Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time

Forsthoefel, Andrew

ISBN 10: 1632867001 / ISBN 13: 9781632867001

Published by Bloomsbury, New York, 2017

About this Item

Following graduation from Middlebury College, 23-year-old Forsthoefel hatched a plan to leave his mother s home in suburban Philadelphia and walk until he spent all his money or hit the Pacific Ocean, whichever came first. Guided by his literary heroes Rainer Maria Rilke, Khalil Gibran, and Walt Whitman (whose democratic spirit is a major influence here), Forsthoefel began traveling west with the bare minimum for shelter, a sign reading "Walking to Listen," and the vague idea that his trip would be "like a graduate program in the human experience. The memoir is genuine kinship and transcendence that buoy the narrative and make the adventure an uplifting outreach. In excellent condition, first printing, inscribed by the author to Peg.

Seller Inventory # 274971

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time
• Publisher: Bloomsbury, New York
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1632867001
• ISBN 13: 9781632867001
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First edition.
• Condition: fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: fine
• Signed: Inscribed by author
• Book Type: book

About this title

Synopsis

A memoir of one young man’s coming of age on a journey across America--told through the stories of the people of all ages, races, and inclinations he meets along the way.

Life is fast, and I’ve found it’s easy to confuse the miraculous for the mundane, so I’m slowing down, way down, in order to give my full presence to the extraordinary that infuses each moment and resides in every one of us.

At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen." He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn’t know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide.

In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt. But he also encountered incredible kindness from strangers. Thousands shared their stories with him, sometimes confiding their prejudices, too. Often he didn’t know how to respond. How to find unity in diversity? How to stay connected, even as fear works to tear us apart? He listened for answers to these questions, and to the existential questions every human must face, and began to find that the answer might be in listening itself.

Ultimately, it’s the stories of others living all along the roads of America that carry this journey and sing out in a hopeful, heartfelt book about how a life is made, and how our nation defines itself on the most human level.

About the Author

Andrew Forsthoefel is a writer, radio producer, and public speaker. After graduating from Middlebury College in 2011, he spent nearly a year walking across the United States. It was the greatest privilege and blessing of his life. He now facilitates workshops on walking and listening as practices in personal transformation, interconnection, and conflict resolution. He is currently based in Northampton, Massachusetts.