Transforming Journeys: Questions for Journeyers

Transforming Journeys is a book about people who have gone on transforming journeys on foot, on bicycle, by kayak, and other human-powered means. It's about who these people are, why they go on these journeys, how the treks changed them, and how they brought what they learned on the road back to civilization and carried it forward into their new life.

For the book, I'm asking a series of questions about what made people decide to take their trip, what happened during the trip, what events really transformed them, and how they re-entered the ordinary world when it was done. I'd like to find out what the personality pattern is of journeyers, and what the template is for life change. I'd like the book to inspire and encourage people who are getting ready to make these journeys to take the leap and head out. I also hope to find principles of change and growth that would apply to most people, so that even people who are unable to physically go out on a trek can use them to make changes and transform their lives.

There is no minimum distance that you need to have covered in order to be included. Some people get more out of a three-day trek than others get in 3,000 miles. If you've gone on a journey that changed your life, I'd like to hear from you.

About me:

I walked most of the Appalachian Trail in 1996, and it changed my life. I made that trip because my life was not working. I had spent most of my twenties wandering around, moving from city to city, doing temp jobs. In my early thirties, I was tired of this, and felt there was a "place" I needed to get to: not a physical place, but an emotional, psychological, spiritual one. And although the place was not physical, somehow I knew the only way to get there was to physically walk a great distance, a long, slow, arduous process. A pilgrimage. I didn't know what the place was or what I would find there, but trusted that it existed, it was reachable, and it was as necessary as blood or breath. When I heard about the 2,150-mile Appalachian Trail, running through the mountains from Georgia to Maine, I knew it was the Long Walk I needed.

And it worked. By the time I reached Maine I had changed, deeply. I had outwalked the old burdens, hurts, fears, and confusions that seemed to make my load so heavy in the first part of the trip. Every mountain I walked over had become a part of me; I felt wider and deeper, with a groundedness no one could ever take away. I had endured months of physical hardship, had trusted thousands of strangers and (except in rare cases) had been rewarded with nothing but help and kindness, and I had outwalked the horizon more times than I could count. I would never feel the same limitations I'd felt before.

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