My Route: Down Lake Avenue, Over on Old County Road, Down 17, Down Maverick to the Rockland Plaza Shopping Center.
Let it be known. I am taking back the streets.
Not from violence against women,though I suppose you could say that I am a woman and that there is a certain violence involved here.
Not from gangs, unless you think of constant traffic as some sort of gang.
No, this is not a revolutionary coup, unless of course you consider that I am walking where few dare to walk:
Route 17.
One woman, one dog. One road. A lot of trucks, a lot of cars. My life may hang in the balance.
All right, enough drama. You see, I live on West Meadow Road. If I were sensible, I would walk my dog down the very nice paths where I live, and then get in a car and drive to the grocery store. However, this doesn't make any sense. Why not just walk to the grocery store with my dog, and get exercise and get my groceries at the same time?
Sounds logical, right?
Well, here's how it goes. It starts out innocently enough, as I head down Lake Avenue to the Southeast. (toward the harbor, in other words.) Lake Avenue intersects with Old County Road. This is the first place where trouble can lurk.
Like a Bengali Tiger on an African Safari, a delivery truck can spring out of the dual in and out roads to the convenience store on the corner. Often, too, cars will sprint across these entries and exits as a way to cut off the streetlight. If it's red, why not cut through the parking lot, and get spit out on the other side? You hardly have to brake. There's no sign of any place that a pedestrian is supposed to walk, or that a car is supposed to stay out of so that pedestrians don't get ambushed.
The only way that you can discover how dangerous that it is to walk past this convenience store is to actually walk past it. It's not the fault of the people who own the convenience store, it's the error of all of us, since we rarely alight from our cars. The parking lot is perfectly laid out and planned: for cars.
I know. I am silly. No one hit me, and no one has hit anyone there. What am I talking about anyway? I have made it safely to the intersection of Old County Road and Route 17, and I now look around for some where to stand so that I can attempt to cross the intersection, and continue down Route 17 towards the grocery store. There is no clear alternative. People in cars don't seem particularly sympathetic. I have noticed that, in my continuing saga of Pedestrian Guerrilla Activity, that if there is not a crosswalk in evidence, people in cars will absolutely not stop. It is their right to not stop, since there is no crosswalk. That's the rule of the game. However, WHERE am I supposed to cross? Am I supposed to teleport to the nearest crosswalk, a mile away? The message is clear: no one expects any pedestrians here. You are not supposed to walk. You are weird, probably eat tofu, and probably are also part of a feminist women's drumming group. And you have a little dog.
I decide to just go for it. I wait until the light changes, and then ease out into the road. People look shocked, but, they stop. Somebody beeps their horn, and I am happy to note that they are waving. I don't know who they are, so they must either know my dog or have had the unfortunate luck to have watched late night local access cable television when they had the munchies or couldn't sleep. They seem friendly, so I wave back and press on.
There is a stretch as I continue down 17 that is truly frightening. Trucks barrel down at 50 or 60 miles per hour, and pass within a foot. Cleo is resolute, and would follow me into the gates of hell, which this is certainly rivaling. People stare at us, as though we are an oddity out here on the state highway. Maybe they wonder if I lost my license because of drunk driving. That used to be the thing, if you saw someone riding around on a bike in the winter on the island. That was when everyone was totally irresponsible, no one had a car with working brakes, and there were no stoplights. That was before it was necessary to employ myself in politically active endeavors, and my main ambition was to not eat animals unless I hunted them myself, and pass the long lonely island winters by knitting, drinking red wine, and watching Julia Child. Some of those sweaters were pretty funky.
But no, here I am, not a drop of wine in me, a law-abiding public official, merely attempting to gain the distant goal of the Hannaford Supermarket. With a dog. We walk quickly down, past the quarry. Soon, we reach the small random patch of sidewalk where there are a beagle and a golden retriever, and Cleo goes nuts, barking with them. The sidewalk is like an oasis, and trees hang over, shading us, and we can feel the temperature drop significantly.
However, the small random patch of sidewalk swings around down North Main Street, since Route 17 is really North Main Street now, and the part I need to walk to get to Hannaford is Maverick Street. There is no crosswalk to get across North Main Street over to Maverick. There I stand, a nearly little old lady with my little dog, with my shopping bag and my little old lady hat, and I just about get run over by an actual little old lady in a mini van, who looks completely irritated that I am in her way. I'm not sure what to do, so, when the line of cars coming up North Main Street stops at the stoplight, before pulling out, I step out with my arms outstretched, like Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves when he decides to get on the horse and ride out for the Confederates to shoot him so that he doesn't have to have his leg amputated. I don't think I am probably as sexy as Kevin Costner, though.
The truck nearest me stops, and it turns out to be some of the guys from Public Works. "When am I going to get a crosswalk here?" I yell.
They tell me that they don't know, but they seem supportive, which is nice.
"Well, we'll make it happen!" I say, but I am not sure how. It seems so simple, yet so complex. An entire history of vehicular psychology stands between me and the grocery store.
No more random little piece of sidewalk, either. Now I am on Maverick Street, and I have got to run the gauntlet before I get to the worst crossing, which is at Maverick and Birch. There, one of those strange moments in civic road planning occurs: the right of way street bears off in one direction, and the street that you have to stop at the stop sign for is not the right of way street. Plus, there is this huge and amorphous lot of pavement between me and Cleo and the next patch of sidewalk. No one is amused at this intersection. I am truly a stranger in a strange land here. I have stepped off the divide and I have set my Orma 60 due south, and I am about to round the Horn and traverse the Roaring Forties. Or, perhaps you could say that I am within 500 feet of the summit of K2, and I am out of oxygen, my ice pick just fell down a cliff, and I am also out of chocolate.
These are the adventures I find myself on, right in my own hometown. I don't have to go to the far east, I don't have to rival David Attenborough on safari. No- all I have to do is try to go to the grocery store with my dog, and you could say that I have serious thrill-seeking issues.
Once again, I've got to just take that leap of faith and step out into the intersection, and gain the last bit of sidewalk that will guide me to our dinner, merciful, safe, sane. Until of course, I get to the Hannaford parking lot.
You might think me un-American, writing about the tribulations of walking in a world that is dominated by motor vehicles. But, I need to get to the grocery store, and this is where I live. I'm determined not to drive there: after all, it's not even a mile walk, I don't think. I think that if I just keep walking that route, and talking about it, and being excited about the small little adventures and the progress that can be made, then eventually, we'll get sidewalks and crosswalks and trees, and people will feel as though it would be so much more fun to walk, to see each other on a smaller scale, and slow down a little.
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