Jonathon Stalls (he, his) spent 242 days walking across the United States in 2010 and has continued to move alongside thousands of people for thousands of miles. He identifies as a ‘walking artist’ with his creative project, Intrinsic Paths. He also founded Walk2Connect in 2012. His work currently moves in the realms of pen and ink drawing, writing and poetry, storytelling with the Pedestrian Dignity project, economic and racial justice organizing, training walk event leaders, guiding meditative practices, and creating long-distance walking routes. His first book, WALK – Slow Down, Wake Up & Connect at 1-3 Miles Per Hour (North Atlantic Books) was released on August 16, 2022. He is gay/queer and resides primarily in Denver, CO. Visit IntrinsicPaths.com and “Intrinsic Paths” on Patreon.com to learn more about his creative work.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Jonathon Stalls about walking across America.
Here are some of the topics covered on this week’s show:
– How you want a lighter backpack when you’re taking longer hikes.
– How your life doesn’t have to revolve around how much money you’re going to make.
– How people of all ages walk across America and have built a community together.
– How your body will find it’s rhythm and communicate with you when something is off while you’re walking.
– How it’s important to listen to body so it can train itself to do what you want it to do.
Connect with Jonathon:
Guest Contact Info
Twitter
@jonathonstalls
@walk2connect
Instagram
@jstallz
@intrinsicpaths
@walk2connect
@natlanticbooks
Facebook
facebook.com/intrinsicpaths
facebook.com/walk2connect
Links Mentioned:
IntrinsicPaths.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
You may think you know how to walk or what walking really is, but you might find that walking can be a whole different game than anything you ever imagined. And this is not about instructions, although that might come up, but well, why don’t we jump into it. On today’s episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first, as you know, those things are your foundation where we break up or… Break up? Where we rip apart, where we look at, where we explore, whatever, the mythology, the propaganda, sometimes the lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play, or do yoga or CrossFit, or Dance Dance Revolution or ESM racing, whatever it is you like to do. And to do that enjoyably, efficiently, and effectively. Wait, did I say enjoyably? I can’t talk. Don’t tell me.].
Jonathon Stalls:
You did.
Steven Sashen:
I know I did. That’s a trick question. Because look, if you’re not having fun, do something different than you are because you’re not going to keep it up if you’re not having a good time. I’m Steven Sashen, your host of the MOVEMENT Movement Podcast, CEO and co-founder of XeroShoes.com. We call it the MOVEMENT Movement because we’re creating a movement, that involves you, it’s easy, I’ll tell you how in a second, about natural movement. Letting your body do what it’s made to do without getting in the way and interfering with “technology” that actually does the exact opposite.
So here’s how you can participate. It’s really easy. Go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You don’t need to do anything to join. There’s no secret handshake, there’s no cost. You don’t need to learn a song or do exercises every morning. That’s just the domain that I got. But you’ll find previous episodes, all the places you can interact with us on social media, et cetera. And to be part of the movement, moving this natural movement thing forward, just like and share, give us some reviews. Give us five stars where you can, and a thumbs up where you can. And hit the like button where you can. And the subscribe thing. You know what to do. If you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. All right, let us jump in. Jonathon, do me a favor, tell people who you are and what you do, and then we’ll jump into things from there. It’s really simple.
Jonathon Stalls:
Right on. Well, honored to be here. My name’s Jonathon Stalls. I consider myself a walking artist. And so I do a range of things. Multidisciplinary. So sometimes it’s I bring a sketchbook in my backpack, and I’ll often walk 15 to 20 miles a day, often long distance through towns and counties. And lots of drawing, lots of writing. And I also do a lot of documenting around pedestrian safety, poetry, all the things. So lots of things. Walk a lot.
Steven Sashen:
Well, so the obvious question, how, why, when? That’s, I know, three questions. But how does one become a walking artist? How does one get hip to what it means to be out in the world walking, and pedestrian safety, and all those things that concern you?
Jonathon Stalls:
Yes. Well, I would say the how is, and maybe it connects to the why a little bit, they blend, but it started for me in 2010 when I did a walk across the United States. And so this was eight and a half months, 242 days. It was a really personal journey. I was trying to recalibrate a lot of things. And I wanted to learn a lot of things from different teachers. Teachers of earth and body and stranger. And I needed to walk things out for a long time. Yes.
Steven Sashen:
So walking things out is one thing, getting the idea, why don’t I just walk across… I don’t know. That’s a bit of a leap for most people. It’s like, hey, maybe I’ll do a marathon. Maybe I’ll just take some time. How does one get from I need to clear my head to I’m going to walk across the United States.
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. So background to the why too, I’ve always been an artist. And so growing up, I moved every two years of my life. I’d been jumping around a lot. So kind of fitting in. A big thing about being a new kid in new schools. I went to 14 different schools growing up. And so always trying to fit in, always trying to be liked by the people, to feel a sense of belonging in school, in neighborhood. And it was always changing. And so all of that stuff was stacking over time. And as an artist, I was trying to create worlds around that, sketchbooks, painting. I was trying to just move beyond some of that pressure as a kid.
And it didn’t really come to surface until I was in my late teens, early 20s. There were a lot of things I was burying and suppressing, hard things just related to my sensitivity, my comfort as an artist. Who am I outside of fitting into a million different groups? Who am I? I’ve spent 16 years of my life being who others want me to be. And I got to get out there and figure some things out. And so it was a mix of that.
I’m also gay, LGBTQ, I was coming out. That was really difficult. It was a heavy process. So being an artist, being sensitive, moving all over the place, I was like, this is going to require weeks, months. And I’m not sure. I’ve never done anything like this. My backpack, for those of you who do backpacking and hiking, was 95 pounds. So you can pretty much, off the spot, this guy has no idea.
