Entry #1: Five mile marker Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts: The Art of Walking

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I have decided to walk from Boston to New York. I could, of course, choose a more exotic setting for a long-distance perambulation such as the Camino de Santiago (of which more later) in Spain and France or the Via Appia in Italy or the Silk Road or the Karakoram Highway in Asia or the overland route from Cairo to Capetown or, closer to home, the Appalachian Trail, or I simply could walk across America. Instead I choose to walk out my front door, turn left at the crossroads and keep going for 230 or so miles until I get to the Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan.

The non-walker might suggest more rapid forms of transportation in the interest of time. I could drive, fly, take a bus, or take the train (though it is debatable at times whether any of these modes of transportation are, indeed, faster).  What is the point of wandering through busy towns and past suburban shopping malls? What is the point of walking on an old road when you could take the highway? Isn’t this just a waste of time and energy?

The reasons for deciding to make this trip are manifold. First, I am cheap. I figured my feet were a less expensive way to go. Second, I like walking. I also enjoy bumping into things I had not anticipated. I like the voyage itself sometimes as much as or more than the destination. I also enjoy collecting information and processing it, and walking gives me more time to both collect and process many facts about small towns, about the landscape of New England, about the historical significance of the road and of the houses, the  fields, and the towns it passes. I am a birdwatcher and it is quite difficult to watch birds at 65 miles per hour, but quite enjoyable at a walking pace.

Here is where I pull out the big guns, namely, one Henry David Thoreau, who wrote an essay entitled Walking, in which he describes the pleasures, purposes, and advantages of walking.  He also believes that people do not walk properly: “I have met but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of walking.” (1)  Thoreau did most of his travels on foot or in a canoe, observing small details as he went, building from the seemingly trivial the arguments and essays for which he is justifiably world-renowned.  I want to be one of those one or two to whom he might be referring.  Life on Earth might be a good sight more enjoyable if everyone read a little Thoreau instead of sticking Thoreau quotations on the bumpers of their Toyota SUVs.

     There is an underlying goal and a concrete starting point for this madness. In the mid 1980s I watched La Voie Lactee (a movie by the Spanish director Luis Bunuel). In this film, two “pilgrims” travel to the holy site of Santiago de Compostela, a city in Galicia. This allegorical film has our heroes meet with a variety of adventures and characters. The film itself is interesting in its own right, and I will discuss it in detail later. What it did for me however, was to help me generate an idea which has percolated for a quarter of a century. I became obsessed with the idea of walking from Paris to Santiago on the ancient trail, le Chemin de Saint Jacques in France and, after passing through Roncevalles in the Pyrenees, el Camino de Santiago.

    Anyone who knows me realizes that it was not a religious obsession. Richard Dawkins is the type of saint I worship. Rather, I was captivated by the idea of wandering roads that had been traveled by many people over long periods of time. It also occurred to me that people once walked great distances to get someplace because they had no other choice. One might argue that Homo sapiens evolved specifically with a capacity, born of necessity, to walk long distances.  The upshot is that I began to walk more and to maintain an obsession with Santiago.

    There are a number of problems with walking to Santiago which I could describe in detail, but the fact remains that twenty-five years went by, and, except for a day or two now and then, I have not walked the Santiago trail.

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