Taking a Walk for Refugees
Posted on June 17, 2019 Posted by John Scalzi 13 Comments
I woke up this morning and checked Twitter and discovered that Neil Gaiman had told me to take a hike — or more accurately, he had tagged me as someone he challenged to walk 2,000 steps by Refugee Day (which is June 20th) as part of #StepWithRefugees, to raise awareness of the roughly one billion miles refugees, in aggregate, walk each year to try to find safety. 2,000 steps is roughly a mile, so the idea is something akin to walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.
So I got out of bed and took that walk, and of course, because such a public challenge by Neil requires documentation, made a video of my morning perambulation. In the video you will see cats, cranes, frogs, headstones and Amish, and, of course, me. Yes, the video is in portrait mode. Sorry. It was early.
As part of the challenge I was meant to nominate three other people to do this walking thing, so I nominated Chuck Wendig, Joe Hill and Yanni Kuznia. But there’s no reason you can’t do it as well. Go take a hike (or walk, or run, or swim, it all counts). As you’re doing it, think of the people who walk not because they want to, but because they have to. And think about the people who, at the end of their daily walk, don’t get to come back to a home that is safe and sound.
I’ve done a little over 1000 so far. I should end up with 5000 by the end of the day.
Recumbent Amish is my John Scalzi tribute band name.
Nice. Slightly different from the walk here in Brooklyn, as I don’t remember seeing any cranes, or frogs, or Amish bikers. But that’s cool too.
That was fun! And meaningful. But fun!
Signed up using my Fitbit, so now I don’t even have to math at the end of my walk.
I noticed some flooded fields on your walk; hope the are farmers are not losing growing time due to too much rain. Ditto on the ‘Amish guy on a recumbent is cool’. I had never thought of that before (or seen an Amish person on a bike before either), but it fits in with the whole lifestyle.
Great video, really inspired me to go on a walk today.
I love the way you feature your property on your blog. It’s interesting to see how other people live in different areas. Plus, I’m an HGTV addict. I love houses and lawns and neighborhoods and that kind of stuff.
But curiously, do you ever worry about internet crazies? I mean, you being a public figure and also being so open about where you live and your personal life. It would scare me to no end. I’m legitimately curious how much, if at all, you factor safety concerns into your decisions regarding sharing personal life information.
Thank you for doing this.
You’ve had cats for years, did you really expect telling Sugar she had to stay behind to work? :D
You should ask your HOA to put in a sidewalk.
I’m kidding. I can gather that there is no HOA where you live.
Therefore: you should *form* an HOA and then petition them to make a sidewalk. Haha :)
For a few years, we had a heron who would visit Spring rain filled low areas near my house in the early evening. We dubbed him 5:00 Charlie as we would often see him flying in or leaving around that time.
Not walking today. Walked yesterday, over 11K steps for the day. Should reach 2K on any given non-walk day. Though day before yesterday wasn’t even 1K. Perhaps I spent too much time reading and doing Legos.
Also, if I can remember, I’ll think about walking refugees on my next walk, but since I usually pass the time imagining walking with The Doctor, I’ll probably wind up thinking about refugees having their civilisation rescued by peripatetic Time Traveler.
As a german refugee helper I love this idea.
There are a lot of stories untold. :(