Steven Sashen:
When I moved to New York City in 1983, I don’t think I had 95 pounds worth of stuff in my car.
Jonathon Stalls:
95 pounds on a JanSport external frame, flimsy. And I had my Blue Heeler Husky with me, which was an amazing… That partnership was incredible. And it was a series of things. I stumbled across the book, Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins in the Auraria Campus Library in Denver, Colorado. It was 20 cents. And I canceled all my classes. It was two and a half days. I just wept, I screamed, I threw the book, I came back to the book, and I read it. And it was like, that’s it. That’s what I need. I got to just eight months.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Well I’m glad you at least had, there was an actual catalytic event. Because still the leap from I got to clear my head to walking across the country was still a little broad. Backing up, so 14 schools. Like military brat, or just get kicked out everywhere?
Jonathon Stalls:
So my parents split when I was six, and they both remarried pretty quickly. Early moves. My dad actually played in the NFL and got traded twice. That was that. And then my stepfather, who I ended up living with, and my mother primarily, was in the cell phone industry. I’m 40. And so the cross-country walk was in 2010. So when we were moving, we were the ones building cell phone towers for the first cell phones in rural USA. I grew up with the lifeline of the big heavy car portable phone to what we have now. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s a hoot. So once you got this idea, I mean, you don’t just go, hey, I think I’m going to walk across the country, let me pack everything I own into a backpack and take off. Talk to me about once it occurred to you, to that first step, if you will. What was in between those?
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. So in all honesty, I was the kind of combination of being completely terrified because I just had no idea what I was doing. I was terrified. Where am I going to sleep? Where am I going to eat? There’s no support. People are dropping me off on the East Coast, and I’m just going. So all of these really complicated fears were all boiling at that point. And I was just as equally filled with excitement and adrenaline. And I’m an athlete too. So I played sports. So some of that, having a goal, getting to the Pacific Ocean, that was helping. So it was a combination of adrenaline and being terrified. Those first steps were both.
Steven Sashen:
Both the psychologist, Fritz Perls, his line is, “Anxiety it’s just excitement without the breathing.”
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. There you go.
Steven Sashen:
But even still, I’m going to keep getting you to drill down on this stuff because I find this totally fascinating. I mean, look, I’m someone who planning is not my thing. So I took a trip to Asia in 1989. And I’d done as much planning as I could do, which is not very much. But the moment I landed, I landed in Hong Kong. It was 1:00 in the morning. I had a phone number I was supposed to call. I didn’t understand the area code system in Hong Kong. So I was calling someone on the wrong island and waking them up repeatedly at 1:00 in the morning.
But then I very quickly, in fact, I actually remember this, a woman comes up to me, she goes, “Are you looking for somewhere to stay?” I was like, oh, this is sketchy. And she says, “Wait, hold on.” And she hands me a Xerox of a Lonely Planet guide newsletter that said, “I landed in Hong Kong. I didn’t know what to do. This woman came up and asked if I needed somewhere to stay. I was clueless. So I just went, and it turns out she has an incredible guest house.” She goes, “That’s my guest house.” I went, “Let’s go.” And from that moment on, I realized all I had to do was show up, and I could figure out the rest in real time.
But walking across the country, I mean, A, did you have a route plan? I mean, that whole thing of where am I going to sleep? What am I going to do? Did you think about how much mileage you were going to do per day? What were you planning about for food? I already said that. How long were you expecting to walk? Let’s start with the easy thing. Where’d you start?
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah, it was the Delaware coast, so Lewis, Delaware. Which part of my very, very loose planning online, I had talked to a handful of people who had done a walk across the country in their own way. And people of different backgrounds, a couple women who had done it. And so getting tips and tools from them was really helpful.
But I was roughly using what’s called the American Discovery Trail, which it’s a national scenic trail. It’s technically 6,000 miles because it connects local, regional, and state trails to each other with a lot of gaps. And you got to kind of figure it out. And I just knew I’m probably not going to be on this the whole time, but it was at least helpful to get a sense. And so that trail starts in the same place I started, in Lewis, Delaware.
So it was just the line straight across the US was nice. And the timing helped. I tried to loosely guess the timing because I knew I wanted, if I could, to avoid the snow over the Sierra Nevadas. I was going east to west. And so those loose things were helping me plan. And my planning was, honestly, it was literally just get to these big cities. The cities were kind of the big benchmarks. So the first city was DC, the next one was Cincinnati, the next one was St. Louis, Kansas City. And just as you described, it was day by day. Let’s see what happens. Let’s see who shows up. Let’s see what the sun says. It was all of that day by day, and it taught me so much about trusting the moments.
Steven Sashen:
Well, we’ll get to that no doubt. But I’m still backing up a little bit. So what in God’s name took up 95 pounds? I mean I get dog food.
Jonathon Stalls:
Well, I think, yes. Well, what’s so funny is this is 95 pounds, where at the beginning, my dog had one of those Ruffwear dog backpacks. And I was called out pretty quickly in Washington DC by this. It’s a really interesting story. This guy came out of nowhere, long white hair, probably in his 60s. Had overalls, no shirt underneath the overalls, all the skin was out, barefoot, character. Came up to me out of nowhere and just started petting my dog, talking a language I didn’t understand. And then turned to me really quickly and just said, “Dogs are not made to carry weight on their back. They’re made to pull weight. So you need to take this backpack off if you’re going to do any more mileage.” And then he just got up and left.
And so grateful I did, because my dog had a really long back. And anyway, so the 95 pounds was in addition to what Kanoa was already carrying. So at one point, it probably was more than 95 pounds, when I took everything off of there. It was extra. I thought I needed extra of extra. Like, oh, I need a couple more extra socks. I really need maybe an extra… The layers were unnecessary. I had a lot of unnecessary… Just silverware, utensil things. And I got rid of it quick. After DC, that backpack went down to 65 pounds. It got down quick.
