Walking was my freedom, my joy, my affordable transportation, my method of learning to understand places, my way of being in the world, my way of thinking through my life and my writing, my way of orienting myself. That it might be too unsafe to do was something I wasn’t willing to accept, though everyone else seemed more than willing to accept it on my behalf. Be a prisoner, they urged cheerfully; accept your immobility, wall yourself up like an anchorite! I was driven to go somewhere that was partly a metaphysical urge to make a life, to become and transform, to do, but literal travel
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