Am off to walk to NY today. A slow stroll, I like to say, through the fast corridor. DC to Manhattan. Off to take in a founding slice of America. Talk to her. Wonder at her. Maybe make a little sense of her. Will paddle across New York Harbor before the end of April.
Abe is my westernmost point. Due north and then east from here. Aiming to cross the Susquehanna by Easter.
Meriwether Zebulon Gump arrives at Leisure World MD.
Tonight’s lodging. The former estate in Olney of Harold Ickes, the second longest-serving cabinet secretary in US history and FDR’s secretary of Interior. FDR used to duck out here to play poker. I’ll be crashing in his bedroom.
Odd to be sitting in the living room of the former estate of Harold Ickes reading from his secret diaries as he describes playing poker with FDR exactly where I am sitting.
Gulp. Hoofing 24 miles today. But the morning is crisp and the legs feel fresh.
I met this couple today along a creek in northern MD. In a week I will be in a town in Lancaster County PA where they used to live with an old Mennonite family they haven’t communicated with for years. I said I’d drop by to tell they are well. They thanked me.
You see a lot of this when walking the roads in northern MD. The warm and cozy of the DC suburbs gives way to a different vibe after 30 miles or so.
Day #3. Just outside Woodstock Maryland. So far the best combination of barn with tobacco drying shed. The day is proving its worth and it’s still early. Not fond of the coming rain though.
Came upon this incredible mileage marker. I have never seen anything like it but have to look for more. And the fascinating thing is, Baltimore by Google maps says 15 miles from there but 33 to Washington.
Meet Skip. My first bona fide pedestrian I have met since leaving Washington. We talked for a while and I told him what I was doing and his face lit up and he said he wished he could do the same thing and when I said goodbye, he said “You have made my day.” His hoodie made my day
I am gathering parables. Too long to relay here. But this man Ted, when I met him at curbside, delivered an amazing eight-minute sermon about what he called the holy walk and resetting the nation’s frequency. I have other destinations, but Ted was clearly one of them.
These houses along Main Street in Hampstead MD testify to when we were still a front porch and not a private back patio people. If you’d done well you wanted to sit on the porch of your nice house and gossip with your fellows as they wandered by. The car ended that.
Been savoring this day for a while. Just 15 miles up from Hampstead through Young Mans Fancy and across the Mason Dixon to Railroad PA. Plenty of time to take in all sights and serendipities. Rain all gone. Legs eager to get back at it.
This is Shipley‘s house along Grave Run Road south of Young Man’s Fancy. The main house goes back to the 1830s. Germans built it, he said. It used to have two doors in front. One for the living to go in and out of and the other to carry out the dead.
Welcome to Young Man’s Fancy.
Until around World War I, every life in this Maryland cemetery was tabulated down to the day no matter how long it had been. And then all of a sudden the days and months were no longer counted. Only the years mattered then.
Lunch (and breakfast) at the Watering Hole before crossing into Pennsylvania. That’s a big crossing there. Aptly, I’m in Freeland MD en route to New Freedom PA.
When I dreamt about walking along the Mason Dixon line I dreamt of finding a farm exactly like this. That two-lane track is the border, once the deepest of diving lines. The old barns are in Maryland and the farmhouse is in Pennsylvania.
Stayed here at the Jackson House in Railroad PA and heading now to York up these tracks.
Abraham Lincoln came here in 1863. He took the track to the left on his way to giving an address in Gettysburg that you may have heard of. He came here again in 1865 and took the track to the right on the way to his burial in the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield Illinois.
Am in York PA today. So many layers here, all complex and elusive, each a mile deep. This North Penn Graffiti Wall changes regularly. One historian calls it “our daily newspaper.”
It wasn’t until Samantha really began to look and to make the connections between the headstones here did she realize the not just four or five of her descendants were buried in this cemetery in York, but more than a hundred were.
Back on the road heading northeast to Wrightsville. A 12 mile morning stroll. Bill and Alec got Easter duty at the York Goodwill #5 fire station, active since 1839. The fox above them is their mascot. Yes, they have slid down the brass pole many times in their service.
Have arrived at the Susquehanna. This was once the start of the great beyond to the Europeans nearer to the coast. Those footings beneath the ‘30s bridge are from the Civil War bridge burned to keep the Confederates from crossing. Rivers demand respect like nothing else. Onward.
What a day. Walked from York to the Susquehanna River and then took a boat with a true American cultural pioneer to see the only examples of Native American petroglyphs in the entire northeastern United States.
Came to Lancaster in part to pay homage to a hero, Thaddeus Stevens. As we debate monuments and what to tear down, let’s hold up the legacy of brave fighters like Stevens. One of the true greats of the 19th century. Read his grave inscription.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the moral compass from Stevens was his nemesis, President James Buchanan. I got a tour of Buchanan’s house and saw, oddly, the bed he died in.
Of this bridge I sing.

