Why I Walked from Canada to L.A. and the Impact on My Life
Why I Walked from Canada to L.A. and the Impact on My Life
For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to the idea of going for a long walk.
It has always called to me as a way to explore Earth, to deepen my connections to life, and to become myself — with simple living at my core.
At the age of 38, by now, I would have expected to have completed a long walk. There were my three bicycle rides across the US, there was my 100 miles hiking in the Appalachians, and multiple canoe journeys into the wilderness alone. In the winter of 2023-2024 I was sitting in meditation on day six of my Vipassana and it came to me so clearly. It was time for the walk. I’d be on the West Coast, so the Pacific Coast Highway from the border of Canada down to Southern California it would be. It is, after all, one of the most loved stretches of highway in the world for all the natural beauty that makes it.
On July 28th, 2024, I set out from the Peace Arch Monument, at the Canada/US border in Washington with Los Angeles, California as my final destination.
The 1,600 miles of walking along the Pacific Coast Highway and neighboring roads, would give me five months to pursue exactly what I was seeking.
So what exactly was I seeking on this long walk? And did I find what I was looking for?
That’s what I’ll share with you today.
Slowing Down and Living Simply
Although many know me for living simply, I didn’t feel like I was living nearly as simply as I wanted to be. Although I had removed myself from the rat race of life, in some ways it had creeped back up. Sure, my time was spent pursuing a greater mission, but I felt like I had lost my balance and I was spinning my wheels for multiple years.
The walk was an opportunity to slow down.
There’s no slower way to move than walking really. At a walking speed of three miles per hour, and 1,600 miles to cover, I’d have over 5,000 hours of moving slow. In a fast paced world, I need to be diligent about designing myself more slowly. Walking was the answer this year. Everything about my existence has slowed down.
To slow down meant to be more mindfully in the present moment. To exist in a state of gratitude for life. To being in love with everything. To embracing my interconnectedness with it all. Clarity and focus … inner peace … wholeness and completeness within. This all came naturally as I slowed down.
The walk was also a means to simplify my physical possessions. To prepare for the walk, I downsized to only what I could walk with. After a couple weeks, I added a walking cart to my possessions, and for the months ahead, there I was, pushing everything in the world that I owned down the highway to L.A.
In this place, I could more easily surrender to the natural flow of life. Walking. Breathing. Being with Earth. Sleeping outside. Resting and stretching my body. Harvesting food and medicine from the land. Drinking water. Swimming. Reading. Thinking. This all came so much more fluidly with my life so simplified.
I don’t want this to all sound like pure joy though. I had my computer with me and spent hundreds of hours on it. But still, I had to walk about 15 miles on over 100 days. There was no getting around it. I had to be out walking, slowly walking.
Connection with Earth
Over the last decade, I have transformed my relationship to Earth in a manner that would have shocked me if it happened overnight. Everywhere I go, there is the Earth. I am connected and I am in love.
Even so, it has been easy to forget this and get lost in all the tasks of life. And even though I remained very busy on the road, Earth was here with me every day.
I spent around 1,000 miles on the Pacific Ocean, getting to know this body of water with a deep level of intimacy. I swam in her water, along with many rivers and creeks that ultimately flowed back to the sea. On the beaches of Oregon, I felt I had been transported out of the United States. I have been to every state except Alaska and this felt more like Southeast Asia or Brazil to me than any state in the US. My love of adventure and new experiences flooded into me in this moment. The majority of this entire walk was an exploration of places I had never been before. I now know this country substantially more than I did before.
I experienced the birds in a new way. I connected with the robins, as they were on a migration south just as I was. Many times I just listened to the birds and felt my mind open up to a deeper connection with all life. I remember looking into the eyes of a sitting vulture and feeling love like I never had before. Even the cows are different to me now. The love that I feel in their presence. I sit here in a little shack in Ojai, California writing this and hear the song birds singing. I am home on Earth and the birds keep me here.
