FTAN, Switzerland - Limbs and lungs aching after a 5 1/2-hour, above-the-treeline hike in the Swiss Alps, I plopped down with pride upon the rough-hewn log that served as a bus stop bench.
"That was a monster!" I said to my husband, reliving the trek across unstable slate fields and rugged mountain meadows, along trails carved by rushing streams, meandering cows and burrowing marmots.
Then the Bachman family from Basel walked by. They had done the same hike with five-year-old twins, a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old.
"At least you beat the twins," my husband smirked.
Only the twins and their mother, Damia, waited with us for the bus. The older kids and their father continued down a gruelling 1 1/2-hour switchback trail to the resort of Scoul. In a further blow to my ego, I learned that the Bachmans were on a three-week summer vacation and had gone on similar hikes nearly every day.
"The hardest thing is stopping every hour to feed them," Damia Bachman said. "They are always hungry."
There are times in life when something that has been abundantly obvious to others for so long finally becomes obvious to you. Like most North Americans, I honestly had no idea how sedentary I had become.
It's not just our fast-food culture that's making us the oversized laughingstocks of the world. It's also that we sit too much - at work, in the car, at school, at home.
We spend weekends and evenings as passive observers, watching sports or movies, playing video games, surfing the Internet - all sitting down.
In most of America, virtually every activity requires a hop in the car. Even when parents do walk, they often keep toddlers in strollers months too long because it's faster that way.
Plenty of American families are involved in sports, but that can mean nothing more strenuous than sitting in the bleachers watching a child's tournament. While exercise walking is by far America's most popular sport - practised by nearly 90 million people in 2007, according to a survey by the National Sporting Goods Association - that survey includes anyone who did it at least once that year.
In Switzerland, walking is also No. 1, but here it's a daily commitment practised at distances that would leave most Americans panting.
Lorenz Ursprung, head of sports promotion at the Swiss Office of Sport, said it's easy to see walking's appeal.
"You can do it as a family, a couple, by yourself. You don't need any expensive equipment. You don't even have to go anywhere - you can walk out your back door," he said.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that every single Swiss village, city and mountain is crisscrossed with paths, ranging from flat sidewalks by the lake to heart-stopping alpine trails.
The Swiss walk for pleasure: to breathe fresh air, talk with friends, give the dog a romp, head to a cafe for lunch. They walk to do errands, pick up groceries, go to work. On Sundays, when most stores are closed, paths are filled with three-generation families, all out for a walk.
"Every single weekend, we went hiking with the family," reminisced Sandro Della Rossa, a 27-year-old language teacher in Zurich. "Sometimes when I was a teenager, all I wanted to do was stay home and hang out with my friends. But no, I had to go hiking with the family.