Steven Sashen:
Did it keep going from there?
Jonathon Stalls:
What’s that? Keep going down? Yes. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Did you end up just like-
Jonathon Stalls:
I started cutting toothbrushes. Limiting. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I learned so much. And as I went through the desert, and I learned quickly too that I don’t want to have a backpack through the high desert. So a friend of mine who had done a long walk, Polly Letofsky, had a custom baby stroller, a BOB stroller that was customized. So I’m now in the desert of Utah, pushing a stroller across Highway 50, which was amazing.
Steven Sashen:
So on that Discovery Trail, how do I want to put it? How much of it is trail? How much of it is roads? I mean, in those gaps, what’d you have to do? I mean, by the way, you’re mentioning Delaware to DC, that’s going in the wrong direction technically. That’s just heading south. And then if the next one is Cincinnati, that’s a hell of a trip just to that be your next spot.
In fact, you just reminded me. I’m out here in Colorado. I bought a car that was in Buffalo, New York. And I connected with a friend of mine who was coming from DC back to Colorado, and he rented a car. And we met in Cincinnati with the idea that we would then drive the rest of the way together. Now, by the way, the punchline is he was going just under the speed limit, and would not use cruise control. And was one of those guys who put his foot on the gas, took it off the gas. So it was constantly… And I said, “Do you not like cruise control?” He goes, “Nah, it kind of puts me to sleep.” I said, “Do you not like going over the speed limit?” He goes, “Nah, I got a bunch of tickets in the past. I’m a little nervous about the speed limit.” I said, “Oh, then I don’t like you driving.” So I drove the rest away. And just driving the rest of the way was crazy. So there are cities between DC and Cincinnati, FYI.
Jonathon Stalls:
Totally. Just these were the ones that, because I learned quickly that I didn’t… So I got off what’s called the ADT, the Discovery Trail. I actually got off of it within a couple days. I just was like, I want to… I would just talk to people. You meet people. The woman you mentioned who just approached you. I’d just start. And they would just say, “Well, actually this road, this back way,” or, “Cut through that ranch,” or “Go down by that creek,” or, “You’re really going to want to get to this town. This is where you’re maybe going.” And I would just listen to local people.
And I learned that I actually was drawn more to, the roads were stressful and hard, and I needed to get off of them for serious stretches of time. But primarily, I was drawn to going in and out of small towns and villages. And I loved learning about these little villages and towns all across the country. It motivated me as a destination. Going into sticky diners, talking to people after some good solitude and movement. So I ended up doing a lot more road walking than I had originally planned, which was great. I stayed with 120 strangers on this trip. So 242 days and 120 people who invited me, or over time learned about me through other people. People throwing lasagnas out the truck as they’re driving by. I had people bury things in the high desert. I wanted Dr. Pepper, water, and gummy bears, and beer. Those were the four things on my list.
Steven Sashen:
Those are the four most healthy food groups.
Jonathon Stalls:
You talk about healthy movement. I don’t know. Anyway, good people.
Steven Sashen:
The fifth, by the way, is chocolate, just in case people are wondering.
Jonathon Stalls:
Right, right. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So what were you doing for money?
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. I needed to do it. Things were not going well. I was going through hard things. I was just like my mental health was really just not, it wasn’t steady. It wasn’t grounded. And so I just knew it needed to happen, and I was prepared to work along the way. This timeline may not work out, and it may be a couple years. I may have to divert. I may have to pause. So I literally left with $1,000 in my account. But I also did some work. I wanted to support a cause of some kind. I wanted something that I could talk to people about that I believed in.
And there was a group that I had connected with in some of my college courses called Kiva, which is a group that helps small businesses all over the world and in the US through microlending, just get started or help save or support their business in crisis. And I loved it. And so I was raising awareness for this organization, doing little talks and just sharing things as I could. And it ended up that a lot of the supporters of Kiva found out about my walk. And the staff, we created a budget, and I ended up raising about 10,000 for my own expenses. And then we raised a lot more for these amazing businesses throughout the walk, which was really, really cool. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
That’s awesome. So on average, how many miles a day were you walking?
Jonathon Stalls:
Oh, so East Coast, because of the grid, you have more towns, it’s closer together. It was 11 to 15 miles. I wasn’t wanting to rush the East Coast because I was just learning how to do this myself. And I wanted to train my body. So 11 to 15 miles on the East Coast. And then moving through the Midwest was about 15 to 18, 15 to 20 miles. And then as things got more spread out, and I’m Colorado too, so I live in Denver, so getting in my home state, and then into Utah, that’s when… Colorado went down a little bit because of the elevation, all the up and down. But high desert ended up being 20 to 30 miles average. Utah, Nevada. Because it’s just-
Steven Sashen:
There’s nothing.
Jonathon Stalls:
… all day in these open. It’s wild horses in the morning. I have a great UFO story. I mean, there’s just-
Steven Sashen:
Hold on. You can’t just leave it at that.
Jonathon Stalls:
I got to leave it. I got to leave it. It’s in the book. Check the book out.
Steven Sashen:
Throw me a bit of a bone. Just use the term anal probe if you have to. I mean, just give me a something
Jonathon Stalls:
Oh my gosh, I love it. All of that. It’s honestly, promise you, it’s in my journal. I did a summersault, wipe my head, did all the things for 20 minutes looking at this thing. Not on drugs, not doing anything. It literally, it looked like a floating jellyfish. It had kind of these tentacles. It transitioned from green to orange, green, orange and yellow. And after about 20 minutes, it turned and flew away. And it was in the middle of right over Sacramento Pass as you get over Great Basin National Park. And the first thing I could do was run to my journal and draw this thing in detail. I was asking everybody in all the libraries and little mining towns, have you even… They’re like, “Yeah, okay. We’re in Nevada, dude, there’s lots of stuff. There’s testing.” And I’m like, “No. No.” So yeah.
