Walking to Connect, Discover, and Feel Better

Through a month of celebrations and trainings, AARP RI is championing walking for transportation, good health, and community connections.

By Lisa Watts

Eric Brenner and Gail Melson had a simple enough idea. Early in the second year of the COVID pandemic the 60-something married couple proposed to their suburban Washington, DC, county parks department that they would lead walks for folks aged “55 and better.”

Twenty-five people showed up in snow showers on April Fool’s Day in 2021 for the first walk. Four years later the Montgomery Explorers has a mailing list of 800. Roughly 40 to 50 older adults gather each Monday morning to discover trails and parks around the county on four-mile walks.

Brenner, a retired state of Maryland administrator, planned the first routes and led the walkers. Melson would lag in back as the “sweep,” observing flora and fauna while ensuring that no one gets left behind. Today a team of 12 volunteers share these logistical duties. They have watched strangers form carpools and friendships. The walkers often report how much better they feel since they started walking and how much they like discovering new places to walk.

Photo courtesy of Montgomery County Explorer’s Club

Walking has the power to improve lives and build connections in just these ways, as Catherine Taylor, state director of AARP Rhode Island, knows. Taylor’s organization has made walking and walkability its focus in 2025. With a slate of “Walktober” events in October 2025, AARP RI will celebrate “the importance of walking as transportation, as a healthy habit, and as a way to connect with your community,” she says. The events, all free and open to the public, kick off on Wednesday, October 8, with a one-mile “connection” walk in downtown Providence. The walk will be followed by a reading at the Providence Public Library featuring Jonathon Stalls. In his book Walk: Slow Down, Wake Up, and Connect at 1-3 Miles per Hour, Stalls reflects on his 242-day walk across the U.S. in 2010 and how he has spent the last 15 years as a walking activist. Stalls created Walk2Connect to train organizations to focus on connection-based walking events, pedestrian dignity, and accessibility. The nonprofit America Walks adopted Walk2Connect in 2023 to continue the program’s momentum.

On Thursday morning, October 9, volunteers trained by America Walks program will lead a walk audit in Providence, noting “any shortcomings in getting from point A to point B” such as broken sidewalks or electric poles blocking the path, Taylor explains. Continuing walk audits also aim to raise awareness about the importance of well-designed and maintained sidewalks, curb ramps and curb extensions, as well as green space, shade and places to rest.

On Thursday afternoon Garrett Brumfield, a disability rights advocate who calls himself a “sit-down comedian,” will lead an event at Roger Williams Park focusing on “rollability” for wheelchair users. The events will conclude that evening with a celebration on the Providence River Michael S. Van Leesten Memorial Bridge.

Taylor first heard Stalls speak in 2024 when AARP RI began working on walk audits. “Jonathon is so inspiring about the humanity of walking,” she says, “about what happens when you feel your body moving slowly through any environment, how you connect with other people and what it does for your mood and your heart rate.”

To encourage safe, accessible walking for all, AARP RI is “involving city councilors and mayors and state officials, decisionmakers and policymakers,” she says. AARP RI is collecting information on upcoming walk audits and group walks being organized by other organizations and sharing those dates and registration links at www.aarp.org/RIWalktober.

“We want to empower people in neighborhoods to observe their surroundings very closely and know how to connect their observations to the levers of power, so they feel some agency,” Taylor says. She was amazed by how many people volunteered for walk audit training in 2024. “It’s exciting how much enthusiasm this is generating. We also want to inspire regular walking activities, and maybe more groups will spring up as a result.”

Jennene Blakely, program access manager for Montgomery County Parks in Maryland, can attest to the popularity of walking groups, especially for older adults. The Explorers club walkers feel physically safe in the group, she says, and they don’t have to worry about getting lost. They don’t need special skills or technical gear. It’s been an “amazing” way to help the county’s fast-growing population of older adults discover new places just beyond their neighborhoods, she says, and to connect with each other.

“Walking,” says group leader Brenner, “is an activity that most people can do and enjoy.”

Walking to Connect, Discover, and Feel Better

Walking to Connect, Discover, and Feel Better

Through a month of celebrations and trainings, AARP RI is championing walking for transportation, good health, and community connections.

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