Trespassing Across America - 04/03/21

 Hello Environmentalists, 

Book 20: Trespassing Across America: One Man's Epic, Never-Done-Before (and Sort of Illegal) Hike Across the Heartland. (6/10)

Premise: An almost 30 year old author travels the route of the proposed XL pipe line. 

The book starts in Alaska where the author Ken Ilgunas is working at an oil refinery. He bounces between lots of different jobs and trips. Mentioning he has hitchhiked before, that is how he starts this journey. From Denver up into Ontario, Ken hikes, and hitchhikes to where the oil for the pipeline is coming out of the ground. He then starts his journey hiking south towards Texas. 

Most of his time is spent walking through fields, hopping over fences, and doing his best to avoid property owners, cows, and roads. He talks about the beauty of the heartland and does a lot of introspective thinking. Eventually when he gets towards the end of his journey he starts having to take roads more often for safety and legality. Part way into his journey he finds he can ask churches or other people in small towns and rely on their hospitality heavily for either a place to stay or to set up camp on their lawn, a hot meal, and often a shower. He finally reaches his destination and puts his feet in the water off the Texas coast. 

The story of this book is very good. But I do have some gripes. First of which the author spends some time talking about sexual fantasies, which I'm sure he had but really do not have a place in this book. Next this story is a somewhat coming of age novel, even though Ken is almost 30 when he starts it, he has a lot of misconceptions, and even mentions how his opinion of Christians has changed and he often relied on churches or their congregation to provide him places to stay and meals to eat. However, he talks down about the people from the heart land a lot. As an English Major, Liberal, and Environmentalist as he often reminds his readers he talks as if he smarter than others. Even going to go as far as saying "They assume I know little because I say little, I know they no little because they say a lot" talking about the people who he was asking questions to. Finally he is extremely vague about the point of his journey. He mentions he just wanted to walk, it was a protest against the pipe line, it was a way to understand the people whose land and towns would be affected by the pipeline, and he wanted to see the nature unchanged before the pipeline went into the ground. It really feels like he was just trying to land on whatever foot made him sound or feel the best. 

I understand he is human, and parts of this book are very raw, but having read several books about on foot travels before, so much of what he said just sounded like Ken was trying to inflate his own ego. Parts of the book are written like he wants a round of applause. What he did was very impressive. From no hiking skill hopping right into a 1900 mile hike, sticking to it even when it got rough. But the large chunks of the book where he is not talking about the trip, but rather writing to inflate his own ego taint the story for me. 

So go hop some fences and explore new roads

and remember dear reader, Stay Vivid.