Steven Sashen:
All right. Well, all right. That is a good teaser for people to get to that. So how much time did you find yourself, I mean, having to camp out versus… I mean, where were you sleeping? Obviously 120 people, I’m guessing a chunk of those were letting you crash somewhere. But when you didn’t have 120 people to help you out, then what were you doing?
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah, it was all camping in any place. All the places. Ditches underneath highway overpasses if the weather was rough at times. I did some of that. Lots of ranches. Just dark spot camping wherever as that sun went down. And there were several kind of middle of the road where I would get permission to pitch a tent somewhere. For example, sometimes I’d make a call into a town or a library where the private… I just learned pretty quickly trusting my instinct, I was building this instinct relationship around something about this town and me just popping a tent doesn’t feel right. Listen to that, make a call.
I called the library. I called the school. Sometimes I’d actually call the dispatch office, and be like, “Hey, I’m walking across the US. I’m coming through. Do you have a suggestion on where I could just put my tent? I’ll be out in the morning.” And a lot of the time, not all the time, a lot of the time people would just say, “Yeah, just put it behind the big tree next to the dumpster on the other side of the pond in this park, and we’ll have our night officer, just we’ll let him know that you’re out there.” So sometimes it was that. But a lot of it was just wherever I would land it.
Steven Sashen:
I love it. I have sometimes lamented that I am not a member of a very tight knit religious organization, because then you could just go from one to the other to the other. You could pick a church, pick a synagogue, pick a mosque, pick whatever, they’ll help you out. Yeah.
Jonathon Stalls:
Exactly. Yeah. I have a friend who, she describes herself as a winter pilgrim, and she goes on these six to eight month, usually winter pilgrimages all over the North America and around the world. And she’s extremely Catholic. And she just, Catholic churches everywhere. They’re just dialed.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, happy to help. It’s their job. It’s similar thing with Orthodox Jews, similar thing for Muslims that I know. Yeah, I don’t have that luxury. But then again, I’m not planning to walk across the country, or just go randomly into other countries at this time and have to figure it out. And wait, you were how old when you did this? How old were you?
Jonathon Stalls:
27.
Steven Sashen:
I mean, I remember I was in India, and I’m trying to leave the country. And I didn’t know there was an exit tax at the airport, and I had no money at that point. I mean, I think that was my last stop on the way home. It was my last stop on the way home. And some guy realized as I was going, “Exit tax? What?” So he paid my exit tax, and said, “You probably don’t have enough money for dinner, and this flight was just delayed five hours, so let me buy you dinner.” And just things like that happened all the time. But I think about it now. It’s like if I tried to do that now at 60, I don’t know if I’d get the same treatment.
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah, it’s so interesting. There’s a lot of older, different ages out there walking across the country, at least within this circle. There’s people out there who aren’t publicizing it, or they’re doing it for a lot of different reasons or needs. But for people that are making it a little bit public, there is a circle of us that we support each other. We have these little groups where we connect. And I’m amazed at how many 50s, 60s, 70s, a couple did it in their 80s. I mean they had the 80s couple had some support, like a van at most of the… Some people, a couple of them just retired, and they’re just like, “I’ve always just wanted to walk the land.”
Steven Sashen:
Oh, I love it.
Jonathon Stalls:
And they just go. Yeah, it’s cool.
Steven Sashen:
Well, let’s talk about your body. So you started out, I mean, I can only imagine you weren’t walking 10 to 15 miles a day before you started. So what was that like suddenly picking up that much mileage? What’d you feel? What was working? What wasn’t working? What’d you discover? What changed? I mean, talk about the evolution of just literally how your body dealt with doing all these miles.
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah, that’s a good question. Yeah. So I had only really done, I would work out in a gym, I’d lift weights, I played ball sports. I’m a beach sand volleyball player. Things like that. So not having a lot of hiking, walking experience. Luckily, I tested out some good shoes, and I luckily had just some good advice from other people who really just told me in their own words, because it’s walking and because you’re not in a rush, trust that your body is going to find its rhythm and it’s going to communicate to you when something needs to shift. And so just listen to the language of your body and listen, then your body will train itself for what it needs to do what you’re inviting it to do.
And that advice was spot on. Because from the beginning I was like, all right, blisters forming, ankle, heel, backside. I mean, obviously shoulders, 95 pounds. So the listening. Not just saying, oh, I’m hurt, I just got to push through kind of like sometimes you do in sport mindset. But it’s like, no, the long journey, if I’m noticing these pain points, I need to stop and listen and adjust. And I’m really grateful that I loosely planned just 11 to 15 miles on the East Coast per day. And so I really had time to work out the kinks, take lots of breaks, shoes on and off, let the feet breathe, and sock changes. So I got some great tips on that from the beginning. And I walked myself into the ability to do 30 mile days in the desert. It was amazing. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Are you aware of anything in particular about how your gate changed, or how you were paying attention to the feedback you were getting?
