Fran Whiting: What you observe about life and love when you go for a walk

Yes, walking is good for you but there is a much more important reason why we should all wander about our neighbourhood every day.

WALKING is such a simple act, isn’t it?

All it requires is putting one foot in front of the other, and aiming your body in a certain direction.

But for the millions of walkers out there; the young, the old and everyone in between – first time fathers pushing prams while the mother blissfully sleeps at home, women with their heads close together, walking and talking, hands curled around coffee cups; couples who have been together for long enough to see their hair go through all the seasons and settle on grey, walking is one of life’s quieter pleasures.

And part of its beauty is that it is quiet, walking is life with the sound turned down so that thoughts can gather and the right words can be found for what’s needed to be said.

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It can be a guilty pleasure – wandering around neighbourhoods looking at other people’s houses and commenting on their carport renovations.

Sometimes the pleasure comes as a surprise; a flash of white cockatoos overhead; a shock of yellow sunflowers peeking over someone’s fence, the first jacaranda of the season performing is delicate, swirling fall right in front of you; a very tiny dog dancing past with a red bow on its bobbing head.

Walking is life with the sound turned down so that thoughts can gather and the right words can be found for what’s needed to be said. Picture: Johanthan Bentley illustration

All of these things are why all of those people are out there walking, and it’s why I’m out there too, usually with Wilson the Wonderdog, usually looking for his best escape route.

But the other reason I walk is because it is the stuff of life.

If you are lucky enough to live in a place you like well enough to stay for years; to bring up your family there or make friends in your community, a place where you are at least on nodding acquaintance with the people you pass as you walk, then you are sometimes also lucky enough to glimpse – and with apologies to the Lion King – the mighty circle of life.

For a few years now, I have walked the length of a particular street and on that walk a few years ago I would pass a young girl who looked like she was trying.

Trying to get fit, trying to make the effort to get out there and get going, and the truth is she walked as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Then, about two years ago, a young man appeared by her side on that walk and her shoulders, I noticed, lifted a little.

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One morning a few weeks later as I passed them I noticed they were holding hands, fingers locked together in a promise of tomorrow.

After that I saw them walking together often, always holding hands, or laughing, or their heads close together, once with his arm around her as the rain came down.

But I haven’t walked that street for a while, we’ve moved and although I still live nearby, I have other streets to walk on now.

Until this week, when I walked that street once more and saw the two of them once more, only now they were three.

The young man with a very small baby wrapped close to his chest, the child nestled between the two of them as they walked, and looking equal parts utterly shocked, exhausted and happy.

I don’t know what sadness that girl carried when I first saw her walking, and she would smile her tired smile at me as we passed, and I don’t know, because none of us do, what is to become of any of them, the young woman, the young man, or their child.

But I do know that to see them walking is to know life itself, and to silently wish as I passed them, that they too will walk through all the seasons, still holding hands.