This week’s Walk It Off has me catching up with an old friend. But before I share that walk with y’all, I wanted to hear from you. Maybe it’s a recent walk, or maybe it’s a walk from earlier in life that you remember fondly. But tell me about a favorite walk that you went on with a good friend. What did that walk mean to you?
My Mom was the OG walker in our family -- layering up on 10 degree Vermont mornings to trapse up snowy hills seemed insane when I was a kid. I watched her trudge across our barely plowed neighborhood all winter until the ice gave way to crocus, the crocus gave way to the hydrangea, the hydrangea gave way to the red leaves, and the red leaves once again gave way to the ice. Season after season, she walked.
Walking was always her thing. Not mine. Then I hit college. GW. With you, in fact. That's when I started working out. The way only college girls do. To try to stay thin. Like really thin. At least that's what the girls did at that particular place and time. We hit the cardio classes, we squeezed into each other's barely there clothes, we teetered on eating disorders. In December of my senior year I was back home for winter break. There were no gyms, just hilly, snowy streets. My Mom told me if I wanted to keep all the weight I'd lost off, I should really start walking with her. So I did. And damn, was she fast.
At first the walks were vanity walks. Gotta keep that weight off if you want to fit in those too tight, too low jeans, right? Yes. Definitely. But slowly, the walks were no longer about calories. They were about her. And me. Us. They were about sharing who we'd become without each other in the seven years we'd lived apart -- three years of boarding school and four years of college left a chasm to bridge. We talked with a sense of urgency, then lingered in long comfortable silences. She taught me how to place my feet across an icy hill to keep traction, she pointed out the snowy animal dens and how the big white barn was exactly two miles from our house. That's where you know to turn back.
When I returned to school a few weeks later, I was hooked on walking and never stepped foot in the gym again. But damn, did those jeans look good.
That was 17 years and thousands of walks ago. Once I learned how to walk, how to really walk, that's all I did. That's how I learn a place, and learn who I am in that place. I've walked across DC, San Francisco and NYC more times than I can count. I've walked lonely country roads where my only companion is my grief. I've walked bright white beaches where the sand is so uneven it hurts my hips, but I keep going anyway because it's too beautiful not to and I'd rather limp home satisfied than not walk at all. I've walked across Rome, Edinburgh, Belfast, Paris. Exploring each new city by foot, almost always alone. Now I walk because it's the only way to clear the pipes between my brian and heart. It's when the little fragments of thoughts become big cohesive life changing plans. It's where I'm the most me, walking just to walk.
I think about the walks that (much like the genesis of WIO) became normal first dates. Had some good ones, some bad ones, and one great one. Now on a trip to Italy with the best one. Keep walking, friends!
Yesterday. I spent three hours with my friend of 55 years on the side of the New Hampshire mountain where she lives. She has early onset Alzheimer's. She is surrounded by wildflowers, apple trees she planted or grafted long ago and woods filled with trees turning red and yellow. "Want to go for a little walk?" She asked. Yes. Oh, yes. She showed me the owl bird house she and her husband made. She showed me ferns. We made aprons out of our sweatshirts and filled them with apples. We listened to the sounds, smelled the autumn coming. We remembered fishing little brooks wen we were little.( She always caught way more than me). When I left we smiled and cried. I live in CA and haven't seen her in two years because of COVID. She can't ever remember where I'm living now or a lot of other details but the important things are all still there. I'm going home with a few apples in my pocket and a memory I will cherish.
On Monday, I got to take a walk with my best friend for the first time since February 2020. She lives in New York City, I live in Ottawa, Canada's capital. She was able to travel back home for the first time in almost two years. We walked along the Ottawa River, shot the shit, laughed our asses off, hugged and hugged, took silly pictures - just ENJOYED being together in person after SO LONG. An incredibly simple yet joyous experience.
In my early twenties, I lived in Richmond, Indiana, had three jobs, and kept weird hours. An insomniac friend down the street who was significantly older than me would walk with me around town at night. He had lived in NYC, London, and Paris in the '70s and had all kinds of stories about musicians/writers/filmmakers he'd hung out with. Like me, he was an avid reader and loved jazz. Our walks featured a common leitmotif: books, music, and film. Not the best location, but the best conversation!
