On Walking

and leaving, and change

My favorite thing to do in Portland was walk to the library. I would get stoned in my bedroom, and pack my backpack with my likely overdue library book, maybe a few zines to hand off at Strange Maine or Abraxas, and a few other things that I definitely won’t use on my walk, but feel like I need to bring with me. From there, I would leave my apartment on Vesper Street, and walk up Munjoy Hill so I could start going down it. I j-walked Washington Ave as often as I waited patiently for the walk sign. I liked to be on the left hand side as much as I liked to be on the right. I would cross Franklin Avenue, never fast enough to make it across both walk-lights in the same go. Past city hall; past the construction happening at the Unitarian Church; until I got to the library. Often, once I had dropped my book in the deposit box, I would turn right back around and walk home.

While I was living in Portland, I was lucky to be living on peninsula. I had an unbelievably affordable apartment that was still three times my sister’s rent was when she lived in the neighborhood, about ten years before me. That same sister told me once that she loved that Portland was turning me into a walker. But living in Atlanta, ironically enough, was what turned me into a walker. Without a car, I would walk for hours around the city to go to public parks, to go to work, to go to weird events at the outdoor shopping mall. The pandemic turned me into a walker because it was the only morally neutral thing you could do outside of your house. But Portland was a place where I lived where I could walk everywhere.

I was lucky to live right at the edge of the Eastern Prom, and I would walk there too (especially if I were sad, or energized). I would walk around and watch the birds fly over the harbor, listening to Janet Jackson. I would walk through the little nature trail and, if the scent from the sewage plant wasn’t too strong, I could believe that I wasn’t in a city anymore.

I never felt unsafe walking alone at night in Portland - a sense of safety I protected with a sense of self righteousness. If I’m out walking alone at night, I thought, then other people will be inspired to do the same, and then there will be a lot of us walking home alone at night. I would walk home after class when I was in Salt, and after late nights tending bar at Space Gallery. Sometimes I would walk home from the Apohadion. One day I walked home from getting a tattoo at Fortune Teller, and I was so tired and drained from my two-ish three-ish hours of pokes that I felt like I was walking through a city made of gel getting home. When I moved to the West End, I thought it would be so nice to have a shorter walk home at night. But walking was always my favorite thing to do in Portland. To a friend’s house, to a show, to the library on a Sunday, just to drop off a book and walk home.

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I decided not to move back to Portland after moving to the MidCoast this year. I’d never planned to live there for very long, hadn’t really planned to live there at all. I’d done a lot of the things I’d hoped to do in my time there, and I hadn’t figured out how to do a few things that I wanted very badly to do. It was hard to find an apartment, it had gotten hard to find new people to go on dates with, it was hard to get a new writing project going. My little lizard died. It was time.

In the MidCoast, you drive. You drive an hour and a half to go to a party. You drive to the grocery store, to your friend’s house, and home after a long day at work. You drive to go on walks.

You walk along innumerable rivers, narrow and wide. You walk in the rain and the snow, and especially the bright sunshine. You walk with your friends, and on first & second & third dates, and by yourself. A good walk is the perfect hinge of the day, giving the morning and evening something to bend on. If you are me, then you don’t get stoned and you walk around thinking about how much can change in a small amount of time.

Walking around in nature, I feel a little bit of pressure. I do not know how to identify trees, or birds, even though I love them very much. I do not constantly notice little flora or fungi. It can take me an hour walking through nature to get out of my inner monologue, and then I feel the crushing guilt of wasted time. It is not quite the same, I compare, as the walks I would go on in the city; right out of my door and into a very specific mix. It requires a little bit more choice - you get in your car, and you drive to a specific trail, often a place where you’ve already been, and start to make a regular of yourself. Instead of impressing the barista, you impress the whole banner of heaven.

So I’m just at the beginning of becoming a regular at the handful of nature trails that I’m starting to love, and noticing, like I did in Portland, their sections. The part where you can start to hear the river is right after the long, flat section that feels like a tunnel. The little pile of frozen tadpoles is after the second frozen stream, after you have to crawl under a fallen tree (but before the spot where I saw a woodpecker). Somehow nobody’s dog has found this pile of slimy bodies, but I can always find the leaf I placed on top of them to keep them safe.

And I haven’t really sacrificed my city walks - in Belfast, I can still walk to the library, and the co-op, and I can even walk to a handful of nature trails. Walk to your walk, then walk, then walk home.