Peter Jenkins, A Walk Across America

It was a lazy weekend.  Cold weather kept me indoors reading.  I'm trying hard to get my Amazon reviews done.  My Alaska road trip created a backlog from which I've yet to recover.  I have 100 reviews of items to review, and 50 of them are books.

Somewhere in all this online Googling and reminiscing, I read an old review I had written about Peter Jenkins' "A Walk Across America."  The book was published in 1977 but I didn't read it until 2009.  I first saw the book "A Walk Across America" in the PX in Kaiserslautern and wanted to read the book in 1977.  Even as a 17-year-old I was fascinated with the idea of walking long distance and didn't know many who also had such ideas.  I finally read that first Jenkins book while in New Jersey in the early 2000s.  I had borrowed a copy from the post library. 

Jenkin's book was one of several books that inspired me to hike and travel once I retired from the army.  John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charlie" got me interested in wanting to see Montana and William Least Heat-Moon's "Blue Highways" inspired me to explore more of our backroads and experience the Lewis-and-Clark trail.  It's been ten years since I took off my uniform (no regrets there!) and I'm still traveling and hiking.

Jenkins was a new college graduate in his first book, disillusioned with the country, and decided to walk from New York City with his malamute dog Cooper.  Cooper was killed in a truck accident in Tennessee.  In New Orleans he meets Barbara Jo Pennell, a Christian woman whom he falls in love with and marries.  Together they continue their walking journey and co-write "The Walk West," their adventure walking from Louisiana to Oregon.

I read both books.  The first one is still the classic which shot Jenkins to fame as a travel writer, even though Barbara did most of the writing.  In the second book Jenkins is honest about his impatience with Barbara's slower pace, especially once she's pregnant and crossing the Cascades.  I didn't like how he treated her, so it was no surprise to find out that the 1976 marriage ended in a bitter divorce in 1987.

The problem with having that first big hit being the first book out of seven is that subsequent books don't quite measure up.  Jenkins since then has written about sailing around the Gulf of Mexico, walking across China and exploring Alaska, but the reviews to those books don't measure up to his Walk Across America book.  He's now married to third wife Rita Jorgensen and they live in Spring Hill, TN.  He has six kids.  His older kids with Barbara, Luke, Julianna and Jedidiah, are now adults.  Jedidiah took time off as a lawyer to ride a bicycle from Oregon to Patagoniain 2014 and is an active social media poster.  He seems close to his mom and mentions her occasionally on his Instagram account.

What is Peter doing now? Peter Jenkins has a Facebook page but most of his posts seem to talk about his earlier years, when Walk Across America made him the country's first travel writer.  Even the photos of himself go back to the 1970s when he was young and blond. He doesn't engage with his 6800+ followers.  He doesn't sound like a happy man.  He mentions his 1957 Chevy Station Wagon.  His latest book is due out this year and talks about his road trips in the Chevy reliving old memories and seeing people he met years ago who are still alive. I'm interested in reading that.

So why am I so interested in Peter Jenkins?  He was one of the first travel writers and I liked his first book.  I was disappointed to read about his second divorce.  His later books all seemed forced on him as subjects by his editor and were never the hits like his first book.  I should have read "Looking for Alaska" before heading out on my road trip last summer, but a synopsis on Amazon tells me he went up there to live in Seward with wife #3 so he can get paid to do crazy things around the state and write about it all.   There are other more engaging books about Alaska since his 2001 book about Alaska. Forced travel for the sake of getting paid never sound as honest as spontaneous walks across a vast country.  I found this to be true for Bill Bryson's books as well.

Barbara Jo Pennell is the one I admire.  She helped edit and write the first two books.  She gets no credit for the first book.  She mentions in an interview that that was Peter's journey alone.  She is credited for writing the second book.  Another joint book published in 1985 talks about their Christian life together, but that didn't sell well.  The divorce was a bitter one and she was left to raise the kids while Peter went off with wife #3 on new adventures.

I got carried away Googling the Jenkins.  Reading about his life brought me back to my own wanderlust. At 5pm I finally took the dogs out to walk a 4-mile loop around the southern portion of Ranchos San Pedro's dirt paths.  It was a bit warmer today than yesterday, but it only reached 58F.  Another two-day storm is due our way mid-week.

http://podbay.fm/show/925468077/e/1457627053?autostart=1 (Interview starts at 2:39 minutes)