Years ago, back in college, my old friend Dirk and I went for walks all the time. One night, for whatever reason, one of us started the classic "Knock knock. Who's there? Banana..." joke. I have no idea which of us was the knocker and which was the questioner, but we kept it going for miles and turned it into various music bits along the way. Knock knock as scat. Knock knock as doo-wop. Knock knock as lounge crooning. I'm guessing the knocker finally gave up when we got home, but it was a glorious few miles of lunacy. He and I see each other rarely anymore, but when we do, we still lapse readily into a language uniquely and bizarrely our own. He's a good dude, and those were great walks.
I only recently came across the Latin phrase Solvitur ambulando (it's solved by walking). Walking has a sort of.. I dunno, there is a state of mind that is shared with a slow bike ride on a safe bike path, or just shooting pool and not caring who wins.. a flow I guess. My wife and I often come up with solutions to issues as we walk (websites we're working on, parenting things etc). My best friend and I often wandered about talking about things (and sometimes shooting pool). The best conversations I've ever had were when walking with our kid when we were just going nowhere.
Before we all had kids, a group of my guy friends and I used to get together on Sunday mornings for walks around Atlanta. We'd walk for miles and miles -- like 10 or 15 miles, see all kinds of different neighborhoods, and catch up on everything. You get to see our city in way that's so different from seeing it from a car (which is the way you see it most of the time here).
That time my older sister and I stayed an extra day in Paris, which we spent flaneuring across various neighborhoods of the sprawling city. That was my first time in Paris and it was monumental in a lot of ways. My mom, younger sister and I flew from Italy, where we spent time with my Bangkok-based my brother and his family. In Paris, we met with my Singapore-based older sister, who flew in from the States.
It was great to get to know her as a person, you know? Not just as a family member. By that time, Singapore had changed her tremendously. She'd become less uptight, and surprised me when she preferred walking casually wherever and not having any plans at all! As we walked in Le Marais, we talked about our careers, by the time we reached the Eiffel, we were talking about life plans. On Champs Elysee, we were discussing boys, which was so refreshing because we never did that growing up; she was the strict older sister even if she was only a year older than me! That day in 2016 became a precursor to what would become our signature city walks whenever we travel. I miss it and her terribly.
Oh this is an easy one for me! I was living in Florence in fall of 2019 and my friend Andri Snaer Magnason came to the city for the day from Bologna, where he was speaking to a convention of science teachers. I knew him from meeting him in New York, through Siggi of Siggi's Yogurt (they grew up together in Reykjavik) and we had kept in touch. I said I wanted to go check out a new arts center across the river, that had just opened up in an old tobacco factory, and he said he'd be happy to walk with me. It was a beautiful, interesting walk and we discussed every topic –– On Time and Water hadn't yet been published but he was appearing on news around the world for memorializing a disappearing glacier with a plaque in a remote corner of Iceland –– but mostly I remember that I had severely misjudged the length of it, and it was like really, really, really far, and feeling embarrassed, like I should apologize, then I realized he lives in Iceland and that was like a short stroll for him and he definitely didn't notice. Still one of the best walks I've ever taken, along the Arno River under the shady trees, the temperature absolute perfection. I remember it ending at the train station with gelato (of course).
Many moons ago when I was living in London, I went on a walk to Highgate Cemetery with a close friend. Not only was the walk beautiful for many reasons (the greeneries, the cemetery, I believe the weather was also good), but it was the walk that sparked the idea that I want my tombstone (a bit morbid, but we /were/ in a cemetery after all) to read: "She who led a thoughtful life". And a decade later that idea is now serving as the basis for my Substack newsletter! :)
When our boys were in elementary school, my good friend and I would walk around their soccer practice field. We were "solving all the problems of the world" and keeping watch on our sons while getting some exercise ourselves.
