Fake It 'Til You Make it: Walking as Simulation in Stewart's "Walking Distance"

             In Stewart’s piece “Walking Distance,” she contextualizes her walk and her stream-of-consciousness thought in the streets of New York. Of all the walking writers we have read this semester, Stewart feels the most immediately relevant to contemporary young people. She frames walking as a kind of bildungsroman, using stream-of-consciousness thought as the medium through which this process unfolds. “Walking Distance” is decidedly inquisitive and free-flowing—it claims that walking is like a life simulator, a test-drive for young adults. 

What I mean by this is the physical space traversed in a walk becomes a simulated version of progress, something inherently rewarding for young people who may feel lost, stagnant, or unsuccessful. Walking simulates success, progress, and achievement. Stewart acknowledges this inner turmoil characteristic of young adults, reminding me of myself and my friends who are college students. Stewart writes, “I suppose I am trying to work out the shape of my life. Which is probably an unnecessary task, but one that I am endlessly committed to nonetheless. I wonder what I am doing, sitting here trying to explain where I am to people who sit in, roughly, the same space?”


In a way, this quote from Stewart reminds me of the maze-walking we studied with the stations of the cross earlier in the semester. As a religious practice, maze-walking simulates connection with God. It symbolizes progress in one’s faith—physical movement symbolizes personal, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual achievement. Physical distance traveled through walking begins to register as emotional distance covered. It is this simulation, this trick-of-the-brain, which makes walking so therapeutic. “Working out the shape” is what the walk can help with or catalyze. It is a way of experimenting with ideas within a structure that has a beginning, middle, and end. Through this structure, goals become easier to visualize and internalize.

As I have been trying to walk more intentionally this semester, I have realized that I find comfort in its predictable structure—in the act of making decisions whose outcomes are inconsequential, in the simulation of progress, and in the sense of control it allows me to inhabit. If you cannot yet define the shape of your life, you can rehearse it through walking. Movement, even simulated, is still a form of becoming; walking does not resolve uncertainty, but it sustains it in a productive way. It offers a space in which the “shape” of a life can be tested without being fixed. Like Stewart, I remain “endlessly committed” to working out my life and figuring out how to support myself. I’m reminded through her that this work does not require immediate resolution, only continued movement and persistence. 

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