McCarthy finishes walk across America
Melissa McCarthy survived three years of illness, injury, a tornado and squalor to walk across America, arriving in Lewes July 27.
McCarthy finished the journey with a walk through Cape Henlopen State Park before sticking her toes in the Atlantic Ocean.
“I can’t wrap my mind around it,” the San Francisco resident said.
Starting in Avila Beach near San Luis Obispo, Calif., McCarthy called her walk the One Earth Walk Project. She walked a total of 10 months spaced out over three years.
The first year, 2015, she made it as far as Fort Morgan, Colo., before illness forced her to suspend the trip.
In 2016, she took up the walk again, starting in Fort Morgan. She made it as far as Crown Point, Ind., before she fell crossing an interstate and fractured her jaw, necessitating a return to the Bay Area because she couldn’t eat solid food.
The walk resumed in April in Indiana, as McCarthy was determined to finish her trek across the country.
She said she knew the journey was almost over when she crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge - via car - and made it to Kent Island in Maryland. Of course, the day she left Annapolis, a tornado had come through Kent Island, but as she had the whole journey, McCarthy survived.
McCarthy said she decided to walk because of her frustration with American politics, particularly when it comes to the environment, an issue she cares deeply about. She wanted to do something other than petitions and giving money to effect social change and awareness.
“I thought, ‘I just don’t know what to do. I just have to get out and walk,” McCarthy said.
She said she was motivated to walk by trying to find the positives in America.
“Paying respect to the land and the environment. Finding out who Americans are. Because I was thinking, ‘I don’t even know who we are. Look at the way we vote.’ I want to find out who we are and have conversations with people. People of all persuasions care about the environment. It’s not just a liberal, tree-hugger thing. Conservatives care too,” McCarthy said.
Not wanting to carry a backpack, she was armed only with her cart, which carried her things. For McCarthy, the most challenging part of the walk was just getting started each day.
“I’m not really a morning person. I’m kind of in slow motion in the morning. It’s just getting out the door. Making that initial move to start. Unless I found a place objectionable, it was hard to get going,” she said.
And what were those objectionable places?
“There were places I could not get out of fast enough,” McCarthy said. “One day, I set up my camping spot inside this abandoned motel. I don’t remember what was wrong with the area around it. It was real depressing and real trashy. I had climbed to the summit of this mountain and couldn’t go any farther. There were all these cabins and they had been trashed to varying degrees. I found one where I could shove broken glass to one side and find a place that wasn’t too gross with rodent droppings and that sort of stuff.”
A native New Englander, McCarthy said she likes being back on the East Coast, where the ocean water is much warmer. She was also happy to be in the flat land of the coastal areas after trekking through the Appalachian foothills in West Virginia and western Maryland. She plans to stay on the East Coast visiting friends and family until September when she goes back to the Bay Area in September to resume her work as an ordained Zen Buddhist priest.
“At the beginning I didn’t have this assurance I was going to make it all the way. I was just going to make it as far as I can. I kept that sort of mindset, not when I get there, but if I get there. I just want to see how far I can go. That will be good enough. I will just keep going until I have to stop,” McCarthy said.
To view McCarthy’s dispatches from the road over the course of her trip, visit oneearthwalkproject.blogspot.com.
