Planes, trains, and automobiles?
Hardly. Some travelers use their feet to go the extra mile
(or 14,000).
Carlin "Buckwheat" Donahue could have done without the heat and
humidity that still owned
Miami in early October. When you're a
resident of Skagway,
Alaska, it's not like you live for hot
weather. But his route was set, and if he was going to make it back
to Alaska by
Labor Day 2006, he'd just have to deal with it. When
you're about to walk 5,500 miles and paddle another 2,400 by canoe
and sea kayak, a bit of discomfort is to be expected. So October 1
and the Miami heat it was.
Donahue is a die-hard member of one of
America's quietest
subcultures: long-haul adventurers. They aren't extreme racers
pushing for fasterfasterfaster. They're hikers, bikers, kayakers,
and, in at least one case, a stilt walker, who just aren't
satisfied with a week or two on the road. "It's the greatest life
there is," says Ed Talone, who took up trekking in 1983 with a
five-and-a-half-month hike of the
Appalachian Trail. "You're seeing
everything, and you meet so many people."
Before he hatched his own plan for a long, long walk, Donahue
thought such adventures were "a shining example of people who had
way too much time on their hands." But between September 20 and
October 1, 2003, three episodes of heart failure and one heart
attack nearly flattened him - permanently. "I really did feel like
I was on the edge of the cliff and I couldn't look up. Everything
was down. I thought I was going to die," he says.
Luckily, Donahue was out of town when his heart problems hit. The
Skagway Dahl Memorial Clinic just isn't set up to handle heart
attacks, and he probably wouldn't have survived. Upon his return
from hospital stays in Juneau and
Seattle, several friends gave him
a treadmill. "I started walking a couple miles a day. It's just a
real simple thing," says the 54-year-old director of the Skagway
Convention and Visitors Bureau. Soon, the walks started to stretch
in distance.
By April 2004, Donahue decided to walk to the town of Whitehorse -
120 miles away. (Initially, his doctor met the idea with silence -
and then she sent him on his way.) Word of Donahue's trek spread,
"cool things" started to happen, and the idea for the Heartbeat
Trail took hold. "People started driving out to honk their horns
and wave, or offer an apple, tea, or encouragement. People were
just really nice," says Donahue, who is well known in Skagway for
punctuating sentences with a howl. When he finally got to
Whitehorse, a woman at the local diner told Donahue that he'd
inspired her husband to get his post-congestive heart failure self
off the couch and start walking, too.
Then Donahue got really ambitious: He started planning a yearlong
journey from Miami to Alaska. If all goes as planned, by September
2006 he'll have walked through at least 16 states and five Canadian
provinces and territories. He's gunning to raise about $250,000
through donations and fund-raisers along the way to give the
Skagway medical clinic a boost - especially in equipment and EMT
training for
heart attacks. He'll also stop into schools and
hospitals to perform a show about life in the far north, a show
he's honed through performances for cruise-line passengers who
visit Skagway. Of course, spreading the word about
heart disease is
also on Donahue's agenda.
Though he will walk straight through the winter, he's not too
worried about dealing with frigid temps. In December 2004, he
hoofed it from Whitehorse to Dawson City,
Yukon,
Canada, in
temperatures that tumbled to 40 below zero. "There were times when
I had to turn around and walk backward because the wind was too
brutal," he says. Along the way he plans to listen to his fill of
satellite radio, do a lot of thinking, and keep his eyes open for
beauty. "Everywhere you go, there's beauty," he says. "Even when
I'm in places that aren't supposed to be pretty, I find beauty. I'm
looking forward to having those kinds of experiences."
In eastern Kentucky, there are 2,000 fourth and fifth
graders watching Joe Bowen's every move. Now 62, Bowen is retracing
a 14,000-mile bike ride he took when he got out of the
Air Force in
1967. "I read [John Steinbeck's] Travels with Charley and was like,
'Man, I've got to do that,' but I couldn't afford a camper," says
Bowen. Instead, he left Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc,
California, by bicycle and, 16 months later, showed up back home in
Kentucky. "I've always known I had to do it again." Not that Bowen
was idle in the meantime - he's the stilt walker. In 1980, he
walked 3,008 miles on stilts to raise money for muscular dystrophy.
"I'm a little bit of a ham," he admits.
Bowen started on April 8, 2005 - 38 years to the day after he began
his original trek. Along with retracing his
cycling route, the
retired construction manager is also rekindling some of the
friendships he first made back in 1967. He says these remeetings
offer confirmation that a "faded memory" is really true: "You would
not believe the reunions." Take, for instance, what happened in
Sheridan,
Wyoming. "Thirty-eight years ago, I rode into the little
town and I only had a few dollars. I stopped by at a little
restaurant and told the owner that I was looking for work. He said,
'I'll help you,' and found me a job working two weeks stacking hay
on a farm." He also let Bowen sleep in the restaurant - as long as
he cleared out by the time the breakfast customers arrived. "I
thanked him, left, and had never written to him." But a local gave
Bowen the man's number when he got to town on his return trip. "I
called him and said, 'Do you remember a young man in 1967?' and he
said, 'Joe, is that you? I'm coming to get you, and you've got to
stay a couple days.' He's just an incredible old man. I guess I was
good medicine for him."
As for those kids back in
Kentucky, Bowen is their on-the-road
guide to America. During his ride he meets with them through
teleconferences and online to fill them in on his adventures and
teach them about culture, history, science, and much more. He also
hopes to teach them to be proud of their Kentucky heritage: "They
know I'm a mountain man; they know I'm one of them." Bowen
interrupted his road trip after reaching
Atlanta around
Thanksgiving so he could go home to Bowen, Kentucky. He'll use the
break to visit local classrooms involved with this project, then
put on his biking helmet and resume his trip for the final 3,000
miles in the spring.
