The Back Yard to the Grassy Knoll

Fourteen years ago when I pulled the world out of storage to play in our tiny back yard with my seven year old son on his birthday who could have predicted how many miles, storms, mountains and divides this ball of rubber and thread will now have seen? Now, after walking in, through or to thirty four states, rolling more than five thousand miles outside of my own back yard, I finished this seventh walk in downtown Dallas to bring awareness to diabetes. There a secret, known to a small group of men, was revealed to me; the neon green lighted building scheme was a picture slipped in as joke in the final plan submition and the owners liked it. A joke where some prankster taped glow sticks to the scale mock up just before the photographer came to shoot the last pictures. The Dallas Texas skyline secret. When the world outside my fence tempted my son and I like a trillion dollar playground how was I to know how that simple-minded choice to jump the fence and go for a walk would alter my universe from that day on. From my back yard across the Ohio river, the Missouri, Mississippi, Shebogan, Red and countless creeks and rivers through wind and, clouds and sunshine I have walked. From my backyard to Wall Street in New York City to the grain elevators of Beemer Nebraska, The Alabama Bayous to the Presidential Mountain Range in New Hampshire, we have walked under the Archway to the West in St, Louis, across the continental divides of Minnesota and South Dakota. To Walden Pond and Cripple Creek I have walked. Fourteen more states, how many more inside stories will I learn, who knows?
Walk for your health. Be your own Movement-movement.