Believe it or not; and aware as you rare of my propensity towards Uber Techno Geekdom I’m sympathetic to your belief in the latter. I consider myself, at heart: A Thoreauvian…that is, one who agrees with the lifestyle made famous by Henry David Thoreau a man who praised nature, simplicity and the importance of living an authentic, deliberate life.
In the past two episodes, prompted by Dr. George Sheehan, we learned about the importance of “knowing thyself”. It sounded kinda silly to me at first, until I pondered the idea oh, for about a decade.
I’ve dedicated much of my podcasting archive to the topic of Thoreau, all the way back to episode 55, recorded in July of 2006 titled “The Maine Woods of Thoreau”. There’s a reason for this. As a
I suspect, with deep suspicion, that you operate with a similar modus operandi.
“THIS IS NOT AN ECHO CHAMBER”.
Okay, well…that was…but your attendance with this podcast is not.
I think I’ve figured something out that was so ridiculously obvious, so stupidly simple that you should doubt, fellow runner, with great prejudice, my capacity for thoughtful, reasonable, logical and methodological decision making of the sort promoted by my pal, William of Ockham.
Normally, these podcasts of mine follow a basic skeptically skelital format: Premise, evidence Premise, evidence, Premise evidence conclusion. That's why I'm so amused by logical fallacies which fail, in every attempt, to successfully reason for a conclusion:
I heard a noise, it must be a ghost. I saw a light, it must be another ghost, I felt a cold breeze....ghost, ghost, ghost.
Yeah. Probably not though.
Today, I'm going to lead with the conclusion and point out the here to for stated ridiculously obvious premise and evidence. Shall we?
Here we go. My conclusion is this:
I am Steve Walker
Yeah...I know, right?
But this isn't just about me...clearly I must be making a bigger point about the form of ambulation so forcefully promoted by Mssr Thoreau. And that brings us to the first premise of this episode: There is nothing wrong with walking.
When I thought of myself as exclusively "a runner", as in my adopted Surname...I would take to the road without walk breaks. I'm a huge fan of, and consider myself a student of, the world class olympian Jeff Galloway. Every mile I've run since the winter of 1998, I give thanks to Jeff: his book On Running remains my "go to book" on the subject. Mr. Galloway promotes "walk breaks", a concept I didn't agree with until I tried it, and ran better and faster than ever before. Go figure.
So, of course there's nothing wrong with walk breaks, in fact: there's nothing wrong with walking on its own...we all know this, it's no surprise...but the self induced stigma that I brought upon myself...and I know there are some of your out there who feel that "purist mentality" when it comes to taking a walk break, or even going for a walk for it's own purpose: may struggle with the activity.
I'm here to say: don't worry, be happy. Walking is one of the first activities conducted by our Australopithecus ancestors...when we crawled down from the trees to move in an upright position...we didn't run first...we walked!
Our first steps as homo sapien children are not made in a dash, but in tepid, cautious off balance steps.
The second premise of this episode is thus: Walking may be a healthier form of motion than running.
Oh, I've done it now...Steve Runner the blasphemer. What am I saying? How can I say this? With a straight face?? I do so because it's true. Running is beautiful, elegant and fun...I get that, but walking is akin to hiking...and hiking is something that can make dreams come true.
Runners are prone to injury: Chondromalacia Patella, Plantar Fasciitis, Iliotibial Band Syndrome, Stress Fracture, Achilles Tendonitis, Patellofemoral pain syndrome, "La Mauvaise Chien"…this isn’t to suggest that walking will not incur it’s own list of injuries: but with less force exerted on the body, the severity and frequency will be considerably less.
Running burns about 2 and a half times more calories than walking; but how does it compare with walking visa vi your quality of life? I don’t know; I’ve been Steve Runner for over a decade now…I’ll have to get back to you on this: but what I want to make clear, AGAIN: is that I’m never going to discourage you from ambulation: that is, moving forward. Run, hop, skip, jump, ride your bike, scooter or wheelchair: I’m of the mind, backed by science: that human motion holds the key to health and happiness.
The third premise is: To walk is to hike, to hike is to saunter, and to saunter is to savor the universe.
