After a lifetime of living in San Diego, when Sara Anfuso moved to the Seattle area, she was ready to explore her new surroundings. The best way to do that, she decided, was on her own two feet.

Anfuso first fell in love with long-distance walking—which she defines as 10 miles or more—shortly before she started college. Her high school was taking a trip to the Camino de Santiago, a famous collection of pilgrim routes in Europe. To train for the 120 miles she’d be spending on the trail, she started taking regular walks with her dad. “I absolutely love spending the entire day just walking and seeing where the day takes you,” she says.

Anfuso likes to treat her long-distance walks like journeys, romanticizing the expedition aspect by taking care to pack the right snacks and prepare for the conditions. It’s an energy most people around here reserve for the mountains, but Anfuso feels urban landscapes hold just as much charm. “People will write off cities as being dirty or overpopulated or congested, but you really start appreciating them once you see them on foot,” she says.

After arriving in the Pacific Northwest in April 2023, she set out on some epic walks, like from Redmond to Pike Place Market. A video she posted on Instagram about what she was packing to go on a 14-mile walk to get boba went viral, and suddenly she had the attention of a whole bunch of people who thought walking was cool.

As she posted about her walks on her account @servedbysara, people started commenting that they would love to join sometime. That led her to the idea of community walks, which she began organizing earlier this year.

The first few walks were trial and error, as Anfuso had never planned a large-scale event like this before. After doing the 6.5-mile loop around Lake Union, she realized the distance was a bit too far for a large group. A walk from Volunteer Park to the Washington Park Arboretum taught her to watch for hills and too many crosswalks. She’s dialed in the perfect length for a group of 100-plus people at somewhere around three to four miles, and tries to organize at least two walks a month.

Although she’s an introvert at heart and being “on” in front of big groups of people takes a lot of energy, Anfuso loves this niche she’s created around walking. “It’s just been a joy meeting people from so many walks of life—pun intended,” she says. It’s also allowed her to become a full-time content creator and prioritize her own health, one of the reasons she leaned into walking in the first place.

I joined a recent walk in Golden Gardens on a sunny Saturday morning with about 150 others. The crowd was a mix of repeat attendees and newbies, with everyone seemingly on their fifth walk or their first. Many people had just moved to Seattle and were excited to explore more. Everyone I talked to had been fed the idea by the all-knowing Instagram algorithm.

One man told me he sets a goal to make one new friend on each walk. He touted the benefits of just showing up when all the logistics have already been taken care of. “The decisions are made for you beforehand,” he said. “It forces you to see parts of the city you wouldn’t have otherwise and explore places you normally wouldn’t go.”

I agreed. I needed the motivation of a scheduled event, as I had to wake up far earlier than I typically would and Ballard can be a pain to get to, but I was happy once I arrived. As I walked to the meet-up spot, another attendee struck up a conversation, and we chatted amiably about public transportation as we carefully worked our way down the steep leaf-covered stairs to the beach.

One woman had even flown all the way from San Francisco for the walk. She plans to do the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago next year—a trip Anfuso recently returned from—and she lamented that there was nothing like this back home. So she hopped on a plane to be part of it all. (I was so grateful Seattle decided to show its crisp, clear, sunny side that day as a reward for her efforts.)

As the group made its way along the shoreline, the several shades of blue where the sea and the sky met the mountains reminded me why I live here.

By the end of the day, I’d racked up nearly 19,000 steps and a sense of accomplishment. (I also had two blisters, which Anfuso says she never gets—I wish my toes were that cooperative!)

Walking has long been dismissed as a lesser form of exercise, but the pandemic helped bring it back into vogue as a gentle form of movement that can improve both physical and mental health. “It’s just a slower pace,” Anfuso says. “With either biking or running, you’re going too fast to see everything going on around you. With walking, you can dive into a pretty flower, a piece of sea glass, or a jellyfish in the water. It’s kind of a mindfulness practice in its own way.”

Before her Instagram posts took off, she says she was “always known as the weird friend” who went on long walks. Now Anfuso has carved her own path, bringing well-being benefits to both herself and the community, one step (and post) at a time.