Jesse WhiteCrow: Writer Who Walked America
After A 3-Year North American Trek, WhiteCrow Resettles - and Writes
Sep 16, 2008
Jesse WhiteCrow is an extreme traveler and writer who, after three years of walking across America, completed his transient mission and has begun the next part: the book.
In the Part One of the series, WhiteCrow talked about the basics of writing while on the trail. In the Part Two, he talked about the transition from the walk to life in an Airstream trailer, where he begins to distill his life-altering experience into a book.
He is still working to re-adapt to a more or less stationary life with relative safety and comfort. Likely easier said than done. (He blogged throughout the experience: WhiteCrow Walking.)
Suite101: How has the transition into a life of relative "normalcy" been going, now that you've been at it for some months now?
Jesse WhiteCrow:With many tribes and people I have lived, slept, grown, and come home. It is a great difficulty to touch real leather, and then have someone place synthetic fabric in your hand saying, "This is good. It will keep you warmer. Come home to this and no insects will feed their young on it. Here, no animals will come up against you in the night." These are hard months.
S101: How do you manage?
JWC: Months are a long time to sit still when the leaves are getting sweet with the coming of color. Early in the morning I rise and before coffee I walk four miles by the sound of water waking flies in the brook. It is easy to see where the black bear gets fat on the berries. Insects are cold and slow in the morning so I keep my blood. I think that maybe I will get a letter or a call that will beg me back to the way of the walk, but this is the time to write and I see no available rescue. I pray for a hard winter so that all I hold is a blanket and a pen...or computer. Distractions are few when your whole world is neck deep in remembering also. Writing is hard because I live alone in borrowed woods. On the walk the road always gave me people, even a woman to kiss sometimes.
S101: How is the writing process going? Any agents or leads to the publishing outcome, to speak of?
JWC: There have been no agents yet. No talk really. I am great at the trade...selling? That is a separate skill. I read that book Do What You Love And The Money Will Follow. This is what I do while I wait on winter. This is what I did as I walked America. I trusted it would all turn out and I wouldn't go hungry....much.
I walked each day, all day to get across America... what was really two walks across America. That proved to be enough.
This is how I try to write....but I liked using my legs better. The book has many levels, door, venues. It is about walking America, yes, but it is about being a man and not knowing how to be one in the 21st Century.
It is about being going back to go forward. It is about leaving everything to go home, and finding out that Home is the leaving. It is about being now 44 and growing without a father and where this puts our feet in a time when sons need their fathers the most. I don't want or intend to preach. I fall down. I make mistakes.
The book is one way home. There is so much more. So much. The journals are just beginning to be opened....six out of 12 remain untouched...It is all just beginning.
Related story:
Books and Writing About Vagabond Travels
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