Page 158 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

The following year, she circled another of the

Great Lakes, gathering attention and new

participants along the way. These walks continue

every year. Websites have sprung up, such as

www.waterwalkersunited.com,

www.idlenomore.ca, and www.nibiwalk.org.

There’s even a Facebook group, Water Walkers United. Their journeys are both spiritual and

physical. They walk to call attention to the sacredness of water, to honor and heal it, and to

raise awareness of the need to take care of the water. Their 2015 Walk took place during July

and August, trekking 846 miles westward from Ontario through Michigan to Wisconsin.

Many of Grandmother Josephine’s sisters have been inspired to organize Water Walks along

ailing waterways in their own home places, including the St. Louis and Ohio Rivers. The 2014

Ohio River Walk spanned 906 miles from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Illinois. They walked for thirty-

three days, averaging twenty-seven miles per day.

Closer to home, in May of 2015, walkers in Virginia trekked the three hundred and forty-mile

length of one of the Chesapeake Bay’s tributaries. When the English came, they named this

river the James, but it was also known as the Powhatan, after the great chief of that land. They

walked to bless and pray for healing of the waters after a CSX train derailment in April 2014.

The one hundred and five-car train, en route to Yorktown, Virginia from North Dakota’s Bakken

shale region, spilled crude oil directly into the river, which then exploded into a fireball.

The Unity Walk began near the river’s source in the Blue Ridge Mountains at Iron Gate, Virginia.

They averaged twenty-eight miles per day on the twelve-day journey, which took them past

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