Another Walk in Philadelphia
And the joys of H Mart
Take a walk!
Generally regarded as an expletive, this phrase should be reassessed as a suggestion that one embrace physical and mental self-care. There’s nothing better for humans than a walk, or a stroll, a ride, a glide, or a roll. Get outside. Touch grass, as the kids say. Ambulate in whatever fashion suits you best, and absorb the ultraviolet rays of our Sun, either directly, through clouds, or glimmering through the partial cover of a shade tree. Meet some people, or squirrels. Listen to the birds insult one another. Experience your surroundings. Our worlds have shrunk. We now explore them by car, or vicariously through electronic devices.
This weekend, I explored a corner of Philadelphia that I’d never visited before. We met at seven in the morning. This meant that Sarah stayed home, because she won’t lrave the house that early unless it’s on fire. (And I don’t blame her.) It was much too early, and I left barely after sunrise. I met my fellow walking weirdos in Fox Chase, at a train station, to begin one segment of a twice-yearly walk around the perimeter of Philadelphia that JJ Tiziou has been doing for 11 years.
If you walk every segment, it’s over one hundred miles. In February, I walked the segment that starts from Cherry Street Pier, with my friend
. You can read about it below:
Most of the walkers are Philly natives, and they enjoyed hearing the story about how hhis Jersey Boy discovered their event by way of a writer from Montana. In February, we walked mostly sidewalks and piers, including the famous Graffiti Pier, some of which has recently fallen into the Delaware River. We got to explore shipping docks managed by the Port Authority, and met fishermen and other curious folks.
This time around, we started on sidewalks and quickly disappeared into a wooded area along the train tracks, following deer trails and bushwhacking our way to keep to the border as close as possible. This led us to a neighborhood that abuts the borough of Rockledge, and then down to the natural border of Tacony Creek, which the train line also follows.
It was a beautiful Saturday morning, but we met very few people out walking. In the ‘80s, Missing Persons sang “nobody walks in L.A.,” and most cities have followed suit as they designed their infrastructure for cars. We followed some of the perimeter on the railroad right of way, and popped out into an industrial lot. One of the workers, named Auggie, let us exit via their street entrance before hopping into his Dodge Challenger. We were a bunch of weird-looking white people, so he assumed we were harmless. One of the few people we stopped to talk to was a retired union member, a Black man, who told us to “be safe,” before looking away, and saying, “you’ll be safe.” Not everyone gets to walk freely without being accused of suspicious activity.
From his neighborhood, we followed an alley that had several resident’s gardens, then crossed the rail tracks into Tookany Creek Park (some name it Tacony, others Tookany.) This was a nice shady walk where we watched a turtle navigate the creek as we followed the well-trod trails, and met some “trail angels” who waited for us with homemade granola and hibiscus tea for a short break. They were all veterans of previous walks, and it was nice to rest and talk with them.
From there, we hiked up a steep trail to Cheltenham Avenue, the border with Elkins Park. It was a long uphill walk to the end of the segment, with several smoke shops on one side where the county taxes were lower for cigarettes, and nicely gardened snug homes on the other. Our journey ended at the titular H Mart from Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, a powerful book about identity, grief, and understanding one’s parents. The food court is where her tears come, because so many memories are tied to food.
I’ll think of this walk whenever I eat omurice, which is what’s on my plate there next to a refreshing cup of Earl Grey milk tea with boba. If you haven’t visited an H Mart, the fresh seafood and produce sections are stunning, and the snack aisles are full of wonders. Find one with a food court and fill your belly before shopping, or you’ll be lugging home a carload of delights.
I don’t walk much in my neighborhood; most mornings, I drive to a park and walk two miles, or hit a mountain bike trail. It’s good exercise, but I don’t get to explore where I live, or meet people. But the times that I walk to the grocery store, or to the park that has a walking track, we’re all in our own little worlds, often wearing headphones to signal that we want solitude. On these twice-yearly walks in Philly, I feel more community than I do in my own neighborhood. Some of the people I walked with have done all the segments, over a period of months or years. I think next year, I’ll try to do as many as I can.
Tom, I can’t tell you what reading this means to me. That you’re continuing these walks and making these connections — it’s representative of exactly what I hoped for when writing A Walking Life. I wanted people to be inspired to walk, or to advocate for walkability, or to find ways to face grief and loss, or to start engaging with their local communities … or all of the above! To find what walking brings to each of us as unique individuals, and what it can do for our neighborhoods and world. Of course, I’d love people to buy and read the book but I always said that if someone got a few pages in and then put it aside because they felt an urge to go for a walk, that was a success for me.
I was on a group video call with some new-to-me people yesterday and one woman had only just moved into a house in the Pine Barrens and I said, “Oh, I have a friend who writes about the Pine Barrens almost every week!” I sent her your newsletter and she’s thrilled to have found your writing about the place.
Sounds fabulous!
During the most dismal, isolated days of Covid lockdown (which began soon after that Poguetry show where I met you and Sarah) I toyed with the idea of making the 6 mile walk from my apartment to Coney Island.
🧞♀️🎠🎡🎢🧜🏼♀️
Reading this, you've inspired me to toy with the idea again. Maybe next weekend? 🤔