My earliest memory of walking as a means to liberation starts when I was eleven.  My school district stopped providing bus service at sixth grade. I lived two miles from the school. Yes, kiddies, I walked both ways, in all seasons, lugging my clarinet and my school supplies.  Backpacks were for Tyrolean yodelers, for all I knew. I disdained  the school bags and the lunch boxes of elementary school; I managed with  a belt-like rubber strap to secure text books and looseleaf binders.   Girls were not allowed to wear pants, so I trudged, many a winter day, through  wind and snow, to school, arriving proper and frozen. I must admit, a good portion of what I learned in HS was how to beg for rides home, when the older brothers of my friends got their learner's permits.   But I also came away with an appreciation for the utility of walking, hard won knowledge for a child of the Long Island post war suburbs. If I wanted to go some place, I could walk there.