By Richard Bammer

If a Vacaville elementary school student read or thumbed through books by famed backpacker Colin Fletcher, author of “The Man Who Walked Through Time” and “The Complete Walker,” the boy or girl would not only learn walking techniques but they also would learn more abstract things, such as walking’s pleasures and its sometimes deeply emotional rewards.

But children simply enjoy walking, especially walking to school, as scores did Wednesday, International Walk To School Day, when it was celebrated at Callison Elementary in Vacaville, one of 46 county schools (fewer than last year) to mark the special day.

By 8:30 a.m. and under a cloudless fall sky, students, alone or in groups of four and five, trudged happily along the sidewalk, north and south, fronting the Vanden Road campus in the city’s eastern sector. Noon supervisor Susie Berk greeted them with yellow string backpacks, a memento of the day, as students made their way to their respective classrooms.