I've spent a lot of my life walking and no doubt many of you have too! What a simple pleasure that we too often take for granted! Through the act of walking we engage intimately with our surroundings, performing our places of residences and our local surrounds by traversing the 'runs and rills' we find ourselves in. We inscribe and re-inscribe our own embodied maps. Through this the places where we walk also inform who we are; they affect the shapes and habitual rhythms of our bodies.
[Martin Place, Sydney - AF]When I am in the city I walk faster. Walking through the Devonshire Street tunnel under Central Station I enjoy the mild exhilaration of cruising past and between people, overtaking and sliding through gaps that open around me. I imagine myself as something akin to a V8 Supercar (although stealthier and with less gaseous emissions!) with a similar sense of changing up and down gears. I see a gap, I push into second, third, fourth gear, slide through the gap and then knock back down to second. The tiles underfoot offer little resistance. I can forget my feet; I push from my gut and my shoulders. My legs might actually be propelling me, but in this state I am aware of them only as keeping up to the push of my body through the crowd. Research out of California State University has suggested that city walking speeds have increased by ten per cent over the past ten years. Perhaps the influence of modern transport together with the development of technology that allows for the rapid transmission of ideas and documents leaves our physical bodies straining to keep up in their wake.
As part of my performance practice (such as it is) I've spent a lot of time walking in rooms, with others. Just walking. You can learn a lot from just walking, about yourself, your environment, your relationships with others. Choose a room, clear it of furniture and walk. Avoid patterns. Walk perpendicular to the walls, walk parallel to the walls. Walk in a grid; walk in organic curves and spirals; walk back and forth along the same line. Stand still. Walk at different speeds. Enjoy smoothly transitioning between different speeds. Invite some friends to walk with you. Think about other things as you walk. Think about yourself and your body. How does your body move? What do you notice about the feeling of the air on your skin, the proximity between yourself and others, between yourself and the walls?
In the bush my walk is irregular and conscious. It's a thinking walk. Maybe 'thinking' doesn't have the right connotations ... It's a productive walk, a craft. My muscles and joints have to work out the country as they bring me into it. They lift me onto rocky steps and attempt to stabilise me on uncertain, slippery ground. I can't forget my feet and legs. I'm tied to them. I have to keep watching the ground in front and around them so as not to crash down onto it. If I'm encumbered with a heavy pack I find myself grounded, having to hold myself up as I move. Without a heavy pack the tension lessens; I'm unburdened and can scramble and leap ahead. This bush experience is more removed from the everyday. I associate walking in the bush as restorative and regenerative when compared with my everyday urban travels. Is it really?
I thought of this post as I walked, in the sun, to the shops earlier this afternoon. My spongy thongs kept my feet in a clumsy sympathy with the asphalt, the cracks in the concrete pavement and the lumpy grass of the nature strips. Maybe in the next post I'll think about shoes ...
Let me leave you with four photos of less everyday places I've enjoyed walking in. The first three are from a recent traversal of the Milford Track in New Zealand. The final photo is from the Jameson Valley in the Blue Mountains.
Where do you walk?
[Clinton Valley, NZ - BH]
[Mackinnon Pass, NZ -AF]
[Arthur River, NZ - AF]
[Looking towards Kedumba Crossing, Jameson Valley, NSW - AF]
1 comment:
Great post!
I walk quickly, navigating the traffic on city streets and seemingly endless tube station corridors. I walk patiently when the traffic in the corridors becomes a queue. I wander calmly through the park on my way to work. I stride beside rivers or canals.
I don't walk as much as I used to. I no longer move determinedly down Victoria Rd and King St. I no longer find my way through the bush, and only rarely adventure into forests, up cloudy ridges or over turnstiles and through the fields.
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