IN 2002 I WALKED ACROSS AMERICA.

From Encinitas, California, to New York City. 3,349 miles in 154 days.

No cell phone, and no support crew.  Just me, my dog Cosmo, a camera, and wagon filled with supplies.  

I wanted a journey so big that I couldn’t see the end.  Without an end in sight the world became very simple, I had only to walk, eat, sleep, and talk to the strangers I met along the way. Cosmo and I found ourselves sleeping in cardboard boxes, behind dumpsters and outside gas stations, in the weeds everywhere you can think of, but most often in the home of a stranger who had offered food and shelter and conversation. 

This was right after 9-11 and much of the country was bonded together in a way that’s hard to imagine today. I stayed with preachers and punks, frat boys and cowboys, veterans and miners, Amish families, you name it, every slice of America welcomed me in. 

On the walk I found my gold shoe superpowers, went to prom, won second place in a hog calling contest, ran out of water in the desert, slept in an open jail cell, got blisters 3 layers deep, almost got hit by more trucks than I can count, loitered a lot, and got really good at playing a children’s electric guitar.

Arriving in New York City didn’t feel like the end, the walk just keeps going through my whole life.  What I learned about engaging with so many kinds of people in their own spaces on their own terms forever changed how I take pictures even 20 years later.