“Oh! How I love walking! Especially if they take me as far as possible from all those who interfere with me,” Noel Coward sighed thoughtfully. He was right. Walking is not a matter of destination, but of purpose. These days, we may have downgraded it to the question “how many steps did you take today?” appear on our screens through apps to enforce regular exercise. But it is by far the most important activity identified with humanity, explains Bill Sharpe. “K” met an American professor in Kardamyli at a two-day walking workshop that was specially organized at the home of Patrick Lee Fermor.

The university professor is teaching a special course on the subject at Barnard College in New York and expects to soon publish his new book, The Art of Walking, by Yale University Press. This is the version that proves that walking is much more than just putting one foot in front of the other. Thus, it includes dozens of images from the origins of classical Western art with the kouros, to the religious pilgrimages of the Middle Ages, and from there to the “flaners” and modern city passers-by, whose mobile phone stigma betrays even their thoughts. This is a “walk” through history, literature, sociology and painting, artificial intelligence.

So Sharpe was, of course, the chief speaker at Kardamyli. The Walking Workshop (May 17-19) is the start of a broader collaboration between the Institute of Ideas and Imagination and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanitarian Initiative (SNFPHI) of Columbia University and the Benaki Museum. The goal was to be a forum for nurturing new ideas and dialogue between scientists, artists and representatives of organizations implementing small humanitarian programs. The meeting focused on both the temporal and theoretical analysis of walking and the kind of historical knowledge it produces. And of course, where else could this be done, if not in the house of Paddy, as Leigh Fermor was fondly called until the end of his life.

“a pedestrian”

It’s not just that the charismatic writer literally crossed all of Europe in the early 1930s to find himself in Greece. He believed in the importance of walking so much that he translated the memoirs of Giorgos Psychundakis from Greek into English. He was a fellow Cretan soldier in World War II, a shepherd who specialized in delivering messages over vast distances on foot. In just one day, he managed to go from Kasteli Kissamos to Paleochora along goat roads. Psikhudakis preserved until 1940 a huge centuries-old tradition lost with the advent of the automobile. He belonged to that category of people whom fellow citizens called “pedestrians”, having a profession of walking. But Paddy himself lived to a ripe old age. He walked quickly with a stick, not stopping to catch his breath, climbing like a wild animal, as his biographer Artemis Cooper, who also attended the Kardamyli Biennale, recalled.

So, to honor Paddy’s memory, we decided to take a walk with Sharpe in the garden of his house, surrounded by lavender and myrrh, overlooking the cypresses, olives, and the sea. But how did the American professor decide to tackle this topic? What tempted him to march? “Throughout my university career I have dealt with cities. My previous book was devoted to New York at night, paintings, photographs, poems, literary works depicting the Big Apple after sunset. At some point, I was surprised to realize that in all topics related to the city, there is a common denominator, and that is walking! It was a real revelation that prompted me to conduct a walking lesson using literary texts dedicated to this. Then I realized that those who go do not just write books, they take pictures, they have political interests and marches, they deal with history, society. Walking connects all the dots from biology and anthropology to sociology, art, political science,” he emphasizes.

After all, what is walking? “Anthropologists will tell us that this is what makes us human. When we stood on two legs, we could see farther than other mammals, we had free hands to hunt, kill game or carry things. It also offers us better thermodynamics, since the sun only hits us in the head, not the whole body. Walking on two legs has allowed us to dominate the planet, for better or worse. Then, of course, the question arose before the human race: what else could walking be used for? That’s where the ritual element came in. We began to perform litanies and rites, walking was also associated with supernatural powers. There is an old church in Ireland where people believe that if you walk around it three times, the devil will appear to you. In ancient Greece, they went on foot to Eleusis for the mysteries; in the Middle Ages, great Christian pilgrimages were made. Even members of different sexes have learned to walk differently to be attractive: women sway their hips more, men sway their shoulders. Walking is the hallmark of our character. Everyone has his own path. But it’s also a terrible, non-verbal expression of his feelings. Are we angry? Are we stressed? Happy; Well, our step changes radically.”

“Walking connects all the dots from biology and anthropology to sociology, art, political science.”

Sharp studied a lot of historical evidence of how the social position differed from that of the traveler. “When there were no cars, the rain from the cobbled streets ran down the middle, creating small streams. The higher you were in society, the further you went from dirty water. Hence the French expression Haut du pavé on the high part of the pavement, hence the elite. Today we have much more democratic sidewalks where we all fit in, haves and have-nots. The history of art is full of works about walking. The ancient Greek kouros is a statue that puts one foot in front of the other. The first-ever video clip of the Limiere brothers shows how workers walk around their factory. The most recognizable filmmaker of the 20th century, Charlie Chaplin became famous for his funny walk. There is no visual representation in Western culture that is not about walking.”

And today; “Today we see it as a duty, not as an opportunity to enjoy life. The truth, of course, is that from ancient times to the present day, walking has been something we have had to do to meet the basic needs of our lives and work. The only exception to this was, as we have seen, ritual matters. You did not go for yourself, but for God or gods. Sometime after the Middle Ages, people begin to perceive walking as a personal matter, a way of self-knowledge. But some privileged people could practice it, others didn’t have time. Erasmus, for example, said that a lady or gentleman of good society should not walk fast because he would be mistaken for a servant. So he set rules for this activity, taking care to walk without showing that he had some work to do immediately. Move around the world without haste,” Sharpe explains.

The screen that sees us

And he continues: “In the 18th century, the argument comes into play that walking means learning. People have returned to the Walking School of the Ancients, they have seen that movement favors thought and that nature has much to teach its children. Scotsman John Muir, the “father” of national parks, believed that going for a walk is an occasion to “enter” oneself. Nowadays, walking has become personal again, because we usually walk with a mobile phone in hand. Without a device, we’re disconnected, we can’t find our destination. We have lost the ability to read the environment and navigate it. Mobile technologies are what accompanies us every second. We walk around and instead of looking around, we constantly look at the screen. Unfortunately, she also “sees” us, as well as the cameras that are placed in public places. In China, giant screens on the streets show the faces and details of citizens running red lights. Scary when you think about it.”

Security and control

So we passers-by are under close surveillance? “Exactly!” Sharpe says. “Modern people have traded the convenience that digital technologies give them, security for freedom of movement. Not only are they watched by every government, but they themselves are more than happy to announce where they’ve been and what they’ve been up to. So perhaps in the future there will be a movement where people walk and travel without a mobile phone, without any possibility of being tracked. In Hong Kong, protesters put on special make-up on their faces to avoid being seen by cameras on the streets, or did not take mobile phones with them so that they would not be seen.”

Just before parting, I asked Professor Sharpe, who taught him to walk more: “But our fellow citizens are crippled. They have to learn how to move because they have to face serious obstacles. As long as we look at our screens while walking, they are much more aware of what is happening around them.”