Once you start regularly walking in public it won’t be long until you start to see some familiar faces. And this in turn might lead you to start thinking about taking things to the next level. For things to get a bit more serious. That maybe, you might like to say hello.
From my experience, it's best to only say hello to your own kind. And by that I mean: other walkers.
Commuters don't tend to be up for a hello. They might be out walking but commuting is a sub-category of walking and operates as its own state. A bit like the Vatican City. Yes it may seem like it's a part of Italy, but its motivations are very different. Commuters aren't out walking by their own choosing and this is a key difference, which means they tend to stick to their own kind.
I heard a story from someone a little while back about two people getting married after walking past each other for months on their commute to work, before one of them eventually stopped the other to say hello. Had one of them just been a recreational walker, it's hard to imagine the relationship ever happening. Mr Darcy and Elizabeth might have crossed a social and class divide, but a commuter and a walker getting together would have simply been a bridge too far.
I think what makes the kinship stronger is that, in the case of a walker, you're not like the commuters and cyclists and runners and everyone else. You have your own club and that feels special. A hello is not just a hello. It’s a 'Hey how about all these other crazy people? I think I saw someone riding one of those hand wheel bike things. And did you notice all the e-scooter people out and about too? They're all a bit odd aren't they. Oh well, life is funny isn't. As long as they're happy. You and I both know what the deal is though and that's all that matters.'
Each club has this too. I know because I've switched clubs occasionally. When I run I join the runners club, and myself and other runners scoff at all the slow walkers, and the cyclists in their lycra and all the other weird people. Your identity and your club is made stronger because of what you're not, and you could say this about most unofficial clubs that people form beyond the walking trails. Our thing feels special because the others don’t get it. We are not these other things, we are this. It's funny how people scoffing at your thing only makes you feel stronger about it. No one else is in on it, but we are. And that's why the hellos feel special.
The only time this changes is when some other connection point overrides these specific groups. Like walking in a smaller town or community. Now you all have a shared connection that goes beyond whether you're walking, or cycling or running. You are all in this little community and the agreed upon stance becomes: we will forget the little clubs for now. We can look past our minor differences because we have this place we're in here. We share the same local supermarket. We buy our pizzas from the same shitty takeaway. And also, I don’t care if you're riding your bike and I'm running, you better say hello because this place is too small for that shit. Don’t bring your big city urban ideas here. If you live here, you're automatically signed up for a hello exchange program. And it's too bad if you're commuting. You better buck up, mister. I am sorry for the language but this is the way things are done here.
All this is subtext. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but there is a lot of nuance in a hello.
At a certain point in time we all stopped measuring walking distances in kilometres or miles or even hours and instead started telling each other how many steps we had walked. A science person came up with ten thousand as the optimal number and we all agreed with this, put on our fitbits and stopped going for a walk and instead started getting our steps in.
You only need to jump back 20ish years ago and explaining to someone that you had walked 10,000 steps yesterday and the day before that you walked 12,000, they would probably assume you were a lunatic. That you might also be the kind of person, if given the opportunity, to share how many sandwiches you'd eaten that year, how many pairs of socks you'd ever owned and that you should never step on the cracks when walking on a footpath or in fact any concrete surface.
Jumping back further to medieval times or to the times of ancient civilisations, you'd probably find people using days to measure how far a walk might be. Such and such village is three days walk. Not to mention that only the very rich could track their steps because they could employ a servant to count them throughout the day. And from what I can tell, there is no evidence to suggest that people back then ever said things like I need to get my days in or whether there was any literature about how many days one should walk to live a healthy life.
I used to see the same tall, limping man on many of my walks down by the river. He always wore a wide brim hat and sunglasses. I couldn't see his eyes but he always had a very determined look on his face and I assumed that his eyes were probably much the same. Because unlike the Vatican City example, the eyes are not a separate state and are governed by the face. It’s hard to have whimsical eyes when you have a determined face, but then again, botox and plastic surgery can do all sorts to upset the power balance and all of a sudden you have some surprised eyes in direct contradiction to a determined face.
I'm not sure if it was some sort of hip injury that he was getting over, but it didn’t look comfortable. And yet despite the difficulty, he seemed to have made up his mind about walking every day and that was that. Hence the determined face.
It took a long time but after getting very little back in return, we eventually got to be on nodding terms. Nothing verbal. No hi's or good morning, but I suspected a nod was a big deal coming from him and as it was hard fought, I didn't take it lightly.
There was brief period where he stopped nodding hello to me after I went for a run and clearly breached our agreement, due to an error of judgement on my part to leave the walking club and temporarily join the running club. Luckily this was only short-lived and our lawyers eventually smoothed everything over and things returned to normal. We returned to our nod hello and I made sure never to make the same mistake again.
There was another regular I used to see and as much as I tried, I could never get to hello. The man looked to be in his fifties, had a lean build and always wore three quarter length pants, a t-shirt and glasses with a purple tint. He seemed like he might have been a raver back in the day and whenever I passed him he always had eyes fixed forwards. I would try to communicate to him through my eyes that I was available for a hello if he was interested. It wasn't intense or forceful, just open and welcoming. Let's be walking friends, was the message I would send through but it never resulted in anything. After a while I gave up. Maybe he didn't need that pressure or expectation when he was out trying to enjoy his walk. Which is fair enough. I certainly didn't want to come across as pushy.
My Pop used to do this thing when he was on a walk where he would try out different hellos. For one person he would punch out a spirited 'good morning!' and for another he would slip them a nod and a mumble. His experiment was to see whether people would mimic him and he found that they generally would. They would often give him the same response back in the way he had delivered it. I don't believe these results were ever published formally in any academic papers but I'm sure he would be eager if given the opportunity.
It makes me wonder if anyone has done this with me. And even whether the tall, determined limping man might have a completely different hello agreement with others out on the walk trail. Perhaps he had just assumed I was only up for a nod.
It's obviously too late now, but maybe behind those sunglasses, on that determined face, were a set of enthusiastic eyes. Itching for a different hello. A big beaming good morning. A high five. Perhaps it was just resting determined face. I suppose I'll never know.
You can't be picky though. Sometimes all you need is a signal, no matter how small. A beacon and connection point amidst all the other clubs who don't understand you. Something to say 'I see you, fellow walker'. In which case, I'll take a nod any day of the week. Especially a hard fought one.
What’s your hello situation like? And have you ever had an interesting or weird exchange with a fellow walker? Let me know in the comments.
This was great…thank you …. I stopped running about ten years ago and have been walking everyday since during lunch break on a local bike path….i have named all the different folks i normally pass on a regular basis…but very little conversation…. After five years of passing one older gentleman and nodding hello, he actually stopped me and said…we’ve seen each other for five years now, and i just wanted to tell you my wife and i are moving to New Mexico, retirement, i did not want you to think I died…. Just a nod a day for five years…and we were like old friends…. Thank you for a wonderful post….
Having lived most of my life in small country communities where everyone knows everyone & stopping for a chat is the norm, I found it difficult adjusting to city living where even eye contact seemed abnormal. I'm a walker (for health & recreation) & have found that smiling at oncoming fellow walkers is the best policy as it almost always results in a return smile - not a full beamer or anything creepy, just a semi-widish kind of grin. A hello is about a 50% return, a good morning is about 20% but often shortened to 'morning', and good evening just seems way too weird & formal for here in Aus & gets ignored completely. I've also noticed that in general, the younger the walker is, the less likely there is to be any response, particularly eye contact.