|
Walkers of the
world, unite!
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF
Associate since 1991
Comments directly to
JonatPower@aol.com
December 27, 2006
LONDON - After the downs of 2006 surely 2007 can only
be up? Don’t be so sure but there is one thing we can all do to
save the planet from mankind’s excess - a little more walking. In
the days when the International Herald Tribune was on the Rue de Berri,
off the Champs Elysees, I would often walk there from my pension in the
Marais, three or so miles down the Seine. It is quite remarkable that
one can conveniently traverse the length of one of the world’s major
cities without having to leave a towpath or back alley, except for the
last 500-yard dash up from the river.
The same is true in London. Setting off from the hotel on the edge of
Kensington Gardens where the guerrilla chiefs of the patriotic Front stayed
during the London constitutional conference on Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe,
it was possible to walk, without touching a main road, through three of
London’s great parks, one after another, before reaching the Foreign
Office. It is a good three miles and gave me an hour to digest the “terrorists’”
propaganda before I took in similar spoonfuls from Her Majesty’s
ministers.
Moscow in Soviet days, after nine in the evening, was a good walking town
too. There were no bars, few restaurants and little socialising by car.
The city used to go uncannily quiet and I could walk for miles in the
older, more tranquil, neighborhoods, working of the heavy food and the
even heavier conversations.
Dar es Salaam used to be quiet at any time of day. And no one, bar perhaps
the president, cared if you arrived late. But, like Moscow, all is changed-
capitalism, the rush of life and the motorcar have taken over. Still,
last month when I was there I could find plenty of peaceful little lanes
shaded by the trees the German colonisers planted a hundred years ago
and work myself down to the gloriously empty sea front to watch the fisherman
gutting their catch and the dhows flitting in the light Indian ocean breeze.
The recently retired president, Benjamin Mkapa, told me he’d vetoed
a plan to erect big hotels and offices along that seafront, wanting it
to remain open to the people of the city who, even if they lived in one
of the poorer slums, could wander down in half an hour and gaze at paradise.
American big cities usually defeat me. I try to walk the first day or
two. But in the end the sheer volume of traffic and the lack of back lanes
and green shortcuts neutralise the compulsion. New York is an exception-
there is a way out of Harlem into the verdant villages of New York state
by an overgrown, abandoned, railroad, bordered with brambles, which when
I did it one fall, were rich with unpicked blackberries. One of my most
favourite walks of all is to cross the Washington bridge out of Manhattan,
drop down to the banks of the Hudson and then follow the almost deserted
and barely known, old, unpaved, coach road way up river. On a hot day
a lazy swim, musing on the nineteenth century masters who painted the
tranquillity of this extraordinary, unappreciated river makes for a perfect
rest stop.
I concede I am something of a zealot in these walking matters. I am about
as far from Max Beerbohm- “It is a fact that not once in my life
have I gone out for a walk”- as a foreign correspondent can be.
Put me down in the Alps, the Rockies, the Andes, the Himalayas, or just
the English Lake District and I’m off. I confess too that my motivation
is not always exercise but thought. I’m one of those wedded to Bertrand
Russell’s dictum: “Unhappy men would increase their happiness
more by walking six miles every day than by any conceivable change in
philosophy.”
Coming down to earth, and my memories aside, the fact is that necessity
alone compels us to walk though this century not drive. No one I know
has calculated how much energy we would save, or how much lower our medical
expenses would be, if we all decided to make just one of our daily journeys
on foot or by bike, rather than by car. Yesterday, I traversed the city
of Copenhagen. All I met in my one-hour walk were other walkers and hundreds
of cyclists. The city is laced with cycle paths and footpaths. This is
how it should be.
Walkers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your gasoline
prices and the wars they too often ignite.
Copyright © 2006 Jonathan
Power
Last 
Next
Jonathan Power can be
reached by phone +44 7785 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Follow this link to read about - and
order - Jonathan Power's book written for the
40th Anniversary of Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
Tell a friend about this column by Jonathan Power
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
Get
free articles & updates
|