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๐งต Thread (25 tweets)
I love to walk.I meander for a hobby.I have pictures all about many different locales because I like to walk, I like to look at shit, & I love to do it with a partner.I need to go outside every single day, otherwise I go a bit crazy.I discovered this living in Asheville.
When I first moved, I'd been living in a wealthy suburb my whole life. Not that I was wealthy, my family was profoundly middle class. I often called my neighborhood the epicenter of the middle class.I'm very clever.
This was a suburb in Texas. As such, there was no real infrastructure for walking. There were sidewalks, but the suburb is sprawling, and designed for cars. Distances are not meant to be crossed by human legs.As such, I was driving by 16. I walked places seldom.
I lived in Texas until I was 25 then moved in with my at-the-time gf in a small town outside of Asheville. We lived up an unpaved road in a little duplex, but I worked in the city proper. Downtown Asheville is walkable.As such, I started walking.https://t.co/gR7bXhgDuy
And yet that first year we were together I remember a profound feeling of luxury.We had one table that I absconded with for a desk.We sat on the floor in this nest of cushions and blankets in front of a tv for all our work and relaxation and meals. https://t.co/g3O9fzEsEx
My car quickly died. We moved to the city proper, and I started taking a bus to the city to get to my job when I could not use her car.I started to get downtown early because of the bus, or stay downtown late after my shift to walk.I would go downtown on the weekends to walk. https://t.co/uDjhbjKO9K
and i would walkand i would walkand i would walk https://t.co/yw2yLea6xU
and walkand walkand walkI knew, I probably still know, every alley and cranny of Downtown Asheville. I will no longer know the restaurants. Those fade and pop up with the seasons. I still miss that lovely, lovely city and its people.But eventually I moved again. https://t.co/0Iz6Pvi2HS
My gf and I split right before the Pandemic, incidentally why I met many of y'all.I moved to a rural spit of town south of Asheville, and three months later the whole world shut down.Everything started closing.But no one really enforced the national parks.So....
6 of 7 days every week for months, when the world was shut down, I drove 30 minutes to an hour out to the Pisgah National Forest, or the Blue Ridge Parkway, or some other trail, I'd drive as far as I could until I hit a barrier, then parked my car, got out, & walked to a trail. https://t.co/MXsvSKl7LK
And I walkedAnd I walkedAnd I walked https://t.co/zi8s3jwIeD
This was a somewhat lonesome and harrowing point in my life.To be left after 5 years, 4 of which were lived together, right before a global pandemic.I'd the opportunity to hit some dating apps right before the Pandemic, but getting laid honestly made me sadder.
So as I went into the Pandemic alone (with a few housemates, which probably saved my mind and soul, they had adorable children and I could occasionally help the family and they'd cook me borsht) I learned to hike every single day, and that preserved me.https://t.co/T7xMxpdQjy
As the Pandemic came to a close, I got a second job, a better job than my initial one, and was promptly kicked out of the family's house with a month's notice. I moved in with a few Twitter folk in a house in Asheville again, in a gorgeous neighborhood, and I walked every day. https://t.co/x8Abe5EDaW
This is a habit I have retained. It started as a sanity-preserving coping mechanism. I think it still is, in many ways. But there's something to it. I need to see things every single day, to see faces and hear what's going on. I need to understand my city and surroundings.
I spend so, so much time alone. Walking permits me connection with the world when I have no other avenue. It's something to do with myself.And it simply feels good. I just physically feel better when I've been walking a lot. I'm made to move, so I move.It's that simple.
When I had to leave the United States for my job I wound up in Montreal for the coldest, darkest winter of my life. I drove from Asheville to Montreal without snow tires, which I learned was A Mistake. Quite probably illegal. But I made it.I promptly caught COVID, lol. https://t.co/Us6faWH2lE
After about a month of adjusting to cold, getting sick, and recovering from what was really a severe bout, I found myself with a new job and no desire to explore in -20f weather.This marked a kind of descent. I found myself boozing constantly. I barely explored until May. The exploration I did get up to was to track down my car every time it got towed because I failed to move it in time for the street to get plowed. I paid no less than $450 CAD for parking tickets over the course of 3 months.Never let it be said I didn't pay taxes to glorious Quebec.
But I crawled out with the sun and I walkedAnd I walkedAnd I walked https://t.co/Ad8wfJl34x
There's something to this life I live that demands wandering.Before I left north Texas I was restless as hell, almost killed myself a few times, unintentionally, due to the restlessness. I was acting out, behaving a fool.Toward the end I found myself at the scant parks and museums to just wander for long periods, but it didn't satisfy. It was a localized peripatetism.
Now my whole lifestyle is wandering. I'm constantly far away from home. And even in those places I am compelled out of the door every single day, to wander, to wander, to wander.There's always something new to see, somewhere new to be.
Even when I was visiting the same trails every single day, there was something new to witness.In Pisgah you could check out different flushes of flours and fungi and insects for every single week of the year, sometimes day-by-day. https://t.co/MzykCTVvDR
Lately I have a method of going about a city. I discover one or two main arteries, then I branch out off of them, street-by-street. Walking circuits every single day, choosing unfamiliar streets connected to the ones I know, I discover everything around me, branching out. https://t.co/CfEO4cYt4q
I'll visit the same spots every day, catch some new ones, and see who passes by, who remains, what's going on.I'll take pictures of the same spot over and over, just cataloguing the changes.There's a lot of romance in minutiae. https://t.co/4UxkXHgonS
I fully expect the next place I move to to have ample opportunity to walk.It counteracts this bubble feeling I have. I reach out online because my local roots are so seldom spread, but I get better and better at meeting people, at understanding places, the more I get to.
Anyway, go outside and completely wear through a pair of boots.Walkand walkand walkUntil you can't anymore.And then do it again. And again.And again.<3 https://t.co/NXwFNLEhXY
