32 miles around Manhattan

saunter (v): walk in a slow, relaxed manner, without hurry or effort

I’m sure there are auspicious times to attempt to walk 32 miles around the outer edge of Manhattan but reader, this past Saturday was not one of them.

The ill-omens began early last week, when a rain icon appeared next to the day of the Great Saunter in my weather app. Then, our Friday afternoon flight from Kansas to LaGuardia was summarily cancelled, and the only same-day rebooking option was a flight hours later that first went west to Denver before continuing east to New York. On top of our travel woes, the illness that had already plagued my boyfriend for more than a week had just got its claws into me, as well.

LaGuardia greeted us with a fun new torture device called “Taxi Shuttle,” where you have to wait for a bus at the terminal to convey you to a taxi stand. We finally arrived home around 1am. We needed to leave for the Great Saunter in less than six hours. After just four hours of sleep I woke anxious and feverish, and struggled to fall back to sleep.

Of course, we still walked. First, because I had already paid our entry fees. Second, because I had said I would. And third, because most people aren’t ever ready to walk 32 miles in a day, and there’s no time like the present.

The day began in a fog, which matched my physical and mental energies, although at least it never coalesced into real precipitation. We were four in all, and I remember saying to my companions several times over what a nice day it turned out to be, as we made our way along the West Side Highway. Early on, we saw lots of neatly groomed parks and well-turned out tulips the size of fists. I caught my first IRL look at the park made out of concrete champagne coupes.

Looking back, it seems I observed little and absorbed less; even early in the day my cells were entirely focused on finishing, with little energy to spare.

Passing the Little Red Lighthouse, which I barely spared a glance for, I felt a twinge of regret that my sense of wonder seemed to have taken the day off. I was a vessel of banal urges: to eat, to drink, to pee, to poop, to walk only so that I could eventually stop walking. And we weren’t even to the halfway point yet!

My feet got hot, and though I changed my socks, I didn’t do enough to alleviate the real problem. I understand how blisters form: the outer layers of skin moving more than the inner layers of skin until they separate and fill with liquid. But I want to know, at which point does it become excruciating? At several points over those 32 miles the pain would escalate violently, from just one step to another. One moment it was bearable discomfort, and then suddenly it wasn’t. We paused so I could operate on a bench, and I limped on.

A few miles later a blister on the ball of my foot popped and gushed between my toes like a water balloon.

Before the Great Saunter, I read a 2015 Racked article by someone who attempted the feat and only made it 28 miles, and I thought: how could one stop just four miles shy of the goal? During the Great Saunter, I understood. The last eight miles were the worst. Adding insult to injuries, the people walking with us (we were rarely out of site of other Shorewalkers wearing “race” numbers) seemed entirely unfazed. Of course, we passed two women hailing a cab from the Upper East Side, when the route diverted inland. And another young woman sitting down on the sidewalk near a bus stop, looking like she had no intention of continuing on anytime soon.

But everyone still moving seemed to do so without limps or grimaces. Chief among them, our power-walking companion, Emma, who commutes more than two miles to work on foot each day and likes to keep a brisk pace. Emma pushed us on, untouched by blister, ache, or fatigue.

Between four walkers we pounded 120 miles of pavement; three of us finished the whole damn thing. It was probably the most challenging day hike I’ve ever completed, although parts of multi-day hikes have certainly been more mentally and physically taxing. Would I Saunter again? Probably—ask me again next year.

Egg nachos in bed, or how one recovers from 32 miles

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On the internet

Reading Caroline Dworin’s account of her 2018 Saunter for the New York Times makes mine seem quite shallow, and also reminded me what a privilege it is to walk and to only have to worry about yourself and the friends by your side.

A new permitting system implemented on Yosemite’s Half Dome reduced the number of hikers—but the number of deaths and injuries has remained the same, David Adam reports for Science.

For one of my part-time jobs, I collected stories about the devastating biodiversity report released this week, with a focus on where we go from here.