A Walker in the Suburbs

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.