Take a Walk on the Mild Side

Isn't it interesting how pendulums swing?

Before modern times, people lived and worked in villages and traveled on foot or used 'beasts of burden' to get around. Time-and-space in day-to-day life was slower and closer to home. Extended family members commonly lived near one another. While others raced toward modernization and beyond, the Mennonites and the Amish held onto this simple lifestyle.

With the introduction of automobiles, in addition to getting places faster, we started driving further and further from home. Modern inventions bring conveniences that should optimize the hours in our day.  As the author of the book Freakonomics demonstrates, outcomes are often the opposite of what we anticipate.  Although we love our cars, appliances, and electronic devices--you would have to pry my iPad from my cold, dead hands--lifestyles are busier, more complicated, and hectic.

We now pay to go grudgingly to the gym to work off calories we no longer burn by walking and plowing the fields. Our blood pressure predictably is higher from driving in traffic and fuming at the inane actions of other drivers. We sit in our cars stuck in traffic and think, "I could get there faster if I walked!"

Bam!

Now when searching desirable cities in which to live, guess what is on the list? Walkability.

A 2014 article in the Huffington Post lists benefits of walkable communities stating, "In particular, the research, which examines different aspects of compact, walkable, and mixed-use communities and compares those aspects to published government health data, finds that such neighborhoods and cities are strongly associated with reduced rates of obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/f-kaid-benfield/how-walkable-communities_b_6014028.html

Well, how about that?

While dreaming of the ideal place to retire someday, a walk on the mild side just might win me over.

[Carolyn Fjeran, LowTide explorer/reflective writer; horticulturist & gardener; former writer for Cooperative Extension Service, Master Gardeners, and The Newnan Times-Herald.]