Want to snap out of COVID fatigue? Take an “awe walk.”

How? It’s easy. There are a lot of “awes” in Detroit just waiting for you.

Skate the Rink at Campus Martius. Visitors can purchase tickets online or by phone during rink hours at (313) 963-9393. Tickets are limited and walk-up tickets are not available. You must wear masks or face coverings, as well as practice social distancing at all times.

The Hum & Glow of Winter in Beacon Park featuring artwork by Artwork by Michael Polakowski runs from January 18 at 6:00 a.m.- February 28 at 10:00 p.m. An illustrator and muralist, Polakowski’s work is inspired by Detroit’s architecture and the tradition of sign painting that has come to define the City’s landscape. The event is free.

If you hurry you can still catch the Winter Update in Beacon Park, which features photo-ready interactive lighting like a gingerbread house, candy arches, a giant hot chocolate, and other sweet-themed light-up delights, along with 125,000 twinkling LED lights. It’s open from 6 a.m. – 10 p.m., seven days a week, but it closes this Friday, January 15.

Interested in history? Do a scavenger hunt or take a self-guided tour from GPSmyCity featuring all the statues throughout the city. For example, the remains of Michigan’s first governor, Stevens T. Mason, lie beneath his statue in Capitol Park. There’s also a stature of Robert Burns, the famous Scottish poet. For more information on the whys and wheres of the statutes, click on  A look at history behind Detroit statues in Click on Detroit.

A stroll down the RiverWalk. Stop by the 31-acre William G. Milliken State Park and Harbor, the first urban state park in Michigan. Take in the 63-foot lighthouse, which is a scaled down replica of the recently renovated lighthouse at Tawas Point State Park, originally built in 1876.

There will be plenty of events coming up in 2021.

Southwest Detroit’s popular St. Patrick’s Day Parade will take place on March 14. Organizers encourage participants to take time to walk through some of the city’s most ecelctic neighborhoods and its business district.

One of the best awe walks you can take this fall is the annual DLECTRICITY, a light-based art and technology festival that has become a part of the city’s heralded annual event calendar since its debut in 2017.

This year’s event, produced by Midtown Detroit, Inc. (MDI) will take place on September 24 and 25 along the Woodward Corridor as well as DTE Beacon Park.

Awe walks are a terrific way to overcome COVID fatigue. They come highly recommended by Virginia Sturm, associate professor of in the departments of Neurology and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation Endowed Professor in the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences.

Shrum studied the impact of outward-facing activities like awe walks on mental health with fellow researchers at UC San Francisco Memory and Aging Center (MAC) and the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI).

The findings of the study were reported in Emotion.

Best of all, these walks give us hope that we will get back to normal.

  DTE Energy