27/12/2021
My dear friend, Ellie Jackson, has created a new magazine called The Movement Movement. It is centred around women’s sport and many other kinds of movement that we don’t hear about in today’s sports media landscape. I was honoured to write an article for Issue 1 which I have reproduced here with her permission. It is called Forging Ahead. In it I have written about the role of walking over the last two years and how lockdowns morphed it from unconscious necessity to national past-time. Even in a pandemic we have all needed to keep moving and that is what this mag is all about. To preorder The Movement Movement Issue 1, The Starting Line, click the button below.
Forging Ahead
Written by Isabel Biggs
Edited by Ellie Jackson
I marched, I ambled, I tip-toed around puddles and I strode across unmown grass. Along busy roads teeming with cars and rugged fields smattered with wildflowers, I walked. Breathing in and breathing out while I tread all kinds of ground, in these moments I was a free person, and all the world’s cages melted away. In the last eighteen months, my mind and body, along with those of the millions around me, sought solace in this one simple exercise.
It happened quickly. The gyms, cafes, churches and all indoor gathering vanished and pushed us on to outdoor terrain. I met friends in Regent’s Park and we would stroll with takeaway coffee cups in hand. My Dad and I would broach forest bogs with our Maltese poodle. I wandered the neighbourhood alone in search of a coffee. In every scenario, putting one foot in front of the other became less a thoughtless exercise in monotony and more a vehicle for what each of us needed at heart. Was it a stomp of resistance? A slow-but-steady clip of hopefulness? A serene drift down unknown roads and quiet copses? Walking transcended its role as unconscious machination to that of a national pastime. I personally became aware that its essentiality did not simply lie in its function of taking me from one place to another, but in the activity itself.
Over the last few years, I have chosen walking over other forms of exercise as the most effective for my mental and emotional wellbeing. Walking is not a mere plod, but everything from a steady beat along a well-worn path to an erratic clamber over and around the unfamiliar. Through every season I tread the commons with my dog at my side and experienced every texture and form underfoot that one can expect in my part of the world in pleasurable variety. The moderate pace of walking imbued a feeling of stability and safety and at the same time, the different locations, scenery and even companions made every journey a refreshment of both mind and body.
In my experience, the isolation found in lockdowns exacerbated the claustrophobia of every mental struggle; depressions deepened and it felt like feelings of anxiety had nowhere to go. Four walls could become the one round wall of a deep well, with one solitary prisoner gazing up to a sky so distant it felt like a myth. Yet days came when mercy abounded and I left my room, walked down the stairs and on to the street; the simplicity of the movement was an emancipation from the perception of endless detention. I breathed in fresh air and strode away, arms swinging with two fists in the face of frustration.
This is no new sensation. The feeling of movement while we walk - without the chest compression of similar activities like running - spreads a feeling of both literal and emotional forward-motion from head to feet. It is not just a means of freeing the mind; in the context that is a global pandemic, simple means of maintaining health have become an encouragement for people in the midst of it, reminding us all that we do have a degree of agency over our bodies even in the face of a ruthless virus. We can inhale fresh air and break a healthy sweat. When I traverse open fields and forest undergrowth, the manicured paths and the overgrown trails, I feel in control.
Changing rules also meant that a time came when we could share this with another person. During a time of lockdown when socialising was vastly restricted, ‘Let’s meet for a walk,’ was the common phrase for, ‘I miss you’. A gentle exercise was a method for connecting with those from whom we had been separated for months at a time. Even when I was suffering mentally these outings became a relief, whether marked by chatter or a comfortable silence. The latter can be beautifully intimate. While we walk we can enjoy a reprieve, whether coming from a place of great noise, or a place of dire isolation. Simply reaching out, and asking another person for a walk, was often the best balm for a sore heart (or two).
Even as society opens up, I continue to walk. Through a park, around a reservoir or even just down the road to get a coffee, I tread the earth both alone and with loved ones, for the joy of it, for the feeling of forging ahead and allowing my demons to dissipate in the blessed release that is my determined march through a changing world.
Issue 1: The Starting Line