Freda R. Savana
Neil King set out to take a long walk and see what can’t be seen when traveling any other way. He wanted, he explained at a stop at Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, to celebrate lives of “American originalists” and take the “pulse” of those he met along the way.
Starting his journey from his home in Washington, D.C., on March 29, King will wrap up his 320-mile sojourn later this month in Manhattan, after strolls through sections of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
“We’re at a strange moment in our history,” said King, a former journalist with the Wall Street Journal. “After all we’ve been through in the last year, I just was interested to get a feel for this part of the country, get a pulse and see what people are thinking.”
The “great benefit of walking,” King, 61, said, is “of course you’re moving 20 times slower than when you’re driving and so because you’re walking people are more inclined to engage.”
Intrigued too, by long forgotten or unknown Americans such as Henry Mercer and Benjamin Lay, King plans to share his observations in an upcoming book.
“There are so many hidden places and things worthy of more attention,” King said. “Some of what fascinates me is we’re at a moment in time when we’re reconsidering our past, taking down monuments and statues, taking names off schools and that’s a worthwhile debate to have.”
However, at this time, he added, “we’re also looking at our own acts of remembering. A lot of preserving and unearthing … and Mercer himself is a great example of that – he was a cultural archeologist, things here are what he wanted to preserve so we don’t forget how we used to do things.”
And Benjamin Lay, “an incredible American original” buried at the Abington Friends Meetinghouse, is another remarkable man who many have never heard of, said King. A Quaker abolitionist, Lay helped move Quakers to become a strong force against slavery. “We need to recognize these people and bring them back to some prominence.”
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