so let's think out loud here...

What's a good name for the walk I want to do? I've begun to narrow the concept down a bit, and have whittled it into this:

I'm planning to walk across America next year, starting in early May, after my mother's birthday (May 4), which gives me time to celebrate her birthday, say goodbye, then head out to the west coast to begin the walk. My contract with Smoo ends in late April, which gives me a few days to get out of Dodge, sniff around my hometown a bit, and then fly or drive west.

The walk's route will be roughly from the Pacific Northwest (Oregon or Washington) to the Atlantic, close to Washington, DC. I don't see this as a "Washington to Washington" walk so much as a "sea to shining sea" walk. I doubt I'll do something as goofily symbolic as hauling along a bottle of Pacific seawater to dump in the Atlantic (the bodies of water are, ultimately, connected! why bother dumping?), but I might want to do something symbolic to mark the passage from west to east. Not sure what yet.

The theme of the walk is interreligious relations, and I'd like for the walk to be characterized by mendicancy-- i.e., I put my life in the hands of charitable others. No food along the journey except what I'm given-- no shelter except where people are willing to shelter me (failing that, it's the open sky for me, or camping if it's stormy or wintry). Because I'm hoping to "connect the dots" by going from church to synagogue to temple to mosque to ashram, I don't see the mendicant strategy as a major logistical problem: I'm pretty sure the country is stocked with enough charitable folks to allow me a night's stay, and I will, of course, be prepared to do some hard labor in exchange for an evening's room and board.

One consideration, though, is that I'm gambling on averaging about 20-30 miles of walking per day, and on being able to hit the aforementioned churches, temples, etc. before I hit the 30-mile mark. Will that be possible? In the middle of the country, I suspect the houses of worship will be few and far between in some spots. On such days, will I either wuss out and camp or will I trudge onward and do 40-50 miles? There's still a ton of planning to be done in this regard.

Anyway, that's the basic concept for the walk. My buddy Dr. Steve warned me not to make this concept public because someone might steal the idea, but my feeling is that the idea will be time-stamped when I publish this entry, and as soon as someone leaves a comment here, that comment will be time-stamped as well. I might be able to alter the time stamp of my blog entry, but I can't alter a commenter's time stamp. Plus, I've got email records to back me up if it becomes a question of who said what when... not that I see myself getting into a court battle about a religious project. I'm not reflexively litigious like Deepak Chopra.

So... what's a catchy name for this sort of walk? Godwalk is out; I'm not much of a "Goddish" person in the classical theistic sense, and if I'm going to be shacking up with nontheists of various stripes, "God" seems a bit too confining as a description of this project. Spiritwalk would be out for similar reasons; it has theistic overtones and an unnecessarily American Indian ring. I don't want to go sci-fi with monikers like Skywalk or Religion Trek, nor do I want to trespass into Nimoyville with a name that includes the word search. As much as it pains me, I also want to avoid vulgarity in the label, so Shitwalk and Fuckwalk aren't contenders, and neither are Snatchwalk and Clitwalk. And Ballwalk hurts just in the hearing.

So I'm open to suggestions. Maybe something in a foreign language might be more apropos, or maybe I should grab a religious concept that might be specific to one religion, but is found almost universally in other religions.

More meditations on next year's walk are on the way, but I thought I'd begin with the ancient question of naming. Float me your comments.


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