Last night I took the El (or “elevated train”) to book club. This isn’t a particularly ground breaking occurrence, I often take public transit in the city, but as I was switching from one line to another to make it to my destination, I was struck by how comfortable I had become using the trains and buses to move about the city. Neighborhood to neighborhood, hipsters to Hispanic, a good tapas restaurant in one area, my favorite Italian spot in another. Go out for drinks on this street, go shopping on a Saturday afternoon on another. The city becomes smaller when you learn the ropes of the transit lines, that great seafood dish is within reach and not with a $20 cab fare on top of it.

When I first moved to the city, in June of 2005, I was unsure of myself. I knew how to walk home from Michigan Avenue but that was about it and I carried a copy of the “Not for Tourist’s Guide to Chicago” in my purse. I was often lost, I’d duck into a Starbucks bathroom and open the book in the stall, terrified of using it on the street, knowing I didn’t want to pegged as someone who didn’t know where they were going. I’d figure out where I was on the map and retrace the route I should have taken, the route I needed to take now. Just walk three blocks and turn left – and walk NORTH, yes, left = North, and then it should be there I’d tell myself, repeating the directions over and over in my head as reassurance. When I took transit I took the bus, it was safer that way, with the driver near by. The driver was my safety net, a person who I could ask for directions or yell for help in case I was mugged.

Many of my friends have moved to the suburbs, for the convenience they say. It is convenient, the suburbs, if you have a car, so easy to zip in and out of parking lots and restaurants and grocery stores with their abundance of space and parking spots and room to swing your arms about if you so desire. But for the convenience of the suburbs behind the wheel, it is wildly inconvenient by foot, and that is where the city captures me. I can’t imagine how many miles I’ve walked in this city, on sidewalks and on the lake front path, to dinner and the grocery store and friend’s parties and to find the perfect stationery, the perfect gift, the exact pair of shoes I need. Walking, always walking, squished between people and high rises or crowds and brownstones, it doesn’t matter for you are in the city and you are always moving.

When I started law school in August of 2005 I was shocked by the number of people who lived “away”, in Lincoln Park and Andersonville and Wrigleyville and Wicker Park and Bucktown. But how do you get to school I’d ask, confused,  and they’d give me their routes. Take a bus to the El, walk to the El, take one bus and then another bus and then walk, each with a route -and in my mind, so many miles between campus and their homes. I couldn’t fathom not living close enough to the school to walk, walking to class was my crutch. If the buses got too complicated, if I thought I was getting lost I could get off and walk Michigan Avenue home, it was my North Star so to speak. But what about an emergency, how would you walk to school from there, it would take hours I’d press, still not fathoming the distance and reliance on the transportation system.

My friends laughed, they wouldn’t walk, and what kind of emergency was I talking about? I’d shrug, and move on, but secretly glad that in my back pocket I had my safety net, my ability to walk home just in case.

I never found out what my envisioned “emergency” was and I only walked to or from school a handful of times. I walked home the first week, over a mile with my backpack full of huge legal texts because I wasn’t sure how to take my bus route home, in the opposite direction from which I came and I was too embarrassed to ask…but not as embarrassed as when I figured out the art to taking the bus the other way was simply to cross the street and catch it going the other direction.

A year and a half after moving into my safe downtown high rise with a view of glittering Michigan Avenue I took the plunge and moved up North. I was no longer scared of the buses and trains and I knew I could do it. I had become a city dweller, someone who could navigate their way around, who understood diagonal streets, the main arteries in the city, the Blue line that goes West, the Brown line that snakes through Lincoln Park, the arterial Red Line that can get you North or South, wherever you are going. I discovered express buses and I walked to new places and new restaurants and I realized that the ability to walk somewhere new within 20 minutes is something I can never give up. Not for a driveway or a backyard or all the other perks of the suburbs. I need my sidewalks and my corner stores and my smushed up, crowded city lovers like myself, where everything is just a little bit over that way.