An utterly gorgeous arching stone bridge covered with grass for a lane that now goes nowhere but is all the more eloquent for it.
I wandered into the Zimmerman’s butcher shop in Farmersville PA and we got to talking. They don’t make sandwiches but they were kind enough to make this homemade bologna and cheese concoction as a gift for me, the passing stranger. Great folks.
These adorable Mennonite ninth graders were playing a mean game of softball. The girls were fantastic fielders and hitters in their long floral dresses. Afterwards, they insisted on singing two hymns for me. I’ve rarely been so moved.
The Mystic Order of the Solitary.

Ephrata PA.

A prime destination.
“I’m not sure what to make of you Neil King but I am going to give you some cookies,” said the Mennonite farrier Matt after our chat in his workshop. His wife gave me a bag of four cookies she had made.
I found a photo at the Library of Congress taken in 1942 of this household where seven generations of the Fry family had lived. I found the house today. They are now onto their 10th generation. They sent a wagon to supply troops at Valley Forge from the mill on this farm.
Few trees inspire awe quite like a giant sycamore. This one at a famous site in Chester County has to be at least as old as the house, built in the mid 1700s.
This is the first US military hospital ever built. It’s called Washington Hall. Built in 1777 before Washington went to winter at Valley Forge. A potent site on a day so beautiful.
Lunch of champions.

It’s kind of scary but everything is telling me now that I’n nearing Philadelphia. The food, the distant hum of traffic. Even my phone. About 30 miles away.

Not too keen to leave the countryside behind.
On the Horse Shoe Trail to Valley Forge.

A sped up slow walk.

Going there to understand how we finally came around to remembering that winter of 1777-78.
Eating last night’s leftovers in front of the bizarre Lafayette’s Quarters with the Pennsylvania Turnpike right at my back. Planning to fish Valley Creek that runs through Valley Forge.

1777 meets I-76.
Washington did not sleep here. Nor did his troops. This 12-man hut was built in the 1950s as part of the long effort to re-create and remember a single winter at a place called Valley Forge in 1777. Interesting thing is—and there are many of them—they have never found the Forge..
Crossing into Philly.
I’m fascinated by the rise of athletics and leisure as a thing in American life. This boat house along the famous Boathouse Row in Philadelphia speaks to one of those moments. – bei Pennsylvania Barge Club
One of my prime destinations. When Tocqueville came to America in 1831, it was not to study our democracy but our penal system. Philly’s Eastern State Penitentiary above any other drew him here. It was by far the most visited and most studied prison in the 19th century.
The Eye of God window to the sky in a solitary cell at Philly’s Eastern State Penitentiary. – bei Eastern State Penitentiary
You may know PA is the Keystone State. Do you know why? That stone in the middle is the keystone. It creates a structure that holds firm even without the window frame. The stone on the right is the North. The one on the left is the South. Pennsylvania holds the whole together.
Philadelphia is of course a city famous for its murals. They are everywhere, and tell the city’s long story in vivid form. This is a great one just across the street from the Fair Hill Burial Grounds, where I went with the great @SigneWilk as my guide.
William Penn stands 37 feet high atop Philly’s city hall, the tallest statue on any building in the world. The first of three generations of Calder sculptors made this, which doesn’t move in the breeze. Penn is facing northeast, my coordinates too as I continue on toward New York
Dropped by the cave where the 17th century mystic doomsayer Johannes Kelpius lived in the Wissahickon Valley in the very outer edge of artsy Philadelphia.He came here in 1694 expecting the world to end the next year.

