Only when semi-retired did I begin to truly enjoy ambling over the Micheltorena Street bridge near my Westside home in Santa Barbara and walking to our splendid public library. After browsing for some books, I might stroll through Alice Keck Park and perhaps find something to drink at Three Pickles Subs on the easy way home.
Like the 80% of Americans now living in suburbia, I agree with Rebecca Solnit that the art of urban hiking has been nearly lost in the accelerating “speed” of modern times. She asserts that there was:
“A sort of golden age of walking that began late in the 18th century
and … [T]his age peaked around the turn of the 20th century, when North
Americans and Europeans were as likely to make a date for a walk as for
a drink or meal, [and] walking was often a sort of sacrament and a routine
recreation, and walking clubs were flourishing.” — “Wanderlust,” p. 272 (see 4.1.1.)
It’s easy to assign blame for this loss to the usual culprits: televisions, telephones, the Internet, social media and the Anthropocene, plus the ubiquitous cars, concrete sidewalks and massive paved parking lots everywhere. Didn’t Joni Mitchell wail, “They paved paradise, put up a parking lot” (from 1970’s “Big Yellow Taxi”)? It was in 1970 that the U.S. Census revealed for the first time that more than half of Americans had moved from the country to the city’s sterile suburbs.
I grew up in the “asphalt jungle” of Sylmar in the northeastern corner of the highly urbanized San Fernando Valley, and while I biked to Olive Vista Junior High School and later to football practices (about 3 miles) at the public high school, it wasn’t very uplifting with cars everywhere, heavy Los Angeles pollution and absolutely no bike lanes (or white cones to protect the cyclist from cars). On the date of my 16th birthday, I immediately obtained my driver’s license, bought a used 1954 Mercury for $200 with my own cash, and threw that old Schwinn away for what I imagined was forever.
What’s this all about?
Solnit calls it the process of “the privatization of everyday life” and a response to urban sprawls such as we see not only in L.A. but in Phoenix, Houston, Denver, Albuquerque and so on, and to a lesser extent in Santa Barbara.
Civic design contoured itself around the cars and the parking lots, plus we do observe more “privatization” of spaces in the form of larger shopping malls replacing shopping streets, while public buildings often become geometric islands in the midst of a paved sea. This is a kind of withdrawal from shared spaces.
As philosopher Soren Kierkegaard long ago stated, “It is extremely regrettable and demoralizing that robbers and the elite agree on just one thing — living in hiding.” The logical extension he predicted has become the gated communities of our time, and obviously so in golden Santa Barbara.
Another example is the loss of “the porch” in home architecture. After years in L.A., I fell in love with our very small porch on a tiny Craftsman-style home on West Ortega Street. My partner and I learned to sit quietly and enjoy urban hikers walking by, just as I enjoy the same now on my street near the Westside’s Foodland Market. I realize the Westside isn’t really “suburbia” like the larger housing areas of Goleta and Carpinteria, but really none of this feels as extreme as Sylmar’s concrete jungle or the entire San Fernando Valley.
We can call this the disembodiment of everyday life in which most postmodern humans define “progress” as a kind of transcendence over space, time and nature via (first) the train, then the automobile, airplane and instant electronic communication via our handheld devices (smartphones). Sociologist Max Weber famously called this sort of isolation “the disenchantment of the world” brought on by mechanization and the ills of scientism.
However, “speed” doesn’t make travel — and walking is a form of travel — more interesting, only somewhat more efficient. Although I’ve been a backcountry hiking freak since 1971, it has required a major mental shift to realize how equally interesting, fun and “experiential” walking around in town can become. Hiking is not the same as “walking,” yet I can cherish both modes of locomotion. Isn’t it interesting how many of our friends rush to the gym in their cars (or bikes) and then get on the treadmill for repetitive exercise indoors?
After the Industrial Revolution that brought automobilization and suburbanization, walking became a conscious choice for some as they reacted to the mechanization of space-time. Even industrial workers in England joined the walking clubs, and these blue-collar workers obviously did not do so out of a need for more exercise.
Walking was a conscious rejection of the Industrial Revolution, but by 1970 with the extreme car culture, “walking” began to seem a waste of time, “lower class” or just silly. By the present time, we arrive at the concept of walking as an art form. Powerful American saint Peace Pilgrim walked continuously for 28 years and refused mechanical travel (“Wanderlust,” pp. 60-63).
The “body” that once had the status of a kind of work animal shifted over to pet status: We exercise “it” much as we take our dog out for an urban hike. During just the past 10 years, have you noticed the extraordinary increase of women and men walking their dogs? I know many love their pet, but others have adopted their pet in order to force themselves out for a daily stroll. Solnit’s book about walking concludes that:
“Walking as art calls attention to the simplest aspects of the act: the way
rural walking measures the body and the earth against each other, [and]
the way urban walking elicits unpredictable social encounters” (p. 301).
I add that while I used to mountain bike along dirt roads for years, even city biking in sleepy Santa Barbara now seems rather risky to me, especially when we add the inevitable speeding-up that comes with e-bikes and e-scooters, I am impressed with the white cones on the Micheltorena Street bridge (photo), but I do witness all sorts of biking close calls these days in town and choose to pass and walk as a biped.
This “privatization of everyday life” trend helps explain the modern cult of the home as a sacred space set apart from the rest of the world, with, as Solnit dryly notes, “the wife-mother as a priestess” who in the mid-20th century was mostly confined to her temple while “the man” drove off to work taking their family car.
Having spent most of my life in that 20th century, I’ve carefully gauged that the 1.2-mile walk from my Westside home over the bridge to the public library on Anapamu Street requires 25 minutes, and I’ve timed the driving at about seven minutes. However, when driving, I also have to locate a parking space or parking structure, park and walk a bit to the library or the Christian Science Reading Room, or wherever I’m heading on State Street.
When my relatives from Munich make their annual visit, they eagerly amble all over our town, admiring the many tree species, the rich bird life and the interesting people they encounter on foot. Munich’s a very friendly big city with more than 100 small parks and scores of bookstores and art museums, and it has cleverly planned walks and shopping streets (not shopping centers). Our Bavarians remain surprised at how many vehicles fill our streets compared with the numbers of walkers and cyclists. (Biking and the outdoors is another issue, for a future column.)
While re-reading Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), it was hard to ignore how Elizabeth Bennet flouts upper-class convention by frequently walking about outside on her own, often meeting her sister or Mr. Darcy, and once she outright rejects snobby Caroline Bingley’s disgust when she accumulates mud on her shoes! Forsooth!
Oh yes, I enjoyed walking to our library to check out “Pride and Prejudice” and other novels, placing the tomes in my day pack and sipping a lemonade from Three Pickles on the way home.
Why not plot some urban walking routes over these holidays that draw you out of the car without really losing much time? City walking with a friend or family may reveal a wandering pattern you relish in the sun; walking can become a “sacrament” as Solnit writes, and it prepares the legs for those backcountry hikes I usually praise. Perhaps you also choose to turn off your phone, take off the earbuds, listen to birdsong and simply appreciate the urban beauty right in front of you.
4.1.1.
Rebecca Solnit, “Wanderlust — A History of Walking” (2000); Peace Pilgrim’s walking exploits began in 1953, and Solnit discusses this walking American saint on pp. 60-62; the Christian Science Reading Room is at 1301 State St. and is closed on weekends; Jane Austen actually wrote “Pride and Prejudice” in 1796 and 1797, but it wasn’t published until 1813.