According to MayoClinic.com, “Walking is a gentle, low-impact exercise that can ease you into a higher level of fitness and health. It's one of your body's most natural forms of exercise. It's safe, simple, doesn't require practice, and the health benefits are many.”
You can find lots of tips there on how to get started and stay motivated.
Here’s an idea. How about a walking vacation?
Crown Journeys, a series of literary travel books, matches interesting writers with interesting places. The only rule of the format is that the writers take their journeys on foot.
In the latest addition to the series, Charm City, Madison Smartt Bell takes us on a tour of Baltimore, from the Inner Harbor to neighborhoods not on the tourist map. Bell’s tour reveals why Baltimore was nicknamed Charm City and why the nickname stuck.
Best selling authors have contributed titles. There is Edwidge Danticat’s After the Dance: A Walk through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti, Myla Goldberg’s Time's Magpie: A Walk in Prague, and Michael Cunningham’s Land's End: A Walk through Provincetown.
My personal favorites are Christopher Buckley’s Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation’s Capital, and Bill McKibbin’s Wandering Home: A Long Walk across America’s Most Hopeful Landscape, Vermont’s Champlain Valley and New York Adirondacks. Both cover places where I have spent a great deal of time and about which I thought there was nothing else to know, but was pleasantly surprised by the new insights they offered.
The Library has other practical walking guides as well, including Frommer’s Memorable Walks series, and there is a wealth of information on the Internet. Start with Country Walkers, a tour provider that offers walking tour packages around the globe. I like their slogan: “Explore the world … one step at a time.”
And just think of all those calories you will burn up …