A World Built for Walking
Last weekend, I drove cattle from winter pasture to summer grazing lands. We could’ve trucked them, but the five-mile ride offered lessons that don’t come any other way. The mother cows seemed to know the rhythm of it; the calves, on the other hand, had no idea what to make of horses, cowboys, creeks, or much beyond the sudden absence of their mothers and their own panicked scrambling—a special kind of chaos near the foundation of the food chain.
More than that, it was time in the saddle with two of my sons. We didn’t just “cowboy up” in spirit—we had the hats, spurs, chaps, and enough layers to handle whatever the day threw our way. That gear isn’t for show; it’s essential when you’re doing real work.
We passed through country most cars or airplanes can’t reach—rugged, remote, overlooked from 30,000 feet. From horseback, it’s wind and sweat, slope and dust, and the restless bawling of a mother searching for her calf, while the calf simply wanted to fold itself beneath a stand of endless purple sage. The start of a calf’s life today still unfolds like it did a century ago—and probably for eons before that.
The ride out was as slow as the walk home—punctuated by a reluctant trot or a lope when patience wore thin. It was the kind of day that doesn’t beg for improvement: hard, quiet, purposeful. And it reminded me that in a world obsessed with speed, some things—good, vital things—still unfold at their own pace.
And as is typical, no one carried enough water.
Before We Got Ahead of Ourselves
For most of human history, speed was a shared limitation. Whether hauling hay or ruling kingdoms, people moved at roughly the same pace. Kings might ride in carriages, but they still bounced over the same potholes.
- That pace shaped life. News and relationships moved slowly. The bicycle, popularized in the 1860s, quietly redrew the map of romance. Suddenly, love could come from ten miles away.
- Around that same time, trains began moving people fast enough to feel sick. In 1842, Christian Doppler proposed that motion could shift sound and light. His theory—once academic—became real each time a siren zipped past with that rising then falling pitch. Suddenly, even sound had a speed limit—and it could be broken.
- Meanwhile, across the American West, the Pony Express became a brief but heroic attempt to outrun geography—carrying letters from St. Louis to San Francisco in ten days for $5 (about $180 today). It lasted only 18 months before the transcontinental telegraph made it obsolete. But it left a legacy of grit, risk, and speed—a frontier myth that still echoes.
Today, you can ship a package coast to coast in two days for less than the price of a drive-through lunch. No bandits. No blizzards. No horses.
Before trains, towns ran on local noon. Trains required schedules. Schedules required standard time. Time zones were born. Suddenly, time wasn’t observed—it was imposed.
Acceleration and Expectation
Cars gave way to jets. Messages outran messengers. Telegraphs led to phones, then texts, then notifications. Now we expect replies in seconds, cross time zones before breakfast, and wear the entirely modern idea of “jet lag” like a badge.
Speed changed not just what we could do, but what we expect. We grumble when packages take three days. We bristle when an app loads slowly—joking that the signal goes to space and back, which, of course, it often does. We curse Wi-Fi at 30,000 feet. We’ve forgotten how to wait.
What was once a shared limit is now a privilege. Some ride buses. Others take bullet trains. A few board private jets or rockets. The faster you move, the fewer companions you have.
Speed has become a filter.
Though technology has evolved, our biology hasn’t. We’re wired for trails and fireside talk, not endless pings. Today’s motion sickness is mental: decision fatigue, burnout, time poverty. We seek out slow food and digital detoxes not for novelty—but survival.
When nothing’s happening, we grow bored and restless. Deep down, I suspect speed has cost us more than it’s given.
Do We Really Need All This Speed?
It makes sense to be fast when a life’s on the line—or when love is worth chasing across the county line, hoping your ex’s goodbye doesn’t ludicrously trail off as they go 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds.
But most of the time, we race because we can. Because we fear falling behind. Because we’ve confused motion with meaning.
The need for speed is real. But maybe the deeper need is to remember what life felt like before we blurred past it.
Now, days later, the saddle soreness has faded, and I’m already looking forward to the next slow ride. There’s something grounding in the rhythm of hooves, the sway of the saddle, and the shared pace of animal and human. It’s a kind of knowing no app can simulate, no algorithm can comprehend—and AI has nothing useful to offer here. That may be the most reassuring part of all.
In a world where every moment begs to be optimized, that ride reminded me: not all progress is forward. Sometimes, it loops back to older ways—ways that still work, still connect, still matter.
The true innovation wasn’t speed—it was endurance, shared burden, and the long view.
And while I’m grateful for highways and Wi-Fi, a big part of me longs for the kind of journey where you’re not just passing through but participating—where you feel the wind, share a joke, and literally eat someone’s dust as you ride shoulder to shoulder. It’s in that slow rhythm, in the quiet presence of others moving at a deliberate pace, that something essential returns. Something GPS can’t calculate and AI can’t fake.
Just honest ground, honest labor, and the kind of fellowship the fast lane can’t offer—and wouldn’t understand if it could.
Whoa!
- National Park Service. “Pony Express National Historic Trail.” https://www.nps.gov/poex/learn/historyculture/index.htm
- Ralph, Paul. “The impact of bicycles on mate choice in the 19th century.” Nature Human Behaviour, 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01069-3
- Christian Doppler, “Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne,” 1842. Summary available at Encyclopedia Britannica – Doppler Effect.
