By Oh hey. Here we go again.
I love walking. Love it. I’ve struggled with mental illness for nearly 30 years, and I’ve found walking to be (next to medicine and therapy) the most helpful thing to calm my mind and soul. Solvitur Ambulando – “it is solved by walking”.
I walked my first long-distance walk in 2006 (the Camino Frances), and the next in 2009 (the Camino del Norte/Primitivo). Hiking the PCT, Appalachian Trail, Superior Hiking Trail, etc etc etc have been at the top of my dream list since my first step on the Camino in 2006. But long-distance hikes require, above all, a large chunk of time, which has been hard to find in the last decade. I’ve been getting ‘itchy feet’ – my soul wants to wander, wants to walk. But life! It has other plans for me right now, and taking six months off isn’t in the cards for the foreseeable future.
But I remembered a lesson from ‘A Walk Across America’ that set Peter Jenkins on his walk across this country: he’d wanted to make a break for Europe or South America and leave this country behind, but a friend reminded him that he really didn’t know his own country yet – so he could leave, of course, but it’d be better if he knew what, exactly, he was leaving. I am always in search of adventure in other places, but I forget that there are vast spaces in my own city that I don’t yet know.
And so I’ve set out to walk my city. Every street. Both ways.
I started this journey in May 2019. I estimate it will take me a minimum of three years to walk all 2137 miles of streets (both ways) and parkways, assuming I’ll have 1-2 days per week to walk. If you’d like to keep up with my walk, I’ll be posting here and on Instagram. If you’d like to join me for a day (or hour) of walking, I’ll be sharing my route for the day on Twitter. I welcome company!
