Dérive

Those who know me know that I like to walk. I'm not quite sure why I do. If I had to hazard a guess, I would suspect that the act of walking purely has a positive physiological effect on my body, and hence my spirits.

Exercise and deep breaths fire off the dopamine. Without a thought, neurons connect and disconnect. Something totally subconscious happens at the most physical level.

I'm rather addicted to the sensation that comes from a long walk. A couple of hours is good, but walking for days or weeks at a time are certainly better.

It used to be that I liked hiking. Then, I thought that it was being out in the woods that gave me the charge. And while the woods are certainly nice, I've learned that it's not so much a hike in the traditional "drive out to the woods and check out nature" sense that gets me going. It's just the simple act of walking.

Which is good, because of late I've come to not only define myself as a walker, but also as an urbanist. While I grew up in rural-cum-suburban southern New York, my adult years have been spent living close-quartered houses on postage stamp sized lots in a mid-sized, midwestern city. I've grown to love being close to my neighbors (even when they frustrate me), being where I can walk to the store and the letter carrier walks to my front door, and having most modern amenities close enough that I don't spend a huge portion of my waking hours trapped in the confines of a car.

So the two have come together quite a bit during the last ten years of my life, and it's gotten to the point that I don't know which I prefer more... a walk in the woods, or a good trek across town.

When I was up in Glen Arbor, Michigan a few years back, I was digging around in the Cottage Bookshop, an excellent independent bookstore, and I came across Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust. In this book, Solnit looks at walking from many angles... historical, sociological, philosophical, psychological, political, artistic, and so on.

Reading that book as I wandered the beaches of Sleeping Bear Dunes (walking barefoot may be the best form of walking!), I began really thinking hard for the first time about why it is that I like to walk.

Last week, I picked up Psychogeography, by Will Self. Self has me thinking about walking in new and different ways, and has me wondering if I really do understand why I like walking, and if I really understand what I am experiencing as I walk.

Psychogeography is a term that was interjected into modern thought by French situationist Guy Debord. Debord had a fondness for taking long walks as an act of protest, as a way of intentionally reacting to the modern society around him by making whimsical yet deliberate choices not to follow the conventional route from place to place. The dérive was the term he gave to these long walks where he attempted to refine the relationship between external geography and the internal self.

So now, along with Solnit's tremendous amount of information about walking, I have Self's commentary and Debord's half-baked theories rattling about in my head. All this gives a guy a lot to think about as he walks around town.

Last night I took a good long walk with my friend Eric, from Creston through downtown and into Heartside. It was a rainy, uniquely 60 degree January night. The company and the landscape ensured that my walk was interesting, but so did the simple act of wondering about the meaning of the walk itself.