RE Hawes Medical Building casts a dark, square shadow across its sloping lawn and onto Warren Street in Allston. On the other side of it is the Brighton Marine Corps Complex, where Christopher Boucher has taken his students every spring for the past six years.
Typically this time of year, Boucher, a Boston College author and professor, would wander around Boston with students in his Walking Infinite Jest class, reading passages from the book where they were. But today, they are accessed through Google Maps.
With students sent home during the semester and limited to virtual visits, Boucher said, “Now that we’re all quarantined and stuck inside, even the most ‘public’ activities have become lonely.”
But even without Boucher’s group of college students, traffic on Warren Street today is more congested than ever. As work, school and social gatherings are forced online during the coronavirus pandemic, people around the world are walking for exercise, getting out of the house, or just looking for something to do.
“Walking is one of the only things you can still do right now,” said Kate Kraft, executive director of America Walks, a walking advocacy group. “People are using public spaces to stay active and become more connected to their communities.”
On the street outside the RE Howth Medical Building, a white-haired woman wearing a lavender sportswear walked slowly and bent over. A runner in shorts gave her a wide berth as he passed by with an overly optimistic prediction of a dreary day. A gloved couple waved from a distance to a man carrying his daughter on his shoulders. Nearly everyone — even the runners — was wearing a cloth mask.
“While most of us are cooped up at home, getting outside for a walk is a great way to relieve stress and stay active,” says Don Morgan, an exercise physiologist and professor at Middle Tennessee State University. “It could also reduce the likelihood of needing to see a doctor during this pandemic outbreak.”
While government officials and health professionals advise people to stay home as much as possible, staying outdoors can actually reduce the likelihood of contracting the virus as long as there aren’t many other people around, Morgan said.
“As long as you practice social distancing, walking during the pandemic is really good for your body,” Kraft said.
She said getting outside for a walk can boost the immune system and help people breathe better — two benefits that are particularly useful in the fight against the coronavirus. But even outside the context of a global pandemic, she gushed about the benefits of walking.
“Walking can help relieve arthritis, reduce the risk of many different cancers, and have mental health benefits,” Kraft said. “Basically all exercise has benefits, and so does walking, although it has the smallest impact.”
Kraft said walking, which is already safe, may be even safer during this time of widespread social isolation. With most people staying home, there is less car traffic on the streets, putting pedestrians at risk. Some cities, including Denver and New York City, have completely closed some streets to cars.
However, some hotbeds of the pandemic have also shut down people’s outdoor activities.
Casa Massima, Italy
Gaetano Zappacosta has not missed a walking day in more than a year. After receiving a fitness tracker as a Christmas gift in 2018, he decided to start working out on New Year’s Day 2019. Unlike most New Year’s resolutions, Zappacosta’s lasted all year long. He also kept going until 2020, and even after losing the 10 kilograms he originally planned to lose, he still walked an average of 7 to 9 kilometers a day.
“On January 1, 2019, I was overweight,” Zappacosta said. “Walking is something I enjoy, but it’s also something I need.”
He usually walks alone, accompanied by an Italian newscaster or Beethoven. On the weekends, he says, he might invite a friend for a leisurely 10-kilometer walk (for Americans, that’s more than 6 miles).
Zappacosta works as a flight attendant—or at least, he thinks he still has a job. With travel to and within Italy closed, he is out of work at least until the virus subsides in the country. But his job has never affected his walking – it just means a lot of it is done around airport hotels. For four hundred and thirty-three days in a row, Gaetano Zappacosta laced up his breathable (he said it was important!) sneakers and went for a walk.
“I really feel like I’m getting a workout for my body and my brain,” Zappacosta said. “It’s helped me relieve stress and my sleep has improved a lot.”
But when Italy issued a mandatory stay-at-home order on March 9, his streak ended.
“Now, even if I walk alone outside my town (Casamasima), it’s forbidden,” Zappacosta said. “I feel sad right now, I’m stressed out and I have too much energy that I can’t really use.”
Seattle, Washington
In Seattle, the first U.S. site of major infections, Vanessa Waruma has also been staying home longer than she expected. While much of the country was still going to work, going to school or hanging out with friends, Seattle saw North America’s first six coronavirus deaths. It was March 2, more than a week before President Donald Trump declared a national emergency.
“In Seattle, I’ve been working from home for about three weeks,” Varuma said in late March. “I was sheltering in place even before the governor’s order.”
Waruma started walking regularly in 2003 when he was transferred to Tokyo for work. After arriving in a strange city, she began to create a mobile database of her new home. She takes a new route to work every day, making her commute one to two hours each way. On weekends, her range of activities expands.
“I would take the train to different neighborhoods and walk around and explore for a few hours,” Varuma said. “I never get tired of it. I’m fascinated by everything around me.”