Some mothers sat in their cars reading or napping for that hour and a half. Although we were both teachers and loved both those inactivities, we wouldn't have missed that sharing time for any book or snooze
Those boys are fathers now, making us grandmothers to our delight, but those soccer days are some of our best memories. Because we laid that intimate, honest foundation for our friendship, we are still trying to solve new problems together today.
I actually love this question so much because half of my walks are with someone else (though, I do cherish my alone time and love when I'm able to have it).
One of my favorite walks was during a rainy summer in June. I think NY had just started to open back up and I had wrapped up work with my two lovely roommates (who are also my best friends). We decided to go to the West Village (get off at the 8th avenue L train stop) and just walk. As soon as we go off the train, it started raining and I almost slipped, but I loved how spontaneous it was. I challenged them to not look at their phones/maps and just walk. We went down all the way to SoHo, saw so many people enjoying their drinks and dinner despite the rain. Ended up taking photos by the fountain at Washington Square Park, saw some NY street rats, almost slipped, and had very shitty tiramisu towards the end. But it was so fun, to just walk, wonder, and explore...
For a halcyon autumn ('15), I was living on 147th at the intersection of maybe-enough-money-for-occasional-treats and weirdly-employed-enough-for-midweek-jaunts. Every last Thursday of the month, my friend/roommate's teaching gig had the morning off, so I juggled my schedule the same. We'd sleep in and then meander down to 125th for Streetbird (RIP) for a lazy brunch, then back up to home, stopping by Make My Cake for slices to eat on the way home. It took no less than 4hrs, and while yes the food was important, it was mostly about the ramble to and fro.
I'm definitely adding rose lenses to it—neither of our mental health was ideal & that weird employment did not pay rent reliably—but I hold those walks as little gems of memory, glinting brightly against the larger mosaic of our friendship.
Last week my high school friend and I met halfway in Williamstown, MA, to go to the museums there and hang out. We haven't seen each other in person in three years--we met at Mass MOCA the last time (museums are easy places to walk, too).
We started out at the Williams College Art Museum, and after lunch we were too busy talking to pay attention to where we were going, so our straight-line, half-mile walk to The Clark meandered way more than it needed to. We wandered on their trails for a while, too, which are dotted with sculptures. It wound up being a whole lot of art and walking (and later people-watching from some Adirondack chairs in town). She and I met as awkward ninth graders in 1984, which amazes me, I guess, when I pull back from it. We walked all over Boston and Cambridge together as teenagers as part of our pack of friends, so it's all one long walk, in a sense. I also perpetually miss the Berkshires, so truthfully, it was a quietly amazing trip, but it's never enough, which is also great in its own way.
The last time I saw my ex-gf. She had a knack for tricking me into taking longer walks (even in my own city). We'd head to a gallery on foot and she'd lie about the distance, or suggest we grab lunch first. In Chicago there's a tendency to measure by blocks, and she'd fib: "It's only three more blocks!" We'd be on foot for hours. The last time, after we caught an exhibit at the AIC in July (🥵), she tried to convince me that Portofino was "Just down the street!" (30 min on foot) 😆 Why am I like this?
Recently, I had the great fortune to walk with one of my oldest friends. We met when we were 13 years old at a summer beach community. My eldest daughter was renting a bungalow in the same community and my friend now lives there all year round. I was spending the day with two of my grandsons. It was a cloudy humid day and threatening rain. We decided to walk to the snack bar for ice cream after lunch. The four of us started out and my 9 year-old grandson immediately protested that “we were going the wrong way”. We explained that there was more than one way to reach our destination. “But the other way is shorter”, he whined. “This way is more interesting.”, I answered.
When we got to the snack bar it was closed; a reminder of the uncertain times we are living through. As a result our twenty minute walk became a two hour excursion encircling the breadth of the peninsula. We did finally get some ice cream and afterwards stopped at a park on the beach for some swinging and climbing. The highlight of the walk for me was passing the volleyball nets where my friend and I had first met 50 years ago. This walk encapsulated my past and present, my early teen years juxtaposed against my recent golden days, filled with 17 grandchildren. How truly wonderful to share this with my dear friend. Life is full of these uplifting experiences and I am so grateful that I have learned to be fully open to them.
