it is a passion and i see the bills jersey right here. like i can't be objective half time. and one of the things i've i and i may that i might go in that direction someday i don't know. but one of the things i'm scared of with that is that sports is such a for me that if it were to become work, what would that look like and what would that be? and haven't had the courage to take that step mainly because i'm like, oh gosh, like i can totally see myself in it, you know, covering an nfl playoff game. and then in my head i'd much rather be on my couch right? and being able cheer and whatnot. but we'll see. i mean, it's very much a passion. anybody else is is a good one to all. well, then i will sign anything you guys have. and thank you so much for coming out to. i really appreciate

well, good evening. i'm mary ann brownlow leno. and welcome to health center to talk of the hill with host bill press, veteran journalists, political commentator, author. before hill center, really even

opened, bill had an idea that he wanted to sort of and host an in-depth conversation that he would moderate with you know distinguished guests and over the years there have been so many very distinguished guests. but i have to say, i think no one more distinguished than our guest this evening. so call my wall street journal editor, political editor and reporter neil king. he has just published this extraordinary book, american ramble a walk of memory and renewal. he said he bookshop copies for sale and neil will be signing the book afterwards. i'm you will have seen that it's just the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive to say the least so without further ado please welcome neil king and bill press.

thank you, marianne. and good evening, everybody. great to see you all. thank you for coming this evening. i want to say a big welcome first to our friends here, the hill center. i don't know what number of talk of the hills this is, but there are fun and exciting and none more, marianne said than tonight. i also want to welcome all of our friends from c-span who are watching on c-span around the country, around the world tonight. thank you for c-span, for covering event tonight. it's very that c-span is here the talk of the hill program started at the hill at ten, maybe 11 years ago now we've had many many programs are very guest was brian lamb, the founder of c-span and yes wow so we have come full having them tonight and i also want to take

a chance to welcome all of those people will be listening to tonight's interview on my podcast. the bill press. todd. that's a shameless plug got the bill press five wherever you listen to your podcast i'm there and our conversation this evening will be part of that podcast as and a switch in terms of welcome such a great to welcome a good friend and a good neighbor and neil king who a couple of years ago this crazy thing of walking out his front door and walking to central park york. now there a lot easier ways to get there. as we know, but no way more. no way filled with adventures than neil and and writes about and relates to us in. this wonderful, wonderful book a merican ramble.

i liked it so much. i've read it twice. wow. i encourage you to at least once and again easily as here will be copies for to buy and for neil to sign right after the program. so neil, let's get started. you live two blocks away, right? i love just down ninth street, which is right there. yes. yeah. did you walk to your are you kidding? oh, yeah. i just want to be sure. start us off page 11, if you will. okay. when you walked out the door and just gets out, that's a scene here. first i will say that of all of the events that might have occurred at the health center or all the books that any of you read, this book has a distinct of starting and finishing on ninth street. so many of us who live on ninth, we know an honor that is so the beginning of this book has a section called the i walk out my

door and then i spend a lot of time talking about why i walked out my door and the history of the territory in between and we'll get to that. well i'll get the right but i just want to get to the portion i'm going to read here because this is at the very end of that that chapter i set out that morning nine days into spring north up ninth street, eager to, if anything of an interest might up along the way, but as i turned away to say a lot, the marine corps barracks blocks away broke out a recorded rendition of the star-spangled. through the loudspeaker that the commandant's mansion as did every morning at sharp. it was a brassy version in the style of sousa. and to those strains i padded the first blocks of an arching path of a and freeways and

farmlands to where hudson spills into that big harbor with lady liberty and her torch. the sun hung warm over my shoulder. there was birdsong in the trees. i had a skip my step and a satchel on my back and could feel within blocks a little bliss seeping in. oh, what a great, what a great. so one more could wrap this up like for the entire evening. let's not take that long on it. but why are it started as an idea right over there one morning when i said, what if i just navigate it as a pedestrian to new york city and didn't take i-90? i didn't go to the union station, didn't take the acela? what would the pedestrian of an experience, what would the pedestrian experience be? and so that faster and for a while and then i, i read more and thought more about the land in between and how others had

