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Sometime in the 1950s, 20 years before I was even born, my father woke up in Harlem. He and a small group of friends, all new arrivals to this city, decided to walk down to the Battery. It took them the good part of the day – made longer still since they stopped to slake their thirst in a number of bars along the route. As a child the story of this day-long journey took on mythological proportions. It seemed to encapsulate all that once was good and now is gone, back when time moved slowly.

Here in 2008, I walk as often as I can, usually taking two strolls around Brooklyn a day. I am a new mother and walking is well suited to new mothering but I was a walker even before my daughter was born. I even considered walking to the hospital when I went into labor until it became clear that this would not be physically possible. We drove. But I really like to walk. As a New Yorker, this is nothing terribly special—walking is what we do here. There is even a yoga studio in my neighborhood that teaches a course in walking.

In the past I’ve written about famous walkers and have always harbored a fantasy to one day walk from my home in Brooklyn to my mother’s house in Pound Ridge, New York. It would be a journey of only 52-odd miles if I could walk there in the most direct way which, of course, I cannot. This has always been a pesky problem for me–how does a person walk out of New York City? Getting to Manhattan from here– Carroll Gardens — is no problem. They built a beautiful bridge just for that purpose. Then I suppose I could take the Willis Avenue Bridge from Manhattan and just start heading north once I reached the Bronx. But after the Bronx the path gets a bit uncertain.

Today I have to be satisfied with a walk through my own part of town. I am lucky that walking through my neighborhood is a bit like Hericlitius’ River – never the same walk twice. Case in point: Today a woman coming out of the South Brooklyn Casket Company told me I had a cute hat.

Later I spied this secret door.