Life is short, but it should be long enough: which is to say: it must not be rushed. You wouldn't open a 1938 Chateau Pétrus ("(Pay-tris") and guzzle it down in a Giant Slurpee cup...no, you'd decant it for an hour and slowly savor it from a stemmed Bordeaux Reidel at room temperature. I'm not making a case here against running, or more specifically distance running...but we shouldn't neglect the significance and value of savoring the world at a slower pace.
My fourth premise is: Distance is pleasure.
When I think about what I loved most about running, for me: distance was near the top of the list, along with peace of mind and self actualization. My marathon PR is 4:04:36…frustratingly close to a sub four hours: but it’s the 26.2 miles that I loved more than speed…it was the Distance Long Runs where I would record most of the early episodes of this podcast, that brought me the greatest satisfaction. “What did you do this weekend Steve?” someone would ask, and I’d answer with pride “I ran 20 miles on Sunday”.Let’s consider some of what Henry David had to say on the subject:
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks— who had a genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING, which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander.
They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean.
Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere.
For this is the secret of successful sauntering.
He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.
But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.
It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises.
Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps.
We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return— prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.
If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again— if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man— then you are ready for a walk.
Who am I?- My argument thus far has been a listing of the following evidence:
- There is nothing wrong with walking.
- Walking may be a healthier form of motion than running.
- To walk is to hike, to hike is to saunter, and to saunter is to savor the universe and
- I find pleasure in distance over speed.
Which leads me inexorably to the following conclusion: I am Steve Walker.
Friendly Fenway
The Pesky Pole, The Green Monster, the DiMaggio Flag Pole, the Triangle, the Yaz Door.
The Fisk Pole, the Red Seat of section 42, row 37, seat 21, Williamsburg, Duffy’s Cliff, the Citco sign.
The morse code initials of former team owners Tom and Jean Yawkey, painted vertically on the white stripes that separate the columns of the American League Scores on the Green Monster scoreboard
and the ladder: an honest to invisible flying spaghetti monster ladder to nowhere fixed to the green monster 13 feet above the ground near the upper left portion of the scoreboard…in fair territory.
Located in the Back Bay Fens on top of an ancient saltwater marshland, surrounded by Brookline Avenue, Landsdown Street, Van Ness Street and Jersey Street (a portion of which is now called Yankee Way) is Major League Baseballs oldest baseball stadium: the 105 year old: Fenway Park.
Opened in 1912 as the home of my beloved Boston Red Sox, Fenway is a shrine to to the game of baseball.
With a seating capacity of only 37,673 (the fourth lowest maximum capacity of any field in the Major League) it’s an intimate place to watch a game.
Those of us who love baseball, consider Fenway to be an oasis from a tumultuous world: a place to escape the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. For about 3 hours and nine innings of sport, all focus is on the play.
Above the right field grandstand, you’ll see 10 retired numbers from some of the greatest ball players to ever play the game: Number 1, Bobby Doerr, Number 4 Joe Cronin, Number 6 Johnny Pesky, Number 8 Captain Carl Yastrzemski, Number 9, Ted Williams, Number 14 Jim Rice, Number 26 Wade Boggs, Number 27 Carlton Fisk, Number 45 Pedro Martinez and Number 42 Jackie Robinson.
There are more important things going on in the world, beyond these green walls. War, famine, suffering, global warming, injustice, desperation as well as kindness, struggle for what is right, aide to those in need and an inexhaustible perseverance of the human species…but we are allowed a break from that tiresome, horrifying reality: we are permitted to watch a game played in a field by a team of athletes who are doing their part to take our minds away from the real world…even if for just a few hours, in at least nine innings. I take comfort in this.
Katie Casey saw all the games,
Knew the players by their first names.
Told the umpire he was wrong,
All along,
Good and strong.
When the score was just two to two,
Katie Casey knew what to do,
Just to cheer up the boys she knew,
She made the gang sing this song:
Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd;
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don't care if I never get back.
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win, it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game.
Knew the players by their first names.
Told the umpire he was wrong,
All along,
Good and strong.
When the score was just two to two,
Katie Casey knew what to do,
Just to cheer up the boys she knew,
She made the gang sing this song:
Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd;
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don't care if I never get back.
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win, it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game.
I’m Steve Walker, reminding you that solvitur ambulando.