taken that trip and by the time march of 2021 rolled around, i had done tons of preparation and it became i just absolutely had to do well. so the route you took you deliberately decided you would not take anything close to 95 right there. you wanted to go kind of the roundabout way, which you did. we'll get into that again. why that? yeah, it's funny because, you know i come out on my street if i took a ride and came and went down pennsylvania avenue and i thought about that to go over the chesapeake and then up the eastern shore, maryland, and across and up the jersey shore. and i was like that, would be a week and a half of ocean and jersey shore. it's like, no, that's not. and the more i thought about the route, the more i, i had to go through pencil vein, i had to go to lancaster county, where the amish and mennonites are. i had to cross the mason-dixon

on an important part of the mason-dixon line. i had to go to valley. i had to cross the delaware, where washington did certain things just sort of fell into place that were must i long to take you to a planet, you know, in various ways, took basically a year. i was going walk out my door. march 2020. but happened it disrupt my life by the way. and so i had to scratch and i decided to postpone it for exactly a year. so i walked out my door on the 29th of march of 2021, in between those two dates, everything unimaginable had happened, including a couple of months before or before i left the whole insurrection at the capitol. so i walked into a world that was profoundly changed when i had originally planned to do it. and so it increased number of things to think about by magnitudes. you took off for 26 days to a lot of -- with you.

know, i took very little with me, you know, i didn't. so the fact that i was sleeping airbnbs and ends and things i had to plot those places which was easy so went light. i had £16 or so i, i i had a fly rod to do some fishing, i had one pair of shoes, one pack, one bag that was not large. it was, you know, i said satchel was it was like huck finn or something, you know, how many company pairs of shoes did you wear out? just one. i only one that more than one pair. really the whole time. yeah. yeah. so you we talked a little bit about this i'm a big fan of travel writers, you know, and i've read a lot of them some of the old fashioned ones like phoebe morton, eric newby or today's traveler and bill bryson, paul theroux had you have read them and did they inspire you? were kind of following their

lead. yeah, well, my list would be slightly different. i'm a huge fan of, for instance, bruce chatwin. yeah. or patrick leahy firm or. who wrote it. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah but know the the reading i did do that really did inspire me and kind of the stage for the walk was the whole stream of writers that have come to the united states in the 1820s, thirties, forties and had done basically what i was which is to travel slowly through an important part of the country to figure this place and would be last and could this young country made up of all of these languages and creeds, races and everything ever form one union. and alexis de tocqueville was a famous member that that tribe. but there were so many that came and i read dozens of those books. and my attitude was similar to theirs. i wanted to go out as if i wasn't already hugely familiar with the landscape and the people in between which i really in a lot of ways wasn't.

and make up my mind about various things by going through it there's so many different levels to the book which after we go i really enjoy. i mean so many interesting places you walk through walk to and learned a lot about so many interesting people that you all the way and yeah and then kind of the big picture so many life lessons that you came back with so let's start with something interesting places you talk about lancaster junction to me that railroad oh the head over dancing hanover j.a. sorry. yeah yeah yeah yeah that's just a little bit. i mean, this is one of the things where i decided i had read how there's a junction, there's a there's a train station, and this was one of the first rail lines built in the united i think it was completed from philip, from philadelphia, sorry, baltimore or to york in 1834. and. in 1863, abraham took that line and it at the hanover junction,

there's line that goes this way, that takes the trains to gettysburg. and he paused there for half an hour. so he was actually waiting for the governor of pennsylvania, pennsylvania, to show up, which he didn't. and then a year and a half later, lincoln was on train that went this way and kept going on this very long route to. take him then in a casket to springfield for his burial. and there was something that was just fascinating about that station and the fact that those two sets of tracks diverge there. and that was sort of one of my pilgrimage was to go to that station, think about those two things. yeah, yeah. you also lankester, i that mixed up there earlier and learned lot about president buchanan. yeah only president i think to come from pennsylvania until joe biden if you count him. well i'm sorry.

from dell. i'm from delaware. all right. okay. i was in delaware, right. okay. we forget about scranton. right? yeah, right. buchanan and then thaddeus stevens, whom i never heard of before. and you talk a lot about buchanan and steven is right. yeah. so one of the things that was great about the was part of my the memory and the subtitle wasn't really my memories so much it was a national memory. like who is it that we remember and why and when i walked into lancaster they were actively debating who to rename that one of the elementary schools after they wanted to think james buchanan's name off he being the last president before lincoln and one of these double faced democrats who was a slave owning of this of the confederacy. well, be soon to be confederacy and i'm a moral coward. and ever since he had died, they had meticulously looked after his mansion, and you could visit

