For the majority of my life, I hated walking. I would win about having to walk. I would much prefer to ride my bike or take the car. Walk to the park? I'll just stay home. Walking seemed so slow and took so long.
Humanity had evolved past walking. We trained animals to let us ride them. We created new modes of transportation. We had bicycles and cars and scooters and skate boards and so much more. Why would any chose to walk. Walking a mile seemed like thumbing my nose at hundreds of years of ingenuity and evolution.
Then a few years ago, I left CHS Field in downtown St. Paul and started walking. I had just planned on getting out of the crowded downtown and the ride share services surge pricing after a Saints game. A couple blocks, check the pricing. Nope. Walk a couple more. Then at some point, I realized that I was maybe a third of the way home already. Maybe I should just walk. I even wrote a whole blog about it when I got home: I Took a Walk.
That walk changed my perspective some. But going without a car for 6 months in 2019 after totaling two vehicles in the span of 5 months was a seismic shift. I walked to the bus. I biked. I utilized ride share services. And on occasion I would just walk home from work. All the way. Walking a mile didn't seem so long anymore. Even 5 miles just took time, it wasn't a stress or even difficult.
It was during these walks that I started to realized how much I had been missing. Driving a car is a full sensory job. You have to be focused on the road, the signs, the signals, other cars, pedestrians, bikes, the condition of the road and a million other things. Noticing any thing else can be a danger to yourself, or to others.
But wow, you miss a lot. Landscapes fly by without a second look or a thought. Homes, buildings, how fast the leaves change. Today I dropped my car off to get the AC recharged. The service station was along the route I used to walk home. So instead of sitting inside or arranging a ride home, I decided to start walking home. Figured if it took a long time, I could make it home. If the fix was quick, I'd just turn around.
I got about a half mile away from the service location and there was a construction project for a new subdivision underway. In what was previously a heavily wooded lot, they were deforesting it as quickly as possible. Passing by in the car, I would probably not have given it a second look. Walking by, the machines were incredible.
One had an attachment that would grab onto a full tree as the blade at the base cut through it in seconds. It would lift 30 to 40 foot pieces and drop them. Another tractor would pick them up in its claw and drag them to what was seemingly the world's largest wood chipper. The chipper fed into a full semi trailer. It was efficient and honestly kind of terrifying.
Another bobcat looking machine had a saw blade that would have seemed more appropriate on the set of Mad Max than in suburbia. This smaller mechanical monster was roaming in the wake of the larger tree eater. The blade constantly spinning and grinding up anything that the tree eater had left behind. These machines, which looked like the characters from Bob the Builder got the Lovecraft treatment were decimating the former forest in an impressive and yet disturbing dance of efficiency.
It was a scene that is burned into my mind. Even now, nearly 8 hours later, it stands out and I am transfixed. I decided to drive by this afternoon. The mechanical monsters are gone. The field looks almost naturally barren. There is no indication that those giant Snorts did this. Just a sign foretelling of condos and town homes in the 300s coming soon.
Is this the weirdly comforting and yet perverse modern cycle of life? That land was barely used, in a first tier suburb, it was likely simply a matter of time. Yet if I hadn't been walking by, the sheer force of the change, the mechanical monsters would be unknown to me.
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