The Joy of Circling the Block

It’s a rediscovery of aimless ambling, but also a late-breaking innovation of movement in lives suddenly devoid of trips or errands.

May 18, 2020

“Circling the block”— a phrase typically reserved for vehicles in search of a parking spot, now something done more on foot — has become a near ritualized activity both extremely basic and extremely fundamental to my days. Call it pedestrian, but it is a holding pattern that has held me throughout my shelter at home.

When I wake up, I circle the block. When the dog needs to be let out, we circle the block. Both before the start of work each day and after the day’s work is over, I circle the block. Each week, I talk to my therapist for 45 minutes on the phone, and during that period, I usually circle the block (approximately five times).

Like one quarantine day, one circle around the block amounts to a concrete unit that can nonetheless be prolonged indefinitely. In math, they call this discretizing the continuous. I have measured out my recent life with block circling.

Circling the block is not only a modest form of exercise; it has also placed my otherwise modest living situation in perspective. In a moment where rent strikes are on the rise in my Oakland neighborhood, while job security reaches a new global low, simply having a block to circle feels like a remarkable privilege.

Circling the block entails a change of scenery, and how lucky I am to live among scene changes. As I’ve circled my block the past month, I’ve gradually discovered which cherry blossoms are late bloomers, which of my neighbors are trying to quit smoking, which have lately started farming, which sit curbside with their newborns, which have bored children and which have cute dogs, which pansies grow so low to the curb that dogs (my dog, specifically) must pee on them.

My Oakland block recently closed its streets off to cars, making it almost entirely a space for walkers, runners, bikers and babies. I’ve never seen the street so full of people. Circling the block has been a rediscovery of aimless ambling, but also a late-breaking innovation of movement in lives suddenly devoid of trips or errands.

Everyone, it seems, is doing it. Usually, I avoid everyone, but these days I am increasingly confronted with the pull of semi-suburban living. Going out in public is paradoxically often the best way to get some privacy when you’re self-confined with others, and so I take my calls outside. I wave to my neighbors from six feet.

When sheltering at home, your world may feel suddenly smaller. But if your block, like mine, has slowly become integrated into your sense of home, then circling it is one way to make the world feel slightly larger.

Jane Hu is a writer in Oakland, Calif.

Doodles by Evan Hill and Tim Herrera. Evan is a journalist on the visual investigations team at The Times. Tim edits and writes for Smarter Living, and he is a co-editor of the Smarter Living book.