Walking back to happiness

Woopah oh yeah yeah!

When I walk, problems that feel knotted tight begin to loosen and gently unwind. Not entirely though. The movement of legs alone isn’t enough to resolve the complications of life. But things soften just enough to see where a fingernail behind a tight loop might, with a little wiggle, begin to ease the issue.

When I’m stuck, when that grey cloud spreads itself across my thinking, walking helps lift the fog. When I’m struggling to write—to find a point of focus for what I want to say—walking unlocks a clarity I struggle to find when I’m stationary. I’m yet to perfect the art of talking ideas out loud into an app, so capturing these thoughts necessitates frequent stops to peck words into the Notes on my phone with a fingertip.

September is the season for walking. Proper, long-stride walks with solid boots and Goretex jackets. Walks where, over time, you fashion your own multilayered petticoat of jumpers and coats tied by their sleeves around your middle—layers shed and reapplied as the weather shifts throughout the day.

Without the puff-inducing heat of summer that weighs and slows walking legs, everything eases—for a while at least. Sea breezes and soft days unfold into a gentle riot of yellows, oranges and browns. A 1970s colour palette landscape that melts into sticky mud after October wind and rain strip the trees of their coats, leaving them naked and cold in November. 

By December, woodland and field walks are out. They’ve become little more than an exhausting negotiation with a series of boggy slopes—pulling yourself uphill with fragile branches—then sliding down the other side on your arse because, frankly, you’re already so covered in mud it really makes no difference.

What is it about this urge to place one foot in front of another, again and again and again, that’s so compelling? Why are we driven to expend energy in this way when it provides no tangible, evolutionary benefit? 

Sitting in the new cafe that overlooks an old haunt earlier this week—a once quiet reserve that, since the introduction of coffee, has suddenly become wildly popular—I watched as, in the time it took me to drink a latte and slowly eat a slice of lemon cake, a hundred people walked past the wide picture window. The opportunity to sit under cover and consume caffeine, sugar and carbs, has changed the demographic of this place fundamentally. The age range has stretched in both directions. Where once this place was visited only by serious walkers and birders, people who weight-train with heavy camera gear and telescopes, now pushchairs and rollators are both in evidence—the wheels that convey us at the beginning and end of life. The birders now stand out against a sea of tasteful middle-class autumn-hued clothing with their loud camouflage and oversized camera lenses.

The demographic may have changed, but all were there to do one thing—actually two things. Consume. And walk. 

Years ago, in the dregs of a dark London winter, when a different, denser fog settled on my mind, walking was my route back to sanity. 

Locked in a deep depression, at a time when I could barely lift myself from beneath my duvet, when my thoughts raged three feet above my head in an angry ball of wire wool making sleep impossible, when the claustrophobia of a city winter weighed on me like a wet wool blanket, I found liberation in movement. 

I walked for hours, from the feeble midday light of an eternally overcast midwinter into and beyond a darkness that fell at 4pm—always reluctant to turn about and start the journey home. I could not bear to be inside when dark descended. As the light faded, I felt a rising panic. But it was better than being indoors where the shift from day to night was hidden from me by walls and heavy ceilings.

There was no joy in this restless wandering. It was movement that came from necessity. A compulsion. A movement I couldn’t bear to end.

My instinct was always to head south and east away, in my mental map, from city spaces and towards open green—seeking out anything that would lift my mood and challenge the pointlessness of existence. As I walked, I lifted my eyes towards the sky in a constant search for a break in the eternal grey.

And there I found solace in the silhouettes of winter branches against a cold white sky. 

I kept looking upward as I moved, trying to imprint these infinitely complex shapes on my eyeballs. Trying to understand what it was about this particular form of dormant life that seemed to offer an opening to hope. I walked until the branches and the sky merged in the fading light and I could no longer distinguish one from the other. Then, reluctantly, I’d turn a corner and begin to wind my way home—rise again the next day—and do the same thing all over again. 

Standing beneath a stag-head oak on the open hill of a park some four miles from home, something cracked. 

An old knowing that had been hidden under layers and layers of days and days. The knowledge that the cycle of life goes on. That nothing lasts forever in one state. My own troubles would fade, just as the bare branches above me would erupt with life once again.

When I was better—when I could see sunlight again on cloudy days, I avoided these depression paths and sought new walking routes. An old sadness lingered and I didn’t want to be reminded of that version of me. In time though, the shadows eased and, in walking these paths again, I overlaid old discomfort with new memories.

