Is it because we're getting closer and closer to D.C. - our final destination? Is it the increasing population density - so that now the small farming towns we pass through are less than an hour's drive from major cities like Chicago? Is it all these college campuses? We've passed through Western Illinois, Illinois State, Illinois Wesleyan - heading tomorrow on to the University of Illinois, then Purdue, Ball State.... I'm losing track. Is it the increasing racial, ethnic, po

Friends, I think that the proverbial house is on fire. My co-pilgrim for these last 109 days and counting - Bob Hall - does not . In other words, despite our shared and strenuous endeavor: Bob and I have some serious differences of opinion. I've said before that the "microcosm is the macrocosm." This little world of our camper van enacts the very same realities as the big old world of the United States of America. Faith in "We the People" begins with the "We" that we actually

In the title of every blog post I measure my distance from home. I’m now 2050 miles from home. I think about home everyday - about my family, about the black locust tree by my house, about the gorgeous Oregon summer that I largely missed. But these past couple of days, I've also just been thinking about what "home" is. For more than 2000 miles (!!) I've been walking through and around small, rural towns. Farm towns, ranch towns, manufacturing, logging and mining towns. I've s

3.4 miles per hour. That's pretty much my pace. Sometimes it dips down to 3.3 or 3.2 (there are snacks to be eaten, photos to take)... Sometimes it revs up to 3.5 (the temperature is perfect, the road itself is thrilling and lovely). But basically, this pilgrimage is incremental and steady. One footstep. One footstep. Yet all the same: there are days where everything accelerates . Days when so much happens, when there are so many experiences, so many encounters: it's like a w

Over the past decade or so, popular culture has embraced ideas like minimalism and life-hacking - people creating ' capsule wardrobes ' and chucking out items that fail to ' spark joy '.... We're all trying to slow down, to cut back, to find our focus in these overwhelming times. As my all-time favorite life-hacker - the immortal Ferris Bueller - puts it: " Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it . " Oh yeah! One common h

Friends, I am a melancholic. The other day in Des Moines , Bob and I were joking that I see the glass half-empty and he sees it...

Before this pilgrimage, pretty much all I knew about Iowa I learned from Meredith Willson and The Music Man . Of course - this is like...

I write this on October 7th - mindful of the war in Gaza, mindful of the possibilities of peace, mindful too of troops in cities most...

Iowa has greeted us with luscious rolling farmlands and terraced fields. And with wind. And with weather. But we'll get to that in a...

The average length of a human stride is 2.5 feet. With my trekking poles, when I'm walking big and strong, my strides may be as long as 3...

It's a zigzag path, this pilgrimage. You're going straight for mile after mile after mile. Highway 126 through the Douglas firs and over...

Back when this began, Liberty Walks made front page news here in Eugene, Oregon. Follow this link to read the article:...

What I know about Nebraska could maybe fill a thimble; walking through the land for 24 days gives me an intense, but spotty...

Good g rief. What a weird expression? What could it possibly mean for "grief" to be "good"? Stay with me on this one. Today is Rosh...

There are no accidents. And I don't mean that in some cosmologically potent way - as in, "everything happens for a reason." These days,...

76 days out of 150 1451 miles out of 2847 We are now officially more than halfway  to Washington, D.C. We've crested the ridge. As my...

"A town can't survive without a grocery." What keeps a community alive? How do strangers become neighbors? How do neighbors become...

The impact of Liberty Walks continues to ripple outward...

Back in early September, Liberty Walks made front page news in Casper, Wyoming.

I'm writing this from the gorgeous backyard of our hosts for the last two nights - Sandi and Wayne Muirhead, trustees of the Gordon...