on a cross country drive from canada to los angeles we met two cyclists returning home from a year long tour. we asked what was the most surprising thing they learned about the world. their response: ‘the world is a beautiful place and people are generous.’ we are certainly given strong impressions of doom and gloom about the world,especially when young and as you write it makes sense to be cautious and discerning but the idea of weirder and whatever the other word is you used,makes my heart swell with the love i know exists on this planet everywhere. thank you for the reminder.
Beautiful. I've had similar experiences—two friends in particular who gave me permission to open my interior world to them, after which I realized that it's not only harmless but enriching and necessary. When I talk to them now, it's like they were excited by discovering me, in the same way that you talk about discovering a landscape of possibility.
It's easy to be suspicious of extroverts, to misunderstand their efforts to reach out and find common ground as shallow, transient, frivolous "small talk"—but over time I've come to see that my most outgoing friends have been the most important people I've ever met.
Reading this, I can't help but wonder if men have a built-in advantage with this one. My relative lack of testerone (among other things), I suspect, makes me more hesitant to approach strangers and travel alone. On the other hand, it's possible that women have a built-in advantage in that others find them more approachable and therefore are more willing to engage when they _are_ bold enough to approach. I think the general principle here is true and valid for everyone, I'm just intrigued by how it plays out differently between the sexes.
it’s not strictly a man/woman thing. i’m terrified of people. moral dilemmas stories trip me up — why would i let a stranger into my car even if they have a broken leg?!
but you’re point is well taken. the experience is not the same. gender matters
The Herzog line is doing more work than it first appears. He's said in interviews that walking is the only speed at which the world can be properly perceived... that cars and planes don't just move faster, they suppress the kind of attention that lets places become real.
Rebecca Solnit made a similar argument in Wanderlust: that the pace of walking is the pace at which thought moves most freely, which is why so many philosophers walked compulsively.
What your story adds to both of them is the social dimension they missed. It's not just that the world reveals itself to those who travel by foot. It reveals itself through the people who stop because you're on foot and wouldn't have stopped otherwise.
"Viktor was always conjuring small scenes and crafting creative social situations that made me realize how much more interesting life can be if you put some thought into it."
Curious what some of these scenes or social situations were.
Mm. Lovely. One thing I love about you/your writing is that you seem to have a pretty firm understanding that life is better when it’s outside of just your head.
But, you’re also very good at being in your head, and being there produces many wonderful things that are valuable. It’s a very nice contrast or yin & yang that I admire.
Great read. I like how many stories are in it too, that was fun:)
—It is easy to overindex on scary, easy-to-visualize risks (like getting dragged into a white van) and miss the subtler risks (like fear shrinking your soul)!
The friction is the feature. High-speed travel solves the problem of distance. But the problem of distance was also doing something: it was giving you time to become someone who had traveled that far. When you compress the transit, you arrive without having undergone anything. You're at the destination but you haven't earned the coordinates in your body yet. The same thing happens with understanding. A fast summary of a complex idea gives you the conclusion without the path. And conclusions without paths are just opinions you borrowed from someone else's walk.
Exactly！And maybe that's the most honest way to describe what's missing. The model has walked every path in the training data. But it hasn't arrived anywhere. It holds the coordinates without having a body that remembers the distance.
At 24, I left my husband, quit my job, sold everything I owned and went to Paris. For 7 months, I hitchhiked all over Europe and had amazing experiences. That was 1972, the year terrorism expanded. It’s a harder world now, but like you said, individual people are wonderful.
I resonate with your sharing tremendously. Every time I'm out in the wild, I can feel life, the liveliness, the voices of nature. It never feels enough.
Thoreau, Nan Shepherd, and more recently Robert Macfarlane are all favorites of mine who understand this well. Something you discuss and they kinda neglect is the psychic wherewithal often needed to do things like cycle (or walk) to another country without a plan.
Are you familiar with Chris Arnade's substack "Walking the World"?
Chris is middle-aged and not necessarily looking for adventures (though he often engages with downtrodden and/or mentally ill people he encounters, whom he is willing to talk to but not many others are). But he spends his time walking through or between cities in various places around the world, finding local bars, meeting strangers, and trying to come up with some sort of picture of how human cultures differ and don't.
When I was in my 20s I also spent time exploring and meeting and staying with strangers. It was an amazing time. Now that I have small children this feels impractical or dangerous. But I like to think, when they have grown, that I will start doing this again.
I love this so much. As someone, who has gone through life more internally, these experiences definitely serve as added motivation to go forth and tread more, trusting the process (and possibilities) along the way. Beautifully written. ✨️
The "weirder and more friendly" framing is the right one. A version of this lesson I keep relearning: most of the friction I imagine before doing a thing turns out to be friction I was carrying with me, not friction in the world. Putting yourself in motion — on foot, in a strange town, or just into a conversation you've been avoiding — exposes which constraints were real and which were postural.
on a cross country drive from canada to los angeles we met two cyclists returning home from a year long tour. we asked what was the most surprising thing they learned about the world. their response: ‘the world is a beautiful place and people are generous.’ we are certainly given strong impressions of doom and gloom about the world,especially when young and as you write it makes sense to be cautious and discerning but the idea of weirder and whatever the other word is you used,makes my heart swell with the love i know exists on this planet everywhere. thank you for the reminder.
