We had met before, Peter and I.
I was 11 years old that summer of 1974 when he was in the midst of his walk across America. The 22-year-old adventurer stopped to rest on a patch of grass beneath a hackberry tree just off County 129 outside Cornersville, Tennessee. Me? I was sitting in the yard, dreaming of faraway places.
Our encounter was brief. Yet, I still have a snapshot in my mind of a young man with an enormous pack strapped to his back. I peppered him with questions as he drank from the water hose. Then he and Cooper, his furry canine companion, walked away and melted into the horizon.
By the time Peter finished his walk--4,751 miles from Alfred, New York, to Oregon's Pacific coast--I was a junior in high school. An enthusiastic reader, I traveled with him through his first book, A Walk Across America, later joining him for The Walk West.
I was living in Alabama before I encountered the intrepid writer again, this time as he plied the waters of the Gulf in Along the Edge of America. In this book, Peter talks about putting down roots in Middle Tennessee. I was surprised. Pleased. Curious. This man who had been around the world had landed less than 30 minutes from where we met that day. I had to know why.
A Journey Remembered
Today, Peter lives at the end of a winding gravel road in a blue-gray farmhouse on the western edge of Spring Hill, Tennessee. "If you had told me at the beginning of my trip, ‘Peter, 30 years from now you're going to be living on a farm in Tennessee,' I would have said you were totally insane," he says with a wry smile. Life has a way of throwing you curveballs.
