A Year of Nothing but Dumb Little Walks

Every day during the pandemic, rain or shine, I bundle myself up and go on a dumb little walk. Most days I do this twice—morning and night, whether I want to or not, like a little Victorian child whose strict governess believes in good, clean air and plenty of exercise. I’m not alone in this: A survey of American adults last summer found that 83% of people said that they had taken a walk outside in the last week; 40% said their walk was more than an hour long.

My walk is the main activity of my day. It’s the big event, stretched uncomfortably over the space that was once occupied by coffees with friends, birthday brunches, dating, dinners, and parties. These walks are boring and directionless, a sorry replacement for what was once a life full of other people. And still, I don’t look forward to giving them up when my calendar fills up again. They make me feel alive and rooted in the world, in a way nothing else does.

A walk is an act of extreme simplicity. To be able to go on one, you have to acknowledge that you have very, very similar needs to that of a dog. Attempts have been made to dress this up. National Geographic named walking “the perfect pandemic activity.” The New York Times chronicled the “walk-tail party.” Today claimed that walking keeps couples from breaking up. On TikTok, the “main character walk” and the “hot girl walk” amassed armies of millions. Countless articles exclaim over walking as a miracle cure, extolling the activity of putting one foot in front of the other the way style writers used to venerate French women for how well they pull off plain black clothing.

I have pandemic walking privilege. I’m in San Francisco, with its wide streets and majestically landscaped lawns and rolling nature preserves. The gateway to the Pacific Ocean yawns across from the bench where I slump, pausing for a phone break. This feels like an affliction particular to our time: getting fully dressed, going outside, and looking at Instagram.

Despite the arresting natural beauty, it feels as though, were I to walk just 10 paces beyond my usual stopping point, I might reach out and find that the horizon is a solid wall. During the pandemic, some things we had accepted as reality crumpled. Every single person’s future became shrouded in a fog of uncertainty. And yet! Here comes a large man, without a mask, jogging directly into my path. Some things never change.

I experience, while walking during a global pandemic, what I can only call road rage. Animal-like, I become viscerally aware of the distance between me and every other person, alive with fury at any encroachment. The presence of billions of invisible particles, real and imagined, makes every moment pregnant with possible tragedy.

If I walk behind someone, am I in their germ path? I hold my breath as a toddler passes by, I step into the street to avoid the invisible spray of a jogger’s breath, even if it means walking into oncoming traffic. I can swing from mask-crusader to anti-masker in the space of a block: If I have my mask off for a moment, it’s reasonable; if someone else does it, it’s proof of the banality of evil. On a narrow road I walk toward another young woman, and in perfect synchronicity from one foot away, we both step off the sidewalk to let the other pass, and then back on, and then back off, and then both laugh. It’s as if I am encountering myself in a mirror.

Every walk contains a full program of activities. I hit every mini community library in my neighborhood—each, somehow, full of looseleaf magazine recipes from 15 years ago. I pee behind a tree. I feel a strong urge to buy something. Ten minutes into my walk and I have become the woman in the math meme, and my calculations are about whether or not I can buy a $38 candle. I listen to a podcast, and then pause the podcast and turn on a song, and then turn off the song and turn on a new podcast, and then stop to google something.

I attempt to learn a new language while walking. My audio language learning app exclusively teaches me outdated phrases: “Can you tell me where the internet cafe is?” “I need to use the payphone,” and “I am going on vacation.” I FaceTime my friends and then, energized with an almost physically painful disgust at the sight of my own face, I snap, “Please call me back on the phone,” even though I called them. I hike up a hill. I think about how as a woman I have a full-time side gig of hating my body, but right now my ass is looking more amazing by the second, carved into an increasingly fantastic shape as I climb the hill. It must be so incredible to stand behind me, like watching an artist at work on a sculpture. How lucky, how fortunate, for anyone in the vicinity.

In the winter I zip myself into a coat that falls below my knees and shuffle through the streets like a runaway bride in a mermaid gown. The virus in California mutates into something that scientists say is even more infectious and even more deadly. I double-mask, waddling through the streets hyperventilating lightly, repeating a phrase that means, “I am going on vacation to France on Friday!” I have a pocket-size computer that can conjure information about any topic in any language in a second, and I have a homemade cloth contraption strapped over my face to prevent sickness and death.

It is spring. I start going on three walks a day. I get overly self-congratulatory about my walking and look up walking across America, in case that is something I can do after I get the vaccine. It is not recommended.

In the early days of my walks, I watched a couple on my street holding a hound puppy in their arms, all sloppy limbed and giant eyed. They set her down, and I watched her take her first tentative steps. Now the puppy is more than a year old, and she bounds down the street, the size of a panda bear. She doesn’t worry about anything, I imagine. She feels only how good it is to breathe in the fresh air, how natural it is to move her body, to mix with people.

As the weather gets ever warmer, there are more dogs outside, more children playing. There are more people to navigate around, yes, but they’re my people, people who are trying to move their little animal bodies, to follow the rules, to be together in safety. Walking isn’t some fabulous discovery. I think the discovery is how good it feels to try to keep yourself and other people alive, no matter how dumb, how boring, how wonderfully simple your activity is.

In fact, I have to put this aside now—it’s still light out, and if I hurry, I can get another walk in.

Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour. You can follow her on Twitter.

Originally Appeared on Glamour