On late night walks and other things

Katie D.

January 8, 2009 - 10:49 PM

I love walking at night.

Really, I love walking in general. I live in Eugene without a car, and have a seemingly insurmountable dislike of bicycles. So I take the bus or I walk the two miles to school. When it's not raining, it's the nicest walk I can imagine: through the graveyard and past parks, looking at Eugene's houses, from quirky to completely beautiful. I have also started learning Italian, using language tapes on my iPod. So if you ever see some girl walking along, muttering to herself in Italian "I would like to buy some wine. Would you like to drink some wine? You owe me six Euros," that girl is probably me.

But aside from the functional walking I do on a daily basis, I also spend a lot of time walking for walking's sake. I love walking and talking with friends. I take walks while I talk to relatives and friends on the phone. Freshman year my friends and I would take regular walks down the Autzen footpath, leaving the dorms and campus for a little while to cross the bridge and walk through the trees. It is so beautiful down there, like all of the Willamette Valley is to me: beautiful, but so powerfully green that it all looks kind of fake to my parched Colorado eyes.

We also used to walk at night. We'd go on a whim late at night, in the middle of essays and after movies. Someone would call for a walk and we'd go: two of us, eight of us, down along the river or around in neighborhoods. There's something about talking while you walk that feels like you have a purpose. You're not just chatting-you're progressing. Even if you're not really going anywhere, you're still going. And there's a benefit to that in the conversation, a feeling of some accomplishment and purpose, regardless of the subject matter.

I also believe there is a special feeling of freedom to conversing on the move in the dark. There's not just a feeling of purpose, but also one of anonymity to some extent. Many of the best conversations I've had with certain friends were undertaken at night, while walking the streets of Eugene or my hometown. I walk at night under the stars and in Eugene rain and wind.

I love walking under the stars. Did you know you can see the constellation Orion in South America? They call Orion's Belt the Tres Marias, although I don't know specifically what that refers to. Orion is my favorite constellation for that reason, and it's one I look for every single night. And if you walk at night often, you begin to notice the changing position of the stars, and the phases of the moon. That stuff is out there, whether we pay attention or not. I have started to notice, and to know when the moon rises and where Orion appears relative to my route home.

And there is a certain feeling of freedom, of unlimitedness, to walking by night. I wonder if anyone else experiences this. Sometimes I walk at night and feel like I could walk forever.

One of my favorite bands is Flogging Molly (Irish folk-punk. So cool), and they have a song called "The Wanderlust." I think about it all the time, and the opening line "Do you still walk the streets at night/with the wanderlust you fight?" I have the wanderlust, all right, and I stopped fighting it years and years ago.

Of course I'm not advocating women being stupid about nighttime safety. I'm careful, I observe my surroundings, and I know which streets are well-lit. I carry pepper spray in my backpack and try to walk like Tom Cruise in Top Gun. I've never had any problems and am not afraid. Cautious is smart, fear is limiting. And the night streets call...

I love the feeling of a city asleep and myself on foot, going where I please. It happens most when I am with a friend or two, that feeling that we might just pass on by our destination and keep walking, walk until we hit the Ocean, maybe, if that's the way we're pointed. That we have what we need: a jacket, good shoes, friends by your side. Tolkein wrote "The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began..." and that is the nighttime feeling of a road for me. It's a sort of romantic idea, this feeling that I could walk to the ocean, making jokes and sharing stories as we stride down streets that are busy by day, sometimes streets I rarely see by daylight but know intimately through nighttime rambles, out to the city limits and down the nighttime highway. And perhaps it's my Eugene equivalent of that rugged American ideal, cruising the country in the car by music. For my little Eugene gang of friends, or at least for me, the true image of freedom is four or five friends, walking down an empty street under stars and moon and trees.

So there you have it: Katie's residual image of freedom. Actually, you know one of my most common activities. Walking to class listening to my music, walking home listening to Italian. Walking to a friend's house while listening to my Spanish news podcast (BBC Mundo Radio, which I highly recommend). I write essays and blogs in my head while I walk, then at home I write quickly, as they are already fully considered by the time I sit down to start. I talk to friends and solve the problems of our little world. I talk to my grandparents and friends in Colorado. I talk to the neighborhood cats in Spanish (all cats speak Spanish, did you know?). And mostly I just walk. I hear Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road," and throw myself into the moment, into the movement: "the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose." I look at the world I live in and find it incredibly beautiful.

The road goes ever on and on...