My Walking Autobiography

As promised, I’m thinking about my history with walking and it’s a pretty interesting lens through which to reflect. Perhaps too personal to be of interest to others, but maybe a model for all to reflect on their own relationship with this most basic and universal human pastime. Turns out to be a (if not, the) central character in my 75-year story: Here goes:

 

• Harrison School: Growing up in 1950’s Roselle, New Jersey, I walked every day to school. Perhaps my mother walked me to and from kindergarten and then my older sister took over, but mostly it was my friends and I walking the half-mile or so to Harrison School. Since they didn’t serve lunch, I walked home at lunchtime and then back, so it was some 2 miles roundtrip. My one year at Abraham Clark High School was a much longer walk, perhaps a mile and a half with lunch included, so that would have been 3 miles roundtrip daily. High school at Pingry Country Day School for Young Gentlemen (which I certainly was not and never became!) was a 3-mile drive one-way. Though I remember once my mother forgot to pick me up and I walked home, it marked the end of my walking school commute. 

 

• Warinanco Park: I was blessed to have a 200-acre park a mere half-block from my house and for all of my childhood, I roamed freely through it all. Played pick-up baseball, football and basketball there (no adult supervision), wandered over to the lake or the stadium or the flower garden. Never thought of it as “taking a walk,” just the free-exploring that marked a kids’ life back in those days.

 

• Watchung Reservation: Once I got my driver’s license, I would often go to this larger natural park and fresh from reading Thoreau, I did feel it as a “walk through the woods.” At 16, the innocence and freedom of childhood was already a cause for nostalgia, so following Thoreau’s advice, I was hoping that nature would restore me sense of belonging and wonder amidst the alienation of teen angst. And it did.

 

• Glen Helen: When I visited Antioch College as a prospective student, the 1,000-acre nature reserve known as Glen Helen adjacent to the campus was a huge selling point. And indeed, once there, many a day was spent walking and wandering through its many wonders—the Yellow Springs (with rusty iron tasting water), the pine forest, the waterfall, the swinging bridge. Sometimes I ventured further into the surrounding farmland and often (I confess), when I was supposed to be in class. But I dutifully followed Wordsworth’s advice: “Come into the light of things. Let Nature be your teacher.” And indeed, these were some of my most memorable “classes.”

 

• European cities: Summer of 1973 was my last quarter at Antioch College and the ending couldn’t have been better: Singing with an early Renaissance Choir in the cathedrals of Holland, France and Italy. In-between rehearsals, performances, museum tours and wine-tasting, I spent all my free-time wandering through the cities of Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome, with side-trips to Barcelona and London thrown into the mix. I often headed for parks, but in general just loved to follow my nose down side streets and back alleys and see what awaited. It was a practice that has served me in a lifetime of future travels, here, there and just about everywhere.

 

• San Francisco Mondays: My first two years in San Francisco were filled with leisure time in-between volunteering to teach music at a couple of progressive schools, giving jazz piano lessons once-a-week at The Community Music Center (for which I was supremely unqualified, but managed to be one step ahead of my students) and accompanying my sister’s modern dance classes twice a week. That left a lot of time to wander around the city and get to know it neighborhood-by-neighborhood. And I did.

 

When I finally joined the working world at the music teacher at The San Francisco School, I worked there four days a week with Mondays off? And what did I do on Monday? Keep wandering around the city! Sometimes with a book of poetry in my pocket or a journal in a backpack. I got to know the many nooks and crannies of the city’s many parks, with Golden Gate Park at the center. But also got to know the diverse neighborhoods— the Latin Mission, the Italian North Beach, Chinatown, Japantown, the then-black Fillmore, Russian Hill (with very few Russians that I knew of) and beyond. I learned where to treat myself to tacos, sushi, piroshki, dumplings, pizza, Thai miang-kum, Vietnamese bun, English fish and chips and more. 