it in the junior league, had been very attentive to that and thaddeus stevens, who had lived in the same town at same time when buchanan was president thaddeus stevens, was the head of the ways and means committee in the house and was way more righteous. abraham lincoln or almost anybody else. congress and was lincoln's in a lot of ways. he was on really pushed lincoln to issue the emancipation proclamation. so on. and they were just then getting underway to sort of rebuild tate his house and now soon going to become a museum. what it should be, which is like a civil rights destination, but that is stevens was one of the great figures of the 19th century, a person who hundreds of times more important than, james buchanan and james, at least in that place, has been held up until now, is finally rightfully, you know. they didn't have to tear a statue down. but if there had been one, i would have been fine with replace. with thaddeus stevens a statue.

you know you've walked into the middle of this debate. yeah, which was really great. and it seems that every you'll find out when you read the book that every city you went to, every town you went to, you connected with the town historian, right? who told the history of the place and showed you the places that weren't that you should you should see terms of learning. know our history. yeah, precisely right now. gettysburg well. oh, i actually i did not go to get his. he talking about valley forge charlottesville. unfortunately yeah. so valley was was a really fascinating thing to me because so i'm sure many of you are familiar but so valley forge the winter of 1770 778 continental army outwits and they don't even have shoes they have nothing but hardtack to eat they're falling apart the have taken over huge portions of the country and they're in philadelphia all sitting around fires and the continental army is freezing in valley forge the valley. what i went to valley forge and

i met an historian there who agreed to meet me and she had written a book about what i was interested in, which was not that winter. it was when we decided to care about that winter. and it took us basically century to care about that winter and we kind of needed have that moment in the late 1800s where all these various kind of victorian sensibilities and other things came together and we needed this symbol of grit and, persistence and sticking it out. and valley forge became that place. and so it's it's a fascinating thing that, you know, we codified. speaking of gettysburg, gettysburg became a more memorial immediately after that battle. and 13 years before valley, forge became like a thing of importance and it's many times since then and now become a huge national park, which didn't happen until gerald ford actually. but that to me was also, you know, i was walking through a

landscape we had been fighting over what statues should be torn down, not. and were we erasing history or? not erasing history. and the is history is a very fluid thing always has been. sometimes it takes us a long to acknowledge that certain happen and the fact that some people are being erased with, our statues are being torn down as part of that process. right. so there are so many other historical places, particularly revolutionary war. you're crossing the delaware. there was boom. and then to me, one of the most interesting places was, the great mound of the great mound. yeah i had on a drive back new york down to washington. you know, if you take the jersey turnpike, you'll see these things that were not so proudly building, but we are building which are these trash mounds, these landfills. and i saw one of them i was like, wow, very landfill. i want to go to the top of that landfill.

so i sent them in a dump a dump yeah, but it's a quite a structure we're building and you can see it right there by the river. so they said, yeah, sure, we would love to take to the top of it. so i arrived there and you know, i went up as the explorer and it was from the top of that landfill that i got my first glimpse, 32 miles away of the tiny, tiny glimmer of manhattan. but, you know, i a bit in the book about how if go to the grand canyon and the top you're in the present and within about 5 minutes you've walked out of all of human history and you go down about 1.9 billion years in geological the landfill. you started that like the eisenhower administration. and then you walked up. and at one point i started i thought i said, where are we now? and the guy said, about 2006. and i was like, wow, that's it that's enron, george bush, second term, you know, and then the present is when you get

there and the trucks are dumping stuff in it, it's not it's sort of fun to make fun of, but it's not so funny, but it's just to see the immensity of this. this is one counties creation. and this is still an active landfill. a very yeah. and the guy that i went with had gone to ohio state university. and when we walked up, i said to, you know, there's this culture of years ago that built mounds all around the ohio river valley down the mississippi. so you might be is would all be aware of these these. and he said, oh, i know. i went to the university and he then started telling me about those maps and he said, our mounds are not like those mounds. so, so many interesting places and many interesting people. so you're walking along, you've got a water bottle and your water bottles empty. you're thirsty. oh yeah. and you encounter a very in the

