I just happened to be driving back from the Oregon Coast on Highway 6, out of Tillamook, and saw Matt Green on the side of the road pushing a cart. I had no idea it was Matt Green at the time. I admit we shared a quick chuckle in the car because it appeared to be someone who had quite possibly chosen the worst possible place to vend something in recorded history (on the accelerating side of a hair pin turn, with a sign too small to read at our velocity). (update: Apparently the sign says ‘we may never meet again’)
I wish I’d known – he’s had an impressive adventure.
Check out imjustwalkin.com to read about his 152 day walk across N. America. From New York to Rockaway Beach, Oregon.
I especially enjoyed his ‘long version’ of why he’s doing it, which quotes from Steinbeck’s Cannery Row:
Once when Doc was at the University of Chicago he had love trouble and he had worked too hard. He thought it would be nice to take a very long walk. He put on a little knapsack and he walked through Indiana and Kentucky and North Carolina and Georgia clear to Florida. He walked among farmers and mountain people, among the swamp people and fishermen. And everywhere people asked him why he was walking through the country.
And then he goes on to say some lovely things, such as:
But perhaps the thing I find most important about walking is how connected it makes me feel to the space Im passing through. I think its because walking is the way we experience our homes. We walk to the fridge, we walk to bed, we walk around the yard. We walk to the copy machine, we walk to the coffee machine, we walk around the grocery store. So this is that same familiar stride, that most basic form of locomotion we know so well, but through vast, immense, unknown places. Its a way to live a continuous line across the country as if it were my home.