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This is Later with Lee Matthews The
Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you

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here weekday afternoons on the Drive.
Neil King Junior is a former national security

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reporter and editor for The Wall Street
Journal. He was deeply involved in the

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coverage of nine eleven, but he's
written a new book that is called American

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Ramble, A Walk of Memory and
Renewal. Neil, at what point did

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you decide I think I'll just go
for a walk. You know, I

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came into my mind a couple of
years ago. I like, what if

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I walked out of my house.
I live in Washington, DC nine blocks

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me as cops has walked up to
New York City and people would be like,

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oh my god, why would you
every want to do that? Sound

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of trouble? But I just germinate
that grew the whole idea. I really

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started to focus on what how I
would do, at what route I would

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take. And then when I did
do it March twenty twenty one, right

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at the end of that first grim
year of COVID, it was a magical

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little moment to choose and the whole
walk, three hundred and thirty miles twenty

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six days, was really quite magical, and I found a great scene to

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walk through, and I really got
a different view of the whole country by

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doing it. Well, did you
take a direct route, like what was

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your route? Did you take the
back roads to try to avoid some of

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the big traffic problems? Oh,
very very much back roads. And I

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you know that it was a lot
longer than would be a direct route to

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New York, but just so much
more meaningful. I went up through like

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the Amish Mennonite areas of Pennsylvania.
You know, I dipped down into Valley

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Forge, where of course we you
know, collectively had a rim winter back

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in the Revolutionary War period with George
Washington and the Continental Army. And you

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know, I went up through Philadelphia
and then up north to some fascinating places

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north there, I walked down along
the Delaware and across the Delaware where Washington

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did on Christmas Day seventeen seventy six. Friend brought a kayak down and we

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did that. That was just having
a lot of fun with these various sights

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and spending the time to really kind
of take them in and give them some

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significance, including the rivers along the
way. And you know it the whole.

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That was really quite a magical American
ramble, a walk of memory and

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renewal of memory to whom and renewal
to whom. Yeah, that's a great

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question. It was some of my
own personal memory. There's a bit of

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a memoir in it, but a
lot of it was really talking more about

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our national memory. What is it
that we decide to remember when and why

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do we decide to remember it?
At prestance you take Valley forward, We

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as a country didn't care about that
winter of seventy seventy eight until basically a

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century later when it was the first
centennial, and then it was like,

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wow, we had we had the
Continental Army had gone through this trial,

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that horrible winter when we were back
on our heels, and it became a

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symbol of resilience and persistence and those
aspects of remembering our past and remembering wrenching

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moments. You know, it wasn't
for me until I got to the Lower

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Manhattan and saw the nine to eleven
World Trade Center holes in the earth.

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Basically that I was like, Okay, I ask standing in front of a

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memorial of something that I very much
experience, and you know, that is

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just a really interesting thing to look
at. Okay, how do we remember

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those events? What we'll just look
like one hundred years from now. There

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was a lot of that kind of
memory and then a renewal. It was

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both a personal sort of renewal of
my own sort of spirit over twenty six

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days, not being distracted by things, just paying attention to the land.

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And then there's this looking at what
might constitute a national renewal, because we

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clearly could use a little bit of
that. Now there's a lot of disciseness

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in the country. I think we've
lost some of our core common cause kind

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of sentiments, and I've kind of
spent some time thinking about what it might

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look like a weird to regain that. Neil King Junior, former national security

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reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
He went on a long walk from Washington,

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DC to New York and he's written
all about it in his book,

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which is called American Ramble. And
you were a rambler, weren't you?

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I did rambling? Man, keep
going through your head? You know,

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I guess you could say it might
have. I didn't do a lot of

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music listening because I was just out
to, yeah, to look at stuff

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and not be distracted by things and
being pumped into my hair. But I

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did do some whistling. One way. Did you rough it? Were you

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hiking and backpacking and sleeping out at
night, or did you try to at

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least have some creature comforts as you
went? I would on creature comforts.

