In Praise of Walking

On becoming a neighborhood staple, shrinking your world back down to human proportions, and being reminded of the weather

This past summer, a new friend came over to our house. When Joseph opened the front door, he looked outside at the driveway and noticed there was no car parked there.

“I walked here!” He explained that he lived in the area and skipped the drive in favor of an evening stroll.

It turns out, this new friend walks a lot of places. To the grocery store, to work, to the new local brewery that just opened up down the street, and to our home for small group. When I first heard about his walking, I thought it sounded lovely but totally unattainable.

Walk somewhere? With all of our kids? There was no way.

Walking places sounded simultaneously leisurely and inconvenient. I knew it would be hard, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try it out and see if he was onto something. So we started adding walks more intentionally into our family routine.

During the day, I walked with the kids, a little caravan of bikes, strollers, and (sometimes complaining) preschoolers parading down the sidewalk. We walked to the grocery store for a few items. We walked to the restraunt around the corner for dinner on the patio, our dog in tow.

Cars are convenient, and most (if not all) of you reading this have at least one, if not two, parked in your garage or driveway right now. It seems a little odd to choose to walk somewhere and forgo the comfort of a vehicle that shields you from the elements and gets you to where you need to be significantly faster than your feet can move.

But after months of intentionally choosing walking as a mode of transportation, I want to shake you out of that convenience and get you outside. Here’s seven reasons I think we all need to walk more:

Walking limits your options and shrinks your world…

The reality of today’s hyper-digital world is that we have constant access to friends and strangers through social media. We’re also bombarded with the global news cycle on a daily basis, with in-depth knowledge of conflicts thousands of miles away.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t be connected to others or that empathy and action for injustice around the world are not worth pursuing. There is no denying that there are global conflicts. But there is also injustice and loneliness in our own zip code. Our neighbors are lonely and want someone to know them by name. When we leave the car in the garage and start walking, we have so many opportunities to share Jesus with the people who live on our street and in our neighborhood.

Yes, walking shrinks your world. For instance, there are eighty-three parks in our city. We’ve been to many of them in the seven years that we’ve lived here we all have our favorites. But if I decide to walk to the park with the kids, it immediately limits our options. We have the choice between two pocket parks that are about twelve minutes from our front door. And since one doesn’t have swings, it’s really not even a choice. We go to the park with the swings every time.

When Joseph and I get out for a date night (a rarity in this season, but someday soon!) there are countless options for a date night in Kansas City. But if we’re only walking, that limits the options significantly. We could go to the coffee shop around the corner, or take a longer stretch and try out that new brewery. But we’re not spending hours googling date night ideas because we already know the small selection within walking distance that to choose from. And I don’t know about you, but sometimes those limited options get us out the door a lot faster since we’ve avoided analysis paralysis.

You might live in an area where you don’t have great date night or park options that are walkable. But that might also stretch you creatively to explore what you can walk to. Or it might push you to advocate for improved walkability in your area. Or it might impact what you look for in a neighborhood, a community, and a city.

…but it also opens your eyes to things you’ve never noticed

Since we started walking more, I’ve become more aware of all of the lovely walking routes and spots around our neighborhood that I never noticed before.

A small local bakery that sells strawberry cream puffs and crepes is just an eleven minute walk away. We’ve driven past this sweet little spot hundreds of times since we moved into this neighborhood. The same is true with most of the shops in the small shopping center that’s in our backyard.

When a date night is limited to where we can walk, we start noticing all of the little dinner spots that we could walk to, or which streets have the best Christmas lights out for an evening walk together. And when we shop for groceries at the store right down the street from us instead of driving across town, we see our neighbors in the aisles.

But even if the walk is just to get out of the house and we’re not walking to something, we notice the details of neighborhood in new ways. We learn the colors of doors, the different breeds of dogs who bark at us as we walk by, the types of birds who sing from the treetops, the different shades of fall leaves on the ground, and the names of the neighbors a few doors down.

You become a neighborhood staple