Walking has always been my route to sanity. Sometimes, when buried a little deeper in the in-sanity, it’s taken me a little longer to get there. Which is why my current inability to walk—to really walk—is so difficult to get my head around. It’s not something I’ve even acknowledged out loud. 

This is my first attempt to do so.

This is not immobility born of depression. It’s a deep exhaustion and a rage-inducing frustration that accompanies many things I used to do without thought. The practical tasks that pepper my days and my years—that give me a healthy balance between head world and real world. Walking, gardening, building shit. 

The feet and legs I once marvelled at for their resilience—their ability to do so much with so little thanks—have let me down. Like the slowly boiling frog, discomfort has crept into me, at first easy to dismiss, easy to push through, but gradually building to a point where even slow, simple, sniffy walks with a semi-disabled dog have become a source of pain and exhaustion. 

Once, I lived my life in sandals and wore my sun-burned, sun-striped feet with pride. Now, I have to chose between supported and sweat-free feet. Supportive sandals that don’t pinch the nerves in my toes do not exist. I’ve tried them all. 

It’s not lack of movement that’s caused this, but this is most definitely causing a lack of movement. Have I damaged my own body with too much walking? Too much time spent standing and bending and kneeling and digging? Is this just the inevitability of aging? I refuse to accept that.

This is the season for walking. But it’s also the season when that cloud of wire wool begins to gather and grow on a distant horizon. That in-between season when summer ends so suddenly and the cold and the dark begin to press hard into both ends of the day.

And what worries me is this. That this lack of movement will lead to a return of that wire wool cloud. How do I keep myself sane without movement?

So I’m finding a way. I’m learning—trying to learn to lean into moderation—to accept that small steps are the only way to make long-term progress. 

My walk at the reserve wasn’t half as long as it might have been two years ago. By the end, when I was dosing myself with restorative caffeine and sweet treats, my feet were burning, my knees stiff, but my head was clear. That looming cloud had retreated. I’d bypassed the masses on a side path, walked the sands at low tide, been pulled back in time to the lives and stories of the people who once worked this coast, and captured fragments of a half-dozen fascinating conversations (always enlightening) between fellow walkers. I’d been taken out of myself and recovered that same knowledge unlocked on that south London hill beneath that winter oak all those years ago. 

Nothing lasts forever in one state. 

And maybe it was the walking. Maybe it was the magic of real coffee where none was previously available. Maybe it was the communality of other humans at the beginning and end of the walk. Maybe it was a little of all those things.  

Granted, the lemon cake was probably a mistake. But there again—nothing lasts forever. Even cake calories can be walked off. 

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Walking Through Substack

While wandering through Substack, as I do when avoiding the actual writing of a post, I unearthed a wealth of nuggets of walking wisdom. Small insights into the shared and solitary experience of walking.

Cat Stacey

’s meditation on re-walking old paths and re-living old memories is a thought-provoking read (and listen). Cat reminded me how stuff I’ve not consciously thought about for years bubbles to the surface when I’m walking. I love the idea of reclaiming places and overlaying them with good stuff and new memories.

“Having spent an entire adulthood with someone who I now despise - and staying living in the same place - means that so many favourite spots are tainted with memory and association. I have often wished I could move away, but have found that allowing the memories to resurface, and then make new memories 'on top' serves me much better in the long run.” 

Scent-Marking my Life

I could have chosen any one of

Susie Mawhinney

’ s posts from her publication “A Hill and I”. Every one of her posts has me floating through the fields around her home in France and wandering the world through her eyes. Susie is not only an expressive writer, she’s a gifted photographer who can turn raindrops into drips of silver. 

“Walking on Plums” is typical of her vignettes from life. I especially love how she describes the combined convenience and intrusion of technology— 

A new moon rises. Rain falls for the entire day. I make a fatal mistake. Searching online for a long range weather forecast I read three and fall into an almost immediate deep and immoveable depression I know will take weeks to shrug off — the downside of having the world and all its information at our fingertips. I know also I will find the last of the plums on the ground. Mission accomplished, one less worry because I can’t tolerate waste in a world where so many have nothing.

Walking on plums

If you like company on your walks but don’t have a walking buddy or can’t be arsed to actually have a conversation, I highly recommend the audio version of

Tom Cox

’s “21st Century Yokel”. This is the book I was listening to while walking at the reserve this week. Tom is a delightful walking companion, full of stories of his own adventures, nature, hints of folklore and quite a lot of his very excitable and very loud Dad.

The audiobook is currently available for free on Audible, although who knows how long that will last, so go grab it while you can.