interesting individual all you want is to fill your bottle not so easy right. tell us you know it was of the things that really was amazing was that by the second day it only took two days for me to realize that when you go out on a walk like this where you have a destination and it's going to take weeks to get there, you start to experience water like bona fide parables like like you have encounters with people along, the road and you're like, wow, this stands for something more than just this thing. and so that afternoon i was walking along in my water bottles empty and i'm walking through this really rich new subdivision of these huge mansions that had been built of baltimore and this young guy in his thirties came down his drive and there was the big house and my bottle empty. and i said, do you have any idea where i can get some water with my cousin? i asked it that way. intention as opposed to could you please fill my water? and so he said and he gave me these very elaborate to this

place. it was like two miles away. and i said. wow. okay, thanks. i appreciate that. and i started walking and then he oh, by the way, i would advise you be careful? and i said what should i be careful of? and he said, well, there are going to be people in this neighborhood that are going to be a little wondering why you're just walking through the neighborhood. and i said really are they and i, i told him then this story about this guy, paul salopek, who's now walking like around the world, essentially. and when he walked across the country of georgia, 54 nights every night, he was put up spontaneously. the people in georgia and i said so. and i ended up walking, oh, while i was leaving the guy, he said oh, one thing i just want you to know when i said be careful, i wasn't talking about me. i think you're fine. i was warning you about the other people in the neighborhood and and in the book. i then go on to muse about our version of hospitality you go

back and look at any of the holy they all it's about how do you treat the stranger who comes down the road and you know, in our case we basically turned hospitality into an industry and rightfully i then filled my water bottle at dunkin donuts, which is where you're supposed to get water. right. there's never occurred to him to say, oh, yeah no, and i didn't ever you. i kept thinking because like it took me like 45 minutes to get out of this ghastly place. and i kept thinking, he's going to show up at any moment, right? like when it just struck me, you know, here's some water. i got plenty water. but, you know, never did. no, didn't happen to me. one of the most magical moments in the book is when you're walking the quaker, the mennonite country, and you come to some kids ball, which turned out to be quite a visit, right? yeah. you know, that was one of these moments. i mean, i just want to impart

one obvious fact, but i can't overstate it walking is, you might say, 20 times slower than driving miles versus 60 miles an hour. it's hundreds of times more meaningful, hundreds of times richer and all of experiences that i had not just i mean, some of them were just walking and, noticing and watching a spring unfold. right i'd never done that before. like literally, i just spent a month watching a spring. but you also have these encounters that you would never notice. but anyway, this wouldn't have happened. so i'm walking up a road, i look over and i see beside school there's just a woman young woman. she's like ninth grade or so, and she's there with a long floral dress such as the head bonnet on. and she has a baseball mitt on her hand. and then i hear this, this whack, and she backs up and she catches this fly softball and she hurls it back to the right of like what going on? so i go into the playground and

there are these mennonite kids on, this huge game, two games of softball, all the young women are wearing these ankle length dresses and are amazing softball players like fall out slide thing and second base ball thing. and so at the end their they they stop playing they all come over towards me their teacher comes over and you know in terms of the whole welcoming of a stranger the first thing he said, what brings you here? and i told him, he said, kids, gather around. let's hear what mr. king has to say. and it was like, tell us what you're doing? and i started to talk to them they were kind of taken aback by my commentary about just seeing their part of, the country. and then one of the young women stopped for it. and she said, mr. weaver, could we sing for, mr. king? and he said, you have time. and i said, i've got time. and so i went into their school. we went down the basement.

they got on the risers there, about 30 of them. and they these two incredible hymns of the afterlife, which was so bizarre because. these are like, you know, 14 year olds on a beautiful spring day and they're singing about their longing for having but anyway. and was the as spontaneous like that saying a thanks me that i had that i was there and that i had come and was interested in them. basically it was extraordinary. and one last thing, when i was leaving that this hullabaloo occurred and then i went up and i was going to fill my water bottle out of there drinking and mystery goes back into the class and. instead of saying anything about me or anything. and the first words out of his mouth are, well, you know, we were working our vocabulary, so if you'd turn to page 36 and i was, wow, because they're just so in the moment, they're just so focused on things.

