The Perception of Distance; or Walk More!

 While recently reading David Owen's The Green Metropolis, I learned that people are less likely to walk than drive in rural and suburban areas not just because there are fewer hassles involved in non-urban driving, but also because of distance perception. The same distance on a rural road where houses are few and far in between, or even on a suburban street where shops are separated by big parking lots, will seem longer than it will in a city where buildings are clustered closely together and human activity is more bustling. To put this theory to the test, I used the Google Maps distance measurement tool (yes I am a map geek) to assess some familiar routes in my life.

Distance to the subway from my old apartment: 1/3 mile
Distance to the subway from my current apartment: 1/2 mile

Distance from my college dorm room to the music building on the opposite side of campus: 1/3 mile
Distance from senior housing to music building: 1/2 mile

Distance from a cafe to my friend's apartment on the outskirts of a village upstate: 7/8 mile

I was surprised that the length of my morning subway walks in Brooklyn are about the same as my former walks to class. All those times I rushed to class, past scattered campus buildings across lawns and tree-lined paths, the route felt so long! In comparison, walking the same distance past brownstone after brownstone to the nearest subway stop feels like a relatively short stroll so I can get where I'm really going. In fact, when I lived in senior housing with my car nearby, I used to drive to class sometimes to save time. I can't imagine ever driving to the subway!

When I was upstate a couple months ago visiting a friend, in a very walkable town, I noticed a distinct lack of people on the street. Yes it was cold, but fifty miles south, the cold didn't stop New Yorkers from walking where they needed to go. Rather than have my friend pick me up from a cafe, I had a pleasant walk to her apartment, getting some exercise along the way. I had no idea when I set out how long the walk really was - I initially perceived it would be quite a ways to go from one end of town to the other, but it actually ended up being a manageable 15 minute walk, or about 7/8 mile, something I wouldn't balk at trekking in New York City.*

I believe that cars play a role in distance perception, as well. The more you drive, the more you get used to the short time it takes to drive everywhere, so of course walking seems to take a long time in comparison. Yes, it may take longer to walk, but there are many benefits. For example,  money saved on gas and parking. Less fuel wasted from the earth's dwindling supply of peak oil. More exercise means less need to drive to the gym to burn the calories you could work off by walking or biking.

Two ladies in particular have written about their own inspiring experiences with pedestrianism: Lisa the EcoYogini walks 45 minutes to and from work in negative degree weather. Erin the Conscious Shopper walks with her children, stroller, and gear in tow for two hours several times a week.

So I'd like to challenge you: Next time you're headed somwhere less than a couple miles away that you'd normally drive to, try walking instead!

*In fact, just this weekend I accumulated 6 miles of walking without intending to over the course of the day, between walking the dog and getting around while out on the town. Proving another one of David Owen's points that urbanites often spend more time outside then their rural counterparts who go from indoors to car and back again.

via flickr

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Recommended Reads

I have always been a voracious reader, the kind who doesn't want to put a book down until it's finished. I was the little girl who read aloud to my kindergarten class, stayed up past bedtime to read Laura Ingalls Wilder, systematically devoured my father's science fiction collection, and always tried to read in the car even though it made me car sick. I now average a couple books a week (according to my library history, I've read forty books in the last four months!) thanks to ninety minutes of daily reading time on the subway (another bonus of public transportation over car commuting). On days when I'm without a book, my train ride seems unbearably boring.

I love the thrill of carrying home books, stacking them on my bedside table, and flipping through the pages. Unlike some people who read electronically via kindle and rarely finish the books they start (I don't get those people). So of course it was easy for me to join esb & cevd's campaign to read the printed word, to make sure we're still reading real books in this age of increasingly shorter electronic communication.

I've read a lot of mediocre books lately (I don't understand how publishers can afford to throw book deals at every tom-dick-and-harry blogger, resulting in a sea of nothing-more-than-adequate books that can't be making much in sales). But here are a few diamonds in the rough that I recommend - books that are worth the risk, as Amanda of First Milk puts it so eloquently, of "walking into another land and coming back changed, or not ever quite returning at all."




Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
I really, really loved Time Traveler's Wife, and I'm not sure that story can be topped, but Audrey Niffenegger's second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, is another well-written supernatural love story. This book pulled me in with its tales of sisters, ghosts, and romance, frought with mysterious twists and turns and a haunting ending.




The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood has invented with brilliant detail a dystopian post-apocolyptic reality that serves as a warning to humanity and keeps you reading to the end to see what hope lies ahead. It runs in tandem with its companion book, Oryx & Crake, but I liked The Year of the Flood and its sympathetic characters better. I must also thank agirl for getting me on this Atwood kick.




Comfort Me With Apples by Ruth Reichl
Comfort Me With Apples tells the beginning of Ruth Reichl's career as a restaurant critic, alongside the dissolution of her first marriage and the passionate start of her second. Her talent for writing about food and life with relish make it clear why she became a successful food writer. She has written other memoirs, which I will now add to my library list.




The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
This is an old favorite of mine. It had been so long that I forgot how the story ended and it was like rediscovering the book all over again; I love it when that happens. The Dispossessed is technically science fiction, but it is so much more than that - it is actually a captivating comparison of an anarchist/communist society versus a capitalist society that fully explores anarchy's capacity for utopia as well as its pitfalls.

"You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free - possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns."

Have you taken the pledge yet? And have you read anything good you'd like to share?

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In the Silvery Polar Night

Last night found me walking three quarters of a mile uphill through the snow at 3am. After a full and merry night at a friend's holiday holiday party in the south slope, back to the north slope we had to go. No cabs were running; we didn't trust clumsy buses on the slippery roads, so there we were. My new waterproof boots holding up their end of the job, I felt invincible and alive and keenly aware of my breathing and pounding heart that propelled me forward for much-needed exercise. I couldn't help but keep walking and walking, looking back every so often at my partner lagging nearly a block behind.

In the unusual stillness of the night, I wasn't in New York City as I know it, where I have never seen such a thick layer of fresh clean snow, but rather in the magical New York City depicted in Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale.

People were thrilled by the sudden onset of so great and (they thought) so unprecedented a winter. Even those who feared and hated cold weather and snow were quickly seduced by the silvery polar nights, and joined in a medieval pageant of sledding, gatherings about the fire, and evenings under the stars. It was as if the occasional joyful paralysis that winter sometimes lays at the foot of Christmas had come for good. Layers of clothing made the flesh more mysterious and enticing than it had been in many a year, a certain courtliness was restored, and the struggle against the elements reduced everyone in scale just enough for people to realize that one of the fundamental qualities of humanity was and would always be its delicacy. The entranced citizens did not go to so many places or work as hard as they usually did, but they lived far better than they had ever lived.

- Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin, page 600**

And today I never left the apartment, but stayed inside all day to bake Christmas cookies. In fuzzy socks and a fleece bathrobe because I don't think the heat turned on once today (wtf). I hope you all enjoyed our snowy weekend.

** It is an EPIC tale of love, morality, fantasy, and New York City from one turn of the century to the next. I still don't really understand everything that happened, but it features truly beautiful prose.

via themikebot flickr stream

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