“What have you been up to lately?”
“Well, I’ve been doing a lot of walking.”
[silence]
“Okay…why?”

This is how many of my casual conversations have started this summer. I answer differently depending on how well we know each other, or how much we’ve had to drink. But the fact remains: I don’t have a simple answer to this simple question. It might be more obvious if I were living in a more pedestrian-friendly city, or if I didn’t have a working car or bike. But that idea that in the last few months I’ve been doing more and more walking in San Diego, the city I was born in and lived around for the majority of my life, has proved a bit odd for some. After all, it’s not as if I’ve been trying to acquaint myself to a new city, which in the past I’ve preferred to do on foot. Nor am I looking for a good form of exercise. I respect the fact that some people find walking to be their ideal fitness solution, but it isn’t exactly the most time-efficient workout plan.

Yet I have my reasons for walking, and as varied as they may be, I’ll try to list them here, followed by a brief explanation for each.

It’s cheap. So far my investment in my hobby has consisted in a pair of walking shoes that the foot specialist (shoe salesman) fit my foot and stride. My options were limited when I asked for the less-flashy pair, but I like what I wound up with and have already been getting good mileage out of them. The only other investment came by way of a Camelbak graciously gifted by my girlfriend who is slowly growing more tolerant of my walking habits. Of all the perks that come with this walking pack, I’m getting to love the fact that it allows for easy access to 3 liters of bottle-free water-sipping. This gear has made getting around a city with privatized parking and little priority on providing public transportation for its residents drastically cheaper.

I don’t have to. It’s a political act in itself insofar as it defies convention. Whatever privilege or power I may possess is drastically reduced in the act of walking. Even without cars, few people would choose to walk longer distances when bikes and public transportation are an option. So choosing to walk miles on end through urban and suburban areas when I can afford not to verges on the absurd. The simple act of walking gets more complicated in cities built for cars and in a culture of fear that keeps pedestrians indoors. The only people I’ve come across on the same routes and putting in the same mileage have typically been pushing shopping carts toward the nearest recycling center or chosen place of rest. Few recreational walkers I pass bother giving me the obligatory hello, most likely because with my backpack, sweat and scruff I must look somewhere between a transient and a lost tourist. My presence on the streets makes little sense and turns few heads, making me even more invisible.

It offers distractions and challenges. Akin to Debord’s theory of the Dérive, some of my best walks are those where I allow myself to drift, or be “drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters [I] find there.” It comes with an acceptance of the limited role of chance in determining where my walks will take me. On the other side of this, I started some of my walks with predetermined restrictions in time and distance, in the quota of photos I insist on collecting. Walks of these sort I will do my best to announce here with the hope that others may want to amble or trek along with me.

It satisfies the historian in me. There’s no better way of unearthing the historical layers of a city than by navigating it by foot. Sometimes my walks start with a urge to see an old building or district, or to travel an old route. Walking through these boundaries gives one a better sense of how these places are connected by space and spirit and time. Obviously, the older a city, the more clear apparent this becomes, which gives cause to many people asking why I’m so fascinated by young San Diego’s urban landscape. But I’m drawn to the neglected and banal as much as the restored and original. There is an element of radical nostalgia ingrained in anyone today who chooses to walk their hometown as a way of retaining some sense of their roots.

It gives me the solitude I need in order to think. I don’t always walk alone, and have had some of my most memorable walks with others, but there is no denying the value in a solitary walk. The sense of freedom that comes from walking alone can seldom be found elsewhere. I often use my walks to give my head a rest from a day of studying, and to generate ideas for writing. Hey, it seemed to work wonders for so many others (Rousseau, Wordsworth, Woolf, et al), so why shouldn’t it work in some remote way for me.