The power of a walk outside: Color Us Connected

This column appears every other week in Foster’s Daily Democrat and the Tuskegee News. This week, Guy Trammell, an African American man from Tuskegee, Ala., and Amy Miller, a white woman from South Berwick, Maine, write about walks they have taken, or not.

By Guy Trammell Jr.

Fall is my favorite season. The foliage changes colors, cooler temperatures set in and annoying gnats, flies and mosquitoes become scarce. It’s a great time for an enjoyable walk outdoors.

One of the perks of living in Macon County, Alabama, is being close to the Tuskegee National Forest. Established on November 27, 1959, in the county’s northeastern section, it’s one of Alabama’s four national forests. At 11,000 acres, this is the smallest of six national forests in the United States that are located completely within a single county.

The forest features the Bartram Trail, which covers the area that Philadelphia naturalist and artist William Bartram recorded during his 1775 to 1776 travels. His illustrated journal pictures Mvskoke Nation villages along with fauna and flora of the Southeastern U.S. The eight and a half mile trek is an incredible adventure featuring deep woods, open grassy wildlife feeding areas, and sandy stream banks that include the Mvskoke Nation’s sacred Uphapee Creek.

Another walk I have enjoyed since childhood is down Tuskegee University’s Campus Avenue. This is where Booker T. Washington hosted President William McKinley and President Teddy Roosevelt with parades on their visits to Tuskegee Institute. I remember watching and marching in our all African-American parades down the avenue as a child. It was a dirt road at the time, but it was full of action, music and excitement.

Walking from the west, Campus Avenue leads from Dr. George W. Carver’s Agriculture Experiment Station, where chickens and turkeys were raised under pecan trees, to Milbanks Hall, where Carver conducted research in all sciences.

Next, passing the Extension Building where Thomas Monroe Campbell, the first U.S. extension agent coordinated programs across several states, you see Chappie James’ jet and arena celebrating the first 4-star African American military general. The walk continues past the chapel, Carver Museum, the majestic Tompkins cafeteria, and Carnegie Hall, where Carver taught the connections between the Bible and science and performed piano concerts.

The walk ends passing Booker T. Washington’s Administration Building; Rockefeller Hall, where Carver lived on the top floor; and Thrasher Hall, which housed the school of education. The last building is the Foundry, recently known as the Band Cottage. The oldest campus building, it is the location where Lewis Adams, the school founder, taught the tinsmith trade.

The shaded path of Campus Avenue was designed by Carver and David A. Williston, Tuskegee’s director of buildings and grounds and the first African American landscape architect.

A fun walk fulfills two parts of the long, productive life trilogy: keep moving and reduce stress. The third part is good nutrition. Here’s wishing you good health!!

By Amy Miller

When Guy and I agreed to write about “fun” walks, that sounded good. I am suffocating beneath world news reports and I have many fun walks in my satchel. But just as I sit down to describe a few of these all-weather escapades, I find myself buried in images of the Darien Gap.

My daughter happens to be at the launch pad for a stretch of southern Panama that migrants traverse hoping to reach the United States. She is headed for the San Blas Islands, but during a layover in the seaside Colombian town of Necocli, she sees rows of tents that shelter these families as they wait for passage over the Gulf of Uraba.

She also sees that the hopeful travelers - mostly Haitians and Venezuelans - are clean and nicely dressed, as if for a family vacation. Today, in Colombia, they look like you or I might on a trip. By the time they cross the swampy jungle of the Darien Gap, considered one of the most dangerous migrant crossings in the world, they will look very different, more like our idea of refugees, an idea that sometimes makes it easier to “other” them. Each week, thousands begin this journey. Each year, thousands die along this route from disease, snakes or starvation, if not to gangs of criminals operating in a place where law cannot be enforced.

I cannot imagine what kind of life leads a parent to take on this walk, a walk that leaves fun in another universe. And once across the Darien Gap they will face at least another 4,000 miles and numerous border crossings to reach the edge of the US border. So remote is the area that when I look up the distance my maps app, it tells me it can’t find a way there.

So how do I go from these thoughts to writing about my fun walks. It is often in my walks with friends and family, or alone, that I find my way. Walking along a road through a snowstorm for onion rings; through a torrential downpour along the coast of Maine; around town with a friend who is troubled; over the hill behind my house with neighbors and their dogs when it is I who istroubled; or alone up Mount Chocorua. On these walks I find camaraderie, friendship, wisdom and the comfort of nature.

More than once on these walks, I or my walking partner has noted, “what’s said in the woods, stays in the woods.” More than once, a circle around town has turned into two circles around town as we solve each others’ or the world’s problems. More than once I have returned from a walk with new energy for whatever the world throws at me. And never do I imagine the world throwing me anywhere near the Darien Gap.

Guy and Amy can be reached at Colorusconnected@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: The power of a walk outside: Color Us Connected