Maryland Bar
Bulletin
Publications :
Bar Bulletin
Editor: W. Patrick Tandy
April, 2004
| |
Putting Her Best Foot Forward |
| By Patrick
Tandy |
“You know another
town that this reminds me of?” Rosemary McDermott asks as we walk the
footpath that rounds Fort McHenry
in South Baltimore. “Milwaukee. Old town. They have all of these
breweries, and you can get the best sandwiches and beer at the bars there.
And the people just come up and they’ll talk to you.”
She pauses for a
moment, relishing the flavors, sights and sounds of another place before
returning to the damp, gray chill of the morning at hand. “Boy,” she
laughs, “in three minutes we learned that man’s whole life!”
And indeed, we did.
We had been about halfway round the fort – the first checkpoint on the
Baltimore Walking Club’s (BWC) 10km Fort McHenry Walk – when we
encountered the man, an elderly gent whose work-a-day garb at once
embodied both Baltimore’s past and present, walking in the opposite
direction. The scene was ripe for conversation.
“You’re taking your
daily walk?” McDermott inquired.
“Yeah,” the man
replied. “I’ve got eleven-hundred-and-sixty-eight miles.”
“Are you
volksmarching?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“Are you on the
volksmarch?”
“No,” the man said,
“I’m just doing this for the hell of it, just to see if I can kill myself
or not. See, I’ve got 25 percent blood flow, and I get dizzy when I run” –
he slid his ball cap to the back of his head and settled on his heels –
“Then I always sleep on this eye here, and it’s always bloodshot…”
From there his
conversation ventured down a thousand different roads, from cholesterol to
childhood to falling out of a moving car at the age of four months.
“My mother caught
me by my foot,” he explained. “My father just told me before he died in
’98. But I can feel back here” – he rubbed the back of his head – “feels
like I must have hit. It’s bashed.”
“Your poor mother!”
McDermott exclaimed. “I feel sorry for you, but your poor mom!”
“She might have
pushed me out of the car!” the man laughed, and McDermott and I laughed
along with him. For us, the old man was one more reason to keep walking,
though certainly not for any form of fear. No. And in fact, as we
continued on our way, past the Key Monument – topped by a 22-foot bronze
statue of Orpheus, the Greek god of song – past the gates at the fort’s
entrance, our walk scarcely begun, I found myself fancying the good talk
and good times of a volksmarch around McDermott’s Milwaukee…
|
“They said the sun
might come out, and if it does we’re going to get into the mid-70s; if
[not], it’s going to stay in the 60s,” notes McDermott, a trial
attorney based in Thurmont, Maryland, as she peruses the photocopied
map that BWC provides for the Fort McHenry Walk. The other side of the
paper contains detailed directions.
“By the way,” she
adds, making note of the temperature, “this is the ideal walking
weather because you don’t get really hot and it’s also not too cold” –
the perfect conditions for a little walk through the history of a
pastime that traces its origins back to post-war Germany.
“Following [World
War II], the German people were poor and depressed and living with
post-war defeat,” McDermott explains. “Their [civic] leaders began these
walks between towns to raise the people’s morale, and the people turned
out in large numbers. If they completed the walk, they received a little
trinket [such as a medal or patch]. Our servicemen liked the concept and
brought it back to the States. You know, we worry so much here in America
right now about obesity. Boy, if you walked 10 kilometers every week…I do
that whenever we’re stressed out at work – just walk. And it could be any
time of the day…just take a 15- or 20-minute walk.” |
 |
O'ER THE
RAMPARTS WE WALKED:
Rosemary McDermott on the grounds of
Fort McHenry |
Today, the
volksmarch – or “people’s walk” – enjoys worldwide popularity with people
of all ages. Volkssport organizations exist on nearly every level of
society, from the local Baltimore Walking Club (www.baltimorewalkingclub.org)
to the International Volkssport Federation (www.ivv.org).
“You can do it at
your will,” McDermott says, accounting for the non-competitive sport’s
popularity. “You walk as slow or as fast as you want.”
The Fort McHenry
Walk is an example of what those-in-the-know term a “year-round event,” a
prescribed, unsupervised walk that anyone can take at any time. “Sometimes
they have organized volksmarches where a whole crowd will do it together,
and that’s a lot of fun,” McDermott adds. “It’s sort of like a carnival
atmosphere.”
As for how she got
involved herself, McDermott traces her own steps back to one of the
aforementioned servicemen.
“It was years ago,”
she explains. “I dated a fellow [who had] been stationed in Germany, and
he told me about it; I had never heard of it. He was one of the ones who
helped organize it in Germany – for the troops, not for the German people,
but then he loved it so much he [went] with the German people.”
Since then,
McDermott’s feet have covered some broad and fascinating ground.
