The joy of walking
Do it for your physical health, for your mental well-being, to connect. In the park, at the beach, in the bush, to work. Take a walk. Richard Walker reports.
The beach walk is a compromise. George, 11, wanted to collect pine cones, so mum Bridget Teatum negotiated with him they would gather some and then come to the beach.
The cones are in a bag in the car – George thinks he’s got maybe 15 of them. They are for a turkey hunt. His grandparents have a farm, and Matthew has a slingshot George can use. You suspect the turkeys are safe. And Teatum’s well-being is nourished by a walk on the beach at Whaingaroa.
The tide, high as it is, seems to still be coming in and as the waves start washing at her feet, Teatum leaps nimbly up a bank created by a previous high tide. The boiling, frothing sea at full tide on a crisp clear day, headlands visible across the restless Raglan bar – this beach is her favourite place.
‘‘I like it at dawn. I like it at dusk. I run here in the starlight and sometimes by the light of the moon. You can see the sun set on the horizon there. It’s a very special place to me.’’
Walking is a social thing for Teatum; if she’s with her sevenyear-old daughter, they might walk for 20 minutes, with a friend it’s more likely to be an hour.
What does she talk about with her friends? ‘‘We’re often talking about love.’’
Really? Is this a good setting for talking about love?
‘‘It’s a great setting for talking about love.’’
She and one of her good walking buddies separated from their partners a couple of years ago and part of their process has been walking together and talking about what they’re experiencing.
She also used to walk her with a friend who was unwell with cancer. They walked from when she found out until she couldn’t walk any more. It was the place they came for connecting, healing, walking, talking. Teatum pauses. ‘‘Life, death, love, children, that sort of thing.’’
Walking. It’s basic. A walk at the beach, in the bush, the park, to work, for exercise, for well-being – there’s not much it doesn’t offer, at virtually no cost.
Waikato University sociologist Holly Thorpe has been researching women’s well-being during the pandemic. It’s been about the stresses they’ve been under but also what they’ve been doing to help get themselves and others through: ‘‘Overwhelmingly, walking has been a really important activity.’’
During lockdowns people got out walking and many realised the benefits were about physical as well as mental health, connecting with the environment and the human connections of seeing others out and about, she says.
And the time spent walking for recreation has risen since Covid, according to Sport NZ figures.
Bridget Teatum, you guess, beats the average. Between walking and running, she is at the beach about four times a week.
‘‘I am interested in te whare tapa whā , the holistic health model. And for me, my taha wairua, my spiritual side, is nourished by walking on the beach because of the connection with nature and the beauty that we see. It fills my cup, if you like.’’
The beach, previously almost empty, has been filling up as she talks, and as mother and son head back towards the carpark, barefooted dog walker Leisa Harford walks past in the other direction, towards Ngarunui Beach.
A naturopath working at The Herbal Dispensary, Harford uses walking to calm her nervous system, to ground, get her feet on the earth.
The earth alkalises, she says. Bodies can become acidic under the stresses of the modern lifestyle, pollution, poor diet. The ground helps de-acidify – alkalise – thanks to the earth’s absorption of electricity from the Sun.
In short: ‘‘Get your shoes off.’’ When walking, she could be listening to a podcast, letting go of something that’s happened or drawing inspiration for her freelance health writing. Today, however, her thoughts were more mundane. ‘‘I was thinking, those blimmen horses.’’
Harford hasn’t beenhere much for a while, courtesy of an injury, so she was thinking what were the chances that on her second trip back there would be horses on the beach. She doesn’t trust black retriever Lily not to run after them so keeps her on a lead. Lily comes with the property where she is house sitting.
Harford isn’t always walking solo; when she’s with one of her regular companions the talk often turns to travel and dreaming about the next trip. Currently in her sights is Bali. ‘‘I always thought it might be back to India but for some reason Bali is calling me. I think with these times it’s not quite so far away.’’
Bare feet may be good at the beach but sturdy footwear is the order of the day at Wairē inga/Bridal Veil Falls off the road to Raglan.
The bush track joins the stream that will shortly become the spectacular 55m falls. This is no crystal-clear mountain stream; it must come from open land and thanks to all the rain it runs depressingly brown. That’s fine though, the people here are loving the walk.
