Aviva Gerwein, left, and Jacob Lehmann Duke, walked all of Berkeley’s paths in one day in 2013.
In August 2013, Jacob Lehmann Duke, age 11, and his friend Aviva Gerwein, age 12, set out to walk every path in Berkeley in one day. “We walked between all the paths and never got on a bus, in a car, or on BART,” Jacob triumphantly told Berkeleyside. Their adventure covered 36 miles and nearly 150 paths in 13 hours.
The following year, BPWA invited Jacob and Aviva to lead a series of 6 popular walks that covered all the paths (but not all on the same day!). Over the years, they have led many more successful walks for BPWA. Jacob also joined the board in 2016, the youngest board member ever at age 14, and he has served as our walks coordinator since. BPWA is extremely grateful to Jacob and Aviva for their years of commitment to our organization and the larger Berkeley community.
For the past 4 years, the two friends have been working on a book of their favorite Berkeley walks, which they had hoped to publish. Later this year they will both be in college, Aviva as a sophomore at NYU and Jacob as a freshman at Williams College.
“Now that that Aviva and I will both be in college and out of the Bay Area, I would like the book in its online form to be a gift to the path wandering community as a resource for self-guided walks,” Jacob said.
BPWA will publish the book in installments of 5 walks each on our website over the next year, and we will announce each series in our newsletter. We have published the introduction to the book and the first 5 walks here.
Each series is a good mix of difficulty and locations; although most walks are in Berkeley, they range from El Cerrito to Oakland. We hope our readers will look forward to each month’s adventures. We are thrilled to put forth these great self-guided itineraries while group walks are suspended.
“Once again, Jacob and Aviva have come through for the Berkeley walking community,” BPWA president Alina Constantinescu said. “We are humbled by their generosity and very excited for this unexpected gift that facilitates new wanderings and discoveries on the paths and nearby trails.”
Jacob and Aviva led a series of walks that covered all the paths in Berkeley, with the final one on June 1, 2014; they are now donating a book of 40 walks to the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association.