A walk across America

Published 4:37 pm Monday, November 24, 2008

By Ruth Longoria

About 100 walkers took to the streets and trails of the Island Sunday morning as part of the statewide health initiative: Walk Across Washington. The event — and activities taking place all week in 92 cities across the state — is sponsored by the Association of Washington Cities.

“We do events like this to try and get people out walking so they are more healthy,” said Erin Swanson, 28, of Olympia, an association member who helped with the event. “I walk everyday. You can walk anywhere. This is an activity that you don’t need a lot of time or money — all you need is a good pair of walking shoes.”

Mercer Island’s portion of the event involved a three-mile walk from City Hall to the Lid Park and began with a short exercise routine led by Parks and Recreation Department Jazzercise instructor Lori Hollow.

“Get your back heel down — now stretch your calves,” Hollow shouted out to the crowd of old and young as they moved to the music and limbered up their legs for the impending hike. The sea of sweats and rain gear bopped up and down as Hollow led them through football poses and high knee lift marches. After a short session, the crowd moved as one out of the parking lot and down the street toward Luther Burbank Park.

“Hurry up, they’re getting ahead of us,” 13-year-old Islander Middle School student Nicole Na yelled back to her mom, Limei Fan, who together with Nicole’s sister, Michelle, 9 made up the back of the group.

“This is wonderful fun, we should have more things like this,” Fan, an administrator for the infectious disease unit of the Fred Hutchison Research Center, said of the walking event. “We try to do family things like this, but we’re always so busy,” she added.

Islander Middle School student Kenny Nelson, 13, didn’t walk much during the event, but he did spend the morning volunteering to cross folks across intersections, his bright orange vest giving drivers a heads-up on the stream of walkers filing up and down the streets along Interstate 90.

“I like doing stuff like this, it’s fun to volunteer,” Kenny said as he directed 52-year Island resident Virginia Beattie toward the rest of the group, which was fading away in the distance. But Beattie wasn’t the last in the group, which included about two-dozen serious walking members of the Solemates senior fitness group, as well as young people, such as Caroline Kangas, 15 and Cindy Liu, 14, sophomores at Mercer Island High School. “This shouldn’t be hard to do. We’re not running or anything,” said Liu, who wore her flip-flops for the walk because, she said, she didn’t have tennis shoes to wear.

Though the walk wasn’t an extremely strenuous event, after walking up the hill at the Lid Park, Ruby Rivchun, 10, was a bit out of breath. “Walking backwards up the hill worked, otherwise I’d never have made it,” Ruby told her dad’s friend, Victoria Mason, 47, who accompanied her on the walk.

The walk was especially useful for Lakeridge Elementary School student Sarah Kahan, 10, who spent the morning walking and collecting leaves for a school project. “We’re studying cycles at school — the process where leaves start out green and turn yellow, orange red and brown — and so I’m going to take a few of each color of leaves to class,” Sarah said.

“You could use another red one,” Sarah’s mom, Heather, said as Sarah ran to find another brightly-colored Maple tree leaf to add to the dozen-or-more leaves her mother held for her.

“This has been a wonderful experience,” Heather Kahan said. “We just moved to the Island (from Sammamish) about a month ago, so we’re really enjoying the parks and trails. And we couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful day.”