Most Un American Activity: Walking?

In this country there is such a horror of walking from point A to point B--why bother when you can drive. Walkers are viewed with the same suspicion as Communists in the 1950s. Walking as a form of transportation is discouraged but put on athletic garb and you get a pass.

My habit of walking around in regular clothes has not gone down well in this tolerant country. A Texan once screeched the brakes of his Cadillac to yell furiously: "Y'all want a ride or you just doin' this." The other day an Alagasco employee pleaded, "Sir, can I give you a ride somewhere." My neighbor glared at me with an incriminating Publix bag in either hand and said in a shocked tone: "You walked to the store!?" None of these people felt threatened by me, but by the notion that one could prefer walking to driving.

Despite the fear and loathing engendered in mainstream Americans, walking is not inherently evil like Communist governments. Walking is really very good. Here are some of its merits:

1. It is free, unlike expensive country clubs and gyms.
2. As a natural activity, it produces little or no repetitive stress injuries which is more than you can say about the dangerous medieval torture equipment found in gyms.
3. In sufficient doses, it provides a complete cardiovascular workout and may add years of healthy life.
4. It is the safest, most effective method of controlling body weight and preserving youthful appearance.

Important as they are, these advantages only skim the surface. The real advantages are psychological and emotional. Walking gets your mind straight. How does it do that? you ask with bated breath. Here are some of the ways:

1. Endurance walking is a powerful method for handling pain as it releases natural pain killers (endorphins).
2. Like any other vigorous activity, walking has antidepressant effects that are significant enough to be used in treating clinical depression.
3. Psychological stress is relieved. When the stock market crashes, investors are advised to walk around the block before doing anything drastic. Good advice,
4. It allows us to be one with the natural world. Consult poet William Wordsworth.
5. It slows the pace of life. If you are on a five mile hike, time is not going to be a rushing river, particularly if you have a heavy backpack.
6. It slows time experientially. When you travel like Wordsworth, you feel like his period. It is like the grandfather clock in the old farmhouse that compels your heart to slow between one aching tick and the next.

Wordsworth may have been a pedestrian poet but he was a prodigious walker covering an average of about 10 miles per day rain or shine. He also lived a very long life - for a Romantic poet. In my leisure time, I estimated that Wordsworth got the same mileage as a good Japanese car. If alive today, he would crush the U.S. automobile industry.

Given my personal experiences of social rejection as a walker, I was shocked to learn that there are over 70 million Americans who walk about once a week as a fitness activity which is three times the number of people who play basketball. My mistake has been to walk in office clothes instead of donning the fitness dress that tells people I am just doing this. They want to know I am on a fitness mission and not part of a Communist plot to destroy the car industry.