I timed the weather to catch the most warmth and as much of the dry season as possible. What I hadn’t realized is that I’d be walking with the salmon. From Washington in August, all the way to Marin County, California in December, I walked along creeks and over rivers where I experienced the salmon and trout running up the rivers to continue their cycle of life. At every opportunity, I had nourished myself from this deeply nourishing source of life — whether through simply being in their presence or through eating them. (I didn’t fish. I sourced from local fishermen and fisheries.)
The redwoods left a profound impact on me and I deeply embraced the practice of hugging trees. My connection to the trees has deepened, thanks especially to the cedar of Washington, the redwoods of Northern California, and the Eucalyptus of Southern California.
Being out walking, meant being out harvesting food. Apples, plums, greens, herbs, mushrooms and more. My diet did mostly come from the local food co-ops, being that my time was limited and I had other commitments, but a substantial portion of my food came from foraging the bounty along the roadsides.
Oh, and the whales, dolphins, harbor seals and elephant seals … you certainly don’t experience these while walking on the Pacific Crest Trail. I walked through regions that were some of the most alive places I have ever been on Earth.
Some of my most intimate experiences with our animal relatives came through removing hundreds of car-killed animals from the roadside and placing them in the forest or upon the grass where they could return to Earth.
I have fallen back in love with Earth and the diversity of life we share this home with.
Walking in my homemade, natural fiber, naturally dyed clothes and either barefoot or in my homemade walking shoes I felt close to Earth. I lost a few items of clothing and was able to let them go, knowing they would return to Earth, doing no harm. Each time I replaced the leather soles on my shoes I gave them to someone as a memento of my walk or I buried them in the woods, where they would become soil. In walking 600 miles barefoot and 1,000 miles in my simple, natural fiber shoes, I learned that I could do a major endeavor like this without the need for any corporation or advanced technology. Doing the entire trip in my homemade clothes was a powerful step in breaking free from all synthetics and the destructive clothing industry. (I did carry a plastic poncho with me for a couple months, and wore it a few times.)
I set out to dissolve more of the separateness with Earth and to become more interconnected with all life. The feelings in my body tell me without a doubt, that this walk was a meaningful chapter in this life direction.
An Experiment in Humanity
Time with Earth abounded, but so did time with people.
Many people asked why I wasn’t walking the Pacific Crest Trail. As much as I would have loved that, this walk was an experiment in humanity. I was very curious of what it would be like to walk on the roads and highways from town to town and to see how people would receive me. There were many that judged me as a threat to their safety or up to no good, but just as many or more approached me with curiosity and intrigue. Many people stopped their cars and joined me walking on the roadside, sometimes for a few steps and sometimes for multiple hours. Many people who have followed me from afar came across me walking right through their town. This was a joy. Sometimes they had their eyes open for me, knowing that I’d be coming through soon, other times they were totally surprised, having no idea I was even on a walk, assuming I was in Florida or North Carolina. There were many happy honks and hollers, as well as a some middle fingers and blarings of a car horn.
In my 180 days on the road, I slept in ~110 places, ~70 of which were camping and ~40 were hosts. I spent ~110 nights inside and the rest of my nights outdoors in campgrounds, patches of forest, beaches and sometimes in whatever flat space I could find just off the road. In every stretch of storms, I was taken in by a host (which is why I didn’t have the need for a rain jacket.) I look at some very deep and meaningful connections with my hosts and I am so grateful for them. I share gratitude to all the hosts here.
Although I did not always speak with the compassion that I desired, I practiced Compassionate Communication with many of those who walked with me, my hosts and in passing moments with people as I walked past their homes and through their towns. I even learned to respond with love, to every person who expressed anger to me on the road.
Originally I planned for this to be a public walk, but with my heavy workload, I found that I couldn’t manage this. My Dear Friend Brent Saeli joined for Washington and Oregon and was an incredible support.
The Walk … A Vessel
Walking is a vessel for me.
The walk had a start and an end, which created a space for me to set goals and intentions.
Over the last years, I have been letting go of so much. I am letting go of attachment to outcome, and to the best of my ability, even thought of outcome. When I set out on this walk, I decided this would be a foundational chapter of my life, and that I would be turning a page into the next chapter upon arriving in Los Angeles.
