Walking to Missouri

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 737, 28 August 1953, Page 4

Walking to Missouri

SONG about "poor little A Robin walking to Missouri" which lately has been heard on hit parades and other programmes has a touch of pathos and a clip-clopping rhythm that may help it to live a few weeks longer than most ditties of its kind. To have no feathers to fly with, and to be compelled to trudge the highways, is indeed to pay heavily for a good time in the city. Walking has nowadays |} become a penance, an affliction, or a most drastic remedy for persons with too much flesh. That at least is the impression given by a recent cable message which told the sad story of two Americans. Mrs. Helen Fedorowicz was 42> years old, five feet high, and weighed 18 stone 13 pounds. Her husband John, aged 59, made a decision. "Let’s take a walk," he said. And they did, until at the end of 2000 miles-four months later-Mrs, Fedorowicz was only / One pound over 11 stone. Whether she will stay that way is another matter, not to be judged without some knowledge of her diet or the state of her glands. And it is superfluous to suggest that such heroic measures can be dangerous: | other husbands and wives are not likely to emulate Mr. and Mrs, Fedorowicz. Walking is falling into disfavour as a way of getting from one place to another. The most popular means of locomotion is a motor car; and many drivers who complain about their bulging waistlines will wedge themselves behind wheels even when they want to travel only a few hundred yards. These are the chronic nonwalkers, the lost ones, who must simply stay fat and put up with it. Others, a little wiser, travel greater distances at high speed and* then walk up and down the hills, afterwards rushing back to the city in a glow of self-approval. Some men do their walking on a golf-course, hitting little white = with skill and devotion. The have no need of these diversions: at school age they run everywhere, even in the house;

and their energy is later poured into various games and sports. It is in middle age that exercise requires conscious thought and effort. With some, perhaps, the interest is too deep and solemn, We may feel unwilling respect for the man who leaps into a cold bath every morning, leaps smartly out again and rubs himself down with cries of exultation, breathes deeply in front of a window open to the south, and puts his body into strange postures and contortions; but we do not follow his example. Men who pursue rude health with fanaticism are not unlike travellers who go rapidly from place to place with no idea what to do with themselves when they arrive. The method of attaining fitness becomes an end in itself, and can lead to depressing forms of human oddness. There is, for instance, that aged physical culture expert in the United States who is reputed to celebrate his birthdays with parachute jumps. He stands on his head interminably, performs feats of strength to shame the young, eats large numbers of raw carrots, and shows us how long and ruggedly we can live when the body is made to know its place. Such people seem to imagine that longevity is a virtue; they are so intent upon staying alive that they know very little about life itself, an experience which has depth as well as duration. Above all, they miss the satisfactions of the genuine walker, the man who likes to move at his own pace, noticing what he sees and hears. True, some of us have no choice in the matter; and on wet days, when the cars go smugly through the rain, it is natural to feel a tinge of envy. But walking does more than carry us to a destination. It promotes an internal music, a harmonious lift and fall of muscle and bone, and an ease of digestion. And it opens’ around us a world that is too often seen indistinctly through windows. Walking may be a slow way of getting to Missouri, but it takes us through interesting country.