My Mom was the OG walker in our family -- layering up on 10 degree Vermont mornings to trapse up snowy hills seemed insane when I was a kid. I watched her trudge across our barely plowed neighborhood all winter until the ice gave way to crocus, the crocus gave way to the hydrangea, the hydrangea gave way to the red leaves, and the red leaves once again gave way to the ice. Season after season, she walked.
Walking was always her thing. Not mine. Then I hit college. GW. With you, in fact. That's when I started working out. The way only college girls do. To try to stay thin. Like really thin. At least that's what the girls did at that particular place and time. We hit the cardio classes, we squeezed into each other's barely there clothes, we teetered on eating disorders. In December of my senior year I was back home for winter break. There were no gyms, just hilly, snowy streets. My Mom told me if I wanted to keep all the weight I'd lost off, I should really start walking with her. So I did. And damn, was she fast.
At first the walks were vanity walks. Gotta keep that weight off if you want to fit in those too tight, too low jeans, right? Yes. Definitely. But slowly, the walks were no longer about calories. They were about her. And me. Us. They were about sharing who we'd become without each other in the seven years we'd lived apart -- three years of boarding school and four years of college left a chasm to bridge. We talked with a sense of urgency, then lingered in long comfortable silences. She taught me how to place my feet across an icy hill to keep traction, she pointed out the snowy animal dens and how the big white barn was exactly two miles from our house. That's where you know to turn back.
When I returned to school a few weeks later, I was hooked on walking and never stepped foot in the gym again. But damn, did those jeans look good.
That was 17 years and thousands of walks ago. Once I learned how to walk, how to really walk, that's all I did. That's how I learn a place, and learn who I am in that place. I've walked across DC, San Francisco and NYC more times than I can count. I've walked lonely country roads where my only companion is my grief. I've walked bright white beaches where the sand is so uneven it hurts my hips, but I keep going anyway because it's too beautiful not to and I'd rather limp home satisfied than not walk at all. I've walked across Rome, Edinburgh, Belfast, Paris. Exploring each new city by foot, almost always alone. Now I walk because it's the only way to clear the pipes between my brian and heart. It's when the little fragments of thoughts become big cohesive life changing plans. It's where I'm the most me, walking just to walk.
I think about the walks that (much like the genesis of WIO) became normal first dates. Had some good ones, some bad ones, and one great one. Now on a trip to Italy with the best one. Keep walking, friends!
Yesterday. I spent three hours with my friend of 55 years on the side of the New Hampshire mountain where she lives. She has early onset Alzheimer's. She is surrounded by wildflowers, apple trees she planted or grafted long ago and woods filled with trees turning red and yellow. "Want to go for a little walk?" She asked. Yes. Oh, yes. She showed me the owl bird house she and her husband made. She showed me ferns. We made aprons out of our sweatshirts and filled them with apples. We listened to the sounds, smelled the autumn coming. We remembered fishing little brooks wen we were little.( She always caught way more than me). When I left we smiled and cried. I live in CA and haven't seen her in two years because of COVID. She can't ever remember where I'm living now or a lot of other details but the important things are all still there. I'm going home with a few apples in my pocket and a memory I will cherish.
On Monday, I got to take a walk with my best friend for the first time since February 2020. She lives in New York City, I live in Ottawa, Canada's capital. She was able to travel back home for the first time in almost two years. We walked along the Ottawa River, shot the shit, laughed our asses off, hugged and hugged, took silly pictures - just ENJOYED being together in person after SO LONG. An incredibly simple yet joyous experience.
In my early twenties, I lived in Richmond, Indiana, had three jobs, and kept weird hours. An insomniac friend down the street who was significantly older than me would walk with me around town at night. He had lived in NYC, London, and Paris in the '70s and had all kinds of stories about musicians/writers/filmmakers he'd hung out with. Like me, he was an avid reader and loved jazz. Our walks featured a common leitmotif: books, music, and film. Not the best location, but the best conversation!
