Be Counted

We were just out for a walk. It's a winter day, but the snow is too thin and crunchy to ski, and we didn't feel like gearing up with snowshoes. So we walked along the road. And it occurred (not to say hit) me, that everything you do in the modern world becomes a political statement.

Drivers use this particular country road as a throughway. It's a major commuter and commercial artery. The area isn't particularly built up, but this road happens make a connection where people need it. So they drive like maniacs. Many of them ARE Maineaics, since the border is just a few miles away. That's how useful this road is. It connects the scattered residents of parts of two states. But it's also just part of our neighborhood, a strip of two-lane blacktop crumbled by frost heaves and bleached gray by road salt and summer sun.

While some people do walk along the road, it's hardly a regular thing. Drivers grow accustomed to piloting their missiles along ballistic trajectories at whatever speed their vehicles can handle. I remarked on this as we walked this morning.

"Take back the streets," my wife said. "We have to get out here and be seen doing this."

Our walk became a public demonstration. Indeed, walking is a public spectacle on many roads, because of its rarity. We've trained outrselves out of walking most places. It's safer and less conspicuous to take the armored vehicle a few hundred yards than it is to walk the same distance. People unfortunate or foolish enough to park in the far reaches of a mall parking lot and walk to the building have to deal with the jostling dinosaurs jockeying for the sweet spot right next to the last crosswalk before the door.

This line of thought led me to consider how everything we do contributes in some way to a politicized movement. I walk in the woods and have to witness the actions of loggers and developers, hunters, ATV drivers, litterbugs, acid rain and invasive species. By wanting woods in which to walk I become a member of a faction.

Biking on the road I represent cycling to those who pass. I become one element in a larger pattern of cyclists interacting with an even larger pattern of humans in motion generally. I am counted.

If I sit at home and do nothing, I am counted. If enough people sit at home and do nothing, somone will come up with a use for that statistic and try to motivate the home-sitters either to keep sitting and acquire some accessories to make our sitting more satisfying, or to mobilize and move outward once we've all been properly indoctrinated.

I don't say this is good or bad, I merely point it out. Even if you withdraw, you still relate to that from which you withdrew. You can drop out. If you want to, you should. But no one really abstains, even by choosing not to choose. You add up to something, all the time, even if it's just a body count. You make a difference whether you like it or not.