The other day I decided to walk over to my friend’s house for a visit. It was a lovely September Saturday: sunny, highs in the 80's, a light breeze. A perfect day for a stroll.
The day started with a highway cleanup with the neighbors. I spent an hour picking trash off the side of the road, and then another hour catching up with neighbors and eating Mom's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Some of those neighbors I hadn’t seen in more than fifteen years.
At ten thirty I put my pack on, tightened my laces, and set out from the pass. Within a mile I was able to get off the side of the highway and pick up an old jeep road paralleling the highway. The easy downhill miles melted away. I kept looking back at the distance I'd come, thinking how incredible the simple act of walking is. You can put a lot of distance in a day.
I stopped every few miles to drink water (I brought 3 liters) and eat (I made some DIY energy bars the day before). This is the best idea you've had in a while, self, I thought. I hadn't gone on a walk longer than a couple miles in many months. It felt good to move.
The pain began at about mile 12, a sharp ache set up in my right knee.
A mile later, the pain moved to my left knee and right hip flexors. Then my right ankle started to hurt, an old New Years Eve dancing injury. The pain never stayed in one spot. It just sort of roiled throughout my body.
I imagined that an intelligence in my body was trying to tell my conscious brain to stop walking in the only language it knew: pain. When the right knee pain didn't make me stop, it tried the left knee. Then the hips. Then the ankles. Et cetera.
By mile 18 or 19 I was hobbling. The bottoms of my feet were hotspotting. My gait went all goofy because I was trying to avoid putting pressure on ever-increasing areas of my feet. I felt, and cursed, every pebble.
The knee and hip pain mostly faded to a background churn by mile 21 and the agony inside my shoes consumed all of my attention. I felt something let go in a squishy sort of way on the ball of my right foot. Definitely not taking that shoe off till I arrive. Best to keep everything in one place for now. The sun set. I put my headlamp on and walked through the center of town and then on out to the far side.
At mile 24, 8:30pm, I staggered into my friend's house and announced that I’d just done a hard thing.
After visiting for the weekend, I didn't walk back. My feet were still a wreck. I took the bus, which goes three times a day, three days a week. It was a solid month before I could walk more than a few hundred yards. I had blisters in places I didn't know I had skin. That's what I get for hucking a distance I've never come close to.
I should have worked up to it, sure. But it was worth it. Opportunities to do hard things don’t often crop up in my life spontaneously, so they must be induced from time to time. In fact, they must be strategically arranged for, is how I view it.
I don't have a car now. I sold my truck before I left for Europe in February and, despite living 30 miles from town, I don't think I'll get another one.
It's backwards to say that I walk because I don't have a car. Rather, I don't have a car because I walk. If there were something wrong with my legs, I would get a car. But my legs work fine at the moment. So a car is unnecessary.
There is no way I'd have walked to my buddy's house that September day if I had a perfectly good car sitting in the driveway. I would have thought about it, but then I would have nah-tho'd it and just driven. I know myself. I don't have the willpower to walk if I've got a car. But I do have the willpower to not buy a car, because that’s a whole thing. That's the strategy of it. Not exactly rocket science, but it works.
I'm doing some work for neighbors. The nearest is a mile away, the other is closer to two miles from here. I walk there, I hustle and move heavy things around for two or three hours, I get paid, and I walk back. Gym? I'm good.
Sure, I need a car sometimes. I wanted to buy some cinder blocks and a couple bales of hay the other day. I borrowed my parent’s truck and trailer and got the stuff I needed while picking up some lumber and siding they needed for one of their projects. I 'need' a vehicle once a month or so. It'd be insane from a resource perspective to buy my own while my parents have two.
What I don't have a great solution for at the moment is long distance journeys, like visiting friends on the coast or up north, hundreds of miles away. Or rather, I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do it. I have options that I’ve yet to explore:
I can hitchhike. I can stitch together buses and trains. I can rideshare, I guess. I can walk. I can ride a bike. Depending on the season and how much time I've got will determine which option(s) I choose.
I'm happily occupied here in the mountains at the moment (I've got to polish off these PV projects before I go larking about the state), but I am yearning to catch up with my friends who are scattered from LA to Washington state. Maybe I'll do a loop later in the winter.