it was phenomenal. what a magic moment. yeah. so from the guy who won't fill your water bottle. tell us about peggy brennan. she was also one of the characters. oh, wow. get a vulgarity yeah in the book. well, that you know so the whole walk i'm just walking and out there if you go out on a big odyssey like odysseus or a night or there has to be a dragon of, some kind or something, a cyclops or something, and the dragon was i-95, right? i was like, how am i going to confront and deal with i-95? and so i took this whole arching path and then i identified cranberry new jersey as this perfectly preserved 19th century town. the midway point in new york and philadelphia on the postal the old postal route. and to the right of it or the east of it, are these warehouses, amazon, all this kind of stuff in the woods and

then running between them. is this brook and i. i had found before i even left i was looking on google maps. i said, oh, i'll go there, i'll talk to town fathers and the historic preservation people, and then i'll make my way up that river and i'll go under the turnpike by water underneath it. so when i'm talking them this beautiful morning and i tell them my plan and woman peggy brennan, who's well under 80, she said that's not going to. and i said, why? and she said it's not it's all water. there's no room for a pedestrian. but i have an idea. and so she gets and she gets her phone out and she her son. and 10 minutes later, her son shows up and he says follow me. and we got to his house. he pulls a kayak out from under his house. they take me to the lake. i like six of them. i get in the kayak and they're all waving goodbye while i'm kayaking up this brook. after he had told i was going have to go over this impediment, these trees, waterfall, there's

this. but when i finally get all of them, then i'll be able to go onto the turnpike and it was all the back. she concocted this plan that became one of the great moments of the whole trip was paddling up the amazon i called it in the amazonia and. so then we went from fear questions. but let's talk a little bit about the lessons that you learned. oh, yeah, what you learned about the american. i mean. you know, i was never on a scientific to come out with a statistically accurate sampling of americans would lead me to some firm conclusion about one of the things and this is on the one hand sort of obvious but needs to be said all the same that if you go and stand with people on their patch of earth their common ground that you share with them at that time and have interactions with people who might basically residing in

another century or certainly have distinctly different political views from your own and and that setting, you're dealing with a fully rounded person, right? with everything about them. that's not just three or four of their political beliefs. and i met quite a few people. politics did not align with mine, but to a person they all had other characters and traits and things that were just so amusing and funny to be said. and so is the other side that we've almost forgotten now that we're breaking into the tribes that we're breaking into and, you know, one guy i met who was an who had all kinds pronounced views on things that certainly didn't align with mine and he i met him in his bar filled with all these incredible vintage. and he just then telling me about the tractors and i it was it was such a great encounter. so, you know, there's a world out there and was my desire was

to pay very particular attention to the particulars that i saw and to put out of mind the more sort of abstract things that we fill our heads with, that fill us with a certain kind of anxiety or venom. and i'm not saying that's the real america, but i am saying to do that for a spell really opens eyes to a different slice the country. i was struck by your summing up on page 340, the love feel for your country can deepen along with the knowledge of the shameful we've done there is ugliness but also beauty in the ugliness. what remember of an era may reflect more than anything our desire to give it the best gloss. yeah, now i am a firm, you know. i know there are certain gov.scot around the country think they've figured out our, you know, mystery to our history or what are what we should be teaching the children about our past and anyone. the things figure that out

hasn't given us ample time because it's such a complicated thing. but the one thing i do know is, if you don't do the valley of shame part of it and it's a long and dark one and i'm and it's an ongoing one and i encounter things almost week and reading that i'm like we did that you know if, you don't continually do that. then don't come out the other side. you a love for this country that is founded in the reality and it's the people that believe if you have a shame for your country, then you're not patriotic. you don't properly love it. it's just such nonsense. i think it's exactly the other way around that by acknowledging and fully absorbing those aspects of our past, it's how you have a better or higher for where we've come and where we are now. so every one of the travel books that we've talked about, yours is a discovery of a certain country, of certain region.

it's also soft discovery. yeah. which you learn about yourself. well, i mean, six days walking by yourself. yeah, a lot of time. yeah. right. the thing i had some really amazing moments of joy along the way and these sort of rapturous moments that i think came about largely because i just decided would devote myself to paying attention and not listening to anything. no music, no podcasts and it had an a cumulative effect those days and it really did become kind of a religious experience, certainly a very spiritual and sort of by the time i got to new york, i just felt that i was sort of glowing. and there was kind of a radiance about things that a lot of that is i still think is there in a way mean it it's it's a funny thing is that you walk at your

door the one thing i'll say you've got your book there because you talk that rapture which came at a very unusual place walking across the bound bridge. yeah, yeah, exactly. there there is a actually a chapter called rafter on the bay bridge. and when i was going up the bay bridge, i, i wasn't really looking for manhattan. it was right there. and when i looked up and saw it, i was overwhelmed by the side of manhattan. and it is, by the way, you know, we've done a lot of disservice to this by a lot of the things that we humans have done. but one distinct service we've done is build the city manhattan because it is a gorgeous, you know, and when you see it on a spring morning with the river there in the harbor there and that thing we and you can go back and read all of scott fitzgerald you want where he talks about in many others that gorgeous site and it was a gorgeous site so i described here this weird rapture though

