Is hiking art?

Or, How To Walk Around Philadelphia

Hiking, in the traditional sense, is pretty straightforward. You show up at a trailhead, you follow a visible path through otherwise snarled and forlorn-looking territory, and when you hit a junction, you consult a map or guidebook on which way to go. This is how most of us, myself included, have been conditioned to think about hiking. And then I went to Philadelphia, and everything changed.

Philly has a long and proud history of provoking artistic awakenings in visitors and residents alike. David Lynch moved here in 1965 and spent half a decade living in a post-industrial section of Center City. Then he directed Eraserhead, which features a mutant baby and a woman who emerges from a radiator. But you can find Philly art beyond the galleries and cinemas. Streets, alleyways, and select metro stations are aglow with paintings. Across the city, you can find Short Story Dispenser machines—you press a button and the machine cranks out a written short story for you on a long roll of paper that brings to mind a CVS receipt. And in the woods, wetlands, riverways, and industrial ruins that surround the city, a unique act of collective curation has taken root and flourished. Each winter and fall, people get together and complete a giant Walk Around Philadelphia. Over the course of 4-5 weekends, they navigate the entire perimeter of the city by foot. Sometimes that means strolling along dreamy waterside paths and other times it might mean bushwhacking around rusting barrier fences.

This adventurous civic tradition is the brainchild of JJ Tiziou, an artist, massage therapist and community organizer who came up with the idea for Walk Around Philadelphia during an artist residency in which he was paired with a writer and given free reign to come up with a joint project. They ended up walking around the city. While JJ often serves as the “tour guide” of each walk segment, ensuring that the group is following the rough perimeter of Philly, the wayfinding is democratic and inclusive. When the group has to make a decision about how to navigate a piece of challenging territory, the pros and cons of each option are weighed. (ex: “Should we walk along this busy road or try to dodge these pricker bushes?”) And if a particular route option makes any person uncomfortable, the safer route is chosen by default.

This means that no Walk Around Philadelphia is ever the same. On each section hike, several new ways of walking are chosen by the walk participants. And this past weekend, I got to take part in re-crafting this urban adventure. I linked up with my friend and fellow Walking City Trail builder, Jules Murdza, who recently relocated to Philly, and we planned to meet up with JJ and the crew on the northwest edge of the city, in the vast woods along the Schuylkill River, for a chilly Sunday saunter.

When our train rolled into Miquon Station around 10:30am, several more walkers were waiting for us on the platform, with grins and coffee in gloved hands. We stood in a semicircle and watched as JJ unfurled a gigantic colored map to show us where we would be walking. Our journey would take us along the forested banks of the river toward the core of the city, and eventually, we would have to choose how to cross the Schuylkill, in order to begin ambling along the city’s westernmost edge. But along the way, there would be other navigational decisions to be made collectively. Running us through the safety procedure for crossing busy roads together, JJ handed out neon-green high visibility belts for us to put on, as well as handheld white flags bearing the Walk Around Philadelphia logo. We also helped ourselves to large circular stickers with the logo, to slap on metal poles and other built objects, as a means of marking the walk that we were creating. With that, we entered a long, sunlit corridor of arbors.

We hadn’t even walked for an hour when the first surprise unveiled itself—a riverside tree sanctuary with enormous handmade wind chimes affixed to the branches with ropes and pulleys. Tom Landsmann, the creator and caretaker of this oasis, was emerging from the sanctuary with a chainsaw after doing some maintenance and he kindly shared the history of the space with us. From here, the riverside path became rootier and rockier, and when we arrived at a section that had been fenced off for repairs, it was time to reach a consensus. We could make our way around the fence and hope that we wouldn’t run into an impassable barrier further along the closed-off trail segment. Or we could take the lead of a posted sign that suggested a detour along Umbria Road. But the road detour might have been designed for cyclists; not for walkers. After weighing the perks and the risks, we decided to follow the road. 

The first portion of Umbria Road had moderate traffic and no sidewalk; just a wide shoulder. Having anticipated the scenario, JJ organized us into a single file column and passed out bright orange scarves to the lead and rear walkers, to wave at cars for enhanced visibility as we traversed the road. After 10 minutes of less chatty, highly alert road walking, we eventually reached a sidewalk that offered partial views of the Schuylkill below us and a chance to breathe easy. We had just passed our first test of working together to negotiate tricky territory, and looking out for one another. And in the process, we had chipped away at a more amorphous barrier than the Philadelphia perimeter; the barrier of beginning our walk as total strangers. Once we bounded back down to the riverside path via stairs behind a condo complex, we were compatriots of the Philly perimeter. And at the bottom of these stairs, we took a good 20 minutes to sit in the sun and share the trail snacks that we had brought along for the adventure.

