That is peak creativity.
A Brooklyn mountaineering fanatic with desires of at some point tackling the nation’s highest mountains is carving his personal path by way of the concrete jungle this month by difficult himself to make use of his personal two toes as his sole technique of transportation.
Benjamin Solomon is only a week shy of ending up his month-long “Via-Hike to Nowhere,” a do-it-yourself mission that has seen him stroll greater than 300 miles up to now, together with his each day three-hour roundtrip stroll to work.
“New Yorkers have been all the time in a rush to get all over the place, and we’ve got so many various methods to get someplace, however I believe we overlook the ability in strolling,” stated Solomon, who works at an leisure firm.
Solomon, 42, kicked off his journey on Sept. 15 with a easy objective to “stroll all over the place,” whether or not its to work, to dinner, to a buddy’s and wherever else he wanted to go over the next 30 days.
The hiker has imposed a strict algorithm on himself all through the four-week endeavor, the only of which prohibits the usage of vehicles, trains, buses, scooters and bikes — and has even denied himself any type of meals supply.
That implies that he clocks a minimal of 12 miles on the 5 days every week he walks from his house in Williamsburg to his workplace in Midtown and again at evening, a trek that takes roughly 180 minutes round-trip in comparison with the hour subway trip he would in any other case take.
That dedication has meant that Solomon has needed to bow out of a number of occasions in the previous couple of weeks as a result of the gap wasn’t walk-friendly, like Rosh Hashanah dinner with household in Glen Rock, New Jersey and his school reunion in Colorado.
However the missed occasions have been nicely value it, he explains: “There’s no good time to do something. If you wish to decide to one thing, you’re going to should sacrifice one thing.”
As of Wednesday night, Solomon has logged 297 miles — equal in size to Vermont’s Lengthy Path.
Solomon has been rewarded for the sacrifice, nonetheless — throughout his journey, Solomon has tread new trails for himself, like throughout the Queensboro Bridge, and has encountered the forged of characters sprinkled throughout the 5 boroughs.
“One in every of my favorites is after I stroll the Williamsburg Bridge and it’s simply used to do the whole lot. There are individuals understanding. There are individuals Djing. I noticed as soon as there have been individuals having a cocktail party, they arrange a desk they usually have been having a cocktail party. I like that there are these public areas, and we simply use them to do no matter we wish and, as New Yorkers, we barely blink at it,” stated Solomon.
The thought was born out of his longtime dream of tackling colossal thru-hikes just like the Appalachian Path or the Pacific Crest Path, which take so long as six months to finish — a timeframe the Willimsburg resident can not afford to embark on at the moment.
“Why do I’ve to attend? How can I simply make up my very own endurance hike right here in New York? And that’s type of what I made a decision to do with this Via-Hike to Nowhere,” stated Solomon, who has been importing each day diaries to social media.
“We are inclined to suppose New York isn’t nature, that there’s no nature right here and also you’ve bought to depart New York to expertise nature,” he continued.
“However there’s a lot nature right here. When I’m strolling, I do really feel like I’m in nature. Once I’m up on the bridge excessive over the river, that’s lovely — It’s like primarily being on a mountain. It’s altering the best way you see town.”
Whereas the “Via-Hike to Nowhere” would possibly suggest a detrimental connotation, it merely implies that Solomon isn’t following any set path just like the well-trodden paths established all through the Appalachian mountains — as a substitute, he’s blazing his personal path.
Unsurprisingly, Solomon confronted some “rising pains” at first of his problem, notably some sore arches. However as a substitute of giving up, the Brooklynite grabbed some orthodicts and stored it transferring.
With one other week on the books, Solomon hopes to stomp throughout one other 100 miles to convey his grandtotal to 400.
By then, he’ll be primed to at some point tackle the Appalachian Path, he stated.