I’ve had a to-do list my entire adult life, and it has generally been never ending. My ambitions are deep and that is both a strength and weakness. Generally, I have taken on more than I can handle and this walk was a way to change that. I committed to finishing everything on my plate before completing the walk, or giving up on it. My to-do list could either be completed or burned. Either way, I’d arrive in Los Angeles with a fresh start.
This walk was a vessel for emptying myself of what no longer served me. A vessel for letting go … of surrender … of fostering non-attachment.
This vessel was an opportunity to deepen into many of my practices — truth, integrity, gratitude, mindfulness, presence, celebration of life, compassion, empathy, interconnectedness, equanimity, universal love — my main focuses of the journey.
This all can be accomplished without walking, but the walking helped to facilitate it. The walking nurtured the environment in my mind. This was both a physical and mental journey, intertwined together.
A Vessel for Truth
For the first portion of the walk, I carried a sign, “Walking Canada to L.A. for Inner Truth.” This wasn’t just a theory, but a concrete practice. Setting out on the journey, I made a commitment to myself. Before arriving in L.A., I would release everything in my mind that I’d been holding back, everything I’d been embarrassed to share, every secret that I had inside. I committed to having nothing to guard or protect. To come into a state of complete transparency and truth.
One of my tools for sharing my truth was a series of nine videos that I published on YouTube. These are all viewable for anyone who would like to have access to this information and embark on this journey of truth with me. I’ve also published transcripts of each video.
As of January 2025, I am without a single secret. I am holding nothing from you. I exist in a state of utter transparency. I write on this in more depth here: My Commitment to Truth and Transparency
To Shed My Past and Walk into My Future
This walk provided a physical manifestation for this manifesto.
With each day on the road, I shed more of my past and walked into the present. I shed what no longer served me.
With the practice of mourning, I tended to many of my relationships that needed healing.
As I walked, I sang songs that opened me up and helped me to become more deeply myself.
I did deep inner work and healing work and practiced the characteristics that I want to more deeply embody. I listened to audiobooks, making my time on the highway a classroom. Ram Dass kept me company along with Marshall Rosenberg, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sadhguru and others.
I am holding onto very little from the past. I have healed so much of what needed healing. I have let so much of it go.
Bringing My Life into Integrity
The pinnacle of my drive is for integrity. Not outside of me, but inside of me. To embody a life of deep integrity. Running a nonprofit, managing a team and taking on more than I could handle all took a toll on my integrity over the last years. This walk was a vessel, to bring every aspect of my life into more integrity. It is impossible to do this in a world where our actions are so deeply interconnected with destruction and injustice. Even being on this computer is a hit to my integrity in a way, but six months after leaving from the Canadian border, I am what could have taken many years further on my journey of integrity.
The practice of integrity is a means to purify my being with the ultimate goal and allows me to walk among society in a way that truth and integrity are what becomes around me.
I am practicing integrity in a manner of depth that purifies my being and allows me to walk among society in a way that integrity is what becomes around me. My deepest aspiration is to be able to simply exist — to walk, to sit, to speak, to be — in a manner where my integrity is my message. Where my integrity soaks into those around me. I believe that this inner work and self-care is inherent to being the public servant I aim to be. As Ram Dass said, “We work on ourselves so that we can be of service to others.”
Entering into Non-Ownership
As I shared earlier, to prepare for the walk, I downsized my possessions to only what I could walk with. Every possession I owned has been on this walking cart with me. But that wasn’t the end goal. This was merely a stage, preparing me for a decade plus dream, to enter into a state of non-ownership. To become the human who owns nothing.
Upon arriving in Los Angeles in just a few days, I will give away everything that I own (yes, even this computer and the clothes on my back). I have even embraced this practice of non-ownership in the digital realm. From before the moment I set out on this walk, my arrival in Los Angeles was never the completion, but a beginning. A beginning I was not yet ready — mentally or physically — to embark upon. The walk was a staging ground. A way to slow down and simplify my life. A time of deepening my love of Earth and the plants and animals we share this home with. A time for deepening my relationships with humanity. A deepening of my practices of truth and integrity and connection to life.
I’m ready for what six months ago I could fathom, but not embrace.