"American Ramble": A writer's walk from D.C. to New York City

the dictionary defines ramble as a walk for  pleasure without a definite route Martha   teichner catches up with a man who went on a  ramble and discovered America along the way in March 2021 Neil King Jr left his home  in Washington D.C and went for a walk   king would walk 330 miles all the way to  New York City it would take him 26 days   he retraced his steps with us this spring heading  off down the mall with the U.S Capitol at his back   did you feel the weight of who we are now and  what we are as a country as you set forth yeah   very much so I mean this is the front yard the  nation's front yard and it just seemed like the   perfect place to start this walk just weeks  after the January 6th attack on the capitol   after a year of covid walking through my first  covered Amish Bridge what king experienced along   the way sticking to back roads would become a book  American ramble I had set out with a Wonder first   stirred by a sickness a jolt of fear had opened  a seam of freedom and I had slipped through   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 which was just to notice  things and immerse myself in a in a walk through   one spring that had it kind of cleansed my eyes in  some ways or my spirit you'll see the exact line   between Maryland and Pennsylvania the  Mason-Dixon line it runs right through the middle   of this incredible 19th century German farm the  Mason-Dixon Line until after the Civil War the   dividing line between slavery and freedom King  asked himself whose history gets forgotten and   who's remembered who are the memory Keepers in  the 1700s it was a Mill and a farm and up the   road in York Pennsylvania he visited Michael  Helfrich the mayor in the 1920s you had the   migration of African Americans up from Bamberg  South Carolina but by the 1950s and 1960s uh the   the great fathers of the community decided it was  a ghetto and they used the first use of eminent   domain to wipe out the entire neighborhood what do  they want to put in instead you're standing in it   a park and then to add insult to injury they took  half of the park and gave it to the industry next   door for a parking lot and a new building the much  older cookes house built in 1741 barely escaped   demolition that is Thomas Paine right there  Helfrich lives in it and has turned it into a   shrine to Founding Father Thomas Paine who stayed  here during the Revolutionary War we have here our   Underground Railroad conductors across town King  met another of York's memory Keepers Samantha Dorm   we have United States Colored troops I believe  we have about 32 that fought during the Civil War   dorm leads the restoration of York's long  neglected African-American Lebanon Cemetery   since 2019 our volunteer group coming out here  we've uncovered over 800 of the flat markers the   point is to rescue the stories of lives it makes  a difference when you're learning about people who   not only look like you but who are related to you  and to be able to say I come from greatness I know   now that I'm related to over 100 individuals  on this land alone of my family [Applause]   time became a thing that odd Neil King if this  is one of the oldest rivers in the world it's   like the fifth oldest river in the world it's 320  million years I've got way older than the Nile   as he made his way along the Susquehanna River  with Paul Nevin we have all these different   tracks in here whose passion is these Native  American petroglyphs possibly a thousand years old   there's a bird track here we have this is a  little infant size uh human footprint here   and then this is like a  serpent we make a creepy crawly   as king walked time seemed to slow  down and then stop altogether as   he found himself among Pennsylvania's  Mennonites he chanced upon this [Music] well the Serendipity was the was the magic and I  met you know at so many great people that I almost   felt were put there by some higher power to to  interact with me he drifted from the Ethereal to   the concrete to the very real world of everything  his walk was not I have arrived at where I   wanted to come which is the Heart of Darkness  itself that is to say the Jersey Turnpike I-95 the main artery of Commerce for the United  States of America time took on new meaning as   he toured the final resting place of some of that  Commerce New Jersey's Middlesex County landfill   with Brian Murray the man who runs it we tip about  1600 tons of garbage a day and last year we buried   somewhere around just shy of about 540 000 tons of  garbage on top of an astonishing garbage Mountain   that will rise another 12 feet this year we're  walking through a whole scale of time a measure   of time where are we right here I think we're like  the early 60s maybe the late 50s so end of the   Eisenhower Administration basically and up there  is today and this bridge right there a depressing   return to now no as king crossed the Bayonne  Bridge he spotted his destination Manhattan I   was just sort of overwhelmed it was like I was  hit by a a wave of elation Rapture a full body   sense of elation it wasn't like the city was some  new thing but I had my eyes had been renewed in a   way [Music] a day later Neil King Jr's American  ramble ended at the ramble in New York Central   Park a twisted network of paths that reminded him  of the complexity of the country he had sampled   you know in the end I think the walk despite  all the kind of gloomy thoughts that you can   have about various episodes from our history and  our past left me a lot more optimistic in a way   about our future than um had been the case  and I walked out the door to find gratitude   and joy at three miles an hour traveling light

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 75,233

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, Neil King Jr., American Ramble, Washington D.C., New York City, 330-mile walk, esophageal cancer

Id: H5KZ-WZq8lw

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023