I can relate to Mr. Mead's experience of walking empty streets. I'm in a rural area now (much like where I grew up), but when I lived in cities the evenings in residential neighborhoods were often devoid of people, and whenever I visit cities now and go walking I don't meet many people except for on designed shared-use paths, depending on time of day.

I try to walk twice a day for about thirty minutes (even when I was spending hours a day playing video games I made time to at least walk), and I can count on two hands the number of times I've encountered another walking person over the past few years I've lived where I am now, orders of magnitude fewer than the number of drivers.

I like the loneliness, and it's also sad to think of all the people, of all ages, cloistered inside.