City walking

I had a friend in town this weekend (my pathetic excuse for not posting here), and whenever a guest arrives to ‘see Philadelphia’, the first question I ask after they’ve dropped their bags is: Are you ready to walk?

I remember how gargantuan and bustling the city seemed to me when we first arrived. After the decision was made, saying to people We’re moving to Philadelphia had all the muscle and electricity of a real adventure, charged with the promise that only an expansive maze of steel, concrete, busy sidewalks and endless honking can offer. Neighborhoods seemed to morph endlessly, one into the other, in an unreachable myriad of happy unfamiliarity, and the stretch between 2nd and 50th streets seemed entirely unbridgeable. As I got to know the city, learned the personalities of each neighborhood and discovered the gems in the city that have come to be home to me, I gradually redefined what it meant for me to go places. I cross blocks by the dozens every weekend, sliding from one neighborhood to the other without a second thought. Center City gradually seems small. Chinatown always seems accessible; the Eastern-most stretch of the city, there by the Deleware River, those cobble-stone streets that represent the mythic past, kept tidy for tourists who expect another world here, all seem, now, very solid and very reachable. Why is it that a place we’re unaccustomed to seems to be so much bigger? Is it just the potential of a new life that was harbored there, in those first weeks as I discovered the streets and found myself entirely taken with a disorientation that made my head buzz with impatience and want? But as I’ve learned my way through the city, I can say I’ve also grown to love the same paths I take, the fact that walking for miles seems normal, the steadiness of the expected as I pass it. So that sometimes, when someone suggests we bike or drive somewhere in the city, I have to reflect for just a minute and shake my head faintly, feeling a sense of calm at the thought: no, let’s walk.