went beyond gratification. i had seen this skyline before a thousand times over the years. i caught sight of it from all directions. and as a cab driver and a common traveler, but on this morning, the sight of it physically astonished and stunned me. the days and all those steps had pried open a part of the human spirit that magnifies the potency of otherwise simple things and grants the commonplace, a touch of the divine. you. so the second time through your book i suddenly said you what i remember now, something that really struck me once about union station. okay, so i went back to union station to double check it and there on the left you're facing union station on the upper left

side of union station is this quote from samuel johnson. so it is in traveling. a man must carry knowledge with him if he would, home knowledge. wow. that's fast. because i actually in here when i say the meaning, you bring, does that fit to your experience? absolutely no. and you know, i to the extent that if somebody says, oh, rambles, he rambled, how do you ramble? what what what qualifies as the ramble? my thing is you pick a place that that is important to you matter how far away it is, you leave your house to get to. because i think that continuity of where you live, your normal life and this place you want to go to is really important and you spend a certain amount of time, preferably really studying and about and steeping yourself in what's in between the stories, the travel, the who

moved, what their when the geology and the more meaning you bring you, the more meaning you in return. it's it's a trade and it's not just the people you meet, it's when you arrive at at the susquehanna river and you've read a lot about that river and you know all that river is and you fully respect that river. it pays you back when you arrive at it. and it gives you things in return. it's it's a transaction. the regret is that we all couldn't go with neil on an american ramble. thank you. questions about road, the people, the places the was the question right we have to please use the microphone so that c-span can pick up our questions. we have another microphone here, just one. okay. okay.

got to please. have you heard from anybody since the book has come out, any of the people you encountered? that's a really interesting question. everybody here, the question. yeah. more importantly, have you heard from water guy from outside outside of reisterstown? a lot of people have said you should bring him the book. i'll have to do that. you know. so the one thing i haven't really tried to convey is my firm belief that are we all live under a certain sort of regulated time. that's the time that goes fast. the time we rule when it's over and then there is this other form of sort of touch time that you can seize yourself that has a higher. i don't know, resonance and meaning about it. and the whole of this walk took in that kind of time. so i know and i, i was in new york two nights ago and we had a party, the guy who took me across the hudson in a boat was at the party.

i mean, i, i remained in touch like my friendship touch with probably i don't know 20 people from that thing. the, i mean including the mennonite so i was up at the same school two weeks ago and 200 people came into the basement and i talked with them and then 50 of the kids sang songs for half an hour and i'm how did i form a bond with them? i was only with them for 45 minutes. two years ago, but i they invited me up last christmas and i went for a christmas concert. and i think a lot of it is if you put yourself out and really open and interested in other people and what they're about, they they respond. so follow up. so when you met people, obviously you put a youth. i'm sorry, did you tell them i'm i'm neil king i'm expert wall street journal reporter and i'm writing a book. at what point did conversation. yeah well, for the most part i

kind of did at least i made it clear that i was walking that i was a writer and that became an issue later when i was writing a book because some people had to go to and make sure they knew they were going to be in a book but that's a different thing. yeah, we have a marianne's coming around with a microphone microphone for oh, right here. yeah. neil, thank you for doing the walk and for sharing your story with us. i really enjoyed the book and. found one of the more beautiful parts it to be the dedication to your brother whom you said noticed things others missed. it seems some ways this walk for you was doing just that. absolutely. help us understand your perspective on life. perhaps after the walk. yeah you know, one of the things that was so interesting about the reading back reading was i, i recreate in the book, which you will now if you read it this walk that jefferson and james madison took lake champlain in

