This is Later with Lee Matthews The Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you
here weekday afternoons on the Drive. Neil King Junior is a former national security
reporter and editor for The Wall Street Journal. He was deeply involved in the
coverage of nine eleven, but he's written a new book that is called American
Ramble, A Walk of Memory and Renewal. Neil, at what point did
you decide I think I'll just go for a walk. You know, I
came into my mind a couple of years ago. I like, what if
I walked out of my house. I live in Washington, DC nine blocks
me as cops has walked up to New York City and people would be like,
oh my god, why would you every want to do that? Sound
of trouble? But I just germinate that grew the whole idea. I really
started to focus on what how I would do, at what route I would
take. And then when I did do it March twenty twenty one, right
at the end of that first grim year of COVID, it was a magical
little moment to choose and the whole walk, three hundred and thirty miles twenty
six days, was really quite magical, and I found a great scene to
walk through, and I really got a different view of the whole country by
doing it. Well, did you take a direct route, like what was
your route? Did you take the back roads to try to avoid some of
the big traffic problems? Oh, very very much back roads. And I
you know that it was a lot longer than would be a direct route to
New York, but just so much more meaningful. I went up through like
the Amish Mennonite areas of Pennsylvania. You know, I dipped down into Valley
Forge, where of course we you know, collectively had a rim winter back
in the Revolutionary War period with George Washington and the Continental Army. And you
know, I went up through Philadelphia and then up north to some fascinating places
north there, I walked down along the Delaware and across the Delaware where Washington
did on Christmas Day seventeen seventy six. Friend brought a kayak down and we
did that. That was just having a lot of fun with these various sights
and spending the time to really kind of take them in and give them some
significance, including the rivers along the way. And you know it the whole.
That was really quite a magical American ramble, a walk of memory and
renewal of memory to whom and renewal to whom. Yeah, that's a great
question. It was some of my own personal memory. There's a bit of
a memoir in it, but a lot of it was really talking more about
our national memory. What is it that we decide to remember when and why
do we decide to remember it? At prestance you take Valley forward, We
as a country didn't care about that winter of seventy seventy eight until basically a
century later when it was the first centennial, and then it was like,
wow, we had we had the Continental Army had gone through this trial,
that horrible winter when we were back on our heels, and it became a
symbol of resilience and persistence and those aspects of remembering our past and remembering wrenching
moments. You know, it wasn't for me until I got to the Lower
Manhattan and saw the nine to eleven World Trade Center holes in the earth.
Basically that I was like, Okay, I ask standing in front of a
memorial of something that I very much experience, and you know, that is
just a really interesting thing to look at. Okay, how do we remember
those events? What we'll just look like one hundred years from now. There
was a lot of that kind of memory and then a renewal. It was
both a personal sort of renewal of my own sort of spirit over twenty six
days, not being distracted by things, just paying attention to the land.
And then there's this looking at what might constitute a national renewal, because we
clearly could use a little bit of that. Now there's a lot of disciseness
in the country. I think we've lost some of our core common cause kind
of sentiments, and I've kind of spent some time thinking about what it might
look like a weird to regain that. Neil King Junior, former national security
reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He went on a long walk from Washington,
DC to New York and he's written all about it in his book,
which is called American Ramble. And you were a rambler, weren't you?
I did rambling? Man, keep going through your head? You know,
I guess you could say it might have. I didn't do a lot of
music listening because I was just out to, yeah, to look at stuff
and not be distracted by things and being pumped into my hair. But I
did do some whistling. One way. Did you rough it? Were you
hiking and backpacking and sleeping out at night, or did you try to at
least have some creature comforts as you went? I would on creature comforts.
I decided I was not going to do the back back, saying I wasn't
going to carry a tank, wasn't carry slipping back. I wanted to keep
it light, nimble, and I wanted to find places to spend the night
to recharge myself and my you know, batteries of my phone and all that
kind of thing. So I have to figure that out a long way,
which is not that easily done because you're only going to cover fourteen or fifteen
miles in a day, So you got to find the places to stay with
those sort of gaps in between. But that was important to have those kind
of comforts. Neil King, Junior, American Ramble Walk of Memory and Renewal.
We hear so much, Neil about how divided as a people we are.
I go all over the United States just because I like to travel,
I like to drive, and I like to talk to people. I mean,
after all, I'm in this business. I don't see the division.
I see separations, I see differences of thought and philosophy, but I don't
see division. You know, I agree with you in a way, a
lot of ways, Lee, And I think maybe it's about you going all
around the country. You're pushing back against the division in your own right.
I mean, we have to be careful about our kind of regional gaps and
looking at the cities as these bad places from the countryside and vice versa.
And you know, what we have in common is the common ground that we
have be meets us when we're talking to each other in the same space.
And I think that interaction is so important, and it's something we're kind of
diverging away from the more we interact on computer screens television screens. That's not
the full rounded person that's funny and quirky and all the other things that we
know when we meet individual people. And that's one of the things that I
really emphasize a lot, both in the walk and in the book. Do
we need to unplug more as a society, because I think we do,
just because of what you described. We we we're only getting snapshots of each
other throughout the day. Absolutely, and I you know, the technology,
the cars that even the things within our cars that are entertaining us, how
we drive them for something, it's all that are taking us away from the
world that's actually out there. And this kind of unplugue in not saying everybody
needs to take us three hundred and thirty mile month long walk. You can
do it for a day, You can do it for a portion of a
day, for a few days. And I think what I did is available
to people in Oklahoma and in Nebraska in all kinds of areas that there are
fantastic walks to take to really meaningful, important historical places. Carve out your
own ramble, but I really urge people to do something along the lines of
what I did, because it can kind of open up a different America but
needs your feeding and lead to a certain kind of personal renewal as well.
Oh I would easily see myself doing one from Tulsa to Oklahoma City or vice
versa on the Old Root sixty six, because so much of it is very
walkable, and so much of it brings you back in through these little towns
and villages that haven't changed at all since the Highway was constructed. No,
absolutely, And I just sound so much interest in like looking at the barn
design and the silos and how the you know, the land had been manicured,
and the fences and just just a whole of it. It just tells
the story. There's a richness there that we just don't quite acknowledge when we're
going doing the sixty five seventy seventy five mile an hour thing. And it
just the more you look, the more you see, the slower you go,
the more you look, and it's just kind of reinforcing process. I
you know a lot of people will be like I think and I was walked
down a road that dignifying. It has a real appeal to it, you
know, well yeah, and it it re establishes the charm of distance,
Oh absolutely, and a respect for it too, because you know that's a
popped down a road just places five miles away. Yeah, five miles away
as an hour and a half of walking. Yeah, But you know there
were times There's one day some friends came up from DC and we met for
lunch and we walked a little bit together, and then they got in their
car to drive back, and I was like, you know what, I
have four more hours that i'm walking before I get to my place for the
night. And I was so glad for those four hours. I felt terrible
for them. I was like, oh man, I love you four hours
enemy. That was so great. Yeah. Well, these are some of
the anecdotes you here at American Ramble, A Walk of Memory and Renewal.
Neil King Juniors, the author. It's available everywhere you get books. And
I thank you for joining us and thanks for the story. Absolutely really great.
I hope to get those. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews
the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons
from five to seven and I Hearts Media Presentation