early to tread

In Italy we walked everywhere. It wasn't that we walked from our apartment on Via del Porrione to class two blocks over, or that we walked to the coffee shop down the street. I mean, we literally walked the entire city of Siena daily. We walked outside of Siena too, to the train stop a few kilometers away. And we walked in foreign cities where we visited, like Venice and Rome, the beaches of Viareggio and the coast of the five lands. Without bikes, euros for bus fare or even a skate board, we walked.  It became not only a mode of transport, but our avenue to see the city, experience the shops and meet the people, even if we didn't exchange words. It was charming to walk in Siena where the streets are made of great gray stones and there aren't sidewalks.  The street runs right up to the store fronts and apartment doors and when the trucks drive through delivering meat from the surrounding farms, you press your body against the cold stone walls in order to evade their tires.  

When I look back at my time in Europe, the most impressive memory I have is of traipsing across France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy, and of discovering the exclusive city of Siena on foot.  In Siena the walls, which tower over and close you in, are also the observer's perch, the writer's thinking position.  And beside the picture of the stone streets, I picture the views from the walls looking out over the rolling hills of the Tuscan landscape. 

From my apartment in Ardmore, the grocery store is one mile away, the post office three-quarters of a mile, my office, two miles, and the book store, a little over two. I began walking again, all over town, about two months ago, when the weather turned cold and my seasonally depressed brain began needing as much natural light as possible.  Occasionally my timid self insecurely hopes nobody I know sees me, but I'm getting over it.  It's the strangest thing, though it shouldn't be, but it's wonderful, this walking.  I'm getting to know this city for the first time since I've moved here, really getting to know it.  Its small roads and its strange streets. The houses with red doors and the women who keep great beautiful gardens. I know where the territorial dogs live and which houses have gone on the market, and the ones which have sold.  

It does take longer, I'll admit. Walking. And it's more tiresome. But it's also much more lively and alluring and cleansing.  In this cold winter my cheeks are flushed by the time I make it to the Post Office... but my mama always said rosy cheeks are becoming.