Commuting - January 3, 2012

I didn't walk the dog today, or take her to the dog park. Ingrid took the whole shebang. I just did the kid logistics (mostly) and went to work.

I said when I started this project that walking the dog has made me really pay attention to the weather... but then so did walking to work. I live about 1.5 miles from the office, and walk there pretty often. Less often in the dead of winter, if I'm honest about it.

This used to be the way of it for almost everyone. Only the wealthiest could afford a coach and pair, and few could afford even to find a place for their horse to graze during the workday.

Our house, in fact, was built to house the railroad workers in the railyards behind us, who to a man walked to work every day. The whole row of houses down our street was built for railroad employees; the superintendent and his assistant have the nice houses a couple blocks down; ours were more utilitarian, a row of plain frame houses set close together.

The streetcar, which came this far north certainly changed a lot of the geography of work vs home—it also allowed the kind of physical separation of work areas we take for granted now. It's kind of a novelty these days to find a family living upstairs from a family business in an American city. Less so in the country, but even there, the old model of living in the house out back of the service station/diner/bar is fading. We are pretty thoroughly accustomed to commuting.

It's this kind of accustomizing I think may lie at the heart of what this project is about. We've become used to a life indoors, whether those doors open onto our house, our car, our work, or the stores where we do our shopping. Walking on a daily rounds, without any real alternative, is generally uncommon.

I snag rides home, and I drive to work as part of our calculus of getting things done—tt takes me half an hour to walk to work and 5 minutes to drive there. If I'm feeling pressured on time, that 25 minutes each way makes a difference.

But the time I spend walking is seldom wasted. It's a great place to sift thoughts and ideas, touch base with my neighborhood, and, as with dog-walking, remember I live in a world bigger than the walls I spend most of my time inside of.