Sign up now for the Fall walk events!
It’s been a busy summer, and a few quick updates are below, but the most important news is that registration is now open for the fall cycle of Walk Around Philadelphia!
Twelve days of walks and then some:
In addition to the twelve longer walks that circumnavigate the entire city, we’ve also got:
- Shorter preview hikes as part of Cherry Street Pier’s Labor Day programming
- Festive happy hour events at Cherry Street Pier & the new Borski Park
- Special map-making events at Studio 34 in West Philly and at CSP
- A virtual event from the comfort of your own home
- Finish Line festivities to celebrate it all with us!
Other recent highlights:
The summer’s flown by without too many updates to this site, but here are a few quick highlights since the last blog post:
Spring celebration & concert
It was still a bit chilly for the Walk’s Spring Celebration & Concert at Cherry Street Pier, but we warmed it up with great tropical sounds from O–Steel, the Oberlin College Steel Pan Ensemble! It was also an opportunity to premiere our cool new patches…
Conservation Day @ Fox Chase Farm + 451 Rhawn gallery visit
One of our first “Edge Events” of the spring/summer season was a walk to Fox Chase Farm for their Conservation Day event.
This trip allowed us to walk the brand new segment of the Fox Chase – Lorimer Trail that takes us straight to the perimeter itself and into the beautiful Lorimer Park.
(Often perimeter-walkers doing a longer segment toward Somerton might miss this trail in favor of following Pine Road, which is less pedestrian-friendly but follows further along the city’s edge)
In addition to getting to see both a mix of farm animals and special exotic animals, we had a special perfectly timed intercept:
Circumnavigator Josh G, who completed the entire perimeter walk last September (and came back as a Trail Angel this past winter) came out to join us…
Instead of meeting us at the Fox Chase regional rail station, Josh had started several hours earlier and gotten off several stops earlier in order to do a longer walk there.
Turns out he’s decided to walk the entire SEPTA regional rail network!
He attributed this directly to his participation in Walk Around Philadelphia, and I love hearing about this kind of ripple effect where our lil walk adventure leads to all sorts of other ones.
Spring Picnic & walk in Heinz Wildlife Refuge
Another spring highlight was a perimeter picnic in the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge:
In our “off-seasons” in-between the larger walk cycles, we’ve been trying to do more events like this where someone can come for just the picnic at an interesting location on the city’s edge without having to walk, or join for a shorter more accessible walk, or both!
This would have already been a gorgeous walk had we stayed to the usual paths… we had some special encounters with nature…
(fish spawning! giant snapping turtle! etc etc…)
… but also some of these really special unusual connections that Walk Around Philadelphia facilitates such as:
… an international traveler from Turkmenistan (and one from Jordan) having their first experience in Philly be an adventure hike into some wild and remote parts of town alongside longtime residents…
… or two of our walkers from the complete opposite sides of the city (Eastwick in the SW corner & Huntingdon Valley just across the furthest NE border) connect around their similar work.
That would have been enough to make it magical….
… but then we ventured off the main paths…
(… as edge-explorers are wont to do…)
… and found our way into the magical lands underneath I-95, where a potential connector trail to provide a southern exit from the Refuge connecting to the East Coast Greenway is envisioned but not yet built.
These landscapes are spectacular, and reminiscent of the concrete columns of Graffiti Pier, and it’s wild that I’ve been coming through the refuge for years without ever catching a glimpse of this corner of this part of it.
Ice cream walk in Cobbs Creek w/ WeWalkPHL
Another spring highlight was our ice cream walk w/ pals from WeWalkPHL – truly a sweet time!
It turns out that there are several great ice cream spots near the city’s edge , so keep an eye out for future ice cream walks in spring & summer to come – or do your own anytime:
- Chubby Fantastic Flavors in Cobbs Creek
- Irv’s Ice Cream on Penn’s Landing
- Franklin Fountain in Old City
- The Ice Cream Post in Bridesburg
- Pop Pop’s Ice Cream Shop in Somerton
- Chloe’s Corner & Tubby Robot in Manayunk
Sound Bath at RAIR + Pennypack Picnic & walk
Our next “Edge Event” was really 3 or 4 events in one:
We started off with a walk to RAIR, the artist residency program embedded in a waste processing plant…
… where we rolled out our mats and sprawled on the floor for a sound bath ceremony facilitated by artist Guadalupe Maravilla…
… and then we made our way past the prisons to Pennypack on the Delaware for another picnic & walk on the just-opened Baxter Trail!
The snake was a definite highlight here.
(I made my usual joke about how the Walk Around Philadelphia snake-trainers and stage-managers had been preparing for this moment for months.)
Outreach events
Meanwhile, the spring / summer also included a pile of community outreach events, where our walkers set out to various points ’round the city’s edge to invite our neighbors to join the walk.
If you’d like to help with outreach for the walk, or explore other volunteer options, let us know via this form:
Caminatas en Español
Another important outreach & accessibility next step this year was offering our first Walk Around Philadelphia experiences facilitated in Spanish!
Our friends at Puentes de Salud sent along a few of their ‘promotoras’ (community health workers), a few of whom didn’t speak much English. It was great to be able to offer programing in their native language!
(Our first experiences in French are planned for this fall!)
If you speak a language other than English and would like to be involved with Walk Around Philadelphia programing in that language, we also have a form for that now too!
Meanwhile…
In parallel with my work on the walk, I’ve been continuing my work as a Licensed Massage Therapist, and my role as Block Captain in West Philly.
We’ve had some fantastic block parties, continuing to provide opportunities for neighborly connection…
… and the folks who run the Indego bike share program brought me in to facilitate a self-massage workshop for their staff – both the office staff & the mechanics benefited from this and I was delighted by some of the sweet feedback that I got from them:
JJ came to my workplace and facilitated an amazing experience for us all. He showed us all techniques that we are now using as part of daily routines for our bodies. I see people carrying around lacrosse balls all across the company! Thank you!
– Drew
…. but now…
It’s time to walk!
The fall cycle of walks is here, and registration is already filling up. This realtime availability dashboard will show you spots available for the upcoming walks:
We may add a few extra groups along the way, and don’t forget that there’s a pile of other bonus events in addition to the walks themselves:
Help make it happen:
You can become a backer via this site to support my work in general, or make a donation via Fractured Atlas to support Walk Around Philadelphia & help us continue to develop this unique experience of the city & make it more accessible to all.
