Why Walk

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Just five minutes of exercise in a "green space" such as a park can boost mental health, researchers claim. There is growing evidence that combining activities such as walking or cycling with nature boosts well-being.

Take a look at the May 2010 BBC report

NOW - Imagine the benefits of a few weeks walking in the wilderness !

Walking restores the world and humanity by Bill Bunn

There is only one way humans are made to move. They are basically made to walk. There are many other ways to get around. You can canoe, for instance. Or paraglide. Or jog or swim. But these modes of transportation are not the staple of human mobility. Walking is unavoidable, a necessity for those with two working legs.

The entire scheme of nature, and the human’s place within it, is built around the understanding that humans use their legs to move. It’s a great unspoken assumption. The earth expects humans to walk.

Wildlife expects humans to walk, and it has trouble with other forms of transport. North American drivers kill one million animals each day, nearly 12 animals per second. 400 million animals are killed by drivers in North America each year. Almost two million deer are killed on North American roads yearly.

According to National Institute for Urban Wildlife and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 50 to 100 million birds are killed each year by vehicles. Research reports that road kill is a significant factor in the decline of amphibians. Motorized transport dramatically reduces insect populations.

Though humans invented vehicles, we have trouble understanding them, too. The 210 million vehicles on North America’s four and half million miles of roads cause 47 thousand human deaths a year. But, how many mammals, birds, amphibians and humans would be hurt or killed if humans only walked?

All creatures, including the human, understand walking. Walking is a primal transport, embedded in the human psyche, expected by the world’s creatures, and the land itself, evidence of an ancient arrangement between humans and their world.

Walking serves as a bridge between other humans and other animals. Humans tend to walk between two and five miles per hour – an average of around three miles per hour. Dogs walk at speeds between two and four miles per hour. Camels walk an average speed of three miles per hour. Horses and mules, when walking, operate at speeds of three to four miles per hour. Elephant walk at four miles per hour. The old friendships between humans and some animals partly depend on a shared walking speed. A walking pace is the speed of community.

Though we don’t walk with many other animals, we could. Many other animals share a similar pace: bears, mice, ants, snakes, cats, or aardvarks. The ordinary human can keep pace with a puma, a zebra, a rhinoceros, or an American President.

Yet, humans are obsessed with the top speeds of each living thing. Many sources announce, for example, that the elk has a top speed of 25 miles an hour. Very few note the walking speed: between three and five miles per hour.

As part of that obsession, humans find ways to travel faster every year. Usain Bolt’s recent Olympic sprint averaged 23 mph. When he sprints, he is unique, and alone. When he walks, any walking human can keep pace. Top speed emphasizes difference.

Mechanically assisted types of transport alienate humans from their planet, and from one another. The fastest humans, currently, ride in the space shuttle traveling at 18,685 mph in orbit. 18,685 miles an hour is an unearthly speed. Top speeds separate us from one another and alienate us from the earth. Lower speeds unify us and bind us to our planet.

For those who like speed, there is a price to pay. One cost is tension. The mind, when you drive, is consumed for the most part in the exercise of managing extra speed, paying attention, watching for potholes and pedestrians. Even jogging requires more attention than walking.

Researchers report that the faster you travel the more tension you experience. A number of studies report, for example, that when speed increases, negative emotions intensify. This factor alone plays a large role in what has been termed “road rage.”

Another cost is a diminished sense of context. When you walk, your field of vision is nearly 180 degrees, 140 degrees of which feeds your awareness. The Optometrists Association of Australia reports that human field of vision “is reduced with increasing speed.” For example, at 100 kilometers an hour, field of vision contracts to 40 degrees.

Higher speeds cause peripheral vision to “smudge” which hampers object recognition, and lowers response times. Motorists traveling 25 miles per hour or faster have more difficulty determining whether a pedestrian is ready to cross a street, and in consequence have more difficulty deciding whether they should slow down.

In other words, speed impedes thinking and decision-making. Thought depends on perception, but speed impairs it. Things “come out of nowhere.” collisions become inevitable.

But walking is a cure. When we walk we take our place in nature. We untie our minds and improve thought. We restore our humanity. So, walk. After all, it's what we were designed to do, and what our planet expects of us.

