A Simple Privilege
The other day we had beautiful weather and there were about 400 people walking and riding bikes around my neighborhood. I mean, not exactly, 400 people…but A LOT OF PEOPLE. I thought about how lucky all of us were to live in a neighborhood where you could just walk out your front door and take advantage of a beautiful day.
I’ve talked about my childhood home before. It was on a very busy street. Not in a neighborhood. If you looked out our back door you could see both of the main interstates that went through Knoxville, our house being situated in a small radius of several junctions and exits. Our road was a major through-road, I guess you could say. There was TONS of 18-wheeler traffic on that road. And definitely NO SIDEWALKS.
When I moved to Huntsville, my Dad was always amazed that I always lived in areas where our house or apartment was within a walkable area. Huntsville had some sort of sidewalk ordinance in place for a long time so you could even walk to stores and libraries pretty safely once you left your neighborhood. There might not have always been sidewalks exactly out my front door, but we always lived inside neighborhoods where drivers were relatively pedestrian-aware. And then once you got out of the neighborhood you almost always had a sidewalk. Man, my Dad loved sidewalks. He just felt like it was a sign that city planners or developers wanted to encourage walking and my Dad loved walking.
He would have really loved that the neighborhood I live in now; not only is it very walker friendly but also has 3 different points where you could enter the hiking trails on the mountain behind us, one of those trailheads being around 250 yards from our front door! So we can not only go for a walk at a moment’s notice, but we could go for a hike. Growing up there weren’t as many preserved hiking trails inside the city of Knoxville as there are now, so we had to head to the Smokies for a good hike. He would love the proximity to good trails here. And definitely would have loved where my brother lives near Denver.
I never really appreciated the ability to just head out the door for a walk or a hike until recently. I’ve been trying to get my watch to acknowledge 45 minutes of exercise every day. Sometimes I do all of that in a walk in the morning, sometimes I start my walk late enough that I had already accumulated some exercise points (turns out when you’re really out of shape doing things like getting dressed makes your watch think you’re exercising) during the day requiring a shorter walk. Either way - I can just grumpily head out the door to get it done without thinking or planning. This has been SUCH a lifesaver for me to keep up this habit. Last night I didn’t even put on tennis shoes. I kept my sandals and socks on and just headed out the door for a 1-mile loop from my front door.
It was weird growing up and visiting friends who lived in real neighborhoods. I always imagined I would spend hours just walking and wandering. I’m not sure if I really would have or not, but I definitely do that now. I regularly just head out the door and onto the roads or up to the trails and just set a time goal and walk. It’s a luxury I truly do appreciate, not just for myself…but for younger Kim who would have gotten run over by a semi had she tried to do that in her youth.