I’m not in the mood to write a post on walking that won’t bore you all to tears, but I want to post on this before the articles go away into the archival depths of the New York Times online. Last weekend there was a lovely little pair of articles on walking in the city — New York City, of course, which I’ve only spent a few hours walking through. I’m a big fan of walking — at least as much through urban places as through more natural environs. I think that many of the sentiments mentioned in Nicole Krauss’s “The Walker and the Walk” and in Alex Marshall’s “The Extreme Boulevardier” can be applied to walking in many cities. While I’m a fan of public transportation (and even of driving in some settings), I don’t think either are nearly as exciting as walking through a place you want to be familiar with. I try to walk around my own city, and I almost make it a rule to walk when I travel.
As an added bonus to the articles themselves, they’ve served as a little springboard for future reading. I’ve ordered Krauss’s latest book, checked out Alfred Kazin’s memoir, and I have Marshall’s book towards the top of my list as well. I’m at least as interested in learning something from three people who can write compellingly about walking as I am in reading the books.