Years ago, back in college, my old friend Dirk and I went for walks all the time. One night, for whatever reason, one of us started the classic "Knock knock. Who's there? Banana..." joke. I have no idea which of us was the knocker and which was the questioner, but we kept it going for miles and turned it into various music bits along the way. Knock knock as scat. Knock knock as doo-wop. Knock knock as lounge crooning. I'm guessing the knocker finally gave up when we got home, but it was a glorious few miles of lunacy. He and I see each other rarely anymore, but when we do, we still lapse readily into a language uniquely and bizarrely our own. He's a good dude, and those were great walks.
I only recently came across the Latin phrase Solvitur ambulando (it's solved by walking). Walking has a sort of.. I dunno, there is a state of mind that is shared with a slow bike ride on a safe bike path, or just shooting pool and not caring who wins.. a flow I guess. My wife and I often come up with solutions to issues as we walk (websites we're working on, parenting things etc). My best friend and I often wandered about talking about things (and sometimes shooting pool). The best conversations I've ever had were when walking with our kid when we were just going nowhere.
Before we all had kids, a group of my guy friends and I used to get together on Sunday mornings for walks around Atlanta. We'd walk for miles and miles -- like 10 or 15 miles, see all kinds of different neighborhoods, and catch up on everything. You get to see our city in way that's so different from seeing it from a car (which is the way you see it most of the time here).
That time my older sister and I stayed an extra day in Paris, which we spent flaneuring across various neighborhoods of the sprawling city. That was my first time in Paris and it was monumental in a lot of ways. My mom, younger sister and I flew from Italy, where we spent time with my Bangkok-based my brother and his family. In Paris, we met with my Singapore-based older sister, who flew in from the States.
It was great to get to know her as a person, you know? Not just as a family member. By that time, Singapore had changed her tremendously. She'd become less uptight, and surprised me when she preferred walking casually wherever and not having any plans at all! As we walked in Le Marais, we talked about our careers, by the time we reached the Eiffel, we were talking about life plans. On Champs Elysee, we were discussing boys, which was so refreshing because we never did that growing up; she was the strict older sister even if she was only a year older than me! That day in 2016 became a precursor to what would become our signature city walks whenever we travel. I miss it and her terribly.
Oh this is an easy one for me! I was living in Florence in fall of 2019 and my friend Andri Snaer Magnason came to the city for the day from Bologna, where he was speaking to a convention of science teachers. I knew him from meeting him in New York, through Siggi of Siggi's Yogurt (they grew up together in Reykjavik) and we had kept in touch. I said I wanted to go check out a new arts center across the river, that had just opened up in an old tobacco factory, and he said he'd be happy to walk with me. It was a beautiful, interesting walk and we discussed every topic –– On Time and Water hadn't yet been published but he was appearing on news around the world for memorializing a disappearing glacier with a plaque in a remote corner of Iceland –– but mostly I remember that I had severely misjudged the length of it, and it was like really, really, really far, and feeling embarrassed, like I should apologize, then I realized he lives in Iceland and that was like a short stroll for him and he definitely didn't notice. Still one of the best walks I've ever taken, along the Arno River under the shady trees, the temperature absolute perfection. I remember it ending at the train station with gelato (of course).
Many moons ago when I was living in London, I went on a walk to Highgate Cemetery with a close friend. Not only was the walk beautiful for many reasons (the greeneries, the cemetery, I believe the weather was also good), but it was the walk that sparked the idea that I want my tombstone (a bit morbid, but we /were/ in a cemetery after all) to read: "She who led a thoughtful life". And a decade later that idea is now serving as the basis for my Substack newsletter! :)
When our boys were in elementary school, my good friend and I would walk around their soccer practice field. We were "solving all the problems of the world" and keeping watch on our sons while getting some exercise ourselves.
Some mothers sat in their cars reading or napping for that hour and a half. Although we were both teachers and loved both those inactivities, we wouldn't have missed that sharing time for any book or snooze
Those boys are fathers now, making us grandmothers to our delight, but those soccer days are some of our best memories. Because we laid that intimate, honest foundation for our friendship, we are still trying to solve new problems together today.