Duct tape, Neosporin, and ibuprofen. That's Dan Rogers's
version of a first-aid kit. "If I can't fix it with that, then I'm
in trouble," he says. Rogers, 42, might want to consider buying his
Neosporin in bulk. He's just one-eighth of the way through a
planned 24,000-mile walk around America that he'll complete in
segments over the next decade.
Like many devoted trekkers, Rogers's passion for wearing out shoes
started with the Appalachian Trail. In 1999 he took a six-month
sabbatical from his corporate job to hike the trail and, not long
after he got back, his father died. Rogers realized "you only get
so much time," quit the job, and, in August 2001, set out on the
first section of his walk. So far, he's walked 3,400 miles. The
next stretch will kick off in April 2006 when he'll go 3,100 miles,
mostly along the Pacific Crest Trail and the Pacific Northwest
Trail.
Now a district executive for the Boy Scouts of America, Rogers says
he originally "just went to meet the country. I found when I
traveled that we all make a difference - like it or not." While
people are initially unsure of Rogers ("I have hair to my shoulders
and a big beard"), they usually grow curious once they realize that
he got to town via his own two feet, not by hitchhiking.
While out on trails, Rogers, who wrote about his trek in America
One Step at a Time, settles into a world of "no noise but the sound
of wind and the occasional bird." The solitude, he admits, can be
tough. "I'm a very social creature, so it makes it more difficult
to go four or five days without social interaction. It's physically
the hardest thing I've ever done, and mentally even tougher."
Like so many others, it started with the Appalachian Trail.
Or, actually, with a 1970s National Geographic article about the
trail. After reading it, Doug Mathews decided on three goals: to
walk the trail, to bike across America, and to paddle down the
Mississippi River. The former information-technology specialist
wanted to see several "cross sections of America," each from a
different perspective. He completed the 2,168-mile Appalachian
Trail over 169 days in 2002, did the 2,600-mile bike ride over 39
days in 2003, and then, a short time later, hopped in a canoe and
made his first attempt at the
Mississippi. He gave up two weeks
into the trip. "I hadn't been back from the bike ride for long, and
I missed being home," says Mathews, 61. But after meeting
Californians Bud Prunty and John Depue in 2003, the three went on a
bike trip in 2004 from
Sacramento,
California, to
Colorado Springs,
Colorado, and Mathews decided to give the Mississippi another try -
with his two new traveling companions along for the adventure.
The trio put their kayaks into the 2,300-mile-long Mississippi in
July 2005 and finished in August. Of all his adventures, Mathews
says, "the
kayaking trip was the hardest. It's more desolate. You
really are not seeing as many people on the river as you are hiking
or biking." Thousands of people attempt to hike the Appalachian
Trail each year (about 500 complete it); just five or so set out to
paddle the Mississippi.
Now that he's finished his trio of goals, Mathews has turned his
eye to trips that he and his wife can do together. Any day now, he
might start trying to sell her on visiting the Mount Washington,
New Hampshire, weather station in the dead of winter. "Being a
Southern boy," he says, it might be interesting to spend some time
in the place where the highest wind speed was ever recorded.
No matter the reasons these intrepid trekkers took their
first long-distance steps (or first turn around the United States
on a bike), the people they meet along the way and the chance to
live by their own rules are what draw them back to the road or
trail time and again. Says Mathews: "It's really the freedom to do
what you want to do."
Walk On >
As the Trails Information Specialist for the American Hiking
Society, Ed Talone finds that his mind is out hoofing it even when
he's firmly planted behind his desk. Though his road stories
tempted us to chuck it all and head out on the road permanently, we
asked him to recommend some time-limited hikes to get us going.
Here's what he had to say.
Have just a week? Try the 205-mile Superior Hiking Trail
above
Lake Superior in northeast
Minnesota. For more information,
visit the Superior Hiking Trail Association at
www.shta.org.
Going for a month? Consider a Long Trail trek in Vermont.
With 270 miles of footpaths and 175 miles of side trails along the
Green Mountains, there's plenty to explore. For more information,
check in with the Green Mountain Club at
www.greenmountainclub.org.
Making a summer of it? It’s off to the North Country National Scenic Trail for a 4,500-mile trek from
New York to
North Dakota. For more information, hop on the North Country Trail Association site at
www.northcountrytrail.org. If you’re more of a
West Coast type, the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail awaits. The route stretches from
Mexico to Canada and passes through six eco-zones along the way. Find out more from the Pacific Crest Trail Association at
www.pcta.org.
Have a year to spare? Talone suggests you map out a route that joins roads to trails and walk across the entire United States: “There isn’t a better experience,” he says.
Don’t have time for a long haul? Try tackling the aforementioned routes one section at a time, or visit
www.americantrails.org to find a trail near you.
Read On >
You can read journals new and old online from our adventurers:
Track Carlin “Buckwheat” Donahue’s progress at www.buckwheat.info or www.heartbeattrail.com.
Get all the details of Ed Talone’s trek across the United States at www.americanhiking.org/news/ journal/hj3_5.html. Find out where Joe Bowen is today at www
.appalachianheritagealliance.org/ rediscover_america.htm.
Learn about Dan Rogers’s ongoing journey at www.sheltoweehikes.com. Read Doug “Mainframe” Mathews’s online trip journals at home.att.net/~canbike/journeys.htm.
Jenna Schnuer