Twenty Years Walking

When I first started teaching in 1986, I knew that I was going to spend a great deal of time at school – and I did. For my first decade or so, I would arrive at school around 7:40am and leave sometime after 7pm. Often, I would leave at 10pm or later. One day, after a long rehearsal, I sat down on a couch and awoke at 6am!

Spending this much time at school was one thing; spending more time in a car commuting was another. My first apartment was about ten minutes from school. When my wife and I married, we lived in the center of town. In 1996, we moved to the neighborhood immediately south of our school. For the past twenty years, I have walked to school almost every day.

While I know this is not possible, practical or desirable for many people, being so close to my work has been wonderful. When we moved, we had a two-year-old who was attending the nursery school in our building, so the three of us walked together. In all kinds of weather, we would make our way down our street, through a short pass-through, and into the rear parking lot of our high school. We didn’t have to fight a car seat, traffic, or horrible early morning departures. Yes, sometimes walking with a two-year-old can be maddeningly slow. Yet the experience was significantly different than when we were in the car.

For much of my daughter’s early years, my mother-in-law was very ill, and we would make long trips to hospitals in Chicago. We sat in traffic during rush hour. She ate, cried, played, and did many other things in the backseat of our car. I drove and tried to keep her happy, but it was very difficult and uncomfortable for both of us. I thought about doing that every day, and I was thrilled to walk, even if sometimes at a beetle’s pace.

We walk in all weather. If it rainy, no big deal. It is far better to walk in the snow than to drive. First, some students and parents are terrible drivers. Second, it takes a while out in the cold to clear off and warm up a car. Many times I have left the building chatting with a colleague. I walk home, and my colleague walks to his or her car. As I put down my school bag in the kitchen, I can see my colleague driving away. 

My van just turned twelve years old. It has about 94,000 miles on it and is still in great shape. Both the savings in gasoline and wear and tear on our vehicles is another fantastic advantage of walking to school.

I know that many people’s commutes afford them time to think, catch up on the news, or decompress. I do those things too, on my walk to school. Getting into the air, walking down my street, greeting kids and their parents, and chatting with my neighbors puts my school day in perspective. It centers me on the real importance of a school.

Often my wife and I walk together. Sometimes, our son joins us. We joke that his dorm in college next year is further from his class buildings than our home is from his high school. He will miss his walk to school. I will miss walking to school with him. His absence will make my gratitude for the years of walking with him, his sister, and his mother all the more poignant.

I’ve been walking for twenty years. That little amount of exercise and short break from the stress of the day has made a big difference in my life. When I retire, it is my plan to move immediately next door to retirement!