I thought I was a serious walker until I moved to New York and met my love. Walking three miles to and from my college campus was no big deal. I walked 50 to 100 blocks in Manhattan. But I had nothing on Ben.

Like me, Ben was often “in the zone” when he walked. When he headed to “the pizza store,” I’d see him coming full speed ahead down the street before he turned the corner into the restaurant entrance. His face was a study of intensity: half the time he looked like he was about to go read someone the Riot Act.

I knew not to wear heels when Ben and I were going somewhere. It was never just a meal. Lunch or dinner was the gateway to a full-fledged schlepfest.

We walked from the Bronx to downtown Yonkers. We schlepped the entire length of South Brooklyn. We trekked every retired rail line that had been upcycled into a walking trail. Even when we talked of his younger years, pounding the literal pavement was central to Ben’s life. He spent lonely teenage summers walking the perimeter of Brooklyn Army Terminal. He processed his first girlfriend’s dumping him with a long walk. He secured parental permission to walk city train yards at 15.

Ben never studied philosophy, as I did in my college major, but he would have appreciated Soren Kierkegaard: “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”

I remembered that when I walked the Brooklyn Bridge in his memory at the Covid March to Remember.