A Day in Berkeley
Lessons in walking and boredom
At the top of the Berkeley Hills in the Berkeley Botanical Garden lies a bench with a perfect view of the Golden Gate Bridge. As you sit nestled between the foliage, you can make out the bay in the distance just ahead of the canopy. The sunshine glistens over the water. The shade, a welcome respite from the sun in the azure sky.
On the bench is a plaque that tells us this bench is a dedication from a mother to her son – she calls him “her little prince.” The dates on the plaque are listed just like any other: two dates separated by a hyphen. It’s only on further inspection that you can see they are only four months apart.
The realization strikes me as I stare at the horizon.
Today I spent the day walking through Berkeley. I set out first thing in the morning and with the exception of a few coffees with friends and a pizza break, I didn’t stop walking until the end of the day.
One of my role models is a man named Craig Mod that lives in Japan and routinely goes on long walks. I’ve referred to him a few times in this newsletter since he’s always been a source of inspiration and fascination. Many of his walks are quasi-monastic in nature: he walks alone with his camera, dictating notes and thoughts into his phone, and then writes newsletter about his experiences at the end of each day. He routinely compiles his work into broader books that he sells online. Craig is an artist, writer, walker and philosopher. A foot-powered thinker for our modern times.
Since I have come into more free time recently, I decided to take Craig’s rules for walking and turn them into reality. Since I have children and various other obligations, my walks can’t be quite as extended but I decided to start tweaking into a version that works with my schedule.
Since, frankly, I don’t really know what I’m doing, I decided to prototype. My first foray: Berkeley.
Despite the fact that I’ve lived in the Bay Area for more than a few decades, I’ve only seen Berkeley superficially. I’ve gone to the occasional meal, taken the occasional stroll, seen a friend - but I’d never done anything like today: wandering solo by foot for hours on end, truly seeing with eyes wide open what was around me and – with the exception of a few end points – going wherever the spirit led me.
I don’t know what I expected from Berkeley. For some reason in my mind Berkeley wasn’t beautiful. If I’d had to describe it before starting I would have said “grungy and dirty” - and yet, not even five minutes after starting I realized my preconceptions were wrong.
Upon entering the campus I couldn’t believe my eyes. In front of me was the most beautiful bright blue jay, jumping up and down amidst a redwood forest, a burbling stream and golden sunlight. Beside the jay was a happy, plump squirrel gnawing on some wood, basking in the moment. What a great reminder of my ignorance!
Meandering through the Berkeley campus I lost myself among intersecting paths. The larger roads on campus are all criss-crossed with pedestrian pathways. Bike paths lead to pedestrian trails near streams. Open lawns abound with gorgeous views of electric architecture and the majestic oak hills.
The interlinking also connects Berkeley campus to the city itself. The edges of campus blur into the residences and stores of town. In a few minutes of walking I passed a Buddhist temple, a theological college, a Mexican food restaurant and a French restaurant that sells cheese puffs, all intermixed with residences in countless architectural styles. Truly an intellectual, cultural melange.
In an interview, Werner Herzog was asked why he likes to travel by foot:
[…] Why is walking so important to you as your mode of travel?
It’s how we are made as homo sapiens. We are biologically organized to cover distances on foot. That’s what we did for tens of thousands of years until we started to use horses, of course, until the mechanical age. And I would not call it “walking” because it’s not going out for a stroll or going out for a “power walk” or ambling in your city. It’s “traveling on foot.” You are reading the world, learning the essence of the world. Chatwin always liked my dictum: “The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.”
One of my milestones for today was going to be the Botanical Gardens. To reach it by foot from lunch was over an hour up the Berkeley Hills.
All alone in the dead of the day’s heat, I reached a fork in the road. The map suggested taking Canyon Road and yet from where I stood this looked like a terrible idea. A yellow “DEAD END” sign was very prominently placed at the entrance of the road. Ivy-lined detritus on the periphery.
The uncertainty is the adventure, I reminded myself, and walked through…
Not even a minute in, it felt like I’d entered a fairy paradise.
“These houses look magical. Where the hell am I?” I muttered to my notes app. The golden light filtering through multi-storied, forest-nestled houses that took my breath away.
One aspect of long solo walks that I did not anticipate was what the mental gymnastics my mind went through as it started to get bored from the lack of its usual computer-based stimulation.
Some of Craig’s Mod rules for walking force you unto boredom:
Walk whenever possible
Which means: Avoid transportation unless absolutely necessary
A lot of interesting things happens in the interstitial “boring” areas between “good” and “suboptimal” walking spaces, and these spaces are often “fast-forwarded” via transportation
No mental “teleporting:”
No podcasts
No social media
No news sites
I adopted the rules blindly but I now know they have a very clear purpose. They force you to be truly present. While on the surface the rules seem pretty simple, actually sticking to them turns out to be more challenging than I expected.
Craig Mod has written a lot about how walks and boredom go together. From “Walk for the Boredom of it All”:
Oh, it’s critical. Boredom is everything, man. I think our loss of boredom in contemporary society is one of the greatest, weirdest, ambient losses. It is one of these things that’s hard to quantify the value of. And we’ve lost it so completely and totally that we very rarely have moments to even re-experience it, unless you do so intentionally. And so for me, yeah the boredom of these walks is, I would say, 50% of the value of it. It’s forcing yourself into a place where you’re not teleporting mentally.
Every few hours, and especially on any long portion of my walk that started to feel monotonous, my mind would rebel. “Is this even a good idea?” “This is so dumb.” “Just take an Uber!” "I’m bored!”
Luckily I ignored myself and kept walking.
At peak heat, walking up the hills, I muttered into my notes app: “It’s so hot. I wish I brought a hat. Lighter pants. Shorts even? And better shoes. Am I really gonna walk all the way back down this again?” But then a few minutes later, another note: “Seeing the sign that says Botanical Gardens: 200 yards! Fuck, yeah!”
The pleasure and joy I had from seeing the Botanical Gardens after walking in the heat bordered on delirious. And then the treasures inside were even more rewarding.
In the middle of the botanical gardens is the “Japanese pool” with waterfalls streaming downhill. Next to the sunken stepping stones of the pool is a sign: “Please do not touch the newts.” Refocusing my eyes beyond the surface, I see little aquatic water dragons paddling through the leaves.
Even though the walk was grueling on my body, by the end of the day my senses were electric. Every bite was delicious. All sounds majestic. The day felt like a pocket of ethereal timelessness and my wandering like a dream.
27,700 steps, 12 miles, 63 flights of stairs climbed.
I prototyped. I’ve learned some lessons. Next time I’ll do things better.
This is much harder than it looks, and yet, it’s worth every step.
I became very nostalgic seeing your pictures. I lived high up in Cragmont Avenue a year in the 1990s and used to walk to Campus each day, grabbing a coffee to go at the first coffee bar... Many great walking paths in North Berkeley hills, although not always easy to find. Tilden park is also great for walking, not only for cycling.
Later in the 2000s I lived on Stuart Street a year and used to walk down to Oakland once in a while. It is not that far really and the flatlands are interesting - or wonderfully boring - in a different way.
...but then I'm a North European (like Herzog) and we walk all the time, everywhere.
The only strange thing about your essay is that you portray walking as something exotic, out of the ordinary. That said, I am happy that you have discovered the pleasure of putting one foot ahead of the other, for hours! Never stop.
You found one of my favorite streets in the hills, Maybeck Twin Drive
Keep on walking!