My parents want to move to Coeur d'Alene, from Yakima, Wash.

My only worry would be Dad would write letters to the editor for our opinion page.

They're devoted readers of The Press. Their papers come to them through the mail, and they read every inch, even the classifieds. They say the letters to the editor are unlike anything they've seen.

"I have to sit on my hands when I read them," Dad says.

He's a funny guy. But there's no ambiguity with the last name Hasslinger. There's no Miller, or Smith in that.

But they want to move here.

"Boy," I say.

They love walking and Coeur d'Alene is the best walking town they've ever seen, including San Francisco, they say. They want to live in Riverstone and walk the Centennial Trail along the Spokane River to the Fort Grounds neighborhood.

"I promise," Dad says. "Not one letter."

My mom is a sailor and they beach their sailboat here, a little two-seater, on the North Idaho College shore.

They say they want to teach me how to sail and I mostly believe them, but it's a little like beginning the move piece by piece, the way battlefields are set up at night.

Out on the water is a little like walking too, only you have to obey the wind, rushing at you suddenly, like through an alley, after hiding behind the rocks and trees and all the bend in the hills, and when you drop your hand casually the water climbs to your elbow.

"We'll leave you alone," Dad says when we beach the boat. "We promise."

And then there is City Park, the music there, and back along Sherman Avenue and down to McEuen Field where we eat sandwiches in the grass, and all of Tubbs Hill - a day by itself.

When the trail drops back down to the Third Street entrance I stop with Eddy, my pup, when it's just the two of us, and there's the St. Thomas Church steeple rising and pointing like a finger to the moon. It's the best thing to see first thing in the morning, and the only place I like more is Dike Road when it's raining or snowing and the black waves leap and crash and you can see all the power of the lake as the lights shine off it.

It's a great walking town, it is.

"Marvelous," Dad says.

In Yakima, with its high desert hills, you have to drive to get to the walking trails. If you climb the hills, the whole valley shines in the distance like a mirage.

But even when it snows here, you can put on your skies and huff down Eighth Street through Garden, Foster, and Reid avenues, and that's great walking, too, everything silent, the massive maples covering the streets like canopies.

And when Eddy and I fly down Boyd Avenue, the street that's saved for sledding, we can go all the way to the interstate if we want, or sometimes we turn toward Sanders Beach and the water.

It clears your head, all that walking.

It's the best way to learn things or think them through, and I remember how mad I'd get at Eddy when he'd tear after a moose while we skied at Fourth of July Pass. We'd come across the same one each morning, and each time that pup would chase it through the forest, never a real threat, until his purple tongue hung out and he had to return.

"Here we are guests," I'd say, shaking my ski pole in the woods. "And you can't share."

So I get to thinking.

About a lot of things, but what's one letter?

Nothing, really. They make fabulous reading anyway, all of them.

What's two, three or four more even?

Tom Hasslinger is a staff writer with The Press. He can be reached at thasslinger@cdapress.com, or 664-8176, Ext. 2010