bushby decided to walk an unbroken path around the world. He sketched out the route on a piece of paper and started his journey of … what, a million steps, ten million, I have no idea.*

It began with a bar room bet and became an obsession, and now his 27-year, 31,000-mile expedition is in its final months. He just entered Hungary and has less than 1,000 miles to go. If all goes according to plan he will reach his hometown of Hull, England, next September.

Bushby started his walk in Punta Arenas, Chile in 1998, when he was 27 years old. Now 56, he’s given a huge chunk of his adulthood to this project. But from the sound of it, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“You need to see how the world really is, and the people who are living in it,” he told the Washington Post. “It’s one of the best educations you’ll get.”

Bushby’s journey has taken him from the southern tip of South America, through the treacherous Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama, through North America to the Bering Strait. He crossed this on his first try, navigating ice and frigid water, only to be arrested in Russia for entering at an incorrect border.

In another leg of his journey, he swan across the Caspian Sea to avoid entering Russia again. That took 31 days. He rested at night on support boats. (Although he began the trip with only $500, he gained notoriety and sponsors along the way.)

“I’ve had to do every inch of this thing by either walking or swimming,” Bushby said. “Every time I stop, I have to start from that point and continue.” When he began, he walked 19 miles a day. Now he walks 15.

Bushby said the main lesson he’s learned is that the “world is a much kinder, nicer place than it often seems.” Over and over again he’s been rescued by the kindness of strangers. “The world will wrap itself around you and help you achieve things and keep you moving,” he said. “It’s been absolutely astounding.”

*That would be 13.5 million to 16 million steps, AI informs me.

You’re born to walk. I’m born to walk. All humans are born to walk. Not a revolutionary statement, right? But it is. Because too many of us sit for most of the day. We sit at work. We sit in our cars as we drive to the office and run errands. We sit during our leisure time, consuming entertainment.

I walk in the suburbs — but I sit in the suburbs too. In fact, I’m sitting right now, writing this post. But at least I’ve already walked this morning. How could I not after reading Mark Sisson and Brad Kearns’ book Born to Walk: The Broken Promises of the Running Boom, and How to Slow Down and Get Healthy–One Step at a Time?

Sisson and Kearns primarily address runners in this pithy and persuasive tome. Walking can give us the cardio hit, can help us burn fat, can do most everything a hard run can do, but it’s much easier on the old bod.

“Walking makes you supple, mobile and flexible—unlike chronic cardio, which makes you creaky, achy, stiff,” Sisson and Kearns write. They urge us to “regard walking as much more than a fitness to-do list item: rather, it is a big part of what makes you a healthy human.”

Walk first thing, the authors say. That used to be my routine. When I lived in Manhattan I’d roll out of bed and walk to work, three blissful miles through Central Park and into midtown. I’ve gotten out of that habit through the years. Not out of the walking habit, but out of the walking-first-thing-in-the-morning habit. I remedied that today, left the house before my first cup of tea, before writing a word. It felt good to be out and about early. And why not? After all, we’re born to walk.

(Central Park was part of my route when I walked to work in Manhattan.)

I walked yesterday through a late-fall forest. The yellows a little more subtle. Still a riot of color, not yet a monochromatic woodland, but enough bare branches to see the direction we are heading. A feel of rain but not yet rain in reality.

I snapped this photo right before the little hill on my route. I was ready for the ascent, not thinking much about how the warmth is ending. I was generating my own heat at that point.

I knew that a deluge was in the forecast, much needed, though not drought-ending. It will take far more than a day’s worth of moisture to do that. But still, I knew I might not walk outside today. So I memorized the passing scenery. The bridge before the rise. The fat fox who scampered across the path. The walker who saw the animal and mouthed the word “fox” to me as she passed.

All these impressions are here today for me to savor. Even if wet weather keeps me home, I have yesterday’s walk to imagine and relive.

I enjoy a clever headline, so when I saw “The Gaitkeeper” in yesterday’s Washington Post (with a Gen Z headline in the online edition) I had to read it. Oh, and it was about walking, too.

The story profiled 21-year-old Cameron Roh, who has 1.4 million followers rating pedestrians on TikTok. I’ve been rating pedestrians all my life but have no followers to show for it. Probably because I rate them only in my head, as in “why are those people taking up the entire sidewalk?!” or “why don’t those escalator riders stand on the right?!”

