Social Distance

A book that Hugh Kenner reviewed in 1987 quoted Marshall McLuhan to the effect that North Americans "may well be the only people who go outside to be alone and inside to be social." It did not occur to me when I first read the review that McLuhan was a Canadian, and that for some months of the year Ontario weather does not lend itself to outdoor socializing, rinks apart. Still, on the whole, the generalization seems to hold from what I see. I do enjoy solitary walks and runs.

Most weekends we run in Rock Creek Park. The stretch between Broad Branch and Ross Roads, which is then closed to motor vehicles, usually has plenty of people in it. Last weekend and this it seemed to have fifty percent more than usual. I take it that the extra fifty percent were all the families that would have been at children's sport, movies, or restaurants. In any case, it would have taken some work to plot a course over that mile and a half that did not bring one within six feet of another person. Actually, one might have had to run in the creek.

I ran downstream towards Klingle Road and so skipped the crowded stretch of Beach Drive. Certainly I passed walkers, runners, and cyclists closer than is recommended. But I did what I could to keep my distance, running in the street, sometimes in the bike lane once I was out of the park. On the return leg of my run, I found the sidewalks along 16th St. less crowded than Beach Drive.

(The book Kenner reviewed was Talking Tombstones and Other Tales of the Media Age by Gary Gumpert. As "The Media Culture's Counterfeit  World", it is collected in Mazes: Essays by Hugh Kenner.)