As I walk in the door, the smell of homemade banana muffins envelopes me in a warm embrace. We gather around a rustic kitchen table, nursing mugs of hot tea with honey, and try to remember 1973. America was in turmoil. We had just pulled out of Vietnam, the draft was over, and the country was polarized as never before. Disillusioned, Peter decided to give his country one last chance.
"My walk across America was about trying to figure out who I was and what I was going to be and how I fit into my own country, if I was going to fit into my own country," he remembers.
Peter fell in love with the America he found. He walked beside mountain men and hippies. He benefitted from the kindness of strangers. And he wrote it down, painting a compelling portrait of the country with the stories of diverse men and women.
"I was trained as an artist and sculptor," says Peter, who earned a degree in art from New York's Alfred University before hitting the road. "I take these people, and I sort of lift them up on a pedestal. It's time to shine the light on their lives, to show how interesting and inspiring they can be."
A New Englander Goes South
He thought this walk of his would take five months. It took five years. But when he finally quit wandering, he came back to Tennessee.
"After spending five years walking across the country and living in almost every possible element of the American way, I just decided that the South was where I wanted to be," Peter says. "I'm the kind of person who can feel at home anywhere, but I've never felt as much at home as I do here."