1792. and i was so fascinated by that thing because jefferson had had a and then madison had dyspepsia or something like that. and both decided they wanted to go up there and. jefferson's travel were filled with. the most incredible details. i was just cheese. and like they go over the mountain and they come down to lake champlain. and he says, we've noticed there are no more persimmon trees on side of the mountain. and i'm like, what? like nobody notices the lack of persimmon trees. and i like and you know, he crossed the delaware here and he wrote, i heard the first katydid and i was like, wow. so it the spring he first the first katydid. and, you know, i read a of thoreau's jottings like that too he would throw his for noting when certain flowers first bloomed and when the last leaves are what trees at the end of the season and all of that stuff and you know, immersing yourself and

it's an antidote you know, we spend so much of our time now. i'm not saying the things that we salivate over on television aren't worth being worked up about, but there's something else going on in the world. it's also worth noticing. and, you know, the more you at least counterbalance with that kind of of tactile while, you know, the unfolding of the season, the whole event is just and that it was an exercise in noticing for the most part you were oh let's forget the water bottle jerk pretty well receive it absolutely right. yeah. did you ever think about what your reception would have been if. you were a 55 year old black man walking doing that. well, i did a lot and i wrote about that a fair bit. i have two thoughts on that subject. the one is i wouldn't for a second act as if i faced risk being what i am walking down the road than all kinds of other

people. black man, you could go on. i probably face the least risk of anyone actually in some ways, because for a while i'm trained in this kind of thing. i'm a journalist for you on other hand, i would not just hesitate but not say any one set of type of person shouldn't do this. and it's really amazing. i did an event in philadelphia and there was a guy probably 55 year old black man sitting in the front and. he asked me a question along those lines and when i answered he came over and introduced himself and i knew his name because he had actually last year walked from harriet tubman's birthplace to the canadian border and he introduced himself, ken johnston. and i said, oh my god, we have communicated. i hadn't met him in person. i said, why did you ask me that question? he said, i just wanted see your response. but part of what his point is, if you're predisposed opposed to doing something like this and

and feel that you're good at it, that's a different i mean, on the other hand, you know, we've all seen the atrocious things that have happened in the last few weeks where and that level of just like insane. if you see the world in a way, you fear or feel fear for a person looking through your door them and you just shoot as a result of that. that's like a mental illness, right? and that is out there. and the one thing i didn't do, by the way when you take a walk like this you notice that the people that are the most intent on multiple no trespassing signs generally live houses that you would never want to go onto their property like you know you have got like five cars and their dogs at the ends of like i'm not going to go on your property, you know, and they're like no trespassing everywhere. okay. got it. right. yeah, great. neil, you just said it was it

was an exercise in noticing and heard you quote mary oliver before attention is the beginning of devotion. you know, life, as we all know, has a way of of the noise it the distraction of it, the just incessant bombardment can numb us all having done this, do you feel you can access that more quickly, more readily, that sort of paying attention, steeling yourself and getting back to that place? yeah, i do. i'm not acting as if i might, you know, on some higher plane or something like that. i do think it like kind of carved out a space of sorts that is, but that's also i'm not acting as if i don't get into all the distractions that everybody else suffers from. and one of the ironies of having written this book about walking to new york is i've now spent hundreds hours driving back and forth between place and. you know, this morning i drove back down through most of the same territory.

and, you know, it's just it's just brain dead time that is just it evaporates know and that again, going to the different forms of time time, time spent going back and in a car is not remembered. time it's that time that, you know, is going be the last thing you think about in your final moments on earth. weirdly enough, this walk probably will be among those. and, you know, it's this crystalline quality that certain stretches of time can have. the next question is from someone who is mentioned in your book, more than mention bill press. first time, long time talk reference for a long time listener. first time caller exactly. like bob woodward, my business partner. we did a radio show for 14 years together. indeed, indeed was a great run. neal i've been struck by how many specific experiences you

had on your journey that resonate with current events. you mentioned somebody getting shot through somebody's front door, for example. the one thing i'm thinking about is we're finally having a serious debate about solitary confinement meant. and you had an experience about the origination of that can you talk about any one of those experiences that seemed inform your opinion or your observations about any current? wow wow, you can use the one i gave you. well, it's that solitary confinement would be one example. okay. yeah, there is. i mean, just a pause on that i had to wrestle a little bit with how i would deal with the city of philadelphia so it's across there's like you could write, you know, books about that. so and i was i decided to focus in large part on the fact that there was this really fascinating prison. there, eastern state penitentiary, which ironically was one of the things that drew alexis tocqueville to come to

the united states, because he was in the u.s., too, to write about our prison system. and it was only when he was here looking at our prisons that it became taken by the democracy aspect of american design to write about that. but that you know, at that time, i solitary confinement was seen as like a very humane thing because the alternative, it was being thrown into a place like things where you are surrounded, all kinds of other criminals. there are going to be beating on you while you were, you know, was like a a matter of be like if all of us were in prison, i would have locked the in here. we would be all together and we would you know. you would always prefer to be in a solitary. but yeah, that's an interesting example of how our view these things can change so much and what something that seemed at one time to be humane becomes anything but over time and i certainly would see it that way now. yes, sir. hi, john.

