"American Ramble": A writer's walk from D.C. to New York, and through history

In March 2021, Neil King Jr., left his home in Washington, D.C., and went for a walk. He would walk 330 miles, all the way to New York City. It took him 26 days.

After a career as a Wall Street Journal reporter, the walk was his way of contemplating America, past and present – and, at 61, his own life after surviving esophageal cancer. "I was off to do something that was very pure and basic," King said, "which was just to notice things and immerse myself in a walk through one spring that had kind of cleansed my eyes in some ways, or my spirit." 

Just weeks after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, after a year of COVID, what King experienced along the way, sticking to back roads, would become a book: "American Ramble."