I forget every fall that on the other side of all the color is my favorite walking season. I love when the woods are clear enough to see through, when all the underbrush is thin enough for trudging. I love the grey and silver fields under the pink and blue of sunset. I love the height of the sky. I love to wander when all the world seems to open itself for walkers.
My favorite times for city wandering is also early winter. I love the feeling of space that opens even between buildings and the warmth of stepping into a coffee shop, the little bubbles of weather and comfort held back by a window through which all the dim evening light can still come through.
Wandering is what I miss about Bulgaria: all those surprising city centers and little shops and tangled roads leading back to themselves. I loved taking the long slow walks with no destination again and again through Dobrich, with no goal but to see and experience, stopping when hungry or tired and continuing when satisfied. It is my idea of proper vacation, of experiencing a place.
One of the pivotal Wandering memories happened in New York City. I was a junior in college with a little bit of conference scholarship money. I used it to take the China Town bus from State College to Encounter, a conference run by International Arts Movement. It was winter 2010. And I knew no one.
I also had never been to the city away from the watchful eyes of chaperones and parents and guided tours. This time, I faced the metro system alone with a large suitcase and a too heavy winter coat that I thought looked suave and urban but really harkened to something out of the Narnia winter coats of the 1980 BBC production.
In the conference lobby, I sat with my information packet and tried to absorb the amount of lectures and conversations and free time I would have in the next three days. Two boys sat down next to me and introduced themselves. They were from Rock Hill, SC. They had lived in NYC for a summer for an arts program and liked making friends. They invited me to meet the rest of their group in a coffee shop a few blocks away and rest from the cold for the afternoon. I went.
I spent the afternoon sipping chair tea in their company. And over the next few days, I followed them everywhere. We wandered up and down Manhattan, through Central Park, past the quiet Meat Market in the dark, down tangled streets in Greenwich Village searching for a cupcake bakery that smelled like heaven down the block. We only occasionally went into buildings: once for an open mic; once for cheesecake; once for lunch. But I mainly remember the walking till my legs felt like they could go no further, till I began to marvel at the weather that settled into the streets between the tall buildings, the wind that rushed around corners. We took the metro and would rise above ground to completely different geographies and senses and the color of sunlight.
It was not New York, exactly, that mesmerized me. It was the sudden discovery that I could go anywhere on my feet. It was the feel of my body transporting me miles and miles, through changing neighborhoods and terrains and little corner shops and more Starbucks than all the people in the Penn State graduating class.
Strangers became my friends and took me with them in their aimless exploration. I needed no schedule or timeline. I just needed my feet, some water, the occasional food stop to replenish my knees to bend and contract.
Wandering, I think, is the key element to my writing. I wander in my thoughts and I wander on the page and the writing turns to linguistic geographies of things I didn’t know I had learned. I feel a kind of wild love for the cities or wildernesses I’ve wandered, like I knew them so perfectly for just an afternoon. No histories or explanations were needed for this first encounter. No expectations or wishes spoiled the pleasure of slow, physical, exhausted wonder.
Wandering is important to our lives. Set aside the agenda. Leave the map behind. Find a bit of urban or rural wilderness. And go. Find the magic in the wander.