My cousin and his wife are out walking. They are in Italy right now. Or maybe Germany. Could even be France or Switzerland. You see, they are hikers and are wandering around the Alps on this trip. I’m not sure when they started hiking. When I remember those childhood days of visiting him two whole states away I attribute his current walking prowess to his wife because as a 10 year old I seem to remember reluctance on his part to cross the street on foot. Now the two of them have even adopted a portion of the Appalachian Trail to keep it free of litter and debris.

I wish I could be like them. In my more agile years I had often trekked through various state, county, and local parks’ walking and hiking trails. I even had a hiking merit badge in the Boy Scouts. (Oops, they don’t use “boy” in that organization’s name any more. Something about not being inclusive. Someone should mention that to the Girl Scouts. But I digress.) I liked to walk. I still do. Now my walks are more along the line of up and down the sidewalk in front of my building and a half mile is as much trekking as I do at one time. I remember walking a half mile from the parking lot to the trail head in some of those parks.

Walking might come to me genetically. The hiking cousin takes his walks to the extreme but everyone else in my family is quite comfortable lacing on a good pair of walking shoes and hitting the pavement for a few miles close to if not daily. My daughter has taken her pavement pounding to the extreme in that she sees her daily two mile walk as just something to do between tooth brushing and showering and runs for her “real” outdoor exercise, a bad habit I might have instilled in her before she was even born. Fortunately I saw running for the folly it was and after a few years and a couple half marathons I returned to the peaceful pace of multi-mile walks. She on the other hand never met a marathon she didn’t like and has run the local marathon (half-marathon version) for seven consecutive years and shows no sign of breaking that streak.

I’m quite content with my daily strolls at distances now measured in yards rather than miles. I do it with a cane and I do it slowly but I do it. I figure if I keep that up every day or at least almost every day I can still outrun heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and crippling arthritis even at my slow pace. And if they get too close I’ll just beat them away with my cane. It’s one of those good sturdy aluminum jobs so I should be able to put a decent dent in bad fortune with it.

If I keep up with that routine, if I ever get to the Alps I might not have the stamina to hike my way around them but I’ll still be strong enough to make it from the parking lot to in front of the fireplace in the lodge. I figure that’s just the right distance for me!