NOTE FROM BFP: the following is a guest (re)thinking walking post by good friend to this blog, Ansel. Remember Ansel? You should! Ansel designed this blog’s current theme! Ansel is also a journalist and media justice activist that blogs a lot about immigration and immigrant justice. What more could there possibly be to love?

“Pere David set out to walk the entire seventy-two-mile circumference without a second thought. Walking, we know, was something he was good at. The priest believed in the purifying effect of long-distance walking. It was simple and hard work. The digestion was stimulated, the muscles toned, while the mind could wander in meditation or prayer. It echoed the purposiveness of early pilgrims. Man as walker is our most ancient inbuilt image of higher purpose, of truth-seeking.”

I walked a long long ways last night. I left the house at about 10:45 P.M., an angry face yelling epithets at me as I slammed the front-door behind me. I didn’t bother to change. A pair of sandals, pajama pants, and a white t-shirt held together by human form; a hand clutching a wallet and keychain. I left just walking, wondering if any of the neighbors had been woken up. There was a sharp searing pain below my right shoulder. It was very dark, the stars clearly visible above me, save for when I strode by a streetlight. The phony yellow lamplight would cast the stars into a blurry haze, making it impossible to look up and focus on a single point of white light; I observed this at the very first light I passed. I rounded the corner of my culdecac, down to the highway, and began walking north, just me and some pajamas, an inside-out t-shirt, and sandals flopping on the sidewalk. I walked at a good clip, turning on Trillium Blvd., past my middle school, into Mill Creek, past the homes of my friends. Curiously enough, while the night was exhaustedly devoid of any strange sound other than the passing of cars, it seemed hard for me to hear my own thoughts. Flip-flop, flip-flop, and vroom vroom…that was all. I felt empty, in a sick sort of way. I didn’t speak, I didn’t hum a tune, and worst of all, I didn’t think.

“The survivor “gets by,” “keeps his nose clean,” doesn’t attempt to fight the system. Instead, he uses knowledge of the system to his advantage. But he cannot hope to confront or change the system; in his heart he knows that his is the life of a cockroach, dodging the heavy aimed boot of a house-owner. The survivor cannot really afford to enjoy life. Enjoyment suggests a surplus of opportunity the survivor just doesn’t have. In order to survive he has to wear blinkers. So in his survival lurks a kind of death, a giving up of what is vital and human, the joy and connectedness of life ground down by the gray demands of the day-to-day. And many survivors of the Holocaust, when prompted, reply: “The best did not survive.”

After a while my feet began to hurt. I hadn’t stopped once, always moving, always heading in some direction. I had a vague plan to walk down into Snohomish, past the farm-fields and into the old town. My feet kept burning. I came to the crossroad that led down to Snohomish, and began upon it, but it was all dark. That was both appealing and discouraging at once, for I could see the stars especially well, but there was no sidewalk and there were no lamposts, and the speed limit was 40 mph. Some obviously-drunk drivers had already passed me. I decided against further injury and death for the night, and looked at my feet. There were blisters on both the insides, and the one on the right was beginning to bleed.

“The survivalist is lampooned for wanting to make things hard for himself, for trying to turn the clock back on all our amazing timesaving technology. He is regarded as odd for wanting to be self-reliant. Odd because he doesn’t like cars and TV and shopping. In the future, though, perhaps the desire for things will be seen as odd in comparison with the desire for human qualities.”

No more flip-flops to slap the night with, replaced by the pitter-patter of bare feet. Now the other hand clutched two sandals, and I was running. At first I had just been walking, but when walking bare-footed on the slightly rough and coarse sidewalk, I had felt every crease and every contour of texture, every little piece of gravel that I stepped on. Quick running, each leg touching down only for a moment on the pavement, was better suited and less distracting. Actually, it felt really good. Running barefoot, without the weight and extraneous bulk of shoes to slow your every step, in just my pajamas and a t-shirt, along the side of the road with no one to else to trouble me, down past Silver Firs and into some remote residential complex where the streets and sidewalks were clean as could be, the pearly-white stars overhead, with the cool night air whipping past my face and blowing the front of my hair up a little, as always, was just what I needed. On the way running back, I thought more clearly and more sharply than I ever had before. Just before 3:00 A.M., I returned home.