I grew up in a working class neighborhood in Providence Rhode Island. My parents never owned a car and unlike other families in my neighborhood we went for walks. Sometimes we walked to a park or to a local grocery store where I could get an ice cream cone for ten cents! We were often accompanied by King, the neighborhood dog. Many of those walks were pleasant but sometimes I walked with my father to the liquor store where my mother expected me to prevent my father from buying hard liquor. We walked at night and I became obsessed with the shadows of street lights. As I walked between street lights the shadow of the pole in front of me got shorter and shorter while the one behind me got longer and longer. My father asked me why I kept looking behind us as we walked but I did not tell him.

When I was 19 I was a lifeguard at the Providence Central YMCA, which was on the south side of town. I lived in an apartment on the East Side. I often finished work at 11PM and had to do the 45 minute walk to my apartment. At the time I was studying Sim Gum Do, a Korean sword fighting technique that was taught to my teacher by a demon in a cave during a 100 day meditation retreat. I never got to use an actual sword but I did have a wooden practice sword. As I walked late at night through the rough streets of Providence, I swung my sword in patterns I had learned in class. Nobody ever bothered me.

I began taking long walks when I was in my first year of college at the University of Rhode Island, which is near the southern coast of the state. I badly injured my shoulder and upper back so I had to stop most of my usual physical activities. There are beaches along the coast from the Connecticut border all the way to Narragansett Bay. Over a couple of weekends I walked the entire length of the coastline.  

In 1978 I went to England. For a month I lived in a village called Alysham in East Anglia. Everyday I went for walks through the English countryside. One day, when I was walking near a Tudor country house called Blickling Hall, I stopped, and the history and memory in the air, attracted by the balance in my hips, flowed along the furrow my body had made while I was walking. This history and memory entered my hips and caused them to reverberate and the reverberation created a force in my body. I called that force the Heat of History. For many years I investigated the Heat of History through performances and reading. I moved from Alysham to London and lived there for a year and a half. I was in an alternative school called Friends World College. Most of my time was spent walking or reading novels. I spent hours each day walking through the street of London. I got to know the city well.

I also hiked around England. I went to Devon, Yorkshire and the Lake District. When I was in the Lake District I walked for a day with a man who spent six months working and saving money and then six months hiking around England. As we walked it rained on and off. Every time it started to rain he put on rain pants, every time it stopped he took them off. He told me that if someone is too tired to adjust their rain gear to the weather they should not be hiking. It is a lesson I have since applied to bike riding.

In 1979 I moved to Chaponost, a village just south of Lyon. I lived with a French family and for three months I took long walks every day. I met an Irish au pair who was living nearby and sometimes we took walks together. By the end of my time there I felt as if my walks were creating a web of connections. I walked between Roman Aqueducts, water towers, stone cottages and waterfalls. I really knew the territory within a day’s walk of Chaponost.

When I moved to Burlington in 1980, walking was my primary way of getting around. After a couple of months I began to have pain in my right ankle. I had sprained it quite badly when I was 18 and it never healed properly. I switched to riding a bicycle and since then bike riding has been my primary way of getting around. 

Now I can walk without pain in my right ankle. I don’t go for long hikes but I walk around Winooski and Burlington. When I am walking on my own I recite poetry to myself. Over the years I have memorized about an hour’s worth of rhymes. The poetry cycle includes some poems I have written myself and some written by others. Every once in a while I memorize a new poem and add it to the list. I also take photographs on walks and recently I have been writing essays about the photos and publishing them in The Winooski News.  

I have two friends I walk with regularly. One friend I see almost every week, the other friend less frequently. We walk through the woods and talk about books and other things. I am grateful that I can still walk and that I have good friends to walk with!

About the Author: Peter Burns is a long-time bike enthusiast, and one of the original year-round bike riders in the greater Burlington area. In addition to writing about walking and biking, Peter teaches a variety of bike workshops. He also works at a group home for people with psychiatric disabilities, teaches classes for the Vermont Humanities Council, teaches swimming at the Burlington YMCA, and is a regular host of Storytelling VT.  You can contact Peter at [email protected].