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah, that’s a really good… Well, and so this is all before I started wearing more barefoot. So I have different things that I integrate into that now. But I would just say there were two different distinct shifts in my movement when I had backpack, and then when I was pushing the baby stroller, the cart in the desert, and different things I’d learn about my body and posture. I mean, there were so many things related to just the way my hips… I’m kind of knock kneed and bowlegged. And so there were certain parts of the road, I actually would feel less…
I learned just naturally. Nobody told me. Didn’t read anything about it, but I was like, get me off the pavement. I need to get off the pavement. I need diversity in landscape to massage the different relationships to the unique changing landscape of my body, this soft body with a soft earth. So that became a real significant learning to get off the road and be on those dirt medians as much as I possibly could. And seeking the little nubs of grass, and almost like these mini-massages throughout a day’s route, now that are so much more with barefoot shoes that it’s so much more tangible. Then it was just a little more like I could feel it, but now I really feel it. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. It’s funny. People will sometimes say about minimalist footwear, barefoot stuff, they go, “Well, we didn’t evolve to walk on those surfaces like that.” I go, “Well, first of all, the hard packed mud in the places that we evolved is as hard as concrete. Secondly, just because we didn’t evolve doing something doesn’t mean we’re not equipped to do something. I mean, we didn’t evolve double twisting double back flips. Go watch the Olympics, or fly fighter jets, or use computers.”
Jonathon Stalls:
Totally, yes.
Steven Sashen:
But to your point, but thing that we definitely did not evolve to do, and we’re not necessarily equipped to do, is the same motion on the same surface day after day after day after day after day. Yeah. And that’s one I’m all for. But the idea that it’s a bad idea to run in some minimalist shoe and do 26 miles. I go, “Yeah, FYI, our first customer happiness manager, he was our only customer happiness person, he was 65 years old, and he was running 120 miles a week, mostly on cement or pavement or whatnot in our four millimeter sandals. Had no problem.” Because he had really, really good form. And basically, he’d do 10 miles a day, and then long runs on the weekend. So you can do it, but he would also go on trails and do other stuff and get that variety, which is important for your body for many, many reasons.
Jonathon Stalls:
Right. Yeah. Oh, the variety was just that was the biggest teacher for me on that walk. It was just the variety, the relationship to it. Yeah. And I think just listening to the body in general. Learning to listen to the body. Not tell the body what to do, not try and corner the body, not just put the body into this default, whatever the default is. Whatever you grew up with or didn’t grow up with, whatever brand, whatever. To actually shift the relationship and listen to it. And these were all things that were helping me learn about a walking pace and a gate. Anyway, all those things. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
You reminded me, I mean, this whole idea of how we just try to force our body to do things for whatever reason. I mean, there’s two things that popped in my head. One is when I got back into sprinting, it took me maybe at least three years, maybe four, till it occurred to me that when I had the thought let me just do one more, that was my cue to stop. Not to do one more.
Jonathon Stalls:
When you have the thought. Yeah, right.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. That has served me very well. If I’m on track now, and if I feel just something feels a little off, it’s like, I’m just done. I don’t need to-
Jonathon Stalls:
I’m just done.
Steven Sashen:
… power through it. And I mean, I’ve remained basically uninjured for 13 years as a result of that. But you also reminded me of one of my favorite versions of this. So I’m a, I think, 17 year member of the Polar Bear Club. So January 1st, they chip away the ice, we’d go jumping in the reservoir. And for a while, they had a thing where they did it in between two docks, and you could just jump in off the dock and then get out of the water, or you could jump in and swim to the other dock. So maybe 50 feet. And I’m there with a friend of mine, a woman who, there was two things that were really fun about this. One is they said, “Who wants to do this naked?” And she just immediately raises her hand and then looks at me and goes, “Oh, that wasn’t a good idea. I haven’t shaved my legs.” And I said, “Trust me, no one’s going to be looking at your legs.” So anyway. And I did not do it.
Jonathon Stalls:
So good. I was like, come on. All right.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, not my thing. So dive in off the dock, and start swimming to the other dock. And I get there first and I jump out of the water onto the dock. And I turn around just as she gets her hands on the dock and starts to lift herself up, and then gets this weird look on her face, it was half terror or half confusion, as she starts to sink back into the water. And I just grab her and lift her out of the water and put a towel around her. And she says, “That was the first time in my life that my body didn’t do what I told it to do.” And it just literally shook her to the core. And for whatever reason, and I don’t know why, that’s the relationship that most of us have most of the time. It’s a weird one.
Jonathon Stalls:
Big time. Yeah. I wouldn’t have had the language for it back then, but as somebody who, as I shared earlier, just suppressed so many things, just buried things in my body, mental things, emotional things, situational things, I just buried stuff. And so I can see just how disconnected I was from my body. And why this really complicated, almost lava like energy around when I was reading this book, Walk Across America, all these things were happening. And I didn’t understand all of it until I was just out there just moving with it.
And oh, it was an interesting, it was healing, but it was also grief. And it was just coming into this, I don’t know, moving into the full thing. It was powerful. I mean, because of just how I’m talking about it now, it’s just why I was so eager to learn from my body, from the earth, from people. I just wanted to restart. And I think that’s where already having, just being an artist as a kid, hence why now just being a walking artist is like this is my work. I love it.
Steven Sashen:
We will get there in a moment. But first two questions. One, I would be remiss if I did not ask, any interesting romantic stories?
Jonathon Stalls:
Oh my gosh. Well, I had a partner that we were mostly together throughout. So part of me laments that. I’m like, man, could we just have waited? There were some just beautiful opportunities of exploration and color. I think about just different musicians I met, people in different stories of… Ugh. So there’s more like just like, ugh, what could that have been times maybe 15 across the country.
Steven Sashen:
I got to give you one. When Lena and I first got together, we were a couple. I mean, I definitely knew I wanted to marry this woman. But we went back to my 20th high school reunion. And all the men, except for one, and that’s a whole other story that I’ll save for another time, but most of the men had gotten pretty fat and pretty bald. And at one point I turned to Lena and I said, “I got to tell you one of the reasons that I love you.” She goes, “What?” I said, “Because you’ll appreciate what I mean when I say this. If you weren’t here right now, I would so be getting laid tonight.” So I can appreciate that there’s opportunities that you were in a situation where you weren’t going to take them. I get it.
