Author who walked from D.C. to NYC will speak at Philly’s Free Library
Neil King Jr. spent 26 days walking to NYC. He spent most of his ramble in Pa., crossing the Mason-Dixon Line into York County from Md., then crossing the Susquehanna River into Lancaster County.
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In the spring of 2021, Neil King Jr. went for a long walk, stepping out from his home in the nation’s capital and into the greater world.
King, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who reported from more than 50 countries, mostly chose the slim shoulders of suburban roads as his trail, and the lights of distant Walmarts as his guiding star. He set off to see and understand a splintered America, walking through Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York — finishing his 26-day exercise “in sustained attention and observation” in Central Park.
“This was not a nature walk,” King, 63, told The Inquirer recently. “This was very much a human walk.”
King chronicled his journey in the recently published book American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal. He’ll visit the Central Library of the Free Library of Philadelphia on April 18 to discuss his experiences in a conversation with former Daily News and Inquirer editorial cartoonist Signe Wilkinson.
King spent most of his ramble in Pennsylvania, crossing the Mason-Dixon Line into York County from Maryland, then crossing the Susquehanna River into Lancaster County, one of the nation’s busiest farming counties. He delves deeply into the state’s role in history, its geography, and its role as a swing state.
“The beauty of the whole of it — the low sun, the silos like exclamation points studding the hills — made me let out a holler and do a little dance,” King wrote of Lancaster County farmland.
Far from D.C., in places where cars rule, King experienced some skepticism and mistrust, simply because he was walking. He walked for hours, longing for a stranger to refill his empty water bottle. But every difficult encounter was countered by moments of kindness and curiosity. Mennonite schoolchildren sang to King and a farrier bid him farewell with a bag of chocolate chip cookies.
“Those spontaneous moments of kindness were more of the typical response,” King said.
King’s discussion at the Central Library begins at 7:30 p.m. on April 18. http://libwww.library.phila.gov/calendar/event/119945