Peter Jenkins

So, every Wednesday at my office, we have speakers come in for what are basically devotionals. This week our speaker was Peter Jenkins, author of A Walk Across America, which is basically the Into the Wild of the 1970-80s. I remember reading it years ago in junior high or something after scouring my parents' bookshelves for summer reading. (because I'm a nerd)

On Wednesday, Jenkins shared some stories from the beginning of his trip, including how he arrived at the decision to begin what ended up being a 5-year walk across America. Most of his talk revolved around stories from that trip, but eventually he focused on fear--the fear he faced as a recent college grad from Connecticut beginning a journey straight into the South, where every pick-up driver was a cast member from Deliverance. How he ended up living in an all-black community for 5 months, and what it felt like to be a minority for the first time in his life.

Jenkins was fresh from Woodstock and had the mindset that America was completely screwed up. Which is what I think a lot of us think. We're part of a generation that's been given everything and desperately wants to give something back. But our generation sees what some of the leaders before us have done, how they've corrupted societies, how they've destroyed the environment, and we get the impression that it will take some massive force or some political savior to change the world. Jenkins set out to prove himself wrong--to see if America really was beyond hope. I wonder if sometimes we only see America and the world in a big picture sense, and forget about the people who actually live in it. That it's not a government that makes a country, but the people.