22 Dec 2016 Time on the road: ‘People are kind, good and want to help’

by Madeline Phillips

If there are conclusions to which Ben Davis came during the five months it took him to travel on foot from California to Massachusetts, it’s this simple: “People are kind, people are good [and] people want to help.”

Preparing for this massive endeavor was actually much simpler than one might imagine. Before setting off, Ben “got rid of everything.”

He shucked most of his possessions and put the rest in storage. He also purchased a stroller that would end up serving as the mainstay of his survival. Ironically, before taking off, Ben also bought a lot of other survival gear he says he actually didn’t end up needing.

“I thought it would be a lot more rugged than it actually was,” Ben said. “If there was one average day, it was corn fields.”

One might imagine more moments of fear than moments of comfort on a journey like this, but for Ben, the only time when he truly felt worried was one night spent camping in the Mojave Desert when he had no cell phone service. But even without cell service, Ben was able to get a message to his family through some passers-by in the desert. He scribbled down some text, and they sent it to his family.

Ben ruminates about those people whose paths he crossed in the desert, and whose paths continued to cross his during “the walk,” his nickname for the 3,100 mile-long excursion. Drivers would flag him down and invite him to ice cream, invite him into their homes for dinner or offer to wash his laundry.

Even with the charity, Ben still had to ask for help sometimes. Of the 20 times he approached a stranger’s home to ask for supplies, like water, or for a place to rest that night, he was never turned away — not once. Of those 20 families who extended a helping hand, only one family made him camp in the backyard. The rest allowed Ben into their homes.

“I knew people would be good, but I didn’t know they would be that good,” he said, reflecting on all the hospitality. When one older couple discovered he was spending the night in their home on the eve of his 30th birthday, he awoke the following morning to a homemade short-stack with a birthday candle balancing on top. The couple then sent him on his way with a birthday card and $10 to boot.

But still, a guy has to get lonely and maybe even a little paranoid out in the wild blue yonder, especially traveling alone. That’s the opposite of what Ben experienced on the walk.

“When it’s corn fields and farms, you know what you’re walking up to. It’s one house with horses and the barn. You know you’re not coming up to some crazy person’s house,” he said.

Ben’s demure approach is probably what landed him around the dinner table of so many. “People connect with stories, but inevitably, the questions come.”

They mostly just wanted to know why. Why cross the country alone, carrying essentially only the things on his back and inside his stroller? It’s not something you hear every day — and certainly not something many people set out to do in their lifetime. Driving across the country is just a whole lot more feasible.

The truth, however, is that as rare as it may seem, a trek like this is not completely unheard of. Ben is not the first person to ever attempt or complete a feat like this. Others have done it in the name of research or charity or some other cause.

But Ben’s cause wasn’t so clear-cut. In fact, Ben says it was more about the sheer challenge of it. He thought he might lose some weight in the process, but it just didn’t work out that way because of the amount of sustenance required to keep a body working while working so hard.

But don’t misinterpret his intentions. Ben’s journey has all the merit of any other athlete’s charitable trek across the vast countryside that is America. However, when describing it, it seems like he felt sort of uncomfortable about not having a specific purpose — about not having an answer that felt “good enough” when people wanted to know why. Eventually, though, Ben got comfortable with sharing the reason: just because. Ben simply wanted to see if he could do it. This was a battle of the wills, even if the wills only belonged to Ben.

“It’s not like going into a running race, or some sort of competition,” he said. “It’s almost like I was in regular life, just a different life. If you moved to a new city and had a great time for six months, there’s really no disappointments because it’s just regular life. The only thing I did was I woke up and walked.”

It was one task every day for about 150 days. He just kept walking.

Reflecting on the walk now, Ben knows he definitely does not want to do it again, but could if he wanted. He also knows for sure: “I don’t need a lot of things. As long as I have a decent bed and food, I’m good. It’s romantic to think about living without a lot — it’s been nice to put that into practice.”