“Something I like about the volksmarches: you’re always in a good, safe
place and it’s interesting,” she says. “My goal is to do all 50 capitals
in the United States. You really get to appreciate America visiting the
capitals; [they] usually put forth their best foot because they want to
sell their state. I’ve done 23 – what I do is get a picture of myself in
front of each of the capitals. So, [that makes] 23 pictures of me in front
of 23 capitals. I still have a long way to go.”
But a conversation
with McDermott suggests that the destination is not nearly as important as
the journey itself – that getting there is all the fun. And not unlike our
friend at Fort McHenry, she is eager to tell her stories. Indeed, in
connecting the dots of her travels, McDermott draws a cultural map of
America that delves far beyond the whitewash of our Interstates.
“Every volksmarch
you go on, you get a flavor of the culture,” she says. “[For instance],
don’t you feel like you know something about Baltimore that you didn’t
know [before]? You meet the people. Whenever I go volksmarching, we all
get a map just like this, so I’ll walk along and people – like in
Richmond, Virginia – they’ll all stop and say, ‘Can we help you?’ When
they see a tourist, especially in the capital, they’ll stop and talk with
you. You really get to know the culture of that little community – like in
Salt Lake City I got to know a lot about the Mormons.”
McDermott’s tales
of walking through cities large and small are colorful: the adobe “artist
colony” that is Santa Fe, New Mexico; the zoning ordnances that forbid
fast-food restaurants in Montpelier, Vermont; the impressive marble war
memorial outside the state capital in Charleston, West Virginia; having
the volksmarch medals and trinkets that certain serviceman had given her
years ago stolen from a hotel room in Savannah, Georgia (they were never
recovered). In a country so accustomed to seeing itself and the world at
85 mph, it would seem that the self-set pace of the volksmarch affords
people like McDermott a ringside vantage to the whites of the nation’s
eyes.
“[One] September,
about five of us hopped into a van and we decided to do the capitals up in
New England,” she explains. “It was the most beautiful week of the year.
Boston’s like Baltimore, in a way: people just come up and chat. So these
people came and sat at a table [in a shopping center] with me and we were
chatting, and the one lady was telling me she was leaving the next
morning. She was [a flight attendant] with American Airlines, and I
thought, ‘Isn’t this interesting!’ So she was telling me all about being a
flight attendant and [how] she was going to Los Angeles and how exciting
it was and how much she enjoyed it.
“Well, we left
Boston and went up to [Augusta,] Maine; that was our next capital. And we
were up in the mountains; Maine is real wilderness. It was so beautiful,
and we just spent the most gorgeous day – the sky was so blue. We came
back at two, and that was when we found out that the World Trade Center
had fallen down. We didn’t know anything about it. And then we found out
that someone had hijacked an American Airlines [flight] in Boston and that
they had crashed it.
“It was a one-week
trip. Friday morning we went to Concord, New Hampshire, and then
Montpelier. Then we went down to Albany. That capital is beautiful – we
[got] there about noon, and all of a sudden at noon the whistles blew, and
it was the strangest thing. Every door of every office building opened up
and streams of people came out, nobody talking, and they all headed to
churches. President Bush had asked for a moment of prayer at noon and so
many of the people in Albany [had] lost relatives in New York City…It was
something like you would see in a science fiction movie. Just streams of
people. Nobody talking.
“I don’t know if
that flight stewardess that I was talking with was on that American
Airlines flight – but it was just like we had almost touched something so
sacred. It was such an unusual feeling to know our whole country was
grieving, and there we were up in the mountains of Maine,
just glorying in the gorgeous day, thinking all [was] right with the world
– not having any idea what was going on with our world. It was just such a
contrast of everything. And the week…I don’t know if you remember that
week; it was the most beautiful blue sky…”
Somewhere beyond
our second and final checkpoint – Cross Street Market – McDermott attempts
to put the volksmarch into perspective.
“It’s such a
stress-reducer,” she says. “Now, I’ll walk today and I’ll get back to the
office tomorrow and I’ll be able to write, write, write, write, write. The
ideas just flow. In fact, sometimes even during the week, I’ll say to my
staff, ‘Let’s shut the office down. We’ll all go take a walk and come
back.’ Just a short walk, but it brushes out the old cobwebs. But the
volksmarches are my favorite. And there’s something [in doing] the whole
10 kilometers – at the end, you’re going to feel tired, but you’ll feel so
accomplished. That’s what happened to the German people…”
“I try to do it at
least once a month,” adds McDermott, whose upcoming plans include
Tallahassee, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, Columbia, South Carolina, and
Nashville, Tennessee. “And look at all the benefits. You’re walking.
You’re outside. You’re discovering new things that you never knew before.
And if you go with friends, it’s a really good way to develop
friendships.”
And as we part each
other’s company, having reached our destination, South Baltimore appears
different – brighter – having passed that damp, gray chill of morning.
“Hey, look,” she
says with a smile, looking toward the sky. “The sun’s starting to come
out.”
