The north wind is blustery, episodic, as I walk the old trail alongside the Santa Cruz.  A mile or so to the south is the ancient mission at Tumacácori (established 1691).  A few miles to the north is the Tubac Presidio, established in the years immediately following.  Spain announced its presence in the New World 200 years before, and first came to Mexico (the Yucatán) in 1519. It had taken a while, but the push northward was on, the inland routes running  through what is now Hermosillo and Magdalena in Sonora and into the upper reaches of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro rivers. The descent to the north along both would take the Spanish into present-day Arizona.

Pausing for a moment, savoring the slight warmth of the winter sun during a lull in the wind, I turn my attention to the western front of the Santa Rita Mountains to the east, and then the less-formidable form of the Sierrita Mountains to the west.  In 1774 when de Anza came through here on his first expedition to Alta California he was on horseback, but he was still seeing the world at three…

Three miles per hour (twenty minutes per mile) over relatively flat (even if somewhat uneven) ground is a sustainable pace for humans.  Five hours of steady walking will get you 15 miles, seven will get you 21. Uphills will, of course, slow you down, although downhills don’t necessarily speed you up (and if you do, it sometimes is of short duration and an abrupt end).  A  four miles per hour pace (15 minutes/mile) is what I do when in the city, several blocks away from my destination, and cutting it close on time. It’s doable, even sustainable for me for extended periods, but it places my focus on the pace, not my surroundings. 

I like walking, I always have.  I like seeing the world at three…

Juan Bautista de Anza (b. July 6, 1736, d. December 19, 1788) was one of the most accomplished officers in service to the government of New Spain.  As a young man he was part of the Portolá Expedition that established the first Missions/Presidios in Alta California (at San Diego and Monterey). In his later years he was the Governor of what is now New Mexico.  However, it is his two overland expeditions from Tubac to Alta California (the second establishing the San Francisco Presidio) that cemented his reputation and his legacy. I’m walking north at the southern end of the 1200 mile Juan Bautista de Anza National Historical Trail…at three miles per hour…

Bipedalism is intriguing, complex, and dangerous.  We are not the only species to display bipedalism.  Birds do.  Yet, with the exception of a few flightless varieties (think ostriches and emus, for example), walking is not their primary mode of locomotion…they are birds after all… The kangaroo is another, although the balance provided by the tail is necessarily different.  The bipedalism of an ostrich is also a completely different matter.  What appears to us to be the knee of the leg is actually the ankle.  The foot and ankle are bone and tendon, the ostrich is always on its toes…unlike us, heel-striking, leg-muscled (relatively speaking), and much slower hominids.  Others who are normally quadrupeds can become bipedal for short periods (all the way from lizards to grizzly bears).  The same is true of primates (chimpanzees and great apes, among others); however, we’re the only species among the primates to exclusively rely on bipedalism.  What one can encounter in the fossil record is another story for another time…

Bipedalism is also risky behavior:  “Walking is falling forward.  Each step we take is an arrested plunge, a collapse averted, a disaster braked.” (Paul Salopek, at the start of the Out of Eden Walk).  When we lift a leg gravity pulls us forward and down.  We counter this fall by extending the leg forward and planting the foot. Our head and torso (now lower than when we started) must be raised (if we are to be successful) so that we can fall forward using the other leg.  You see where this is going. If we lose the ability to raise our head and torso, put a brake on our fall… This is why falling is such an issue for older people, they have greater challenges in “putting the brakes” on what was always a single step away from disaster.

I like the quote from Salopek, but did not give you the complete version above. 

Here it is:

“Walking is falling forward.  Each step we take is an arrested plunge, a collapse averted, a disaster braked.  In this way, to walk becomes an act of faith“. (italics added).

“…to walk becomes an act of faith”…   He was reflecting on the biomechanics of bipedalism. My first thought is of a toddler, taking her first steps under the watchful eye of her parents.  She’s seen them do it… 

It is an act of faith, but that particular faith runs even deeper.  To take tight rein on The Dream, in the face of The Unknown – and potentially disastrous…to take that first step…  The sense has probably always been there, that disaster can be as close as a step away. That it is important to take the step anyway…  De Anza certainly had to be aware, Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea, Armstrong and Aldrin, Cook, Heyerdahl, Earhart…  At some level we all are…

To only walk upright is part of our birthright as a species, both our pleasure and our peril.  Historical accounts of expeditions/travels as well as my experiences tell me that walking at three is an optimum pace to locomote as ourselves, and experience the world in which we live.  Four seems too fast to be present, less than three subtracts distance from that which we are comfortably capable.

The sun is settling on the Sierrita crest.  The wind is picking up, the temperature dropping.  I turn around, put the wind behind me as I walk back…at a steady three. 

To stride out across the landscape. To experience the world under one’s own power.   I like walking…