When I changed jobs nearly seven years ago, the commute got a lot better. My current office is five blocks from home — an easy, 10-minute stroll.
On most days, I walk to work. Transportation in Louisiana usually means automobiles, so pedestrian commuters stand out. When I first started walking to work, kind neighbors pulled over and offered me rides, assuming my car was in the shop. Now, they know that my morning is going as planned.
I’ve become accepted as part of the familiar scenery: The Man Who Walks to Work.
As summer closed this year, contractors began reworking two crosswalks on my route to make them easier for pedestrians to navigate. I was happy to get the help, though the construction made the sidewalks temporarily off-limits. I drove to work in the meantime, which seemed silly for such a short distance.
Getting back behind the wheel reminded me why I’ve enjoyed commuting on foot so much. Walking has been so much slower that it’s revealed things I’d have missed from a car window.
I’ve noticed houses and yards that were there all along, apparently invisible to me for years as I breezed through the neighborhood in my SUV. Last year, I watched the daily progress of a young couple who had bought an old home and were slowly renovating it themselves. Seeing their hard work and ingenuity each day encouraged me to be my best self at the office.
Their freshly reimagined house, with its smart new roof and bright front door, continues to renew my sense of possibility.
I’ve seen other wonders not obvious from in front of a dashboard.
A neighbor once left a complimentary basket of homegrown citrus near the base of her driveway, the fruit a gift to passersby. That lovely gesture of greeting as I walked to work pointed me toward the basic goodness that endures in a broken world. On three different walking commutes, I’ve befriended prodigal dogs, and reconnecting them with their owners made me smile.
A walker’s world involves the close and particular, which can be different from the exaggerated universe of social media. I usually feel better about life as a walker than as an online wanderer, and I’m grateful for the gifts that these journeys on foot have brought me.
For a magazine story I’m publishing this winter, I recently interviewed Henry Schaffer, a retired professor who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. When pandemic shutdowns prevented him from visiting the gym, Schaffer tried walking instead. Although he’d lived in the same neighborhood for decades, the walks were a window into things that had long escaped his attention.
“There were monuments. There were gardens. There were all sorts of things,” Schaffer told me. “It became a compulsive hobby. What could I discover next?”
My neighborhood’s sidewalks are open again, and I’ve resumed my walks to work. I’m also wondering just what I’ll discover next.
Email Danny Heitman at danny@dannyheitman.com.