The Charm of Arrival

Walk: From the Dutch Deli to home

Distance: 16 blocks (2.5 miles)

Duration: 50 minutes

Thoughts: Why do I enjoy walking in one direction only more than doing a round trip? Perhaps the key is I like having a destination. Walking in a circle has never appealed to me. Going around and around the park, circling the blocks, it can suffice, but the best walk for me is a long one that ends someplace different than where it began. There is just an innate pleasure in getting somewhere.

I have long fantasized about walking an extremely long distance, with stops along the way, a walk that takes most of a day, but not in the mountains. I'd like to do this walk somewhere urban. When I lived in L.A. I imagined myself walking from downtown L.A. to Santa Monica beach (according to Google Maps, 16 miles). Now, in Salt Lake, I can't think of a good, similar, option. Once I walked from our house on Capital Hill to Malon and Myron's in the Avenues, and then to Rocky and Erin's house in Harvard-Yale, and then to my parents' house on Wasatch drive (isn't that just the perfect list of snobby liberal neighborhoods in Salt Lake?). That was about a 7 mile walk (again, according to Google Maps), and I remember at the end of it, feeling that I could hardly keep walking. Thoughts of death marches drifted through my thoughts as I trudged up the hill to to Wasatch. Perhaps the LA walk was always a pipe dream...