"You must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking."—Henry David Thoreau
I walk two or three miles on most days. The distance varies. No electronic gizmo registers how much ground I cover or how many steps I take. A power walk it is not.
Rather, I engage in what Thoreau called "the art of Walking." I follow in his footsteps—so to speak—but at a camel's plodding pace.
I have a few elliptical routes. They overlap like a Venn diagram such that my house is the hub. Some walks intersect mountain streams—Parleys, Emigration and Red Butte—in which I monitor water levels.
I am always hoping to glimpse a cutthroat trout holding in a pool, but I never do. However, my interest in urban raptors was rewarded this year by a family of Cooper's hawks nesting nearby.
Besides the nest, my walking circuits pass seven coffee shops and a dozen Little Free Libraries mounted on front-yard monopods. Books and coffee attract me as a bird feeder draws a hawk.
I confess I am not so much a Thoreau-inspired ruminant as I am an observer. I take note of endangered monarch butterflies—and the milkweed their life cycle depends upon—but I don't spend a lot of time pondering the cause of this year's upsurge of black widow spiders and grasshoppers. Neither do I dwell on the goat heads I find thumbtacked to the soles of my shoes (although I've considered carrying a bottle of Round-Up to poison the tire-puncturing plants encroaching on the sidewalk.) Also short-lived is the urge to report ice-covered sidewalks to city hall when walkers are put at risk by those who refuse to clear the snow.
To walk the city streets is to make your way through the understory of an urban forest ("urban forest" having the jarring effect of oxymoron). Although its streets are hardscaped in asphalt and concrete, Salt Lake City manages an inventory of 85,000 trees. The bronzed leaves on many of them last summer evinced the double whammy of drought and heat. Many trees succumbed. Their removal by city workers changed the face of the land noticeably, but I have learned to take the long view, mindful that some of what I observe is a snapshot of change in progress. Twenty-five years from now, the crowns of replacement trees will betray no evidence of today's chainsaw and stump grinder.
On the other hand, a sidewalk draws attention to itself as the topmost stratum of land-use history. Some stretches of sidewalk I walk served as roadbeds of trains and trolleys in the early 1900s. One route puts a remnant of the 19th-century Jordan and Salt Lake Canal under foot. Another crisscrosses the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway in 1913. All are just a long walk from a prehistoric shoreline. I like to think that sidewalks are palimpsestic, in that they disclose previous uses of the land to the reader of historical markers, or to the observer with an attentive eye.
A layering of history under the concrete might raise an area's walkability quotient, if such a holistic, perfectly nuanced metric could exist. Some scores can account for distance to groceries, bus stops and bike lanes. But what of the ineffable criteria that make neighborhoods fit for walking?
The prevalence of Little Free Libraries or patches of AstroTurf? The ratio of pollinator gardens to gravelly xeriscapes? Traffic-calming road designs with bike corridors like on 600 East? The number of people who clear the snow-covered sidewalks of neighbors who don't?
One certain factor is color because Utah's green-is-good lawn ethos is in flux. In a culture that has equated brown grass with the sin of sloth, a carpet of bluegrass betokened virtue. No longer. The drought has upended that.
Nowadays, a browning lawn is as much an indicator of civic-mindedness as having a Tesla in the driveway and solar panels on the roof.
Walkability is affected by Utah's elected officials to some extent or another. The governor prays for rain; the Legislature "saves" the Formerly Great Salt Lake with a flood of dollars; the congressmen hold forth on Fox News; and the mayor of the capital city plants 3,000 trees. Mayor Erin Mendenhall is reforesting the west side of Salt Lake City at the rate of 1,000 trees a year—welcome news for walkers.
The mayor is also taking steps to upgrade the walkability in the heart of the city. She proposes closing Main Street between South Temple and 400 South to facilitate walking. The four-block stretch has been tested as a car-free zone on summer weekends since 2020.
It's popular with the Downtown Alliance: Pedestrian traffic generates walk-in customers. Closing Main Street to cars is such a forward-looking idea, I worry that like other popular initiatives, it may attract the meddlesome We Know Best Caucus of the Utah Legislature. Remember its treatment of marijuana? Redistricting? COVID-19?
The politicization of the coronavirus public health crisis is an indelible memory. I will also remember the effect on walkers. The bleak days of the pandemic brought more pedestrians and fewer cars to the streets.
The neighborhoods were quieter, and the air was cleaner. Masked walkers gave a wide berth of social distance when passing one another. The antisocial precautions brought a James Taylor lyric to mind: "Well, any other man stops and talks, but the walking man walks."
To have "stop-and-talks" restored and smiles unmasked is most welcome. To have a mayor making good on a promise to "transform a community one tree at a time" is even more so.
Private Eye is off this week. Send feedback to comments@cityweekly.net