I actually love this question so much because half of my walks are with someone else (though, I do cherish my alone time and love when I'm able to have it).
One of my favorite walks was during a rainy summer in June. I think NY had just started to open back up and I had wrapped up work with my two lovely roommates (who are also my best friends). We decided to go to the West Village (get off at the 8th avenue L train stop) and just walk. As soon as we go off the train, it started raining and I almost slipped, but I loved how spontaneous it was. I challenged them to not look at their phones/maps and just walk. We went down all the way to SoHo, saw so many people enjoying their drinks and dinner despite the rain. Ended up taking photos by the fountain at Washington Square Park, saw some NY street rats, almost slipped, and had very shitty tiramisu towards the end. But it was so fun, to just walk, wonder, and explore...
For a halcyon autumn ('15), I was living on 147th at the intersection of maybe-enough-money-for-occasional-treats and weirdly-employed-enough-for-midweek-jaunts. Every last Thursday of the month, my friend/roommate's teaching gig had the morning off, so I juggled my schedule the same. We'd sleep in and then meander down to 125th for Streetbird (RIP) for a lazy brunch, then back up to home, stopping by Make My Cake for slices to eat on the way home. It took no less than 4hrs, and while yes the food was important, it was mostly about the ramble to and fro.
I'm definitely adding rose lenses to it—neither of our mental health was ideal & that weird employment did not pay rent reliably—but I hold those walks as little gems of memory, glinting brightly against the larger mosaic of our friendship.
Last week my high school friend and I met halfway in Williamstown, MA, to go to the museums there and hang out. We haven't seen each other in person in three years--we met at Mass MOCA the last time (museums are easy places to walk, too).
We started out at the Williams College Art Museum, and after lunch we were too busy talking to pay attention to where we were going, so our straight-line, half-mile walk to The Clark meandered way more than it needed to. We wandered on their trails for a while, too, which are dotted with sculptures. It wound up being a whole lot of art and walking (and later people-watching from some Adirondack chairs in town). She and I met as awkward ninth graders in 1984, which amazes me, I guess, when I pull back from it. We walked all over Boston and Cambridge together as teenagers as part of our pack of friends, so it's all one long walk, in a sense. I also perpetually miss the Berkshires, so truthfully, it was a quietly amazing trip, but it's never enough, which is also great in its own way.
The last time I saw my ex-gf. She had a knack for tricking me into taking longer walks (even in my own city). We'd head to a gallery on foot and she'd lie about the distance, or suggest we grab lunch first. In Chicago there's a tendency to measure by blocks, and she'd fib: "It's only three more blocks!" We'd be on foot for hours. The last time, after we caught an exhibit at the AIC in July (🥵), she tried to convince me that Portofino was "Just down the street!" (30 min on foot) 😆 Why am I like this?
Recently, I had the great fortune to walk with one of my oldest friends. We met when we were 13 years old at a summer beach community. My eldest daughter was renting a bungalow in the same community and my friend now lives there all year round. I was spending the day with two of my grandsons. It was a cloudy humid day and threatening rain. We decided to walk to the snack bar for ice cream after lunch. The four of us started out and my 9 year-old grandson immediately protested that “we were going the wrong way”. We explained that there was more than one way to reach our destination. “But the other way is shorter”, he whined. “This way is more interesting.”, I answered.
When we got to the snack bar it was closed; a reminder of the uncertain times we are living through. As a result our twenty minute walk became a two hour excursion encircling the breadth of the peninsula. We did finally get some ice cream and afterwards stopped at a park on the beach for some swinging and climbing. The highlight of the walk for me was passing the volleyball nets where my friend and I had first met 50 years ago. This walk encapsulated my past and present, my early teen years juxtaposed against my recent golden days, filled with 17 grandchildren. How truly wonderful to share this with my dear friend. Life is full of these uplifting experiences and I am so grateful that I have learned to be fully open to them.