608 the magic of having no car
What world are we talking about? Why the walker's world of course. That little known globe we all live upon, but barely tread upon.
Let me start with full disclosure. I own a car. It's a work truck. Technically my wife went to the dealership and all that stuff, but my name is on the papers various places and it's parked outside my house and I can use it pretty much whenever I want to, so yeah, I have a car. Or at least we have a car.
But for years of my life, I lived without a vehicle. Sure up until 16 I was forced to be car-free, but I'm talking about the years that I've had a license but chose not to drive.
When I moved from suburbia into a big city, parking tickets were the first thing that told me to get rid of the vehicle I had at the time, a Volkswagen Vanagon. Then for a number of years, I rode a motorcycle around the city. You could generally avoid parking tickets, and traffic and congestion weren't really that big of a deal.
But then my motorcycle broke down. I don't remember which motorcycle it was, or what precisely was wrong with it, but I remember there were a few weeks that I didn't have it and instead I took public transit and walked everywhere...and I think that was the moment. This must have been sometime in the late '90s. I remember realizing 'I haven't had a vehicle in weeks and I'm doing just fine.' I didn't have any problems. Like, getting around with no issue. Maybe I even enjoyed it, I don't know, all I know is a few years later I got rid of the motorcycles, too.
In reality, there was really only a few months where I didn't have access to a vehicle. Like October of 2004 to May of 2005, that that was the really truly car free time of my life.
But, my name wasn't on any of the papers or anything like that. I can remember borrowing my wife's, my girlfriend at the time, I can remember borrowing her car a couple times in the five or six years before we lived together before we got married. There was also the car I owned for about 6 months while considering a move to LA. Anyway, all this is a really long way of saying, since I got rid of those motorcycles back in 2004, I considered myself to be car-free. I haven't been able to convince my wife to be car-free except for a few months in 2007 when she relied upon Zipcar.
Okay that's way too much personal history, we're not here to talk about my life, we're here to talk about a magical world that most people don't see.
Oh, you go for walks? You know all about what it's like to be a pedestrian, right?
No. No, you don't. Seriously, you don't. The world is much more complex than that, and understanding what it's like to be a pedestrian in modern America requires years of walking. Understanding what the fabric of car-free America is requires years of practice. To be able to truly look at a landscape as a walker requires being a walker, first and foremost, with years of...walking. There's no other way. If you stepped out of a vehicle to do some walking, you're not a walker, you're a temporarily inconvenienced driver.
Thinking about how to get around in this world as a walker, how to approach your daily life, requires completely reframing your mind and how you think.
The undoable becomes doable. You might wonder how you could ever live a car-free lifestyle while you're trapped in a suburban-car-dependent-hell-hole-landscape.
The answer is you're going to move. Yeah, that's it. You can't live a walkable lifestyle in an unwalkable place. It ain't going to happen. That's why all these Band-Aid technologies like ebikes and electric vehicles are such a big deal. Because you're screwed. If you own a house where you're car dependent, yeah, I'm sorry, that was your bad idea. You didn't see the writing on the wall.
But what of this magical place? The walker's world? We started this rant on such a positive note.
What can I tell you? It's right there. I'm sorry you can't see it. Maybe I could describe it to you a little bit. The walker's world is filled with alleyways, gardens, flowers, and beautiful things. It is a world of shortcuts, and shade trees, and subtle observations. It is a world of seasons, with the weather you can touch and feel. It is a world of life. It is a world of love, and intimacy, and patience. Time moves more slowly in a walker's world. Life takes on significance. Things matter.
And you get to know all the dogs in your neighborhood.
(Thanks to my brother and his little boy for visiting, the source of these photos.)
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