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Walking Quotations

If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk. ~Raymond Inmon

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

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. ~John Muir, 1913, in L.M. Wolfe, ed., John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, 1938

Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow. ~Henry David Thoreau

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time. ~Steven Wright

I have two doctors, my left leg and my right. ~G.M. Trevelyan

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing. ~Aldous Huxley

When you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the shoe leather has passed into the fiber of your body. I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. ~Wallace Stevens

After a day's walk everything has twice its usual value. ~George Macauley Trevelyan

I dream of hiking into my old age. ~Marlyn Doan

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning. ~Cyril Connolly

Solvitur ambulando, St. Jerome was fond of saying. To solve a problem, walk around. ~Gregory McNamee

A pedestrian is someone who thought there were a couple of gallons left in the tank. ~Author Unknown

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. ~John Muir

Thoughts come clearly while one walks. ~Thomas Mann

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. ~John Muir

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. ~Soren Kierkegaard

Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird. ~Jules Renard

You need special shoes for hiking - and a bit of a special soul as well. ~Emme Woodhull-Bäche

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see. ~John Burroughs

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," 1841

Nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas. ~J.K. Rowling, "The Egg and The Eye," Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2000, spoken by the character Mad-Eye Moody

People say that losing weight is no walk in the park. When I hear that I think, yeah, that's the problem. ~Chris Adams

How can you explain that you need to know that the trees are still there, and the hills and the sky? Anyone knows they are. How can you say it is time your pulse responded to another rhythm, the rhythm of the day and the season instead of the hour and the minute? No, you cannot explain. So you walk. ~Author unknown, from New York Times editorial, "The Walk," 25 October 1967

Make your feet your friend. ~J.M. Barrie

I'm the walkingest girl around. I like to work at it - really get my heart pounding. ~Amy Yasbeck

He who limps is still walking. ~Stanislaw J. Lec

There is this to be said for walking: It's the one mode of human locomotion by which a man proceeds on his own two feet, upright, erect, as a man should be, not squatting on his rear haunches like a frog. ~Edward Abbey

Walking isn't a lost art - one must, by some means, get to the garage. ~Evan Esar

Now shall I walk or shall I ride?"Ride," Pleasure said:"Walk," Joy replied.
~W.H. Davies

[We] live with our heels as well as head and most of our pleasure comes in that way. ~John Muir

Your body is built for walking. ~Gary Yanker

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I haven't got any special religion this morning. My God is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably don't need any other god. ~Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia, 1977

If you are walking to seek, ye shall find. ~Sommeil Liberosensa

The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk. ~Jacqueline Schiff

We live in a fast-paced society. Walking slows us down. ~Robert Sweetgall

Walking: the most ancient exercise and still the best modern exercise. ~Carrie Latet

The body's habituation to walking as normal stems from the good old days. It was the bourgeois form of locomotion: physical demythologization, free of the spell of hieratic pacing, roofless wandering, breathless flight. Human dignity insisted on the right to walk, a rhythm not extorted from the body by command or terror. The walk, the stroll, were private ways of passing time, the heritage of the feudal promenade in the nineteenth century. ~Theodor W. Adorno

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. ~Henry David Thoreau

A dog is one of the remaining reasons why some people can be persuaded to go for a walk. ~O.A. Battista

If you pick 'em up, O Lord, I'll put 'em down. ~Author Unknown, "Prayer of the Tired Walker"

Walking is good for solving problems - it's like the feet are little psychiatrists. ~Pepper Giardino

There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country. A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo. Even a bicycle goes too fast. ~Paul Scott Mowrer, The House of Europe

I represent what is left of a vanishing race, and that is the pedestrian.... That I am still able to be here, I owe to a keen eye and a nimble pair of legs. But I know they'll get me someday. ~Will Rogers

After dinner sit awhile, after supper walk a mile. ~English Proverb

If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish. ~Charles Dickens

Walking takes longer... than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. ~Edward Abbey, "Walking"

As a nation we are dedicated to keeping physically fit - and parking as close to the stadium as possible. ~Bill Vaughan

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-three today and we don't know where the hell she is. ~Ellen DeGeneres

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes my rage, forgetting everything.
~Pablo Neruda, translated

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. ~Henry David Thoreau

What really helps motivate me to walk are my dogs, who are my best pals. They keep you honest about walking because when it's time to go, you can't disappoint those little faces. ~Wendie Malick

Walking gets the feet moving, the blood moving, the mind moving. And movement is life. ~Carrie Latet

If you want to forget all your other troubles, wear too tight shoes. ~The Houghton Line, November 1965

The Americans never walk. In winter too cold and in summer too hot. ~J.B. Yeats

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for. ~Henry David Thoreau

The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk. ~Mark Twain

[Hiking] is the best workout!... You can hike for three hours and not even realize you're working out. And, hiking alone lets me have some time to myself. ~Jamie Luner

Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance. ~Author Unknown

The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand. ~Frederick L. Knowles