Jonathon Stalls:
Yes. And it’s just I think part of it too is even the neurology of walking is so beautiful to me. And so to be out there for so many days. I love the neuroscientist… Oh, why am I spacing his name?
In Praise of Walking is his book. But he’s a neuroscientist. And he just kind of breaks down, and in simple terms, is just saying after about 20 minutes, you’re creating new neuro pathways. So to to be walking 15 miles a day, to be seeking all these, and I’m such a feeler and I’m a sensitive person, and just, oh my gosh, sexual energy was going in every direction. And it was amazing. Just reclaiming sexual expression. I walked hours naked in the desert when there weren’t cars. I mean, just parading around. And oh, it was just such a… So I lament being in a relationship. It was a good relationship, and we’re still together. We’re married, but it’s-
Steven Sashen:
That’s great.
Jonathon Stalls:
… just wait a year.
Steven Sashen:
But I’ll throw this in the mix though, and I’m wondering if this is your experience. When Lena and I, before we were a couple, and I was trying to do everything in my power to make us a couple, which she had no interest in whatsoever. In fact, I went to visit her once. She had moved to Albuquerque. And she said, “You can come visit, but you’re going to be sleeping on the floor and don’t touch me. Don’t even think about it.” And I was very attracted to this woman. And so I had all this sexual energy sort of moving through my body, but nothing to do with it. And by the end of that weekend, I was just so blissed out because it wasn’t being used in some way. Ringing a bell?
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah, absolutely. The only way I relate to it is I was so much more… I don’t know, just sometimes different teachers of mine have shared things like sexuality being a portal. Just not necessarily relational intercourse, but just sexuality in general, sexual connection. And so I just would find myself really drawn to these stories of people I would stay with, or walk with, or get to know during my breaks. I would find myself so much even more engaged and present. And there would be all these things connecting. Or I would literally hug trees for long periods of time. I would feel the warm mud under the creek and really centrally… So yeah, I don’t know if that’s the same, but it’s a similar-
Steven Sashen:
No, I think it is. Because I think we all have habits of how we deal with energy in our bodies. Lena’s taking, we’re going to Europe to do some business with our European office, and she’s got really bad jet lag issues. So she came up with this brilliant idea. She’s taking the Queen Mary, which is a riot. And so they have formal dinner, and then three galas during the trip. So she got all these clothes to wear. And so she asked me to take pictures for her mom. And I was just commenting on just how incredible these outfits were and how hot she looked. She goes, “Well, I noticed that you’d glance at me and then just look away.” I said, “Yeah, because I can’t tolerate anymore. It makes so much happen in every part of my body, I literally-
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. That’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. It’s just beautiful. Sexual energy’s so beautiful.
Steven Sashen:
It’s one that we don’t explore it in a way where people can talk about it, or explore in a way that is either safe or just not about having actual sex. Just what is it when this comes up with maybe someone that you don’t expect it to, or someone that you did and it doesn’t. It’s a very interesting topic. And I know, just in my own life, I mean, it has not happened in a way, other than a conversation like this, frankly.
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. I think for me at least, so much of my walk was about accepting sexuality because some of the background, this is in my book as well, I get really raw about just my personal, there was a lot of shame around being gay or queer, kind of on this spectrum. I was suicidal for three months. I lived in Ireland. I was on that edge. I grew up with complicated religious stuff, stories of all the things that get attached to those things.
And I was like, I got to walk this out. And so anytime it would come up, I just wanted to greet it with warmth and curiosity, and how do I treat this differently as it comes out? And so just, I think, again, that eight and a half month relationship shift to all these things that were trying to take me out in some ways. And walking literally being a medicine for so many things. And sexuality, like sexual expression and what people go through sexually. And the hard things, the shameful things, the deep things, the dreaming things, the secret things. And what I love about walking is when I’m moving with other people and sexual stuff comes up, it’s like you’re side by side, you’re moving, there’s movement. And you have nature all around you, sunsets, sunrises, trees that twist and break and bend, and non-binary, non-conforming queer flowers. You just got stuff saying, “Be you.” And to be a witness to someone’s… Oh, I could go on and on. We could do a whole thing on this.
Steven Sashen:
It would be interesting. I’ll tell you, I wonder if there’s a variation. So let’s see. I don’t want to dive into this too deeply. Some people know I had a, we referred to it as a health scare or a health something, or medical something. In short, there was a period of time in the last few months where it was indeterminate about whether I was going to be dead within one to five years. From the moment that I got that diagnosis and did not know, and arguably still don’t really, because none of us do, but that’s a different story, but this is something that demonstrably could have been something that would’ve killed me. 100 times a day, I was just blissed out by either seeing clouds, and just the way I describe it sometimes I go I felt like an alien that either just landed here and was going, oh my God, look at that. Or, I’d been here for a while and had to go back to my planet. And it’s like, oh, I’m going to miss that.
But it wasn’t sad. It was just like this is so enjoyable. And I don’t remember it having a sexual component per se, but it was just this full body kind of gratitude/bliss/a lot of movement. And not always when I was walking, but I mean, I walked my dog for about an hour a day. A lot of time walking the dog. Often when I was in the car, often it just random, weird… And it was delightful in the truest sense of the word.
