An Ode to Walking (Part Two)

(without a mention of high gas prices)

I number it among my blessings that my father had no car…The deadly power of rushing about wherever I pleased had not been given me. I measured distances by the standard of man, man walking on his own two feet, not by the standard of the internal combustion engine …The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it “annihilates space.” It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given…Of course if a man hates space and wants it annihilated that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once. There is little enough space there. (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy).

Last week I suggested that there is merit in walking because it takes the world on its terms.  That is, there is merit in needing to acknowledge the hills, the weather, the mosquitoes, the aromas, the distance.

Walking also takes people seriously. When I walk, I take people seriously. Walking to church, for example, I pass through a real human community. I find people digging dandelions in their front yard. I see people reading their paper with the morning coffee. I step around hopscotch on the sidewalk. The neighbor’s dog frightens me from the other side of the fence. I am a real person in a real human community.

When I drive, I paratroop into the church from nowhere. I am worshipping in No-Place. In most cities, churches have literally become the church of no-Place. Situated far from where anyone calls home, you can’t get there except by car and the church’s neighborhood matters not a whit.

This can be confirmed by the fact that, as far as I know, there is no such thing as sidewalk rage. Why is it that, Layton Friesen, otherwise calm, cool and collected, when he gets behind the wheel of a car, will fly into a fit of rage at other drivers? Two reasons: As the barber in Wendell Berry’s novel Jayber Crow says about his recent car purchase, “Ease of going was translated with our pause into a principled unwillingness to stop.”

My speed of travel seems directly proportionate to my annoyance at being interrupted. And besides, to a walker an interruption is a rest.

However, more importantly, I get angry with other drivers because those beings sitting in other cars are not real human beings. The glass and steel and the speed at which we drive have made them into an abstractions. The minute they become real, I am mortally embarrassed for having become so angry. Have you ever shaken your fist at another driver, only to discover that she is your next-door neighbor?

When I walk, people become people and I have the possibility of relating to them, human to human. No one can love abstractions. There is good reason for the Bible telling us to love our neighbor. When I walk I have moved from being something analogous to a pornographer (degrading others by dehumanizing them into abstractions) to being a neighbor (relating to people who present themselves to me in all their uniqueness).

By Layton Friesen