One of the high points of 2014 for me came in May, when I walked around Lake Washington in two days. (I've alluded to this walk before.) The first day, I walked from Capitol Hill along the south edge of the lake to Bellevue, where I stayed in a hotel for the night. That leg was 31.64 miles, according to my trusty pedometer. The second day, I walked from Bellevue along the north edge of the lake and then down the Burke-Gilman Trail. That was 29.2 miles. Walking sixty miles in two days is not nearly as tough on a body as running a single marathon; my toenails didn't fall off, my nipples didn't chafe, I didn't have bad blisters at the end of the walk. The next day I was a little sore, but not as much as you'd think. (Admittedly, I was prepared for the walk because I walk a lot every weekend; I try to do at least twelve miles every Saturday.)

My intent was originally to stay as close to the lake as possible in my walk, but that soon went out the window; by the time I got to the base of Madison Street and tried to make my way south, I realized that the perimeter of the lake is pretty much entirely surrounded by the houses (and fences) of rich people. For a goodly part of the sixty miles, I was admiring the lake from afar. But there were plenty of parks and lots of opportunities to view wildlife—mostly ducks—along the way; it's not like we live in a part of the world where the people's access to nature is denied. But it's still a little sad that it's impossible to walk around the shore of the lake.

During my walk, I had a chance to appreciate some of the things that the city of Seattle has done right. Compared to the east side of Lake Washington, walking in Seattle is a pedestrian's dream. There are plenty of signs for bicyclists and foot traffic, the sidewalks are well-maintained, and safe passage is clearly marked along the way. On the east side of the lake, especially in Renton and Kirkland, there were very few signs; if I didn't have my phone with me, I would've gotten lost at least three times. Even worse, I dealt with long stretches of road with no sidewalks at all on the east side. I had to walk in the street, with traffic whizzing a few inches from me. I'm tempted to do the walk again next year, in clockwise rotation this time, but those few potentially deadly stretches might deter me from doing it again. I don't want to get Stephen Kinged to death. Too, when I was approaching Bellevue, the walking/biking path was a caged tunnel running alongside the highway. Walking through those paths, with the roar of traffic to my right and the trees separated by chain link fence to my left, I felt a little like a trapped beast. To be fair, there's probably not a lot of demand for the east side to improve their pedestrian pathways; I barely ever saw another human being outside of a building or a car during the hours I was walking around the east side. But that's backwards thinking; if Renton and Kirkland and Bellevue made their cities more pleasant to walk in, more people would walk in those cities.

I love long walks like this because they reduce the city to a human scale. My perception of the city isn't warped to a commuter's view of blurry buildings or nose-to-tail traffic. Instead, I'm forced to live in the bubble of my senses, at a speed that allows me to take in my surroundings. Now, when I'm taking a bus across the bridge to Bellevue, I look at the lake in a totally different way. I know exactly how large it is, because I've walked around it on my own two feet. It's a big lake, but it's not too enormous. You can manage it at a stroll, if you've got a couple days.