Walking As Escape And Exercise (1)

Camino, Spain

I have two doctors, my left leg and my right. GEORGE TREVELYAN

I've never been one for sitting around too long. I like to be up and about. As someone once said: We sit at breakfast, we sit on the train on the way to work, we sit at work, we sit at lunch, we sit all afternoon, a hodgepodge of sagging livers, sinking gall bladders, drooping stomachs, compressed intestines, and squashed pelvic organs. And as someone else said: If it weren't for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn't get any exercise at all.

Of course I'm sedentary much of the time like many of us. I sit at the computer, I sit at the dining table, I sit and read a book, I sit and watch TV. It's just that I can't sit down for long without getting terrible itchy feet. In fact I don't think we're meant to live overly sedentary lives. I know for a lot of us this is unavoidable at our place of work. That's why it's so important to try and balance things out by using our own two feet as much as we can during our leisure time.

The one thing I can't endure now is sitting for hours and hours in the car. This dates from a time when I used to drive 40,000 miles a year criss-crossing England as a freelance publishers' agent. I just couldn't go back to driving hundreds of miles each day. I have a phobia about it. (Sometimes, when I had a few free hours, I would turn off the motorway and take a walk in the countryside - carrying an umbrella, and dressed in a suit and smart shoes! I must have looked a trifle odd to other walkers passing by in cagoules, waterproof trousers and leather boots. But for me it was a necessary escape valve.)

The other sedentary activity I find difficult is sitting at dinner parties and social gatherings, or in circles of acquaintances or colleagues, and having to make polite conversation for hours on end. I'm not anti-social - but I'm not particularly effusively sociable either. When the boredom sets in and the gossip becomes too much to bear, my feet start tapping and my gaze turns to the world outside beckoning from beyond the window. How I would so love to be running in freedom out there! 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have identified with this. In a passage from the Eighth Walk in The Reveries Of The Solitary Walker Rousseau reminds us that, in order to appreciate a walk in nature with all its charms, you must leave behind the disturbance of the vain ideas of the drawing room, the fumes of self-love and the tumult of the world, and social passions and their sad retinue:

I remember perfectly that during my brief moment of prosperity these same solitary walks which are so delightful for me today were insipid and boring. When I was at someone's house in the country, the need to get some exercise and to breathe fresh air often made me go out alone; and sneaking away like a thief, I would go walk about the park or the countryside. But far from finding the happy calm I savor there today, I took along the disturbance of the vain ideas which had preoccupied me in the drawing room. Memory of the company I had left followed me into solitude. The fumes of self-love and the tumult of the world made the freshness of the groves seem dull and troubled the peace of the retreat. I fled deep into the woods in vain; an importunate crowd followed me everywhere and veiled all of nature to me. It is only after having detached myself from social passions and their sad retinue that I have again found nature with all its charms.

As well as being an escape from stress, boredom and social passions and their sad retinue, walking is also excellent for our health and well-being. It reduces the risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. It keeps joints fluid, and bones and muscles strong. It's also a strong antidote to depression and other mental health problems. And it's actually pleasurable too! These are wonderful benefits from such an easy, innocuous, free and democratic activity. 

Walking is the best possible exercise. THOMAS JEFFERSON

It is remarkable how one's wits are sharpened by physical exercise. PLINY THE YOUNGER

A vigorous five mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. PAUL DUDLEY WHITE

The Benefits Of Walking (And Getting Lost)

In his book, Walkers, Miles Jebb reminds us exactly why walking is medically good for us:

It stimulates the muscles which assist the heart in circulating the blood, thus increasing the heart's efficiency and decreasing such dangerous things as cholesterol levels, clot formations, blood sugar, and hormone production. Also, through the exercise of the lungs, it improves the oxgenising capacity which, among other things, activates the brain cells. Besides this, it triggers off responses from the nervous system, so releasing tensions and providing an outlet for pent-up emotions. And it slows down the ageing process of bone-demineralisation, particularly in the legs and feet. All these attributes are more than ever important today when most urban people are overstimulated and underactive and grossly neglect their legs, those massive limbs which constitute over a third of normal body weight. Walking is thus the simplest and easiest way of keeping fit; and a brisk walk of around 4 miles an hour consumes about four times as much energy as a slow stroll, and about half as much as a moderate jog or run.

A little further on in the book, Jebb cites George Trevelyan, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who advocates the merits in walking alone, walking by night, and even losing one's way (!) He extols the usefulness of walking in the solution of personal and psychological crises, and of walking as medicine. Trevelyan's Essay On Walking begins like this: I have two doctors, my left leg and my right ...

I particularly like the idea that 'losing one's way' can somehow be beneficial - a good and valuable experience rather than a confusing and stressful one. I've often thought this myself. Indeed, I've been lost more times than I care to mention - not completely lost, but vaguely lost, a wee bit lost. Which, I think, is a rather pleasurable state to be in.

On my walks I'm frequently too lazy to keep looking at a map, and my map reading skills are more basic than refined, should we say. However, as long as you have a general idea where you are, and as long as you are not in a potentially dangerous situation - such as in the high mountains with night or bad weather approaching - being 'lost' for a while can be fun. You can call up all those forgotten, ancestral skills - navigating by the sun, moon, stars, and wind direction, interpreting the lie of the land with the physical senses rather than blindly and uncritically following some pre-prepared route or map. You suddenly become active rather than passive, a little more alive, more finely-tuned to what's going on around you. There's a raw immediacy, a delicious frisson in your interaction with the world which you don't get to the same extent if you stick religiously to a pre-planned route come hell or high water - and then panic if you accidentally stray.

In yesterday's post on Taormina I talked of 'intuitively guessing' my way back from the Virgin of the Rock into town. This kind of experience - when you're not really lost but are relying on instincts and split-second route choices to get you where you want to be - is a really attractive one, I find, and one I relish. Such tempting, serendipitous pathways can lead to secret, unexpected places you might never have found on the map, and you can have a really exciting adventure by following their siren calls.

I'm reminded of John Keats' concept of Negative Capability, which he defines as the state when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Sometimes you just have to suppress the intellect, the rational organising mind, for a while ... and go for a walk ... with only a fuzzy idea about where you are going ...