13 Moon Walk 4 Peace Walkers travel through Yuma

Ten people left Atlanta on 10/10/10, walking for peace. They plan to return to Atlanta on 11/11/11, after walking 10,000 miles to cities and American Indian reservations during the span of 13 moons.

Comprised of people ages 4 to 82 from various ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds, the 13 Moon Walk 4 Peace walkers spent several days this past week in the Yuma area, where they participated in various community activities to promote peace and healing.

“We're very happy to be in Yuma,” said Audri Scott Williams, who serves as “vision keeper“ for the walkers. “We've had wonderful experiences since we've been here. The communities that we have met have been so embracing, and we just consider ourselves very fortunate to be here.”

On one recent evening four of the walkers gave a presentation at the Yuma Center for Spiritual Living.

On the next night the group joined in a special ceremony honoring the late Lewis “Mucaw” Jefferson, a young Quechan man who crossed the nation in 2008 while on a historic walk calling for the protection of tribes' sacred sites. Jefferson died later that year.

A special peace pole, hand carved by the 13 Moon walkers, was planted in his honor.

Each community the peace walkers pass through is encouraged to establish a peace zone, such as a garden space or park, according to the group's website. And each community is asked to create a peace pole that may be designated as part of the National 13 Moon Peace Trail, which the group wants to have federally recognized as a “national peace trail.”

Williams has been walking for peace since 2000. She participated in one walk in honor of her ancestors from the Trail of Tears, one for her ancestors involved with the Underground Railroad, and one for world peace. She has walked all over Europe and Africa and has crossed six continents so far.

The current walk is her fourth.

“I'm the vision keeper for the walks that have happened,” she said. “What that basically means is I receive the vision to do it and then hold the space so it can happen and then walk it, wait for the right people to come together, and we certainly have seen that happen. We've got 10 dynamic people in this walk.”

The walkers travel in two RVs, which they use as a home base. “So we'll park that a few days out, sometimes a few miles out, and then we walk to it and sort of slingshot ahead,” Williams explained.

The group walks in a relay-type format and tends to cover 35 to 40 miles per day when they're walking. “And then when we come into a community, we do various activities in the community, from speaking, planning peace walks and what we call Walk a Mile for Peace, where we get the community to walk with us,” she said.

Funding is provided by the walkers themselves as well as people in various communities who make financial contributions to the walk.

Prior to peace walking, Williams worked as the dean of continuing education in community services at Charles County Community College in Maryland. “I guess you could say I've always tried to reconcile the part of myself that was the academic and the part of myself that felt a very strong spiritual call.”

Others who join in the walks seem to be answering a call as well, she said. “When I share the story of the walk, it seems to go out and it touches those people who are meant to be a part of it.”

The current walkers are from Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama and Michigan. Williams explained that traveling with people who start out as strangers creates internal peace and healing, which in turn creates peace and healing for the larger community.

“You can't have one without the other … It is a personal, internal journey for each person on the team, then it's a communal journey for the team itself, and then that all gets reflected back in the large community.

“And then it becomes a healing for the larger community as well because we're all in alignment,” Williams said, “and we're all reflecting that peace to one another, for one another.”

www.13Moonwalk4peace.com.