When you find yourself in your sixties, time takes on new meaning. It is stunningly clear that life doesn't go on forever. At sixty, you are midway between forty and eighty. Bones begin to creak, blood pressure and other things rise. Strange, unmentionable things are happening to the temple that is your body. You realize that time is finite and you can't keep putting things off.
Shortly after I turned sixty, I realized that I wanted to mark my sixty-fifth birthday in December 2011 with an epic act that would combine physical activity with reflection on how to use the next twenty years, should I be lucky enough to experience them in good health. Walking across the United States fit the bill perfectly.
I shared the idea with my son, Casey, who thought it was cool. Then, one night in February 2010, at dinner with candles lit and the fireplace flickering, I put the idea out to my husband, Lincoln. Lo and behold, he was unbelievably receptive, and over many dinners, we had fun exploring the practicalities of how we'd do it.
Choosing Route 20 was easy. It passes within a couple miles of our house. It's a cross-country route that's full of history. From Boston to the Pacific coast of Oregon, it traces the westward embrace of this continent by the people and ideas (good and bad with the benefit of hindsight) that created our country.
So, one cold morning in February 2011, I stepped out from the waterfront in Boston and walked 7.5 miles to Watertown. Walking just a few days here and there, it took me until the following April to make it past Albany.
Fast forward, it's 2016. I turn seventy this year, and I'm about to cross the Snake River from Idaho to Oregon. Nearly 3,000 miles of Route 20 lie behind me. Although I've occasionally deviated from that road, it took me across the Mississippi, 425 miles through Nebraska, and will be my guide through vast, empty eastern Oregon. One day this year, it is very likely that Lincoln and I will splash into the Pacific in Newport, Oregon … one mile west of the official end of the road.
While I've been on this journey, things have happened. My mother died, my father died, my younger sister died, one of my businesses grew, another sputtered, and my son got engaged.
Each year that I've stepped back onto Route 20, it's a fresh moment to experience muscle soreness, blisters, relearn how to pack my daypack, and coexist with Lincoln in the used RV (named Moby) we bought in western Iowa. Every day, I'm out exploring America one step at a time. I'm not sure I've discovered the secret to living the perfect life in my aging years, but a few hundred miles still stretch ahead … and each one of them is another chance for an epiphany.
—NANCY