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I decided I was not going to
do the back back, saying I wasn't

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going to carry a tank, wasn't
carry slipping back. I wanted to keep

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it light, nimble, and I
wanted to find places to spend the night

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to recharge myself and my you know, batteries of my phone and all that

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kind of thing. So I have
to figure that out a long way,

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which is not that easily done because
you're only going to cover fourteen or fifteen

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miles in a day, So you
got to find the places to stay with

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those sort of gaps in between.
But that was important to have those kind

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of comforts. Neil King, Junior, American Ramble Walk of Memory and Renewal.

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We hear so much, Neil about
how divided as a people we are.

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I go all over the United States
just because I like to travel,

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I like to drive, and I
like to talk to people. I mean,

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after all, I'm in this business. I don't see the division.

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I see separations, I see differences
of thought and philosophy, but I don't

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see division. You know, I
agree with you in a way, a

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lot of ways, Lee, And
I think maybe it's about you going all

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around the country. You're pushing back
against the division in your own right.

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I mean, we have to be
careful about our kind of regional gaps and

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looking at the cities as these bad
places from the countryside and vice versa.

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And you know, what we have
in common is the common ground that we

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have be meets us when we're talking
to each other in the same space.

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And I think that interaction is so
important, and it's something we're kind of

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diverging away from the more we interact
on computer screens television screens. That's not

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the full rounded person that's funny and
quirky and all the other things that we

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know when we meet individual people.
And that's one of the things that I

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really emphasize a lot, both in
the walk and in the book. Do

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we need to unplug more as a
society, because I think we do,

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just because of what you described.
We we we're only getting snapshots of each

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other throughout the day. Absolutely,
and I you know, the technology,

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the cars that even the things within
our cars that are entertaining us, how

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we drive them for something, it's
all that are taking us away from the

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world that's actually out there. And
this kind of unplugue in not saying everybody

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needs to take us three hundred and
thirty mile month long walk. You can

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do it for a day, You
can do it for a portion of a

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day, for a few days.
And I think what I did is available

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to people in Oklahoma and in Nebraska
in all kinds of areas that there are

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fantastic walks to take to really meaningful, important historical places. Carve out your

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own ramble, but I really urge
people to do something along the lines of

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what I did, because it can
kind of open up a different America but

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needs your feeding and lead to a
certain kind of personal renewal as well.

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Oh I would easily see myself doing
one from Tulsa to Oklahoma City or vice

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versa on the Old Root sixty six, because so much of it is very

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walkable, and so much of it
brings you back in through these little towns

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and villages that haven't changed at all
since the Highway was constructed. No,

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absolutely, And I just sound so
much interest in like looking at the barn

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design and the silos and how the
you know, the land had been manicured,

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and the fences and just just a
whole of it. It just tells

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the story. There's a richness there
that we just don't quite acknowledge when we're

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going doing the sixty five seventy seventy
five mile an hour thing. And it

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just the more you look, the
more you see, the slower you go,

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the more you look, and it's
just kind of reinforcing process. I

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you know a lot of people will
be like I think and I was walked

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down a road that dignifying. It
has a real appeal to it, you

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know, well yeah, and it
it re establishes the charm of distance,

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Oh absolutely, and a respect for
it too, because you know that's a

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popped down a road just places five
miles away. Yeah, five miles away

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as an hour and a half of
walking. Yeah, But you know there

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were times There's one day some friends
came up from DC and we met for

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lunch and we walked a little bit
together, and then they got in their

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car to drive back, and I
was like, you know what, I

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have four more hours that i'm walking
before I get to my place for the

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night. And I was so glad
for those four hours. I felt terrible

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for them. I was like,
oh man, I love you four hours

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enemy. That was so great.
Yeah. Well, these are some of

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the anecdotes you here at American Ramble, A Walk of Memory and Renewal.

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Neil King Juniors, the author.
It's available everywhere you get books. And

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I thank you for joining us and
thanks for the story. Absolutely really great.

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I hope to get those. Thanks
for listening to Later with Lee Matthews

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the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember
to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons

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from five to seven and I Hearts
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