6:00 A.M. And I search quietly for my shoes, my keys, my cane and my cell phone. Living in an apartment with two people who have an allergic reaction to mornings, I’ve mastered the art of quiet living.
Once I’ve gathered my things, I slip quietly out of the house, and leave my wife and daughter to dream for a few more hours while I take a walk.
The sun will begin to rise in a few minutes as I head east. My walk will take me from the small town of Lafayette, California to the city of Walnut Creek. The distance is about five miles, and I’ll make it in just about ninety minutes.
Down the hill of Orchard Hill Court to second Street, then a short jaunt to Mount Diablo Boulevard, and I’m on the first leg of this normal weekend excursion.
Lafayette, with a population of maybe 25,000, is predawn quiet. Few cars pass me as I walk. In just a few minutes, I’ve hit my stride, and established a rhythm that allows me to clear my head of any troubling thoughts. I obey the few traffic signals I encounter. I’m aware of any cars on the streets I cross, and wave them on. I’m in no hurry.
This first leg of my walk, taking me from the heart of the small town to where the sidewalk quite literally ends, is, I guess, about a mile, and I arrive at Pleasant Hill Road about fifteen minutes later. I’ve passed the Park Lafayette HOtel, a 7/Eleven, a Dodge dealership, even a cemetery thus far, but no people on foot.
At Pleasant HIll Road, I head south, passing Hungry Hunter Steakhouse before I reach the onramp for HIghway 24. This is where the sidewalk truly ends. I’ll be walking in the bike lane for the next couple miles.
There aren’t many streets to cross along this stretch of the walk, so whatever is on my mind is free to percolate. Whether it’s a work situation, or something happening at home, now is the time that I get to mull it over, pick it up, turn it this way and that, and make whatever arguments that I might think of.
It amazes me at times that I can be so internalized, and yet so outwardly aware, at the same time, but I’ve gotten used to this paradox by now. I’ve been an urban distance-walker since I was eleven, and my father had the first of two heart attacks. As part of his recovery, he began walking everyday. At first the distances were short, but they grew in length as he recovered, and soon he--and then we--were walking five miles on a Saturday or Sunday morning.
We were the morning people of the family, he and i. it was the time we shared, whether it was breakfast or a walk.
In my teens I came across a book that would take this routine and turn it into a passion, even an obsession.
Being legally blind, as a child my world was constricted to an area of three streets east to west, and one block north to south. But as I grew, I began exploring further and further afield. Of course, I didn’t ask for permission: i just walked. I ventured across first one boulevard boundary, then the other, until I was walking alone on the same route my father and I had done a few years earlier.
And then came the day I received and read Peter Jenkins’s book, A WALK ACROSS AMERICA.
I had never head of someone walking across America. That was an entire continent. The idea blew me away.
And I wanted to do it, too.
I was sixteen, I think, when I read that book. And one weekend, my parents were getting ready to go to a neighbor’s wedding, and they asked me what I was going to do for the day.
“Take a walk,” I said.
And I did. But first, I caught a bus.
I started walking from Sherman Oaks Galleria, and started south on Sepulveda Boulevard.
I didn’t have a destination, really. I just wanted to walk, to see where the street went, and to see what was out there, up there in the hills that served as the southern limits of the San Fernando Valley.
So I walked.
My first idea was to walk as far as Mulhulland Drive.
I reached that point, but first had to learn--remember--how to navigate along a busy street where no sidewalks were built. And I had to pass through a tunnel, with cars whizzing past at 40 miles an hour.
Once I reached Mulhulland, I decided that I didn’t want to stop, so I changed my destination to Willshire Boulevard, and kept moving.
Four hours later, I reached “civilization” again, where I boarded a bus that brought me back into the valley, back to the Galleria, and where I caught a second bus for home.
When I returned home, my parents were back from the wedding. My mother asked me where I’d gone, so I told her.
“Did you hear where she went,” she asked my father in astonishment.
At that point, my parents probably thought I’d lost my mind. Instead, what I’d lost was my fear of the unknown.
Fourteen years, and hundreds of walks, hundreds of miles later, I’m walking along Pleasant Hill Road, heading for Olympic Boulevard, which leads me into the heart of Walnut Creek. And if I wanted it to, it would lead me straight to Barnes & Noble where I could easily spend an entire day among the books. But this morning--it’s maybe 6:45 by this point, the store and its cafe won’t be open, so I’ll make my way to the Walnut Creek BART station instead.
At Olympic Boulevard, I turn east again, facing the risen sun that had been to my left, and thus not in my eyes until now. I can take my pick of the north or south side of the street here. The north side will sprout sidewalks sooner, but the south side bike lane is wider, so I usually chose that side of the street for this next short leg of my trek.
Walnut Creek is a bigger city, and by now there are more cars. There may be some bicyclists, even the occasional jogger to greet me with “Passing on your left.”
Tice Valley Boulevard comes, and I turn left, heading north on the final, shortest, leg of the walk. It’s only seven or eight blocks from here to the station, and it’s sidewalks all the way
Finally, I reach the BART station, so I fish in my pocket for my ticket, run it through the machinery at the fare-gate, and walk through. Up the escalator, and out onto the platform, where I wait, sometimes just minutes, sometimes longer, until the train comes, and I take the five-minute trip back to Lafayette.
By the time I return home, and open the door on the still sleeping family, it might be 8:00. No one else within has awakened, but my day is already revved up, so I grab a Diet Coke and settle down in the living room. I turn on the stereo low, and see what NPR has to say, or tune to the local country music station and relax my muscles.
