The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.

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Why a walk in town can be just as good for you as a stroll in the countryside (Duh).

I was boggled by this: 'I have lived and worked in central London for decades and so I struggle to come up with anywhere new', because it tends to be that one develops runlines like an animal in the jungle, also, there is ALOT of London? I felt quite elated when the rather banal matter of medical appointments took me to Belsize Park and its teeny wildflower meadow beside the walkway to the Royal Free Hospital.

But I am all for urban walking and one of my current woez - has been for some years ahem - is that my urban flaneusing across the Atlantic has been on hold, and even if all the other factors no longer pertained, I am so not going at this present moment.

Sigh.

(Though I have just been looking back to see how long ago were my last visits to a) New York and b) Chicago (that was not just O'Hare for onwards transit) and it was Quite A While. Last Madison for Wiscon trip was 2019.)

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From:

heleninwales

We live in the Snowdonia National Park, but when we visit London -- or any other city -- we walk for miles. There are so many places you can walk without getting muddy or having to climb steep hills, which is what we do here.

From:

ethelmay

During the early days of Covid, when we were still worrying about outdoor transmission, I took to walking through local (Seattle) alleys, for privacy and variety. A few in my neighborhood are almost like country lanes, with grass growing between the ruts and the trees in people's back yards meeting overhead. (Country lanes of course don't have quite so many garbage cans.)

From:

adrian_turtle

It reminds me of all the talk about living out in the country making people smarter. (Maybe 10 years ago? Time blurs.) It referred to an experiment, which stuck in my mind because it was done at the University of Michigan and I know the place so well. It was one of those psych experiments where they have a bunch of people do puzzles and little tests of short-term memory and cognitive ability, which are so much easier to measure than anybody's actual intelligence or well-being. Then some of them to take a walk downtown in the business district, some of them take a walk in the arboretum, and some of them hang out in the waiting room, and they all come back and repeat the tests. The grad students crunch the numbers and conclude that time in nature is good for cognition. (Sure, ok. I think it's great for cities to have parks.) By the time somebody read the first paragraph of an article written by a journalist who only read the abstract, it's no longer about parks or ability to focus on an office job in the afternoon.

From:

oursin

The extent to which it's just about Taking A Break, moving the body, distracting the mind, is surely the significant factor.

From:

ckd

I also haven't been back to Madison since before COVID, and I have much less distance to travel and no border shenanigans to take into account. Sigh.

My part of Seattle has some pretty good walking options, though, and I've picked Ingress back up to give me more of an incentive to get out and about and explore.

From:

jesse_the_k

that Madison has become a better place to walk since then! We got a new transportation bureaucrat who's serious about lowering speed limits and improving pedestrian infrastructure.

I grew up in cities, walking everywhere, riding my bicycle, and (most freeing for a young person) taking transit. Parks are nice, the countryside is lovely, and cities are optimal for walking!

From:

silveradept

Being able to go anywhere without the expectation of having to be a place on time is good for us anyway. And it allows for that exploratory situation where you discover that thing that is there and often always has been, but that you were unable to take sufficient time to notice. It's great, and I wish I had the opportunity to do it more in interesting places, but alas, suburbia.

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oursin

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It's Always More Complicated

The wandering thoughts of a wandering hedgehog