After moving back to the United States, she found herself completely losing interest in most other modes of transportation. What started as a purely utilitarian way to get from one place to another ended up improving her mood, easing pain from chronic back problems, and becoming a moving daily meditation.
Now, at 47, she still walks more than two hours in a typical pre-Covid-19 day, including an hour to and from get off work and with colleagues at lunch.
“I don’t have a car and I don’t like taking the bus,” Varuma said. “If I can get somewhere in two hours or less, then I’ll walk to it.”
She’s glad she doesn’t have to give up her favorite mode of transportation entirely in the age of coronavirus. But now, 17 years later, and what she expects will be the walk of a lifetime, she’ll have to make some adjustments to her daily routine.
“Now, instead of walking to get off work and to lunch, I walk for an hour at lunch and 60 to 90 minutes at the end of the day.”
While people around the world are using the pandemic as an opportunity to rest and relax, Varuma is eager to get out of the house even more than usual.
“I used to take weekends off sometimes,” she said, “but now, because I need to get out of the house, I spend more than two hours on weekends walking, trying to avoid crowds and find less traveled paths.”
Los Angeles, California
In places where the situation is less severe and restrictions less stringent, some avid walkers are still having to limit their daily activities.
For Alison Bellon, walking has long been an important part of her health and self-care. When she was two weeks old, her left lung collapsed, leaving her respiratory system less than optimal. Catching the coronavirus is scary for the average person, but it was even scarier for Bellon — she said there was a good chance she would die if she contracted the virus.
Growing up, Veron tried to ignore her health issues to play soccer and softball, but she couldn’t keep up with her friends and teammates because they all had two normal lungs.
“I usually find myself more comfortable in positions that require minimal aerobic activity, like goalie or catcher,” she said, then chuckled. “The thing is, I’m not very good at it.”
Soon, after spending too much time on the court panting, sometimes hyperventilating and even passing out, Veron started walking. In her hometown of Los Angeles, the freeway capital of the world, walking as a mode of transportation is laughable. But she found that the more she did it, the less breathless she felt. She noticed her muscles getting bigger, until eventually she could start taking longer hikes and out-of-town hikes.
Now she walks to work — a two-mile round trip — and pretty much everywhere else. In addition to running errands and meeting friends, Verone also allows herself to splurge on fancy restaurants, takeout, or desserts whenever she walks there.
“My favorite ice cream shop is a little over three miles away and they have the most delicious rose water ice cream,” she said. “So if I wanted it, I had to walk there and come back.”
She also discovered new local gems on foot, including a Mexican ramen shop and a privately owned stone castle with a drawbridge. Now, as the pandemic pushes Angelenos onto sidewalks they’ve never walked before, she’s noticing that her neighbors are making new discoveries of their own.
“I can hear them outside admiring and pointing out unique architecture or things they’ve never noticed before, like the stamp on the sidewalk outside my house that says it was built in 1923.”
Bellon is self-isolating as much as possible to avoid getting infected, which means she’s walking earlier and earlier each day to avoid the growing number of new walkers hitting her neighborhood’s sidewalks.
“I get up around 5 a.m. and walk around the neighborhood for an hour or two,” Bellon said. “But when I start seeing other people starting to walk, I’ll go back.”
Northampton, Massachusetts
Boucher is also walking, but now in western Massachusetts, 90 miles from Warren Street and the RE Hawes Medical Building. He also no longer has to carry around a 1,000-plus page copy of Infinite Jest.
“I have a five-year-old and a seven-year-old, so I’m always thinking about how and when we’re going to get out of the house next,” Boucher said.
Boucher counts himself among the list of fiction writers who enjoy walking. According to Charles Dickens’s biographer, he often walked about 12 miles a day. Wallace Stevens, a New Englander who never learned to drive, walked two and a half miles to get off work every day. Boucher’s own formal introduction to the inner circle of Boston joke enthusiasts came during a walk with Bill Lattanzi, an author who compiled a guide about the book One of the most comprehensive maps of backgrounds.
“We spent the entire afternoon,” Boucher recalled. “We walked through Brighton Marine Hospital, past the Citgo sign… and we made it all the way to Cambridge.”
Like Peron, he discovered sights while walking around the book’s settings that he might have missed in a car (or on Google Earth). Near Warren Street, a small plaque identifies a sloping park as the site of the Tennis Academy, where much of the book is set. In Cambridge’s Inman Square, he met a staff member at Ryles Jazz Club who knew an old club regular who inspired author David Foster Wallace’s character One brought personal inspiration.
While Boucher can no longer take his usual route, he is making do.
“There are actually two ways to look at the whole thing,” he said. “One is to focus on what we can’t do, and the other is to start doing something new.”
