A memoir of one young man’s coming of age on a journey across America--told through the stories of the people of all ages, races, and inclinations he meets along the way. Life is fast, and I’ve found it’s easy to confuse the miraculous for the mundane, so I’m slowing down, way down, in order to give my full presence to the extraordinary that infuses each moment and resides in every one of us. At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen." He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn’t know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt. But he also encountered incredible kindness from strangers. Thousands shared their stories with him, sometimes confiding their prejudices, too. Often he didn’t know how to respond. How to find unity in diversity? How to stay connected, even as fear works to tear us apart? He listened for answers to these questions, and to the existential questions every human must face, and began to find that the answer might be in listening itself. Ultimately, it’s the stories of others living all along the roads of America that carry this journey and sing out in a hopeful, heartfelt book about how a life is made, and how our nation defines itself on the most human level.

"For several decades following the end of the Civil War, the most popular sport in the United States was walking. Professional pedestrians often covered 500 miles or more for up to six grueling days and nights in pursuit of large money prizes in competitions held in big-city arenas. Walking was also a favorite amateur sport; newspapers often noted a "pedestrian mania" or "walking fever" that only began to give way in the mid-1880s to fast-rising crazes for baseball, bicycling, and roller-skating. As competitive walking faded, however, another kind of walking that had also begun in the late 1860s came to full flower. Between 1890 and 1930, hundreds of men, women, even children and entire families were on the nation's roads and railroad tracks trekking between widely separated points-frequently New York and San Francisco-and sometimes moving in unusual ways, such as on roller-skates or by walking barefooted, backwards, on stilts, or while rolling a hoop. To finance their attention-seeking journeys, many sold souvenir postcards. Although they claimed various reasons for making these treks, for most the treks clearly were a means of personal expression. The public usually found these performers entertaining, but public officials and newspaper editors often denounced them as nuisances or frauds. Tapping vintage postcards and old newspaper articles, this is the first book to bring back to view this once-familiar feature of American life. Following a prologue providing background and context, five chapters address different aspects of this trekking phenomenon. In 106 illustrations and seventy-six vignettes-some poignant, many amusing, all engaging-the book provides a fair representation of the many trekkers who moved across the country during those years. An epilogue offers some final musings about those trekking performers and their place in the annals of American popular culture"--

After serving in the US Army, Jake suddenly finds himself homeless, so he begins walking to different towns in search of work. Although he is unable to find any lasting employment, he soon realizes that walking and sleeping under the stars seems to be helping with his PTSD. During one of the nights while camping in the forest, Jake decides to walk across America just to see what it could do for him. Alone and unsupported, Jake spends the next three years traveling on foot from Tennessee to Delaware, to California, to Florida, to Alaska, back to Florida, and back to California again. This is a true story that details all of his experiences.

"There's a cancer, and it's killing our democracy. A poor man has to sell his soul to get elected. I cry for this country." On February 29, 2000, ninety-year-old Doris “Granny D” Haddock completed her 3,200-mile, fourteen-month walk from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. She walked through 105-degree deserts and blinding blizzards, despite arthritis and emphysema. Along her way, her remarkable speeches — rich with wisdom, love, and political insight — transformed individuals and communities and jump-started a full-blown movement. She became a national heroine. On her journey, Haddock kept a diary — tracking the progress of her walk and recalling events in her life and the insights that have given her. Granny D celebrates an exuberant life of love, activism, and adventure — from writing one-woman feminist plays in the 1930s to stopping nuclear testing near an Eskimo fishing village in 1960 to Haddock’s current crusade. Threaded throughout is the spirit of her beloved hometown of Dublin/Peterborough, New Hampshire — Thornton Wilder’s inspirations for Grovers Croner in Out Town — a quintessentially American center of New England pluck, Yankee ingenuity and can-do attitude. Told in Doris Haddock’s distinct and unforgettable voice, Granny D will move, amuse, and inspire readers of all ages with its clarion message that one person can indeed make a difference.

How to Walk Across America is the survival guide for the crazy, courageous few who want (or need) to chuck it all and walk from ocean to ocean. No nonsense. No marketing. Just lessons from the road, from people who have actually walked across America. This is the ultimate primer on mega-long distance hiking, practical advice to keep feet from failing, sanity from disintegrating, and bank accounts from disappearing, no matter how long the hike. Attorney, adventurer, and author Tyler Coulson walked across America in 2011 with his dog, Mabel. Contributor Nate Damm did it in 2011, and contributors John and Kait Seyal did it in 2012, with three therapy dogs. Coulson shares lessons that you can only learn on the road, from common sense to highway secrets. He writes with candor and humor, stripping away all the marketing and glamour of high-tech, high-dollar hiking. What's left is the ultimate first-level guide to the practice of chucking it all and walking out. It pulls no punches: it will scare you, inspire you, and leave you laughing. Tyler Coulson is also the author of BY MEN OR BY THE EARTH.

With breathtaking descriptions and humorous anecdotes from his 2,176-mile journey along the Appalachian Trail, Paul Stutzman reveals how immersing himself in nature and befriending fellow hikers helped him recover from a devastating loss.

As seen on The Fine Living Channel's, Radical Sabbaticle TV program. The delightfully refreshing true story of one mans walk across America. The book tells of his adventures along the way, as well as reviews some of the historical sights he passes.

In 1896, a Norwegian immigrant and mother of eight children named Helga Estby was behind on taxes and the mortgage when she learned that a mysterious sponsor would pay $10,000 to a woman who walked across America. Hoping to win the wager and save her family’s farm, Helga and her teenaged daughter Clara, armed with little more than a compass, red-pepper spray, a revolver, and Clara’s curling iron, set out on foot from Eastern Washington. Their route would pass through 14 states, but they were not allowed to carry more than five dollars each. As they visited Indian reservations, Western boomtowns, remote ranches and local civic leaders, they confronted snowstorms, hunger, thieves and mountain lions with equal aplomb. Their treacherous and inspirational journey to New York challenged contemporary notions of femininity and captured the public imagination. But their trip had such devastating consequences that the Estby women's achievement was blanketed in silence until, nearly a century later, Linda Lawrence Hunt encountered their extraordinary story.

For fans of Cheryl Strayed, the gripping story of a biologist's human-powered journey from the Pacific Northwest to the Arctic to rediscover her love of birds, nature, and adventure. During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to feel stifled in the isolated, sterile environment of the lab. Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific research she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again, to be guided by the sounds of birds and to follow the trails of animals. In March of 2012, she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic, traveling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft, and canoe. Together, they survived harrowing dangers while also experiencing incredible moments of joy and grace -- migrating birds silhouetted against the moon, the steamy breath of caribou, and the bond that comes from sharing such experiences. A unique blend of science, adventure, and personal narrative, The Sun is a Compass explores the bounds of the physical body and the tenuousness of life in the company of the creatures who make their homes in the wildest places left in North America. Inspiring and beautifully written, this love letter to nature is a lyrical testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Winner of the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Competition: Adventure Travel