I’ve blocked off Sunday, May 25, for a walk.
One full day. One city. No meetings, no emails, no kids, no dog. Just me, a pair of worn shoes, and a wander – as the Brits say – through decades of emotions, experiences, people, places.
It’s inspired by Colin O’Brady’s 12-Hour Walk – which offers up a solitary, tech-free endurance practice meant to reset your mind and reconnect you to your deeper self.
My walk will be less about endurance and more about immersion, a personal pilgrimage through the geography of my life. It will wind through decades of memory layered across Richmond’s streets, parks, and back alleys.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,” Thoreau wrote, “and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Thoreau had a pond and the singular focus of youth. I have 20 miles of sidewalks, and thousands of memories that have shaped who I am. Walking directly into – through – the layers of my life, the residue of past lives and loves and losses, the building blocks of who I am, is part rediscovery, part affirmation, part release.
The timing isn’t entirely incidental. There’s a weight in this weekend that I want to carry for a while, to see what it has to say.
I did something like this long ago when I published Caffeine magazine back in the early 90s. My friend Jim and I chronicled what was supposed to be 24 hours in Richmond. It was probably closer to 15 hours but there was sauerkraut and coffee, angry restauranteurs, lectures about Klingons and the “sweet teat of Liberty,” and an asshole cop harassing a girl with a bad stutter after she rear-ended us in the rain. (We mostly traveled by car.)
This time I’m on foot, and moving solo.
This won’t be a precise loop. It will meander. It’s a map built on memories, not GPS coordinates.
I’ll step out my front door in Lakeside and start with the sunrise in Bryan Park before threading through Bellevue, Ginter Park and Rosedale, where I played as a kid at my grandmother’s house and later pushed a stroller down the same sidewalks with my own kids. Past my old boss/mentor/surrogate dad’s old house, and homes of close friends.
My grandmother built, and partly lost, a family in these neighborhoods. I raised, and partly lost, my own family in these neighborhoods. A loop of generational time. Circularity.
So, yeah. The first leg might be the heaviest. Northside is my hearth.
I’ll cheat the long stretch from Ginter Park to the Fan with GRTC, and then thread my way past a dozen different apartments – India’s talking fish, Chesley’s condominium, a rotating cast of best friends, a year of solitude, the first hard years of several hard relationships. Each apartment housed a different version of myself. Some versions trying too hard. Others not trying at all.
Up to Arthur Ashe Boulevard and into the Museum District past another grandmother’s home, and then Carytown. First jobs, first punk albums, first dates at the Byrd, lonely mornings writing poetry in quiet coffee shops.
These legs of the journey will be anchored by old friends and lovers, professors and mentors, punk rock shows and part-time jobs, solid moments of loneliness and joy, more than a dozen apartments, and – yes – memories of gallon after gallon of coffee. (I remember every single cup. Fondly.)
Walking east again, I’ll reach the western edge of VCU and remember a professor or three who transformed my life, the punk tree in Shafer Court, the idiot walk at the Village Cafe, Dance Night at the Metro, the GWAR space, pulling together the student newspaper week after week in the wee hours of the night, falling in love again and again and again.
It should be mid-afternoon by the time I push through downtown and finally reach the river for half a second. And I’ll let the city fold back around me as I take a Lyft home. (Got to get the dog from daycare before 5!)
So, about 9 hours, not 12. Somewhere around 20 miles. Intentional time – every half hour or so – reflecting on singular people who imprinted my life.
I won’t be cutting off from the world entirely. I’m bringing my phone, but it’ll be on Airplane Mode. Just a camera and map. A notebook and pen to document thoughts, memories, gratitude.
I’ll stop for breakfast and lunch, and maybe post an update.
I’ll sip coffee slowly at a café that holds a story or two. (Heya, Village!)
I’ll sit on a concrete wall in Scuffletown where I first learned how much I didn’t know about myself.
Every half hour or so, I’ll hold another handful of people – past or present – close, and reflect on what I gained, what I lost, what I still have to say:
What did I receive from you? What do I still carry? What else needs to be said? What do I want to carry forward? Thank you.
This walk isn’t about getting it right, or reaching an arbitrary milestone. It’s about being present.
The sacredness of the walk isn’t in how rigorously I avoid distraction, but in how I keep returning to what the walk is meant to hold.
The walk will carry its own rhythm. My role is just to listen.
It wasn’t my original intent, but this walk is a long memory of the shape of my life: The geography of childhood, fatherhood, marriage, and unraveling. Street corners where I made decisions that still ripple outward. Parks where I sat on benches and imagined futures I couldn’t quite reach. Whispers of people and dreams lost to time. Appreciation for people and dreams that remain sustaining.
The walk remembers the relationships that changed me – and the ones I wish I’d changed, or solidified, before they fell away.
It honors a marriage that mattered deeply, even if it didn’t last forever. Twenty years is a long time. It should be walked with – but alone this year.
The walk isn’t about grief. It’s about unfolding, and becoming. It’s about carrying forward, intentionally, what matters.
Because I won’t be done when the walk is done. And that’s the point.
What lies ahead is built on a foundation. That foundation – and this life, with all its turns and transitions – deserves to be walked with. Not just thought about. Not just remembered. But honored, step by step.