Barbara Jenkins: Walking into Remarkable

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0:49I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. So stop just thinking different and start thinking remarkable. Helping me this week is Barbara Jenkins. She captured the hearts of millions of people when she chronicled her epic 3 ,000-mile walk from New Orleans to Oregon in the blockbuster bestseller, The Walk West. This journey with her former husband became a National Geographic cover story and international sensation. The book sold over 15 million copies. Barbara went on to author several more inspirational books, including the number one mass paperback, The Road Unseen.

1:38She's been a keynote speaker for major conferences and served in influential roles. Like a commissioner for two Tennessee governors, Jenkins also chaired the board of the Tennessee Women's Forum. Barbara continues to embrace adventure, whether painting, writing her next book, or telling stories to her granddaughters. Jenkins lives with openness and passion. She believes that even when one door closes, patience and persistence will open another. Jenkins sees life's curveballs as opportunities to build, resilience, and grow. Her latest book, So Long As It's Wild, is out now and tells the inside story of that 3 ,000 mile walk.

2:24You will be fascinated. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Merge 4, M-E-R-G-E and the number 4. I'm an investor in the company because they make the coolest socks. For a 30 % discount, use the promo code FRIENDOFGuy. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. And now, here is the remarkable Barbara Jenkins. At the very end of your book, you talk about all the great adventures you've had. And one of the adventures is going to Maui. You must know about the fire, but I just wanted to let you know that that big banyan tree you discussed, people think it has survived and it will make it through this time.

3:18I remember they had a beautiful crafts fair under that tree. Yeah. And I bought some gorgeous jewelry there. And I always think of that tree and just the roots all the way out across the ground where people just sit there. You start off with this great story about writing or co-writing a book and it sells 15 million copies. You tell story after story about meeting these great Americans and inspiration. Give me the gist of that book. Obviously, it was a life changing experience. I spent three years walking from New Orleans to the coast of Oregon and meeting real Americans across this country, facing all kinds of dangers, of victories, of losses, of weather conditions.

4:14not knowing where my next meal was coming from, learning to sleep on the ground at night, learning to live at a different pace, putting one foot in front of the other. But the gist of that story, of that life, I think really was about self-discovery and discovery of an America that we have forgotten and of people that we have forgotten and overlooked.

4:49So let me get this straight. You meet Peter in New Orleans. Yes. You fall in love. Yes. You go on this three-year walk. Yes. You're basically carrying a 40-pound pack. Yes. You're trying to do 15 miles a day. Yes. You don't have GPS. You don't have Patagonia. You don't have REI. You don't have Uber. You don't have Lyft. You have no Airbnb. No. It's just hard for me to wrap my mind. How did you logistically do this? It is like an alternate universe. You have to get into a different mindset where literally you walk by faith. You put one foot in front of the other because you don't know what the day is going to bring.

5:39You don't know who you're going to meet. You don't know where you're going to get your next meal. And I did that for three years and living one day at a time. But it taught me a depth of life that I think very few ever truly understand or experience. because I honestly, in order to get from A to Z, and when I would look ahead or look at a map, it was overwhelming. How could I ever accomplish something like that? But it's like everything in life, we do it one step at a time. And so it was one step, one hour, one day at a time. And I began to notice things along the way. I began to hear sounds and smell, smell and experience the earth and the people and the weather and experience life in a way that if you're a nature lover, sometimes when you get out in the wilderness, it may take a day or two for you to assimilate and come down out of all the way.

6:55the frantic life pace that the world is today into kind of an alternate universe where you begin to hear the sounds and see the stars and feel the earth under your feet. I did that day after day in all kinds of conditions. If you read the book, you know about the tornadoes and the storms and the heat strokes and the whiteouts, the blizzards. But it was a great adventure. It was a great adventure. If I were in my 20s again, I'd do it again. You would, yeah? Yeah. And if your kid said, Mom, I want to retrace your footsteps, you'd be all in? Just a couple of years ago, my oldest son, we took a road trip and we retraced the route that I walked from New Orleans to Oregon with his dad.

7:48And, of course, he has written. It's coming out this fall. It's called Mother Nature. He's a New York Times bestselling author as well. So you need to have him on your podcast. Okay. You'll be the first mother-son combination. Yes. It's an oddity. Very rare because I certainly didn't time. It took me three years to write this book, Guy, because I did not want to write it. I had no desire to write this book. No, wait, just for clarification. You're talking about the second book. We're talking about the book that you're just about to release, not the original one. Okay. The book So Long as It's Wild is going to be released September the 12th, 2023.

