I just finished reading “A Walk Across America” by Peter Jenkins. Its a simply written book about a self-proclaimed hippie and flower child who quite literally walks across a large part of the eastern half of America with his dog from 1973 to 1974. Its mostly filled with love passages devoted to his faithful dog and heartwarming stories about the mountain-men and southern-folk he meets on his way. In the end the walk turns out to be an ironic metaphor for his search for God, not a search to understand the people of America as he leads us to believe in the beginning. The ending sucked since the guy didn’t actually finish the story. After spending 300 pages on New York to Alabama, he skips over everything from Louisiana to California in a few lousy sentences. Yeah right buddy. I can’t believe you did that to me. Its called A Walk Across America, not A Walk to Louisiana. Bah humbug. Not highly recommended but a unique story none-the-less.

Click here to see A Walk Across America on Amazon

I really liked how in the epilogue it says he wrote the majority of the story in Ourey, Colorado. I’ve been to that town a few times and it is remarkably beautiful. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the first time I saw it, tucked away in a tiny crevice in the heart of the Rockies, illuminated by a ray of sunshine through thick grey clouds and entirely dominated by the impossibly high mountains that surround it. I was probably about 15 or 16 and on a road trip through Colorado with my friends’ the Heinz’s when I first visited. In Ourey there’s a natural hot spring that the town has molded into a swimming pool, a candy store, a few old mining shafts, one or two of the inevitable tourist trap “antique” shops, a small stage show that hosts a few town locals that play guitar and dance on mondays and wednesdays for anyone that around to listen and throw in a few dollars, and some run down farm houses. Thats about it as far as I can remember.

Click here to see Ourey in Google Maps

Bye