A Wildly Underestimated Form of Genius
Walking is a wildly underestimated form of genius. A poetic rebellion. A secret back door to the mind’s most interesting rooms. It’s not just about getting somewhere; it’s about becoming somewhere. Becoming the kind of someone who notices the way the light skips across a puddle. Or how a crow has the audacity to caw like that. Or how an idea, once stuck, starts to stretch its legs and tries out a little dance move.
Virginia Woolf walked. A lot. Through Bloomsbury streets, ideas trailing behind her like a well-dressed shadow. “As a woman, I have no country,” she wrote. “As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.” And she walked it into being. Steve Jobs, yes, that Jobs, swore by the walking meeting. No PowerPoint. No desk. No awkward swivel chairs. Just stride, speak, stride again. Beethoven marched his symphonies into existence. Wordsworth wandered until his notebooks bloomed into poetry. Charles Dickens reportedly walked 12 miles a day through London, winding his way through city streets and internal landscapes alike.
Artist Marina Abramović (controversial, I know) walked the Great Wall of China, a 90-day journey, as a performance piece and personal pilgrimage. Werner Herzog trekked from Munich to Paris in winter, believing that the act of walking would save a dear friend’s life. He called it an “act of faith.” David Hockney ambled through the Yorkshire countryside, capturing its changing light with his iPad. Patti Smith, poet, rocker, rebel, walks the streets of New York as part of her daily ritual, collecting fragments of memory and lyrics.
The soles of our shoes are directly wired to our imagination. Step, and a new idea whispers. Pause, and clarity gathers like morning mist. Move, and the inner critic quiets down, replaced by curiosity. The world comes alive in motion: plot twists appear on sidewalks, product ideas peek out from behind picket fences, and poems perch on telephone wires waiting to be seen.
And here’s the wonder: walking is free. It’s democratic. You don’t need a grant. Or a gallery. Or a beret (though it doesn’t hurt). You just need a door. And a willingness to open it. Then step out, left, right, repeat. Through neighborhoods, forests, over bridges, or even laps around a parking lot. It all counts. Every single step is a return to yourself.
And it’s not just romantic. It’s scientific.
Walking enhances memory and hippocampal health. A study published in PNAS found that older adults who walked regularly for a year had increased hippocampal volume, which is directly linked to memory performance (Erickson et al., 2011).
Walking boosts creativity. Stanford researchers discovered that walking increased creative output by an average of 60%, with both indoor and outdoor walking showing strong effects (Oppezzo & Schwartz, 2014).
Walking improves mood and reduces anxiety. A meta-analysis in Health Psychology confirmed that regular walking interventions significantly reduced depression and anxiety symptoms in a wide range of populations (Kelly et al., 2019).
So, science meets soul with each stride.
Walking is a creative act. A love letter to the muse. A silent collaboration with the world. Each step, a syllable. Each mile a sentence. And before you know it, you’ve written something—even if only in your bones.
Libby DeLana is an award-winning executive creative director, designer/art director by trade, who has spent her career in the ad world. Click here to get your copy of Libby’s first published book, Do Walk. You can connect with Libby on Instagram @thismorningwalk and @parkhere.