I completed my first long distance walk in 2002. Like a growing number of Americans, it wasn’t in the USA, but rather on Spain’s Camino de Santiago. That marked a turning point in my life; I’ve continued to walk on pilgrimage, alone and with students, almost every year since then. I just returned from my most recent foray on the Caminos del Norte and Primitivo.
Walking in Europe has been a profound experience. As a history teacher, it felt like an immersive, deep dive into the past. As someone who never saw himself as particularly athletic or strong, it has been transformative to become an unusually capable long-distance trekker. As a classic PNWer, right down to my deeply engrained secularism, it has been deeply influential to face religion on its own terms, in one of its most positive and enriching contexts.
Walking in Europe has also been a glorious exercise in escapism, all the more so over the last few years.
Academically and intellectually, I’ve never had much time for the US. My interests have always pulled my attention abroad. There have been two moments in my life, though, that have shaken that orientation. The first, of course, was September 11, which occurred on my first extended trip abroad. While my friend Jon and I remained in Europe for quite a bit longer, we ultimately cut our trip short and cancelled the last leg of our flight home, disembarking in Pittsburgh and renting a car to drive across the US. It was hard to shake an overwhelming need to connect with America, to see it and feel it, after it had been altered so indelibly while we were away.
The second came in the wake of the last presidential election. The polarization gripping this country doesn’t need to be rehashed here, and I’m not especially interested in unpacking macro trends. What struck me on a personal level, though, was my own personal disconnect with rural America. As a person and as an educator, I needed to do the work. So, over the last couple of years, I’ve tried to create opportunities for student exchanges, for immersive experiences, for dialogue across my state of Oregon, which is a pretty good microcosm of the country as a whole.
While all of that has been enriching, I want something deeper, something all-encompassing. And that desire led me to the American Discovery Trail, the first non-motorized coast-to-coast walk across the USA. I’ve never had much interest in wilderness treks like the Pacific Crest Trail or the Appalachian Trail. I like passing through towns and cities, as much as I value beautiful natural scenery. And my hopes for this walk are to engage in dialogue with people across every state along the way, getting away from the simplistic narratives churning through the media in order to forge more personal connections.
We’re heading into an election year, one that feels historically high-stakes. The rhetoric and divisiveness promise to be incendiary. As I write this, we’re coming off a weekend with two more mass shootings and it’s easy to face both the events and reactions with equal measures of outrage and despair.
I would like to believe that we are not as intractably divided as it feels, that there is a foundational decency shared by the overwhelming majority of people across this country, that we have the capacity to chart a course forward that will serve the good of the people instead of the interests of the powerful.
That is what I hope to discover on this walk.
2 thoughts on “Walking The American Discovery Trail”
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I hope the trip will lead to great conversations and connections and maybe help us all build some optimism for the trajectory of our country. I am excited to follow your progress, Dave! Forza! G
I recently traveled to the remote part of Eastern Montana, where my son is helping to dig up dinosaur bones near the Fort Peck Reservoir. The 1,000 mile journey east from Seattle crossed many political fault lines. Coeur d’Alene was certainly more “red” than Seattle. Great Falls was more “red” than Spokane. But once we hit the prairie and there was just a ribbon of two lane blacktop crossing endless empty country, I was struck by the hostility expressed by locals towards the federal government and “west coast liberals.” There were separatist signs on barns calling for local control and state’s rights. Certain motels and restaurants didn’t welcome “outsiders.” People there didn’t seem to know that net federal tax dollars from urban centers flow to their state and their community. They were angry, and impoverished, and their little town was dying, and they thought they were supporting the liberals in the cities, when in fact their entire state is subsidized by “blue” tax dollars. I had some nice one-on-one conversations with people there, but it was hard to shake the notion that there are many countries within all that is “America.”