I’m a huge fan of the author Bill Bryson. If you haven’t read his hilarious, laugh-out-loud masterpiece “A Walk in the Woods” I won’t judge you….too harshly, but you really should read it. After twenty years abroad, he also agreed to write a weekly column of observations about moving back to the U.S. In one column he commented on how much Americans rely on cars and how little we walk. He referenced a university study that found 93% of all trips from home took place in an automobile.

As I pondered his humorous observations, I immediately thought of two recent stories related to his comments. On a hike in Norway, we met Sebastian and his mom. Sebastian was in the Swedish military, and as part of his training, actually had spent time in Tucson. One night, he and several of his friends decided to walk to a grocery. The first thing they found was that as a pedestrian, you couldn’t get there from here. There were no sidewalks and no crosswalks across the several lanes of traffic, only concrete barriers, ditches and fences. Sebastian and his mates took this as a personal challenge and actually found a way past all the obstacles and walked to the store and back. On their journey, they were stopped not once – but twice – by well meaning Tucson police who asked “Is there a problem?” After being assured their mission was purely domestic in nature, both officers helpfully offered “Would you like a ride?” Sebastian found it both amusing that people walking would attract such attention.

Second story: A few years ago a group of us hiked a goodly chunk of the John Muir Trail. One of the participants lives just outside of Green Bay, Wisconsin. In preparation, Phil loaded his backpack and hiked back and forth on a road with some sizable hills. When he shared with a friend that on a Saturday morning he had covered ten miles in this fashion, the friend asked “Why, is your car broken down?” No, Phil assured them, this was in preparation for a long backpacking trip. Unable to wrap their head around the concept, the friend pressed on. “Because if your car isn’t working, we have an extra we can loan you until you get yours fixed.” It helps to understand that in Wisconsin the basic food groups are cheese, meat in tubular form and beer (I say this with love as a proud Wisconsin native).

Both these stories, as well as Bryson’s comments, serve to highlight a problem. It is hard to swim upstream in a culture that prefers to float down the lazy river. And when communities make automobile travel not only the preferred, but the only possible form of travel, small wonder that we find it easier to “go with the flow.” Having said that, I’m not going to do anything drastic like give up my car…”you can have my car when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers”. This is also not meant to be a political thing. Bryson speaks sadly of a community out east that invested millions of dollars making its downtown pedestrian friendly – only to see pedestrians stay away in droves. Turns out people didn’t like having to walk from wherever they parked their cars in order to be pedestrians.

What I am going to do, and suggest, that I/we in one small way attempt to swim upstream. In the coming year I’m going to strive to embrace human power every single day. I’m setting the bar very low. My goal is to move either one mile or twenty minutes every single day. I’m not counting “steps” at work. (True confession – a lot of steps at work are to the kitchen area to see if someone brought in Dunkin’ Donuts, or homemade cookies, or leftover Halloween candy. Hey, I’m being honest here!) So that’s it. Move by human power every single day outside of work. I’m not going to save the planet or change the culture. But I actually did this a couple of years ago and made it all the way to April or May before breaking my streak. Several things happened during that streak. 1) I felt better. I exercise plenty, but making a point to get exercise every single day, even when I was sick or tired, ultimately made me feel better. 2) It became self-perpetuating. The longer the streak went on, the more I wanted the streak to continue, and the better I felt (see #1) And 3) It affected my decision making. Drive the car or ride the bike to work? If I ride the five mile round trip to work, I won’t have to anything else if I don’t work out that day.

While I harbor no illusions, it occurs that maybe 4) walking/riding won’t be so uncommon and out of the ordinary in our culture. While this probably happens less in Flagstaff than in some places, wouldn’t it be wonderful if people walking didn’t seem odd and attract the attention of police? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people didn’t assume your car was broken down if they saw you walking? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if towns become more pedestrian/biker friendly – not because a few people mandated it because it is something you should do it – but because that’s what people really did – and wanted? Oh well. Baby steps…starting January 1 who’s with me. I don’t have a catchy name or anything – maybe something like 365 Challenge. Call it what you will, but in 2019 let’s seize the carp!