I can attest to the fact that he was wrong.
Sorry. Posting the full Johannes Kelpius cave video here.
I went to Abington Township to hail Benjamin Lay.

He was perhaps America’s first true ruckus maker, a performance artist with great courage and conviction and among our first abolitionists. He was a dwarf, a hunchback, and a true moral giant.

I found this drawing there.
You know you’re finally out of exurban Philly when you pass a farmhouse with a one-horse open sleigh on the front porch.
The Mercer Museum, a big pilgrimage destination tor this walk. Henry Chapman Mercer was a multifaceted genius who was keen to preserve a fading America a century ago. This is quite the place.
The Mercer Tile Works. Doylestown PA.
Thanks to a friend, I slept here last night in the incredible studio at the Mercer Tile Shop. Beyond belief.
Another true milestone. The mighty Delaware. Crossed the Susquehanna on Easter and here now at the second mighty river of this trip. One stands in awe of such rivers. New Hope, PA.
Buried along the banks of the Delaware. Christmas 1776. Just south of a New Hope, PA. Washington had crossed early that morning.
The Delaware Canal towpath. Not much in the way of walking can top this.
Drumroll. Trumpet fanfare. Fife and drums. My own morning crossing won’t be quite so brisk. Or consequential.
Delaware, crossed. Her current was no contest against the force of my paddles. After two weeks in Penn’s woods, I have entered the Jerseys.
Just as he paused to sip from from the nearby spring, I paused to take this photo of this stone marker beside this suburban driveway.

But as any scientist or historian can tell you, all pauses are not created equal.
I met a guy in Grovers Mill who has a weird water tower in his backyard that many thought was a Martian landing craft in 1938, when Martians landed here during the War of the Worlds.

By an uncanny coincidence, he was wearing a SpaceX hat. Orson Welles would’ve liked that.
44 miles from where I will then paddle across the harbor to lower Manhattan. But many strange adventures in between.
Exclusive footage.

After 21 days on the road and 30 minutes paddling up this mysterious creek, including two portages to get around logjams, I have arrived at the heart of darkness: the New Jersey Turnpike itself. And I managed to make it underneath and get to the other side
Still agog that this happened. But I really did manage to kayak beneath this bizarre portion of the Jersey Turnpike. Met a guy who lent me his kayak and told me to leave it there and he would come back up river later to fetch it. The things that happen…
I got my first glimpse of the isle of Manhattan from atop the Edgeboro landfill, the highest altitude in the area and the largest landfill in New Jersey. Summiting this peak was a major objective on this walk to New York. These mounds testify to how we live.
This morning’s chore is to cross the Arthur Kill right here from Perth Amboy to Staten Island. One of those little boats will do the trick. This is how the colonials got back and forth to NY. What a morning.
Nothing beats the kindness of strangers. In this case, Stu Conway got me across the Arthur Kill. Treading the length of Staten Island now.
I wonder how many New Yorkers have explored the completely creepy New York City Farm Colony ruins in the heart of Staten Island. A huge and astonishing place that once housed thousands of poor people who grew vegetables and even grain here. The forest is taking it all over now.
After 25 days, I crumple at the sight of her. Speechless. The view now from the Bayonne Bridge.
But before I go further I must salute my gracious host Danuta. She of the Victorian Bed & Breakfast of Staten Island. A Polish emigre who insisted on doing my laundry and serving me dinner, so I said she actually ran a B, B, D & L. I called her my beautiful launderette.
Snuck up behind her. Will see her in all her magnificence tomorrow.
Crossing this glitter path soon. And from there, seven or eight miles left to Morningside Heights. Twenty six days of wonder to get here from DC.
The great Kevin Murray, my Hudson captain for the day, got me across. And I thank hardly for that.
The extraordinary survivor tree, a resilient Calley pear that survived the collapsing towers, in full leafing flower at the 9/11 Memorial.
Thanking Aaron for the perfect welcome to New York: a stellar wide-open game of chess in which he played the Taimanov variation of the Sicilian defense. But it was no match for what I sprang on him in the opposite corner. St. Mark’s Place.
I completed my 26-day ramble from DC to NY. If any one line stands out, it’s the one recited to me by a Mennonite teacher in Lancaster County:

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

That simple walk transformed and renewed me.
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