Emma Schoenberg and I leading the Next Steps walk into Montpelier on April 9th. photo credit: Zac Rudge/350VT

It’s a badly-kept secret that I love taking long walks. That started for me in 2005 when I hiked the Appalachian Trail and got mixed with climate activism starting with the Energy Exodus walk in 2013, and with two Quaker-led climate pilgrimages along pipeline routes and between coal plants in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. So it’s no wonder that when my friend Maeve McBride asked about doing a climate walk led by 350 Vermont, I got excited and jumped in.

It might not be exactly obvious why pitching in on a five-day 65 mile walk through Vermont called Next Steps is the work of the Climate Disobedience Center. Aside from taking the streets through Middlebury and Montpelier without a permit, we followed the traffic laws and weren’t overtly disruptive on our journey. We gathered 300 people in the state house at the conclusion of the walk and sang the place down at the invitation of our elected representative allies, and the doors were open for us and we left on our own accord.

But on another level this is precisely the work of the CDC - building the bonds of trust and love that make possible a vibrant movement of risk taking and disobedience. And was for me an experiment in building what we call “the field”.