Feeling Like a Fraud: Our Walk Across America Became Front-Page News

In August 1979, a young couple landed on the cover of National Geographic for walking 3,000 miles across America. I was half of that couple.

It all started when I met a man who had walked from New York to New Orleans, the same place where I was working on a master’s degree. He was on a quest to discover himself and understand the country after Vietnam had ripped the nation apart. We dated for several months, fell in love, got married and left New Orleans in July 1976, headed to Oregon. On foot.

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We walked across Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Oregon. We walked 15 to 20 miles per day, carried 35 to 75 pounds on our backs and slept in a tent at night. We experienced dramatic adventures like trapping alligators in Louisiana and being attacked by outlaws in southeastern Colorado. I fell off a glacier at 13,000 feet and was hit by a car in Utah. We also walked across the Cascades of Oregon in the coldest winter since 1919.

While on the road, we met and stayed with farmers, ranchers, homemakers, teachers, secretaries, and other working men and women of America. We photographed them and told their stories, eventually publishing three bestselling books: “A Walk Across America,” “The Walk West” and “The Road Unseen.”

“The Walk West” sold millions of copies and was listed as one of the most influential bestsellers on American culture in 100 years. The “Walk” books became part of the permanent White House Library.

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To the world, we were a fascinating couple, sweethearts of American adventure. Inside, I felt like a fraud.

But I was also a newlywed in very abnormal circumstances. There were no intimate dinners where my new husband and I could linger over chilled wine, or soft beds we could crawl into for lovemaking. Nothing about what we were doing was sexy.

Instead, we walked through burning 100-degree temperatures and bone-cold blizzards. Both of us were tired, hungry, irritable and sweaty, and we smelled. My husband expected me to keep up, to walk faster and farther, and told me I could win the Best Actress award for limping and dragging behind. We argued and were impatient with each other. At times, we were mean.

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I remembered my granny who traveled to Arkansas as a child in a covered wagon, and then spent her whole life scratching a living out of the rocky hills of the Ozarks. She didn’t have more than a cotton dress and a tattered apron, but I never heard her whine about being poor, cooking on a hot wood stove or making 100 biscuits each morning for her large family. Between my new husband insisting I shape up and memories of her endurance, I walked on and kept my mouth shut.

We were already scheduled to write books, speak and travel (by plane). After we were chosen for the cover of National Geographic, the world became our oyster. Opportunities and money fell out of the sky.

As a woman of faith, I told myself I needed to be patient and long-suffering. So I pushed aside my feelings and kept my mouth shut, like I usually did, but this time I knew I didn’t like it. I felt alone and trapped while sensational full-page ads for “The Walk West” ran in The New York Times and other papers across America.

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Instead of walking behind an adventurous man, I would be walking alone. And this time I needed to speak up and quit pretending everything was perfect. When we walked across America, I had lived through all kinds of danger, but I feared what lay ahead would be far worse.

News of our breakup traveled faster than a shotgun blast. Readers from New York to Los Angeles wanted details. They wanted dirt. They wanted gossip. I was heartbroken, embarrassed, ashamed and scared. I had been living a lie and had to take a radical inventory of myself. I was an Ozarks hillbilly who had achieved more than I ever imagined, but as quickly as fame and fortune appeared, they were going down the drain.

During the long, expensive and public divorce trial, my husband’s lawyers wanted me to agree that I contributed to the downfall of the marriage.

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“Yes sir,” I answered. “I contributed to the downfall of my marriage because I should have kicked him in the ass a long time ago!” My mother would have been proud.

The experience of walking across America brought money and national publicity, but it was losing everything and rebuilding my life that brought revelations and profound insights. Now after 40 years of silence, I am telling my thrilling, messy and heart-wrenching story, and how I came out stronger — and more authentic — on the other side. And today, I no longer feel like a fraud.