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. Yeah. That, yes. I mean, just honoring what you shared, and that’s exactly one of the things, that the awe, I think keep thinking of awe. Just awe, awe, awe. And just the gifts of walking as a practice. So there’s utilitarian walking. We’re pedestrians. I got to get to the store. There’s exercise walking. But just from to open towards just awe and to let those channels, the emotional ones, the sensual ones, the I’m actually maybe a part of the cloud, and the cloud is a part of me. Oh my gosh. What does that feel like? That kind of stuff.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it’s a good one. And I think we just hit on something, which is that it’s unusual to have those experience, unless for some reason, voluntary or otherwise, you’re sort of thrust into a radically different world, if you will, a radically different way of experiencing yourself on the planet. And so mine was just like, hey, by the way, this could kill you. And yours, hey, well arguably, I’m sure you had that thought every now and then on the road, like, oh, this one, this is sketchy. I hope I make it.
Jonathon Stalls:
Yep. Oh my gosh. Several times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, it’s question, the tension of those edges helping kind of guide a whole new way of just listening, connecting, opening, releasing, all these different things that happen. I always reference walking, but it can be other things. I have friends that experience some similar things like that in music. But yeah, just on the edge. I may not survive this. And so what does life look like forward if there is a forward?
Steven Sashen:
And here, the thing that occurred to me, I remembered when I started having this experience, there was two meditation teachers, husband and wife, who decided to experiment and pretend they were going to die in a year. And just see what was it like to kind of gear up knowing that a year from now they were going to die. And I remember, this is 35 years ago, I remember even then thinking, you can’t fake it. This happened when it was going on for me. I kept thinking about that book. It’s like, yeah, no.
And I wouldn’t argue that anyone should put theirself in a position like this artificially, but I talked to a number of friends who had been going through cancer treatments. And I was telling them what I was experiencing. And they went, “You know what? Other than when I’m having chemo, or worried about my kids when I’m dead, that’s exactly the experience. Because I know that this, it’s not going to end the way I imagined.” And it’s sort of a shame that there’s not another, let’s call it safe way, I know that sounds paradoxical with what we’re talking about, to have that kind of experience where it is almost thrust upon you, the awesomeness of things, the preciousness of things. And maybe it’s a psychedelic thing. I don’t do psychedelics. Not yet.
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. There’s people I know that will share some things like that. The chapter at the end is called Walking as Rite of Passage. And I put it out there. I definitely wouldn’t say easy. But there’s something about, I called the little subsection, The Aching Edge. And it’s even just the thought, and I share this with a lot of students when I’m doing school stuff, and they’re like, “Hey, where could we go? What should we plan to do? How do I do something like this?” And I’m honestly, right out your front door for six days. Oh, just go for six days. Three days, two, and just see-
Steven Sashen:
I wonder about that-
Jonathon Stalls:
… even that mindset of out of the comfort defaults.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. But I wondered, you had a plan-
Jonathon Stalls:
No, you’re right. Yeah. It’s not the same.
Steven Sashen:
To know that at a certain amount of time you’re going to come back, everything’s going to be cool. Which brings me to, well, two things I want, it’s going to bring me somewhere, but first I have to say the whole thing about building new neurons. Kirk Erickson, who’s at University of Pittsburgh, this is 10, 12 years ago or so, he had just completed a longitudinal study on elderly people walking. And found that the ones who walked more, or maybe walked at all, retained more gray matter than those who didn’t.
And I said to him, I said, “Why do you think that is?” He goes, “Well, all the stimulation.” I said, “Imagine what it would’ve been like if they weren’t walking in big, thick, padded, motion controlled shoes.” He goes like, “Oh yeah.” But that was a nine year study that had lots and lots of money behind it. We don’t have that luxury at the moment. Which brings me to, you get to the Pacific Ocean. A, I want to know where you landed, but B, I can’t even imagine the panoply, a word I don’t get to use very often, of emotions and feelings you must have had at that moment. So where’d you land, and what was it like just even knowing you were going to be there in some amount of time, and then actually getting there?
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. The words that I used that were just so very loud then, and are still now, is just the beginning of that walk was kind of like a trembling. This is kind of a, I don’t want to say last shot, but it’s a big shot. Am I going to survive this? And the leading story was I don’t have what it takes. I don’t have what it takes. I don’t have what it takes to be strong, to defend myself, to name when I’m hurt, to name my dreams publicly, to name and be the reason there is conflict. I don’t have what it takes. I don’t have what it takes. You don’t have what it takes. All these voices. And by the time I crossed through Nevada walking naked in the desert, UFO talking to me, getting into California, I’m like, I have what it takes. I just climbed over mountains. I met thousands of people. I survived. I learned things. So getting to that beach at San Francisco is where we finished. And so funny story, randomly connecting nakedness, but I had-
Steven Sashen:
Wait. Please tell me it was Baker Beach.
Jonathon Stalls:
It was. And I had no idea. So I didn’t know. I’m like, well, that just-
Steven Sashen:
Wait. hold on. We got to say why, explain why that’s so relevant.
Jonathon Stalls:
It’s a nude beach-
Steven Sashen:
The north end of it.
Jonathon Stalls:
.. in San Francisco. So I have my great uncle from Kansas and my great aunts. I have rural people are flying out. And I’m like, we’re going to meet at this beach because this is close to the presidio where we’re doing the event and whatever. So everybody met there. And I had amazing people who were host families were flying out to walk with me that last day along the beach. So we had about 100 people moving through the city, because Kiva’s headquarters are in San Francisco. So they had staff, we had host families. And then my rural Kansas relatives are waiting at the beach. And they’re just so in their suits and humble. And we get to the beach, and we are all hundred of us walking through hundreds of naked bodies. It was the best. Oh, my aunt is clinging and looking, and everybody’s getting excited, but doesn’t know what to do. The people who are nude hanging out are like, “Why are you walking through us?” Oh, it was amazing. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing.