Alasdair Nicoll is looking for orchids, and he’s found acianthus sinclairii and a little spider orchid, corybas trilobus, some of them flowering nicely on a dark, damp bank beside the path. It’s the beginning of the season, which starts earlier here than further inland, so it’s a good time to be looking. Nicoll does a lot of tramping and some volunteer work for DOC. He lives near Lake Rotomanuka at Ō haupō , and has been helping with predator control at the lake as well as two other nearby wetland lakes. With the bush coming back there, he’s been seeing the pū weto, or spotless crake, kingfishers, lots of fantails and pū keko. He’s seen matuku, the Australasian bittern, and last
summer there were spoonbills. Being in the bush is refreshing, he says. ‘‘It takes you away from, you know, the big wide ugly world at times. It’s just recharging your batteries, too.’’
Hamilton woman Ella West is on a mission to recharge her batteries once a week for a year. She’s up to number 14 of a 52- hike challenge. Often she’s solo, but three-year-old son Elias is along with her for this one. On their way out from seeing the waterfall, she’s carrying him, but says he was doing well with the walking earlier. He’s a nature boy, she says, and stops and explores it all.
West’s hikes are largely about her mental health. After the birth of her third son last year, she says she experienced ‘‘quite bad’’ postpartum depression. A midwifery student, she started walking to help her cope and recover. She started, she paused, and then early this year she thought she needed to keep it up somehow. ‘‘That’s where I figured out I need to do a 52-week challenge to keep me going.’’
It’s not easy doing a hike a week given she and her partner have three young children and this is winter, but so far so good and she’s getting stronger.
It’s about getting out in nature, getting the fresh air and exploring places she never knew existed. It’s about accomplishment as well. When you’re at the top of a mountain you feel like you’ve achieved a huge goal, she says. Like the Hakarimata summit, with more than 1000 steps. She’s just done Maungakawa outside Cambridge. It was all tree roots and greenery.
‘‘I like the alone time as well. Being a full-time mum, it’s nice to get out and sort of hear nature and self-care by yourself. It doesn’t get lonely.’’
For the overnight hikes she has in mind, she’ll go with someone else. She’s already done Kakepuku with a friend. It was nice to have someone to talk to, but, she laughs, ‘‘I like silence when I walk’’.
A little further along the track, there’s not much silence between a couple of friends with a lot to catch up about, short of breath but still chatting as they reach the top of the climb on their return from the base of the waterfall.
Tammy Giddings is here for three weeks from the UK, time she’s spending with her friend Liza Druce, who came out to Hamilton two and a half years ago. They both hail from Wiltshire, where Giddings still lives. She flew in a couple of days ago and they’ve already had a walk around Hamilton Gardens, while Druce reckons Giddings is going to love the Pinnacles, also on their list. The whole trip is about hiking mountains and Giddings is loving it: ‘‘When you’re doing it, nothing beats when you get to the top and you catch your breath, and you look out. Nothing beats that feeling.’’
New Zealand is very different from back home. The views are phenomenal and pretty much everything outdoors is free, Giddings says incredulously.
The trip will also take in a weekend at New Plymouth because Druce is a power lifter, hoping to deadlift 150kg at a competition there. For her part, Giddings is a runner, but walking works. It doesn’t take much, and after a stressful day it clears the head and is good for mental health. ‘‘It heals my soul.’’
Holly Thorpe says most women in her research project tried to go to natural areas, like the river in Hamilton. ‘‘Those connections with nature were really, really important for people’s mental health and well-being.’’
Women said they began paying more attention to the natural environment, noticing seasonal changes or the sky changing or seeing a beautiful sunset. ‘‘I think people have been looking for pockets of joy and walking really offered a lot of that.’’
New routines, often with family, have endured: ‘‘People, particularly in our research, have said, ‘wow, walking’s actually a really important part of my life. And I learned this through the pandemic, and I continue to do it afterwards.’’’
For Thorpe, a regular walker herself, it wasn’t entirely unexpected that walking would be important for the study participants, but she was surprised at the degree of its significance. ‘‘Often it was the thing that they looked forward to in their day, and they got a whole lot of joy from stepping out of their house and going for a walk, and seeing the neighbours and having a chit-chat from afar.
‘‘So I think walking became quite associated with pleasure and with joy and escapism and coping.’’
The full research project will involve 100 women participants, from a wide range of backgrounds and circumstances.
