Hastings, Washington DC, Geneva, Rome, Paris in each of these cities I spent time this summer exploring on foot the things you miss when you travel any other way. Much of the time without a map or a guide (which is the only way to explore when on a voyage of self discovery) I wandered around these big cities and they really didn’t seem all that big. When Henry David Thoreau was asked why he walked instead of riding he put into perspective the scope of the universe and the reality that no two points on earth are really all that distant when you consider the vastness of the universe. With this philosophy the whole world seems much smaller, and infinitely more explorable. The true color of a place lives not in the center where all the tourists go, but in the the side streets where the locals hang out. I realized the other day that though I have walked these places all over the world I have never really done the same in my home town of Seattle…until now. With my daughter in the hospital and my trips into the city becoming a regular occasion, I have been spending hours each day walking my city and in some ways reacquainting myself with things and in other ways learning the city from a whole new perspective. I probably couldn’t drive the city any better than I did when I first learned, but I am learning all the ways to walk and it’s made me appreciate the place of my birth more than ever. The touristy places like the pike place market have a local flare that makes them less touristy and more just what we are, but the thing about walking is that you see the people more and a place becomes less about the places in it and more about who lives there.