Beautiful. I've had similar experiences—two friends in particular who gave me permission to open my interior world to them, after which I realized that it's not only harmless but enriching and necessary. When I talk to them now, it's like they were excited by discovering me, in the same way that you talk about discovering a landscape of possibility.
It's easy to be suspicious of extroverts, to misunderstand their efforts to reach out and find common ground as shallow, transient, frivolous "small talk"—but over time I've come to see that my most outgoing friends have been the most important people I've ever met.
Reading this, I can't help but wonder if men have a built-in advantage with this one. My relative lack of testerone (among other things), I suspect, makes me more hesitant to approach strangers and travel alone. On the other hand, it's possible that women have a built-in advantage in that others find them more approachable and therefore are more willing to engage when they _are_ bold enough to approach. I think the general principle here is true and valid for everyone, I'm just intrigued by how it plays out differently between the sexes.
it’s not strictly a man/woman thing. i’m terrified of people. moral dilemmas stories trip me up — why would i let a stranger into my car even if they have a broken leg?!
but you’re point is well taken. the experience is not the same. gender matters
I think you’re right, both have different advantages and disadvantages.
The Herzog line is doing more work than it first appears. He's said in interviews that walking is the only speed at which the world can be properly perceived... that cars and planes don't just move faster, they suppress the kind of attention that lets places become real.
Rebecca Solnit made a similar argument in Wanderlust: that the pace of walking is the pace at which thought moves most freely, which is why so many philosophers walked compulsively.
What your story adds to both of them is the social dimension they missed. It's not just that the world reveals itself to those who travel by foot. It reveals itself through the people who stop because you're on foot and wouldn't have stopped otherwise.
Biker Pete doesn't pull over for a car.
Love this!!
"Viktor was always conjuring small scenes and crafting creative social situations that made me realize how much more interesting life can be if you put some thought into it."
Curious what some of these scenes or social situations were.
Mm. Lovely. One thing I love about you/your writing is that you seem to have a pretty firm understanding that life is better when it’s outside of just your head.
But, you’re also very good at being in your head, and being there produces many wonderful things that are valuable. It’s a very nice contrast or yin & yang that I admire.
Great read. I like how many stories are in it too, that was fun:)
—It is easy to overindex on scary, easy-to-visualize risks (like getting dragged into a white van) and miss the subtler risks (like fear shrinking your soul)!
Love this.
The friction is the feature. High-speed travel solves the problem of distance. But the problem of distance was also doing something: it was giving you time to become someone who had traveled that far. When you compress the transit, you arrive without having undergone anything. You're at the destination but you haven't earned the coordinates in your body yet. The same thing happens with understanding. A fast summary of a complex idea gives you the conclusion without the path. And conclusions without paths are just opinions you borrowed from someone else's walk.
Sounds like a perfect analogy to AI 😅
Exactly！And maybe that's the most honest way to describe what's missing. The model has walked every path in the training data. But it hasn't arrived anywhere. It holds the coordinates without having a body that remembers the distance.
At 24, I left my husband, quit my job, sold everything I owned and went to Paris. For 7 months, I hitchhiked all over Europe and had amazing experiences. That was 1972, the year terrorism expanded. It’s a harder world now, but like you said, individual people are wonderful.
I resonate with your sharing tremendously. Every time I'm out in the wild, I can feel life, the liveliness, the voices of nature. It never feels enough.
„It never feels enough“ 💯this, I think that’s something important in itself
it is worth finding more people bolder than you. love this one!
Thoreau, Nan Shepherd, and more recently Robert Macfarlane are all favorites of mine who understand this well. Something you discuss and they kinda neglect is the psychic wherewithal often needed to do things like cycle (or walk) to another country without a plan.
Are you familiar with Chris Arnade's substack "Walking the World"?
Chris is middle-aged and not necessarily looking for adventures (though he often engages with downtrodden and/or mentally ill people he encounters, whom he is willing to talk to but not many others are). But he spends his time walking through or between cities in various places around the world, finding local bars, meeting strangers, and trying to come up with some sort of picture of how human cultures differ and don't.
When I was in my 20s I also spent time exploring and meeting and staying with strangers. It was an amazing time. Now that I have small children this feels impractical or dangerous. But I like to think, when they have grown, that I will start doing this again.
I love this so much. As someone, who has gone through life more internally, these experiences definitely serve as added motivation to go forth and tread more, trusting the process (and possibilities) along the way. Beautifully written. ✨️
The "weirder and more friendly" framing is the right one. A version of this lesson I keep relearning: most of the friction I imagine before doing a thing turns out to be friction I was carrying with me, not friction in the world. Putting yourself in motion — on foot, in a strange town, or just into a conversation you've been avoiding — exposes which constraints were real and which were postural.