The study’s findings so far find an echo in the results of a nationwide survey showing an
increase in walking levels. The Active NZ survey of people’s participation in play, active recreation and sport is carried out annually by Sport NZ.
Last year, it showed 60% of adults 18 and older walking, a percentage streets ahead of those either gardening or doing an individual workout using equipment, in second place at 24% each. Slightly more women than men walked.
That 60% number was up from 57% pre-pandemic, an increase Sport NZ describes as significant.
Mental health is an important benefit of walking. For practically all others, ask Hamilton man Robbie Shen.
He’s puffing a bit at the end of a chilly walk around Hamilton Lake this week, returning to his vehicle with 6-month-old Elina, who is smiling in her stroller.
Obviously the circuit of the lake has been good for her, and it’s been good for Shen himself in a multitude of ways. It’s good exercise, he says, and it’s also good for him to spend time with his child and to give his wife a break. Doing the loop of the lake was daunting when he set out, but now he’s planning more. It’s been common enough for him to come with his wife, family or friends for a walk, but this is his first full circuit this year. It has got him thinking he might come a couple of times a day, for a circuit at lunchtime and then for a shorter visit later, maybe with friends.
He’s going to talk to colleagues about holding meetings in person at the lake rather than via Zoom. He can set up a meeting for an hour, do the loop of the lake with Elina, give his wife a break, and get work done. It’s the walk and talk meeting taken to a new level. ‘‘So I think that’s a good idea.’’
Clearly getting the blood moving is good for fresh thinking because Shen’s also got another good idea. He works in the international education business, which currently involves a lot of video linkups with overseas partners. He’s thinking for the next virtual meeting he has with international partners, he’ll sit by the lake and tell them: ‘‘Okay, look at the background. This is Hamilton.’’
Sometimes walking has a more straightforward purpose. Simon Dmitrenko has the Waikato River below his feet as he walks across the bridge on his way home at the end of the day. The view of the river carries memories for him as a former Hamilton Boys’ High rower spending long hours out on the current. These days he’s at a military prep course on upper Victoria St, with aims of getting into the navy, and the daily walk from his Claudelands home is usually 25 minutes, 15 if he’s in a hurry. He listens to music, audio books and podcasts, switching them up depending on his mood.
Normally Dmitrenko takes the Claudelands bridge, but today he has an appointment that has brought him across Anzac Bridge. He walks partly because he has limited access to driving, and he finds the buses boring. It’s more interesting and healthier to walk and breathe in the fresh air and he’s more likely to see someone or something interesting. ‘‘It’s the most ecological thing you can do,’’ he adds.
Dmitrenko is in good company: Waka Kotahi figures show New Zealanders walk an estimated 807 million kilometres for travel annually, which would mean an average of about 160km each.
When it comes to exercise, walking’s got the lot, Anytime Fitness Hamilton manager Prab Sadiura says. It’s a low-intensity, non-impact exercise, good for all ages. ‘‘Running, sprinting, weightlifting, they all add stress to the body, whereas walking is one exercise that’s actually relaxing and still gives you the benefit.’’
You can put on some music, go for a long walk, get your thoughts in order. What matters is movement. ‘‘As long as you stay active, you’re good to go. You don’t always have to do high intensity exercises to stay fit.’’
A cardio workout comes from walking on an incline, he says. Setting the treadmill to incline and doing a brisk 20 minute walk will work wonders. ‘‘It gets hard. It sounds easy but it’s not.’’
Sadiura hasn’t been walking so much himself since shifting to Hamilton a couple of years ago. Before that he says he walked all the time in downtown Auckland, covering 12 or 13 kilometres every day. The hustle and bustle of the city tended to disappear when he put on his favourite Indian music and walked. He plans to pick it up again soon.
‘‘I keep telling myself that.’’ Back at Raglan, Bridget Teatum takes off her shoes for the photo. She’s puzzled as to why she was wearing them in the first place since she likes to feel the sand between her toes.
The beach is a contemplative, but also active place for Teatum, who used to do a lot of longdistance running, including offroad marathons.
‘‘When your body’s moving it’s easier for your mind to be at peace, I find. We’re very active in my family. So it’s good to be moving. Perhaps it helps you process, I’m not sure. Definitely, I don’t just sit at the beach. Yeah, definitely walking is good.’’