Steven Sashen:
So was it relief? Was it, I mean, sadness that it was ending? I mean, I can just imagine things rolling through one after another after another. Some contradictory, some just expanding whatever the previous one was. And then the next day you wake up, I mean, what the hell was happening?
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. It was at all the above. And that really started a couple weeks into California, or towards the end. I just was like, what? This has become not only my recalibrated sense of self and connection to others and to the planet and to these new teachers, but this is my primary medicine clearly. And so how do I keep this? Do I just keep walking? Do I do a different long distance trip? So it was pretty quickly, I was like, I have to integrate it. I have to keep walking. I know I have to keep walking. I know that’s in the cards, that’s in the story.
And so then it shifted. A couple months when I started, was one of the loudest things along the walk was what I would also notice in other people when they would join me for an hour or a couple days. I mean within 20, 30 minutes, the things that we were able to share with each other, the things that we’re able to surface, the way they would be able to communicate. Wow, I had never walked through my town from this side to the other side before. And I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’m 45. Or these things that just were, I’ve never shared that with anybody, or it felt so good to just move, and just get out of whatever I was stuck in, or all these things. The reflections would stack and stack.
And so I experimented with this project called Walk to Connect, it’s what I called it, connection. Because connection just felt so loud around all of it. And so then I just, within a couple months, just started hosting walks. And I put it on meetup.com, and my first walk was 26 mile loop around Denver. Who wants to join? And no signups. None, nobody. And I was like, okay, well it’s got to be 24 next weekend. 24 miles. Nobody signed up. And then I bumped it down to 18, had three people. And that was the first Walk to Connect experience. It was an 18 mile loop around Denver. And then from there it was just posting walks of all sizes, themes, topics, training leaders doing things. Did that for years. So I kept myself out there, had to.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s be beautiful. And so we started the conversation, part of what you mentioned was, correct me if I’m remembering the phrase wrong, pedestrian safety?
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. So there’s a project, so throughout the cross country walk, and then as I started doing walking events with Walk to Connect, a loud learning, loud was just around built environment and safety and accessibility. I would just spend hours waiting with people, connecting with people at bus stops. I have so many visceral memories, and still to this day, of elders, specifically elder grandparents, holding with one hand their grandchildren, like clutching their hands. And then the other hand, four grocery bags waiting for a bus that only comes once an hour without a bench or a shelter in the rain. And just experiencing these families that are just from all these different backgrounds and situations and circumstances. People who move on wheelchair, who are in a state highway, who live in the apartment, are trying to get to the grocery store because there’s no sidewalk. I just would see scenario after scenario, hundreds, of how pedestrian mobility is so under prioritized as a modality of transportation.
And so all this stuff, hosted events, got elected leaders out, did things for years. And I still wasn’t seeing enough changing in the system. And so as an artist, just the last three, four years, I’m like, how can I just try and get more creative with this? And how do I engage younger audiences in particular? And so created this project called Pedestrian Dignity, where it was just focused on the dignity of a human body moving through any given environment, trying to get home, get to work, on foot or on a wheelchair. And how can I share stories related to this topic from the lived experience framework? And so I’ve been playing on TikTok and Instagram. I’m 40, I don’t know what I’m doing on there. I shouldn’t be on there. I hate it. But I love who I’m connecting to on there. And some of the seeds that are getting planted around telling these stories from a lived experience framework. And so the Pedestrian Dignity Project is a part of my creative work. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, I love it. Well, I hate to do this because I think we could keep going forever.
Jonathon Stalls:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
But A, we can’t, for numerous reasons, not the least of which being I got to pee. Although not the most pressing one, I will confess. This has been an absolute pleasure. And I’m sure there’s a million questions that I haven’t thought to ask and that other people have go going through their head. Because just trying to imagine doing something like what you’ve done is that alone is a bit of an adventure. And I am curious to hear where people go with that and what they want to know. And I imagine they can ask you those questions. So if people want to get in touch with you and find out more, I hear a rumor that you have a book of some sort. I don’t know where I got that idea. But can you tell people how they can find you and find out more and find your book, et cetera?
Jonathon Stalls:
Yeah. Thank you, Steven. So the book is titled WALK, all capitals, and Slow Down, Wake Up, and Connect at One to Three Miles Per Hour. And so it’s non-fiction, creative non-fiction. I do pen and ink artwork. There’s artwork, there’s practices, stories, essays. And you can find it anywhere books are sold. Check your local bookstore. I highly recommend the audio book because you can take it with you as you’re moving-
Steven Sashen:
While you’re walking.
Jonathon Stalls:
While you’re walking. And then just my creative work is at intrinsicpaths.com. So you can sign up for events. I’m hosting events all the time in Colorado and outside. And I’ve got my pen and ink artwork on there as well. So intrinsicpaths.com is a great way.
Steven Sashen:
I can only assume there’s a link to find the book from there as well.
Jonathon Stalls:
Yes, yes. Yep.
Steven Sashen:
So well then please do reach out to Jonathon with any questions, any whatever. Find the book, go for a walk. If you can’t find him, just go for a walk.
Jonathon Stalls:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. This has been a total, total pleasure. So first of all, again, thank you. Looking forward to what’s next. Since we’re neighbors, we need to do something about that.
Jonathon Stalls:
Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
We can take a walk. And for everyone else-
Jonathon Stalls:
If I can promote your shoe, I mean, I’ve loved them have. This is my first pair and I’m wearing them everywhere. I love the way they feel. I love the way they support me. I wear FiveFingers all the time. I love those. But I have a different relationship with these. So eager to connect more on how I can support and promote too.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s very kind. Thank you. So well, we will figure that out. For everyone else who would like to support this whole idea of natural movement, including Xero Shoes, but not required, then do m
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free