 

• Michigan Outlet/ Sugar bowl/ Baldy: Since 1976, my wife and I and later kids and later grandkids would go every summer to her folks’ “cottage” on Lake Michigan near Frankfort— and still do. We have our ritual activities and they always include certain walks— the one to Old Baldy where we scamper down the enormous dune and then walk the beach back to the Watervale Resort where our cars are parked, the long beach walk in the other direction to the Elberta Lighthouse, the shorter beach walks to the outlet and Sugar Bowl dune. Of course, swimming is a main attraction and bike riding figures into our schedules, but walking and hiking are right there in the center. 

 

• Backpacking and Calaveras: My first backpacking trip was part of a class at Antioch called “Man and Nature” (sorry that even radical Antioch didn’t see the gender issue in the title). But in fact, it was the teacher and five male students who set off for the Adirondacks equipped with a compass, sleeping bags, pots and pans and a map or two to embark on an adventure for which we were ill-prepared. But we came out alive and backpacking became a steadfast part of my adult like. First alone, then with my wife, then with my wife and kids. The last backpack trip I took was in 2022 with my daughter Talia ( 38 years old), my granddaughter Zadie (9 years old) and me (71 years old). It was Zadie’s first and what I suspect was my last. The walking wasn’t bad, but sitting on hard granite rocks for some of the day kind of did me in.

 

Meanwhile, my wife and I helped lead 20 school camping trips to Calaveras Big Trees between 1980 and 2000 and these 5-day excursions pretty much involved a hike each day, from anywhere from 2 to 5 miles. 

 

• Stairway walks: Later in my San Francisco life, my wife and I discovered Adah Bakalinsky’s Stairway Walks and delighted in not only finding these hidden routes tucked into various neighborhoods but loved reading her comments that miraculously mostly held-up. Things like “Notice the large ceramic pot with the flowering _______ on the front porch”—and sure enough, there it was!

 

• World travel: One year before we got married, my soon-to-be wife and I took a trip around the world—three months in Europe and seven in Asia. We both agreed on walking and wandering as our chosen travel life-style and that we did—in England, Scotland, Italy, Greece, India, Indonesia, Japan and other points in-between. 

 

As we continued a lifetime of travel on every continent (except Antarctica), walking continued to be a central presence in getting to know a place. 

 

• Palm Springs: Much of that travel and camping and backpacking was with our two daughters, from their early childhood up through today in their 40’s. So no surprise that the walking traditions continued with the grandkids and this is especially true of our annual December trip to Palm Springs, complete with hikes to Palm Canyon, the Ladder Hikes, the mountains above Palm Springs and more. Fortified with snacks and treats and promises of post-hike ice cream, beginning the tradition of telling stories to grandson Malik starting when he was 4 to keep him moving and then in the last few years, him telling stories to me, we build memories together step-by-step and happily so.

 

• Pandemic: We are so fortunate that we live about the same distance from Golden Gate Park that I did from Warinanco Park growing up—literally a half-a-block. For the 44 years we’ve lived here, the park has continued to be our back yard to walk through without having to take care of the plants. Never was this so needed as during the pandemic and we took full advantage of being outside during this difficult time of isolation. We also renewed our exploration of neighborhoods, helped by new books like Gary Kamiya’s Cool Grey City of Love and Why is the Golden Gate Bridge Painted Orange. Many times we paused and thought in wonder, “If someone dropped us here blindfolded, neither of us would have any idea where we are!”

 

And so here we are again, 75 and 76 years old, having walked 6 miles yesterday around the York Wall and 8.3 miles from Nether Poppleton to York, soon to embark on a walking tour organized by a group called Muddy Boots. Three sunny days so far in our U.K. experience, but rain predicted for each of the walking days, so the muddy boots—well, shoes— prophecy may yet live up to its name. 

 

At the end of this reflection is the inconvertible truth— walking has been my constant companion in every phase of my life and happily so. Grateful for the good health and good legs that allowed it all to happen and continue to bless me with its gifts. May it continue!