Walk 8: Atlanta - Peachtree Street

Have you ever started walking somewhere and then realized that the walk is a mistake but somehow you can’t stop walking – either because you’re lost or because you know it will take a long time to turn around and just go back the way you came? I assume going back the way you came isn’t really interesting…Yet I do it all the time in my daily life. I retrace my steps often because it’s efficient or habitual or just because I don’t even think about it. I just walk. But because I was walking in Atlanta, a new place for me, I felt like I had to make that walking count somehow. But when I got into this walk it wasn’t working for me. I only had a limited amount of time to walk and I wanted it to work for me. I didn’t feel like I was getting anything out of this walk. What did I want? I think I wanted to be comfortable and I wasn’t (it was very hot and there was little shade). I think I wanted to see something interesting, a neighbourhood, some flavour, some insight, some people and that wasn’t happening to my satisfaction either. It was mostly apartment buildings and hardly anyone walking, no apparent street life whatsoever. In three hours, I never passed a school or a park or a cluster of shops except for one plaza. I went into a store just to get out of the sun for a few minutes. The store was called Talbots. It was expensive and very sterile and seemed to appeal to an older (60+) white clientele. I hightailed it out of there. There was a patio restaurant beside the store where people were “lunching” but it too looked upscale. It wasn’t what I was looking for (apparently). I headed into a sidestreet and entered a treed neighbourhood but, again, there was no street life, no one was outside. I saw that they had mailboxes along the side of the road and while I was walking, the letter carrier came along and delivered the mail but it wasn’t a letter carrier, it was a vehicle – like a rural delivery service. The only people I saw on that street were a woman and child walking a dog and a young man with a knapsack. When I finally emerged from the street at the subway station, there were people all around. It was crowded but I really didn’t understand where all those people came from…