8:36I did not want to write that book. And it took three years to write it. But it was my granddaughter. At the time, she was seven years old. and she said to me, Yo-Yo, my name is Yo-Yo. She said, Yo-Yo, did you really walk across America? And I knew then that was my calling. I knew I had to write this story from my vantage point, from my voice, from how I experienced walking across America and all the before, during and after events. And I had to do it for my own legacy, but I didn't want to do it. You didn't want to do it because it forced you to revisit some of the things that your ex-husband did?

9:32Or what was the negative? I think part of it, if you remember, I go back and tell the stories of being raised in the Ozarks. Yeah. And the poor Ozark hillbilly. in the Missouri Ozarks. And my mother, whom I love deeply and who passed away in 2010, my mother was hell on wheels when she was a young woman. She was a fiery, redheaded, temperamental woman, and she was a very difficult mother. And so it was painful for me to tell those stories because of this conflict of how much I love her, but yet to tell the story in such a way where the reader feeds her for who she was at that time. Because being raised as a poor hillbilly, we did not have indoor plumbing until I was 12 years old.

10:28And we were very poor. And the reader really needs to see where I came from to understand how in the world could I ever agree to walk across America. But I knew what it was to do without, to live humbly. It wasn't a stretch for me. It was painful to write because I had to go back and tell stories that involved my mother. And then, of course, after the walk and all the fame and the fortune, selling millions of books, Our books became a permanent part of the White House library. We were on the cover of National Geographic magazine. We were a sensation. But there was so much more to the story. And I lived the part because I had so much invested.

11:20I had walked across America. We had built a financial kingdom. I had three beautiful children. Why would I want to upset the apple cart? And so I had to go back and revisit the truth of why the marriage failed and then rebuilding my life. So it was painful for those reasons. But out of great pain comes great change and great victories. I'm trying to figure out why the title is so long as it's wild, because the word wild can be interpreted in several ways. So please explain the title. The title comes from a wonderful quote by John Muir. John Muir was a naturalist, a writer, an adventurer back in the 1800s, and he settled in California.

12:18But he had this famous quote that says, God made everything beautiful so long as it's wild. And so long as it's wild comes from his quote. But so long as it's wild is a very captivating title, it does mean many things to many different people. But it's like the freedom and the wildness of life, of nature, of change, and of not being confined by all the structures of a nine-to-five job or living in a grind, though long as it's wild. I love the title. Oh, I loved it too. Maybe I'm trying to see a pattern or see something that doesn't exist, but it seems to me that around the same time you were walking across America, Lamar Alexander walks from Mountain City to Memphis like a thousand miles.

13:19So did he inspire you or you inspire him or that's just coincidental that the two of you are walking? And it's coincidental. We did not know Lamar at that time because what was it? Do you have the years there? He walked in 1978, which is about the time you were walking. Okay, yes. No, we actually, I think, probably inspired him because he asked us to endorse a book that he wrote called The Tennesseans. But because of his walk and our walk, we did become friends. And we spent many evenings in the governor's mansion having dinner and talking about wild things and adventures. And he was quite an outdoorsman.

14:07You tell this great story about you're young, you've fallen in love, you're in New Orleans, and you go to this service, and this woman named Mom Beal has a sermon, and she talks about going with this man. And you took it as a sign of God that, yes, you should go with Peter and walk across the country. Looking back, do you now think, oh, that was just a coincidence? It really wasn't God talking to me and what a mistake it was? Or how do you interpret that? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. First of all, it was a phenomenal experience. I was working on a master's degree at a seminary. So I was already a woman of faith.

14:57But when Peter asked me to walk from New Orleans to Oregon with him, I had never been camping a day in my life. And so it was overwhelming. And I was going to break up with Peter because this is his dream, his journey, not mine. So I spent a lot of time meditating and praying and looking for guidance. What should I do? So I said, I'll go to church with you one last time. And if I don't have some kind of revelation, something that tells me that I should do this, then it's over. We'll just see where we are after you finish this walk. It was 1975. It was the fall. We're in New Orleans. Beautiful, sunny day.

