February 13, 2005 A Writer Treks Across America, Again By MICHELLE YORK
ALFRED, N.Y. - Peter Jenkins trudged down a snow-covered country road recently, unconcerned with the frigid cold and wind from the worst storm of the season.
A group of college students, their heads down except to look out for snowplows, followed quite literally in his footsteps.
One of the few cars on the road slowed. The driver lowered a frosted window to ask if the group needed help. "No thanks," Christopher Gordon, 20, one of the students, shouted gleefully. "We're out for a walk - a walk across America."
With a confused and irritated look, the driver sped away. No matter. Mr. Jenkins, 53, often got a similar reaction 32 years ago when he began his first epic journey across the country.
He started that trip as a disenchanted young man, so upset by the Vietnam War, Watergate and the troubled state of race relations that he was ready to abandon America. An older friend urged him to give the country a closer look.
So he began walking in October 1973, starting in Alfred, which is 300 miles northwest of Manhattan, in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, accompanied by his dog, an Alaskan malamute named Cooper.
He finished his journey more than five years later, in January 1979 in Florence, Ore., a much-changed man and something of a nationally recognized adventurer.
As he walked, camped, and took odd jobs to earn money for the next leg, Mr. Jenkins lived briefly with some of the people he met and benefited from countless acts of generosity. They came from mountain men, hard-working hippies, wealthy ranchers and struggling families.
A photo editor and a writer for National Geographic magazine championed his journey after he and Cooper showed up at the magazine's offices while walking through Washington, D.C. They helped him chronicle his trip in two essays in National Geographic, the first published in April 1977, after Mr. Jenkins had been on the road for three and a half years. "It struck a huge chord, like Huckleberry Finn," said the writer, Harvey Alger, who is now retired.
Literary agents and book editors tracked down Mr. Jenkins as he continued traveling. Later, he wrote two best sellers. "A Walk Across America" told the first part of his journey from New York State to Louisiana and is still required reading in many schools. "The Walk West" chronicled the second half through the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest.
The anger and divisiveness in the country today reminds him of the Vietnam War era and is, he said, the sad inspiration for a second journey. "It's time to take another look and see how Americans have changed," he said.
On Jan. 22, he began at the same starting point he chose the first time, his alma mater, Alfred University.
He and eight students with whom he has talked for several months to broaden his understanding of today's youth walked eight miles to a place he described as a hippie hotel, Pollywogg Holler. (Teepees and lodges heated by wood stoves are among the amenities.)
They played cards and talked. The next day, he escorted them safely back to campus. (The students, despite the boast made to the driver on the snow-swept road, would not accompany him past this first leg.)
Two days later, Mr. Jenkins had to interrupt the trip briefly when a close friend died of a heart attack. Mr. Jenkins doubled back for the funeral - an experience that reminded him of his own mortality and the unpredictability of life.
As for the rest of the journey, who knows what may happen. Mr. Jenkins has no preset route and is not a man to get hung up on the details of traveling. He is open-minded about where he might go, how long he might stay and what he expects to find.
"I want to spend more time over here," he said, looking at a map of the United States and sweeping his hand over Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas and South Dakota.
He will also revisit the places that profoundly changed him three decades ago, including the former home of Homer Davenport, a self-described mountain man in Chatham Hill, Va., and a commune farm in Summertown, Tenn., where his dog Cooper died.
This time, he will not walk the whole way. While he might walk for as many as 1,000 miles in a journey he expects will last 18 months, he will sometimes drive and also wants to travel using the means popular in some of the places he plans to visit.
He might venture to Alaska and hop on a dog sled. He is open to riding a horse through the ranchlands in the West. He has a new motorcycle license, as does his son, Jedidiah G. Jenkins, 22, who will join him to explore parts unknown after he graduates from the University of Southern California later this year.
"I imagine we'll be connecting with people, staying up until 5 a.m. learning their deepest, darkest secrets," his son said.
Nearly everything about the elder Mr. Jenkins has changed since that first trip. Then, he was a college graduate who had chosen to major in art so he would not have to write many papers. Today, he is a successful writer.
Then, he was a loner, a vegetarian and a pacifist. Today, he is the head of a large family, the owner of a cattle farm and a supporter of President Bush and the war in Iraq. ...
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/nyregion/13jenkins.html>
Carl