Andrew Forsthoefel - Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time

More Praise for Walking to Listen

In this moving and deeply introspective memoir, Forsthoefel writes about the uncertainties, melodramas, ambiguities, and loneliness of youth Forsthoefels walk becomes a meditation on vulnerability, trust, and the tragedy of suburban and rural alienation [His] conversation with America is fascinating, terrifying, mundane, and at times heartbreaking, but ultimately transformative and wise. Publishers Weekly

Whoever you are, wherever youre from, you need to read this book. You need to read it for its searing honesty, its hopefulness, and its grace. You need to read it because its story is your story, too. Andrew Forsthoefel walked across a continent to listen to strangers and learn from them. There is great wisdom in his footfalls, and you are holding it in your hands. Sue Halpern, author of A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home

Forsthoefel offers moments of genuine kinship and transcendence Millennial ennui turns into a search for meaning in an intriguing portrait of America. Kirkus Reviews

In a world of congestion and noise, Andrew Forsthoefel has written a book that opens up an ocean of sublime reflective space. As refreshing as it is timeless and endearing, Forsthoefel deftly shifts between his inner being and the peoples lives that flow through him, mile by mile. His enduring determination to understand others is infectious, and like the many walks of life who embrace him into their homes and hearts, we cannot help but be disarmed of any lingering cynicism or distrust. Ultimately Forsthoefel inspires us to be more curious in life and less offendeda virtuous philosophy in what appears to be an age of increasing polarity in American society. Tim Cope, award-winning author of On the Trail of Genghis Khan

Soulful [Forsthoefels] openness provides a window into the extraordinary lessons to be learned from ordinary people. This is a memorable and heartfelt exploration of what it takes to hike 4,000 miles across the country and how one young man learned to walk without fear into his future. Booklist

If you look at Andrew Forsthoefels journey on a map, its a tiny thread, an infinitesimal crack, yet its enough to break loose Americas stories: the open hearts and closed minds, the love and the fear, the beauty and danger, the wisdom. Jay Allison, producer of The Moth Radio Hour

[Forsthoefels] observations are frank, sometimes humorous and always thoughtful. The metaphors he employs to illuminate his experiences are vivid and powerful. And the lessons he takes away from his interactions with people of all walks of life are extraordinary, reshaping his very existence. Reading about it will undoubtedly transform his audience as well. Shelf Awareness

With a name like Forsthoefel, it had better be good. And it is, combining the best humanistic aspects of Walt Whitman, Barry Lopez, John Steinbeck, William Least Heat-Moon, and Marco Polo. Albert Podell, author of Around the World in 50 Years

For my mother, Therese Jornlin.
Impossible to say what I owe you, but I do my
best with thank you.
I will hear your prayers forever.

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,
And accrue what I hear into myself and let sounds contribute toward me.

Walt Whitman

You, yesterdays boy,
to whom confusion came:
Listen, lest you forget who you are.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener?

Kahlil Gibran

I recorded eighty-five hours of interviews while walking across the United States, which Ive edited to create most of the dialogue in this book. However, there were many conversations that went unrecorded over the course of my year on the road, exchanges that happened too fast to catch or interactions that precluded the use of an audio recorder for various reasons. Ive included several of these moments as scenes in this book, consulting the notes in my travel journal to recreate the conversations. For all dialogue, Ive limited my own editing of these voices as much as possible, attempting to stay true to what people said and how they said it.

I used real names with a few exceptions, noted here. The following are pseudonyms: Dan, Frank, Simon, Don, Mae, Eric, Manny, Jay, Maia, Veronica, Bea, Mayor Rousseau, Phil, and Henry.

The hills of northeastern Georgia shimmered with dawn light, sea green, strung together by the black thread of the highway. I was on this highway again, walking alone through the winter, filthy and far from home, virtually clueless as to what lay ahead. But that actually seemed okay today. Familiar. It was a kind of home in its own way right now, this feeling of familiarity, the sense that I actually belonged here, wherever I happened to be. It was getting steadier, that feeling, and with each day on the road I believed it a little more. Maybe someday itd be unshakeable, a kind of knowing that went beyond believing. I walked a mile in the unseasonable December warmth, and then another, and another, and it felt like I was being held between two great handsthe high sky above and the fertile ground all around. No effort this morning, just floating. Who am I today? I wondered silently. Who do I want to be? The answer couldve been anything, with so much space all around me, so much unknown.

Id only been walking for two months, but it seemed like thered never been anything else but this. Everything that had come before was fading into my footsteps: my childhood, nothing but whispers and flashes; adolescence, a blurry wash marked by a single vivid streak, the divorce; memories of college that felt ancient, as those passed on by an ancestor, or someone else long dead; and then my doomed job on the lobster boat, like a story told so late at night it actually mightve just been a dream. It all felt so far away, almost forgotten. Only the cars were close now, and the trucks, and if they got too close they would kill me. Their airstreams were monstrous invisible tongues, licking me good-bye over and over again all day long.

Around eight A.M. there was a handwritten love letter on the shoulder, highway trash. I picked it up and read. Dear Caleb, Happy two months! I love you so much! Its been great like really. I know were going to have more great times together.

It was something to think about. Not that I needed it. Theres a lot to think about when youre walking alone on the highway all day. I tended to think about peoplethe people Id met so far, the people I loved. And food. I thought a lot about food. Now, though, I thought about Caleb and his girl, and about how two months can seem like a lifetime when youre in love, or walking across a country, and how it all goes so fast until theres nothing left to go, and its gone. You are my absolute everything. Im sittin here missin you as usual. I hope your doing the same. What once had been a love letter was now litter, and this would soon disintegrate back into the earth. I wasnt that much differentdestined to disintegrate someday. I placed the love letter back onto the grass. Didnt seem right to keep it.

Id spent the night before in a barn owned by a chicken farmer named Diane. Her house was nestled in a stand of pines at the end of a long dirt driveway. A row of Christmas candy canes led me up to the front door. It was just before dark when I knocked, and as always, my breath turned shallow.