And I Walk - Kae Brophey

Kae recently retired after a four-decade career in the nonprofit sector, where she led youth programs and championed braille literacy. Based in downtown Toronto, she lives with her partner and their two cats, embracing a new chapter shaped by curiosity, connection, and community.

Any other RATS or BATS here? If you know, you know. But in case you don’t, those are the unofficial titles earned by people who walk or run across Tennessee—virtually, of course.

With an online community centred around walking, you just never know who might be out there.

Walking has always been my pace of choice. Short distances. A means to an end. Slap on the headphones and step out into the world.

Saturday, March 7, 2020: an in-person event for hundreds of community members in midtown Toronto. My event. I returned to the office on Monday, still coasting on the dopamine high, planning to deal with a mountain of leftover program materials. But like pretty much everyone who showed up to work in person that week, I was told to leave that task unfinished, take my laptop, and start working from home.

I was already familiar with a hybrid schedule. I could do this…right?

LOCKDOWN.

Sure, I was a walker. I walked to places and from places. But suddenly there was nowhere to go. No walking to the office, no hanging out in coffee shops, no occasional movie date. Destinations had quietly disappeared.

I quickly realized I needed to make walking the experience itself—for my physical, emotional, and mental health.

I remember making a conscious decision: no headphones or soundtracks on my walks for the next little while. The thought of anything distancing me from the world around me felt unsettling.

So I settled into daily short walks. Walking as a way to encounter random people and feel connected within my community.

In mid-April, my sister approached me with a proposal for my upcoming birthday.

Lazarus Lake, the brains behind the infamous Barkley Marathons, wouldn’t be hosting his annual torturous in-person trail running event in Tennessee’s Frozen Head State Park in 2020. Instead, he was launching a virtual “race” that people could join.

The goal of GVRAT (Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee) that first summer of COVID: run, walk, or crawl the equivalent width of Tennessee to earn the status of RAT.

My sister’s question: Did I want in?

Apparently, I did.

I crunched the numbers. I’d have to log about 8 km per day to cross the state. Possible? Perhaps. Likely? Hmm.

On April 30, I tentatively introduced myself to the other 5,000 racers in the Facebook group, asking if there would be a breakdown of racers by Canadian provinces as well as U.S. states. I got a reply that the requested breakdown was in the works.

The reply came from Lazarus Lake himself.

I was hooked.

I recorded 12 km the first day, walking in red glitter Converse because the running shoes I’d ordered hadn’t arrived yet. I checked the math again. At that pace, I could even take a day off now and then to recover.

Spoiler: I took no days off.

Within just ten days, the first ultrarunner had already skedaddled across Tennessee. Organizers added an option to earn a 1,000-mile pin en route to completing a second lap for even more swag (BAT = Back Across Tennessee). Before long, registrations had spiked to more than 19,000 walkers and runners around the globe.

Over the next few months, walking became a strange combination of discipline and arithmetic.

By late June, I had increased my mileage to four hours of walking, starting before sunrise. During my workday, I’d take breaks to log my hours and obsessively check the race map to see where the heck I had (virtually) landed in Tennessee. Then I’d check in with the Facebook group—my people—to commiserate with the injured, cheer on finishers, and offer and receive encouragement.

By August, I added a 5 km evening walk.

More numbers. More steps.

My days revolved around walking: preparing to walk, walking, recovering from walking, and thinking and talking about walking.

Five hours of walking a day. No headphones. No music. Mostly solo.

And one step at a time, as the days passed, it happened.

Seventy days to the first crossing (RAT – 1,021.68 km). Then another forty-two days to get back across to where the madness started, just outside Memphis.

It was achievable only because my body cooperated and carried me through 46 consecutive days of walking the equivalent of half-marathons.

On April 30, the thought of me walking 22 km in a single day would have been laughable.
On May 1, 2020, I woke up and started walking with real intention.

As long as my body allows, I’ll be unstoppable.

Right now, I’m tackling the World’s Longest Walk—from the tip of South Africa to Magadan, Russia (23,000 km)—with a small group of friends I can’t walk with in person. Virtually, of course, on the World Walking app. We’ve been at it since 2023, and as of writing, we’re 83% done.

Walking is my choice of pace. My pace of joy.

Walking is how I connect, but also how I escape. I walk alone. I walk with people. I walk in silence or in conversation. It’s how I process what’s happening in the world and how I choose to live in it.

2020 was the beginning.

For someone who studied philosophy at university, I somehow missed taking a course on the Stoics, who believed our brains function better when our bodies are in motion. The rhythm of our feet unlocks the rhythm of our thoughts.

It turns out they may have been onto something.

When my feet move, my mind settles.

And so I walk.
Therefore, I am.

READ MORE > Her Story, Rambler Cafe Blog