This is a record in photographs and brief essays of my walking every street in my hometown of Somerville, MA. Somerville is small enough that “every street” is a doable project instead of a daunting one. It would be much harder in some of the other cities in which I’ve lived (and, in many of them, frankly impossible by the rules).

I like walking. Why not walk more?

For fun. For exploration. For discovery. To share my town. To see it through new eyes. To connect more deeply with this place.

Of course you can! Get out there and walk! And then tell me about it. I like adventure stories. 

They’re more guidelines than actual rules. More seriously, rules set boundaries, boundaries create structure, and structure is integral to meaning. 

I have traveled all over the world and loved learning from people what is interesting, historical, and unique about their homes. Places matter because of what they mean to the people who live there. While walking every street in Somerville is, on the one hand, a lark, it also matters to me. I want to share why.

It could be for someone else, but I’m not thinking about it that way. I already walk several miles a day. Walking every street is a project separate and distinct from my fitness, though walking 250 miles will undoubtedly have an impact on it.

Somerville is a little more than 4 square miles in area, with about 250 miles of sidewalk across 657 streets. It’s longest street, Broadway, is a bit more than 3 miles in length. Compare that to Boston, which is more than 48 square miles, with about 1200 streets, several of which are considerably longer than 3 miles. Don’t mistake me: someone could walk every street in Boston! It’s a bigger project than Somerville.

A thousand times “Yes!”