Mom's Talk Q&A: Not Too Pedestrian: The Value in Walking to School

Now that my family has lived in Pelham for more than a decade, I’ve gained some perspective on the place, and come to the conclusion that it's a town that reveals itself slowly to those who live here. The things that were immediately apparent,  even as we looked at houses, are still there, of course—like the good school system, the charming houses, the proximity to New York.

But the value of other things became apparent only as our kids grew—and my favorite is the immeasurable value of being able to walk to and from school. To some, this may rate as an inconvenience—it’s hard enough to get out the door, and even harder if you have several other little ones in tow—but for me, because I have had only one elementary school-age child at a time, it’s a joy that I wish I could take advantage even more than I do.

This came to mind—even on what for the most part has been a rainy week—because on Monday, which started off with an inhospitable drizzle, Colonial School held a walk-to-school day in honor of Earth Day. (My first-grade daughter and I are somewhere in the group photo at right.)

Students, accompanied by their parents, met at four stations throughout Colonial’s district at 8 a.m., and then proceeded on the march to school.  Our group, which met at the corner of Highbrook and First, numbered about 50, if you count the dogs and toddlers that also came along for the walk. The kids were urged to wear green, which—for one enterprising boy—meant dyeing some of his hair green.

It all made walking to school festive, a celebration. At the corner of Highbrook and Boulevard, the entire intersection closed so we could march by.

But it doesn’t have to be an official walk-to-school day for the walk to feel that in some very tactile way, it's a way to celebrate the day. We live about as far as from Colonial as anyone in the district, which makes the walk a healthy chunk of quality time, a shared experience held outside of the usual confines of the day. (That is, if we leave early enough and don’t find ourselves running down Highbrook.)

As we walk out the door and down the street, my daughter and I practice our counting, examine the construction project going on around the corner on Washington Avenue, check the progress of the daffodils and whether the snow pile outside the Community Church of the Pelhams has fully melted. (It has.) There are dogs along the route that need petting, friends to meet along the way. It makes going to school an occasion, rather than a schlep. And that's not even to detail the benefits to our environment and our health.

But the benefits of being able to walk everywhere extend to older kids too. When our son entered middle school last year, it occurred to me that, for him, Pelham had turned into a campus. Home was the dorm, the middle school and high school were the academic quad, and Double Rainbow? Well, that’s the student union. While we all tell our older children to take precautions as they navigate town, we are still able to give them a measure of freedom they couldn’t have many other places. If we lived where I grew up in Fairfield County, my son would be taking the bus back and forth—and I’d no doubt be ferrying him around town for much of the afternoon, not to mention burning up huge quantities of highly expensive gasoline.

The benefits to Mom’s schedule and budget aside, living in a town built for pedestrians allows us to give our teenage children some freedom when they have truly started to yearn for it, instead of later, only when they are old enough to get a driver’s license.

Here, at the time of year where we are all too well aware of what we pay in taxes to keep our community the special place it is, it’s important to remember the value of Pelham’s intangibles. For me, the town's walkability is one of the biggest.

And now for today’s question: what intangible thing do you value most about living in Pelham?