All these years I haven’t ceased my nearly daily hikes of an hour on average. Sometimes part of a commute but more frequently the walk has shaped the ultimate purpose over anything else achieved along the way. Entirely disconnected in the sixty-to-eighty percent majority of cases retrospectively considered, music otherwise accompanies from a dedicated player or basic button phone, something about as compact and featureless.
I guess that’s not bad for a fairly stationary lifestyle. I’m hesitant to say ‘sedentary’, as stationary by no means implies the frightening concept, though need to exercise discipline in keeping it that way. But stationary, despite the travel and nomadic practices, there’s no denying.
To miss more than a day of such movement across outdoor spaces, I feel restless if not plain lousy. Such movement exercised and I feel universally better. The manifold short and long term benefits of daily walks probably require no elaboration. Consult your intuition.
In the course of the walk, I like to acknowledge passerby strollers (or even motorists) with a barely perceptible wink or nod. It costs hardly anything yet compounds to the overall synergy boost. Sometimes I might utter a word. In most cases, most countries, most demographic makeups, the passerby stroller (or motorist) returns the gesture in a like manner.
Here in the more upper scale region of Puebla I currently stay, this interchange of vibes has been largely the same if not a notch friendlier yet. But a bizarre shift takes place once I cross the invisible border between the developed and the impoverished sectors, a border reachable within a mere twenty minute walk.
One side of the border sees gated neighborhoods of solid masonry homogeneous in their architecture, with playgrounds, commercialism and Christmas decorations. The other sees a vast deforested plain. Instead of sidewalks, the roadway abounds in garbage, stray dogs, small dilapidated structures, a fragrance of street food, fossil fuels or ash, and the gradually approaching favela within another fifteen minutes of walking.
I’m quiet used to such surroundings and don’t consider them anything remarkable for a hike. The social dynamic, however, doesn’t entirely accord.
There aren’t any considerable pedestrians. An infrequent case will certainly not be the athletic type carrying a water bottle.
As far as the inbound motor traffic consisting of more downtrodden cars and motorcycles, I still nod an imperceptible nod and smile an imperceptible smile. Yet I’m met with a look of bewilderment mixed indifference. Even the dogs in these parts eye me with a hint of derangement (mixed indifference) compared to the counterparts at that other side of the invisible border.
It is what it is. I need my walks and sometimes get weary of posh neighborhoods homogeneous in their masonry, secure in their guarded entrances, avid in their consumerism and Chrismacy in their decorations.
Though I’d prefer friendlier vibes. Or maybe it just wasn’t the right day. On both occasions.
Now I’ve remarked upon this year after year, but take the same privileged-impoverished dynamic and transplant it to an arbitrary region of Brazil, and I claim substantially greater odds of a friendlier reception regardless of which side of the border I occupy. Brazil +1 yet again.
Questions, comments? Connect.