The walk eventually took us out of the woods onto boardwalk paths along the water through the energetic neighborhood of Manayunk. Here we contemplated crossing the Schuylkill on a former railroad bridge that’s eventually going to be converted into a pedestrian walkway. But in order to ensure collective comfort, we opted for a more fortified crossing on the iron-bound Pencoyd Bridge. From there, we ascended into the knolls of Laurel Hill Cemetery just in time to catch the last flares of daylight. And as a pale pink dusk started to take hold, we emerged from the sanctuary and arrived at the corner of Bala Avenue and Route 1: the terminus of our walk. Those who felt like it could amble over to the nearby Landmark Americana grill for celebratory beers, as I did, and those who were ready to get horizontal could hop onto a bus, train, or an Uber. But the Walk Around Philadelphia would resume at this same spot the next day.

Sadly I had to catch the train back to Boston the next morning. In fact, I wrote most of this newsletter while waiting for that train to show up. And for the entire ride home, I was haunted—in a good way—by a single question. Can hiking be art?

The more I think about this, the more I feel like the answer is a resounding YES.

Whether you’re creating a walking experience or a more specified walking route with maps or signs, the through line here is curation. Even the most celebrated, century-old backcountry trails began with someone surveying the landscape, envisioning where a trail could go, and then asking themselves, “Why?” In the most literal sense, art can transform the way we engage with places. It can offer aesthetic immersion. And it can make a cogent statement about the world we live in. Today, with so much of our lives delineated by class, race, and social isolation, the act of orchestrating a community walk that breaks down perimeters and borders strikes me as an essential form of art.

It also reminds me of the motivation I felt when launching Boston’s Walking City Trail in 2022. The idea was to illustrate how many places that we think of as disparate are actually more connected than we may realize—by creating a hiking route that allowed you to visit all of those places on one long walk. San Francisco’s Crosstown Trail had the same effect, to the point where the New York Times even wondered whether this connective, cross-neighborhood trail could “unite” such a horrifically unequal city. No trail or artwork can achieve that. But sometimes it can get us moving in that direction.

As of this week, the winter edition of Walk Around Philadelphia has concluded. But the fall walk awaits, and when those hike dates are announced, you can register for any of those section walks at the Walk Around Philadelphia website. Spots on each Philly section walk are limited, so I also recommend signing up for the mailing list!

And here's the audio version of this week's newsletter.

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I had actually been marinating this idea about hiking and trails as art before my visit to Philly. One of my goals this year is finding fiscal support for the Walking City Trail project in Boston, so that I can spend more of my time building alliances with local organizations and businesses, creating more trail resources (and more trails), and staging events that prioritize equity of access; so that more people can experience the wonders and possibilities of local green spaces, and their potential for bringing us together. And what I’m learning is that the institutions we intuitively turn to for creating walking/hiking projects—parks and rec offices, conservation nonprofits, etc.—are not yet set up to support trail projects that begin at a creative grassroots level. Without 501c3 status or affiliation, both of which can pose significant administrative strain for small grassroots groups or creators, it’s very difficult to qualify for grants that might support projects like Walk Around Philadelphia. Or the Walking City Trail.

So what I’m doing right now is diversifying my research and thinking beyond the obvious institutions that support wayfinding projects. Rather than looking solely at outdoor recreation offices and nonprofits, I’m looking at organizations and initiatives that foster community art projects in green spaces and on streets. And if you happen to know of anything or anyone that I might consider looking up, I would be extremely grateful for those suggestions! The more we can find and spotlight viable pathways to fiscal support for urban wayfinding projects, the more likely we are to witness an explosion of walks and trails around U.S. cities. The creativity and the desire are there. Both are bubbling to the surface. And what we need now is a blueprint for sustaining these creative projects and encouraging new ones: a blueprint that includes more than volunteer labor. Because, to quote Jimmy McMillan, who founded New York’s The Rent Is Too Damn High political party back in 2005, the rent is still too damn high.