Three years ago, Natalia Riabkina watched as Russian soldiers marched through the streets of Zaporizhzhia, her hometown in eastern Ukraine. She recalls fleeing the city with her family, feeling frightened as they negotiated checkpoint after checkpoint while moving through Russian-occupied territory.
Today, Riabkina lives in Kyiv. She graduated from college last spring and is now applying for graduate programs in Canada, with a focus on either art management or Slavic studies. She recently began taking walks as part of her daily routine. It helps her process her trauma, she says.
"My family has lost so much," she said. "Our city is occupied. We don't have access to our home. My parents think it's lost forever. We need to start over. Walking helps me think through what I've experienced."
Riabkina learned to appreciate the soothing effects of a long walk this past July when she was part of a group of nine young women from across Ukraine who participated in a "peace walk" through Northern Ireland. The four-day walk was the inaugural iteration of a program established by two Yale World Fellows, Federica Du Pasquier and Leon McCarron, that aims to bring people together through the simple but transformative power of walking and talking through natural landscapes.
