When I got the following photos in an email, I got very weepy. Yes, I was PMS’ing, but more importantly, the brilliance of the sun, the glory of kinks dancing with blue….we all agreed that this must shared.

~bfp

A friend and I went for a walk on an unexpectedly hot, sunny day: a high pressure system stared down the usual Spring grey and warmed the Bay waters. It was a perfect day to share.

Post here includes a picture of my friend; she’s standing smiling at the camers. Her orange t-shirt glows against the grey green of the native grass and brown grey of the marsh. The sky is that perfect blue. All the pictures in this post are taken by her. She whipped out a phone and made a record of this moment.

Actually, we don’t get to meet all that often. Our lives are neither parallel nor functionally intersecting; we have to make the time … to sit, to eat, to talk … and, on this occasion, to walk. Technically speaking, as you can see from the pictures, ours wasn’t a hike, nor even much of a walk. The original meeting was for lunch — a sitdown time to connect and revisit the contours of our lives over the past couple of months. But the sun was shining. The outside beckoned. Could we go for a walk? We gathered enough food for provisions for ourselves and, judging from the size of the bags we are carrying, for all of you. So, here: grab a bite to eat. Come join us.

Post here contains an image of me taken while out on our walk. I’ve smudged out my face because I am having weird qualms about my face on the net at the moment. Not that it isn’t already there, but … allow me a little uneasiness, will you? As I look at the picture, I notice that my hair kind of looks like a smaller explosion of the bush that is behind me to my right. Same colours, same kind of shape. Eerily, the grey-ish erasure of my face seems to blend me even more into the heathered landscape. It’s a picture of me, in my chair, with a great big grocery bag of food on my lap. The sun shines into tussocky grasses and plants. I’m sitting on one of the tarmac bits; this is just before we get going.

It’s true at home in the UK but, for some reason, it seems even more true in the US. No one can just walk; because very few people just do. Walking has become an event — something more than simply traversing the local landscape from point A to point B. It’s something you have to stop and do. When people say, “Oh, I went for a walk,” I always expect to hear that they went somewhere other than the pavement just outside the doors. They went out…. To nature. To take a walk. And so it was for us; we piled into a car, hung our hands out the open windows, and allowed the wind to style our hair as we sat in the traffic jam, inching towards the grass, gravel, and Bay.

A crip spot, the schk-tunk as my axles lock into place, a distribution of baggage — LUNCH! — and we’re off.

Except that we aren’t really.

We can’t stop talking. We’ve not stopped talking since we met at the grocery store. We’re already high from hunger and giddy on our conversations about language, connection, our futures, and the way we’ve lived in the past months. Our voices ring out, loud, into the breeze. With every face that passes us, I’m conscious of the fact that we are different; we’re not dressed in exercise clothing — we’re not “out for a run” — we’re not taking a walk. Why do people “take” walks … do we have to rob the environment of even this? Can’t we simply walk? No taking, just a simple physical act that deeply rooted and deeply grounding? We’re not on a quiet walk with a professional colleague, family member or lover. It’s a nature preserve, but we’re not even appreciating the nature with the kind of subtle expert knowledge that you see so often around here.

No. We’re here — 2 black girls — and, yes, I am aware of that. Despite the diversity of where we live, I don’t often see black people out walking — and we are visibly and actively enjoying our surroundings and celebrating being with each other. We aren’t murmuring meditatively; should we be? It’s open space, a special spot. Other people, with the exception of a child, seem quiet. Should we be in that place of quiet respect — like a concert hall?? It’s a beautiful day. Our voices and laughter sound above the wind.

Post here includes a picture of our surroundings. The sky is a deep blue that is offset by the blue-grey of the water and the white tips of the tiny waves and the salty leavings on land. The inlet itself is surrounded by grass that in the foreground is green and slightly gold, but as your eye progresses towards the centre of the picture and the water, the blades turn grey and the plants more wild and tussocky. Between the water and the sky sits the East Bay Hills, one of the hills is particularly in focus.

I am conscious of the noise my wheels make as they strike the ground beneath me. Some of the area — the main bike paths– has tarmac over it; other parts are graded almost level and covered with a kind of shale/gravel. The stone is not so deep that I can’t roll on it a little way, but it is not easy going, by any means. I’ve been coming here a while. I’ve never seen another wheeler, white or black. The crip spots are occasionally occupied, but still I’ve never seen another wheeler. I wonder what they think of us as we pass by. Is my friend a carer who has taken me out for a special trip? Are those glances of pity — so nice that you can be out? I know disabled people go out, but where *are* you all? Or are people shining on us their glances of interest and curiosity? There are books on accessible trails in the Bay Area; people do go out and want to go out. But I never see anyone on wheels. What is it about walking that it remains so firmly a privilege of the on-foot-walkers? Do we really think walking is about the feet?

Beyond these philosophical concerns, the most pressing question is the food that we’re carrying. Unconsumed food is heavy. We look for a bench really close by. But we don’t even get there before it strikes us. We are moving and talking, talking serious stuff about mental health, pathology (squirm, don’t worry we were careful with the word), consent, commitment, legality, disability, feminism, race …. And in that moment, in our intensity, we have built a small community with bfp and Jess.

Ours was scheduled to be a lunch break; now, it is a walk. It is a walk that is now connected to the work of the re-thinking walking project. We’re stunned. And then my friend takes these pictures. Our individual physical movement is now part of a political movement. The recognition of how radical this walk and our conversations are silences us for a second; our next step will be meaningful. It will be powerful simply because we have intentionally acknowledged our presence in this environment and our connection to those other women walkers.

We eat, talk, and pack up the remaining crumbs. It strikes us as funny that even here at the salty, marshy edges of the land and sea, there are trash cans. We both make some kind of “America indeed” comment. Then, we turn right; I pull my shoulders back, feel my hands rise; I breathe down, and my hands strike the rims. My wheels sink slightly into the welcoming ground.