hey, bill. neal, what a wonderful story. and i'm waiting to hear bill's memoirs. i'm going to come come to early. look in 81. when i finished undergrad, i had the best job of my life. i traveled around the country, 44 states selling hundred dollars sets of cookware to single women. i did it as it was like is hope to stardom. but but one thing i learned there were there were these kind of regional quirks. they were usually i'm selling units to a mom and her daughter. if would, say, in the rio grande valley, they would get up all of their friends their neighbors would come over and i'd be talking to a 12 or 15 people when i was in south louisiana. would every every house i went into the only word that happened in the country, the dads bring me a beer. when you were like north of burlington in durham, they have like the north, just the oddest accent ever heard. people sound like they have

morals in their mouth and in anywhere. i'd say these quirks around the country were there like did you notice like when were walking around it it seemed like how was south jersey different from north jersey? how was lancaster different from 30 miles away? yeah, no. i write about what i called micro nations and i actually gave to these various places, i call it the kind of greater washington, greater capital. and then when i got into maryland, it was self land because i was actually, you know, northern maryland is actually quite southern in a lot of ways on, that area of york county as well. and, you know, going across the susquehanna from york county into lancaster county, i think is one of the biggest cultural leaps anywhere in the country, because you're going from a very frontier ish place with a very different of approaching farms and land management to this very prim and very exacting anabaptist way of farming and

the were like really big and proud. and these huge grain silos. it was a striking difference and i, i sort of trace those as i go somewhat in cheek. i'm, i'm, i'm walking, i'm not sociologist, but you know, the imprint of who settled where when is is a very much of an ongoing feature in american life everywhere. you know and and it may that way for centuries more despite all the movement you know some of these ideas just don't really change not much another thing that raise your hand if you have a question i'm here answering with the nothing that struck me and that you point out is you can be walking in you're talking to the people you're to think about the history but but you have sometimes stop and recognize that what's really striking is the land. yeah yeah this land of ours is beautiful and of ours which you certainly saw a lot of them came

to appreciate. yeah, i have one living at the end of the book where, i kind of summarize some of my conclusions. i have little riff on how it wasn't really, you know, we americans like to think it was the principles that we came across the atlantic with whether it was like adam smith or or our them and strength and our resourcefulness, our persistence and all that. and i'm not disputing that those things were of some value, but the one thing i think we diminish is the place that we found and you know, that was by the way, very inhabited from the first encounters all along the coastline, i think way more inhabited than a lot of people are aware. but those people had done no damage to the place and. so we arrived on these shores that where so much of our greatness that was to come because of this place right.

and we've some ways done that place relatively few favors and we continue to do it relatively few favor. but the beauty of the land really. absolutely. yeah. here we go on this side of the room with a question right here. okay. thank you for just waiting. just a second. american ramble by the author. yes. so i grew in the west. and as you're talking about this, i'm thinking this is a very east coast kind of a thing. yeah. how do you think this trip would have been different in different parts of the u.s.? yeah, very. you know, i grew up in colorado and i'm like 14. yeah, yeah, yeah. i, you know what one of the things is that and i just read by the way, there was a guy, rinker bock, who wrote a fantastic book called, the oregon trail, which i couldn't recommend. it's such a good description of

that, that whole passage. and he then did it, his brother in a in a covered wagon. it's really fantastic story, but, you know, once you go further west, the density of the stories becomes less. and particularly when you get out into the more mountain west, there's just not as to write about in terms the human side of it. so you would have to travel larger distances to have kind the narrative thread. in my case i was, you know, there was all these civil sites, there's the construction of the railroad, there's the canals, there's the all revolutionary war sites, there's so much that was. but i'm really drawn to doing some things out that way. so longer, no longer walks the ramble, a walk, memory and renewal. neil king and thank you, neal. thank you.

thank you for doing the walk thank you for writing the book and thanks for being here. thank you all for being here. this is amazing. amazing city books for this year and they will be glad join you and and sign your book for you. and thank you all for coming. we'll see you at the next edition of the talk of the hill. good. thanks. all right. oh, fantastic. thank you. i really.