Roh gives high marks to walkers who are aware of their surroundings and navigate crowds with ease. He criticizes those who walk blindly into passersby while glued to their phone screens.

I’m glad that Roh and others are raising the issue of walking etiquette. It doesn’t matter much to walkers in the suburbs — but it certainly does to walkers in the city.

When I lived and worked in Manhattan I’d try to match my pace to the lights of the cross streets. If I was up to speed I would catch “Walk” signs at each one. To do this required sidestepping and passing and thinking ahead. It was part stroll, part sport. It was gaitkeeping, for sure.

A mild autumn Sunday, an open afternoon, and a walk along a Reston path to the Washington and Old Dominion rails-to-trails line. Cyclists whizzed past as they do in these days of e-bikes. So I hatched a plan: return not the way we came but along a road I’ve only driven, never walked.

It was a gamble. I wasn’t sure of the distance and was concerned about the traffic. Hunter Station is an older road that has retained its charm and its lack of shoulders. Striding along it required some hopscotch maneuvers, sometimes jumping over to the other side of the road for visibility’s sake.

But the road was worth it: a cathedral of trees and hills with acorns crunching beneath our feet and the sharp scent of turning leaves. Every so often a lane would wind off to the left or right, inviting further exploration.

A walk down a road I’ve only driven before is like stepping through the looking glass. There were the familiar landmarks — the single-lane bridge, the curved hill — only in slow motion instead of fast. I could take my time, get a true sense of where I was. Which, at least yesterday, seemed like paradise.

Yesterday I walked from my daughter’s house to my own. It was an impromptu decision, though mapped out earlier. There was one tricky part, involving passage on what I thought was a trail but could not be absolutely sure wasn’t a driveway.

My trespassing days are over (though never say never) so I was hoping there were no fences to scale. I was relieved that there were not. I walked the three miles absolutely legitimately.

These were suburban miles, to be sure. Not a bucolic woodland trail but a paved path along a four-lane road where motorists drive 10 or even 20 miles above the posted 40 miles-per-hour limit.

Still, I’d achieved what once I could never have imagined — I’d made my way, on foot, from one home to another. It felt like a break-through. In fact, it was.

I’ve developed a cautious approach to reading the newspaper these days. I want to be informed, but refuse to let the news dictate my day. I’ll scan the headlines, dip into stories that interest me, perhaps read a few op-eds, then call it a day.

This morning I lingered over a story that fits perfectly into the philosophy of A Walker in the Suburbs. A counselor at a Maine high school, transformed by her own hike on the Appalachian Trail, decided to offer a hike instead of detention to students caught skipping class or talking back to their teachers.

While students grumbled and some parents worried that this wasn’t punishment enough, the counselor persisted. A year later, students report that the hikes have enlarged their perspectives. They feel soothed and encouraged by the three-mile expeditions. Some feel invested in school for the first time. Others hike even when they’re not in detention.

Solvitur ambulando is the unofficial motto of this blog. “It is solved by walking.” It is also solved by being outside, watching the play of light on trees, joining the parade of seasons, trudging the extra mile.

I’m always heartened to find further proof of these truths.

Some days, I walk to stretch my legs, to get my muscles moving. Other days, it’s mental exercise I crave. The ideas flow best when the body moves through space.

But yesterday, I walked for none of these reasons. Yesterday, I walked for tomatoes.

I took the long way around, ambled one half of a circular trail, crossed and recrossed the Glade, went up a hill and down some stairs. And, close to the end of my route, I stopped in at a farmer’s market. The tomatoes were ripe and I bought three.

What fun to stroll back to the car with my precious cargo. Not just my phone and keys (the essentials), but also with those three tomatoes.

A walk doesn’t need a reason — but if it does, tomatoes are a good one.

Yesterday I slipped out between the raindrops for a walk around Lake Anne. This is one of my favorite Reston walks, one I often take with a good friend, though sometimes I do it solo after my yoga class.

This bridge is on that route, a bridge to nowhere, you might think, though that wouldn’t be exactly right. It’s only a short pedestrian bridge, doesn’t span a great river or even a shallow canal, but it brings me full-circle from the community center, where my yoga class is held, back to my car. A bridge to somewhere, after all.

On the way I pass gardens, kayaks, rock sculptures, a cafe and a bookstore. The best walks are like this, I think. They combine natural features — woods, fields and streams — with signs of human habitation: houses, stores, cafes. And then there are bridges. A good walk might include one of those, too.