15:50Peter is in his holy jeans and and and t-shirt and and sneakers and of course I'm embarrassed because he looks like he came in from under a bridge and there's no place for us to sit except on the front row and this is at a big church there's about 2 ,000 people I'm embarrassed so we sit on the front row and then they wheel out this old woman in her 80s in a wheelchair and i'm thinking this is like star trek where am i this is so unique so different so this little old lady she begins talking in this very sweet but very forceful voice and she begins telling the story of Abraham and Isaac in the Bible, and they're looking for a wife for his son.

16:53And so they send this servant to this village, and the servant sees this beautiful young woman, and he thinks, oh, she's definitely the woman. But then the family asks her, is this something you want to do? Will you go with this man? So Ma Bill developed this entire sermon. And after she told the story, she said, the title of my sermon today is, Will You Go With This Man? Well, for me, it was like a bolt of lightning because that was the question of my heart. Was it coincidence? On that time, on that day, in that moment in history, that particular sermon, those particular words came to me. I did feel like it was a bolt of lightning and it really was a call.

17:52Now, I had the choice. The question was to me, will you go with this man? I didn't have to go, but I felt like it was a call and that I should go. And obviously, it changed the trajectory of my life forever. I had some of the greatest adventures of my life, the greatest joys, as well as the greatest heartaches. But isn't that what life is all about? yes so yes it was i do not regret regardless of what's happened in my life not for a second because each of us along the trajectory of life are given the choice every day of our lives what will you do today how will you be better do better go better but there came a point in my and Peter's marriage and life, he chose another direction.

18:51I can't be responsible for his choices, but that doesn't mean that the call for me to go was not real and was not meant for me. So yes. So you go on this walk and arguably you have a very good lens into, I would say, The word real is overused, but you really met Americans. It wasn't just investment bankers and venture capitalists, right? No. And so what did you learn about people on this journey? I learned that common people are remarkable and extraordinary. Every person has a life story. I trapped alligators in Louisiana. I walked across Texas. Texas I met ranchers in Texas I met Homer and Ruby ranchers out in West Texas they stopped and gave us water to drink and invited us into their home for a bath and a meal we ended up staying a few days and I sat at Ruby's feet and I learned from her that she actually traveled to Texas in a covered wagon she was the oldest of 13 children they were so poor that she ate water gravy for food.

20:11I heard their stories and sat on the front porches and sat at the tables of Americans across this country and learned their hard work, their ethics, their belief systems. And what I discovered is that we're so much more alike than we are different. and we may live in different houses and have different levels of income, but yet when you take away all the traffic, people are just people. People are just people. And we all have very similar needs and goals. And if you're a parent, you love your children, you want what's best for them. If you're a man, you want to work, you want to earn an honest day's pay.

21:04If you're a mother or a woman, you want to raise up your children the best you can. The very core of humanity, we're all so much alike. And you brought up Ruby. In one of your conversations with Ruby, you were expressing the difficulty of the trip, the difficulty of the relationship with Peter. and she basically said, suck it up and keep going, right? Yes, but Ruby was a pioneer. She had worked like a man in the fields and had picked cotton and had worked in cafes and they built this little three-room ranch house themselves and had lived in a shack after they got married in the 1930s. Ruby had a hard life.

21:55and to look at me, I'm a young woman, I'm healthy, I'm on this great adventure, I've got the best of equipment, Jan's Fort backpacks, Tans equipment, and she looks at me and she has no pity or sympathy for me. And so instead of saying, oh, you poor girl and, oh, your husband is not nurturing you or doting on you, we were newlyweds sleeping on the ground so there was no romantic evenings by a pool drinking a glass of wine we were sleeping on cow patties under bridges and instead of ruby offering me all this pity she challenged me she said all law girl she say law l-a-w all law girl girl, this ain't so bad.

22:51You ain't lived till you've picked cotton all day long in the hot Texas sun for 25 cents, 100 pounds. She said, well, this walk across America, it ain't nothing. You can do this. So she never said anything against Peter or talked about our marriage. She challenged me as the person, Barbara, you can do this. And that's exactly what I needed. So I called her one of my many angels along the way that gave me the encouragement. And I think that's what's wrong with young people today. We're not challenging them. We're pitying them and enabling them to be immature and to not stand up to the trial, and difficulties in life.

23:43But Ruby, she gave me gut. She gave me her pioneer spirit. And I'll forever be indebted to her. Just to be devil's advocate a little bit. But there are some times when you should get out of a bad relationship. So how do you balance suck it up by Ruby versus get the hell out? Peter and I were still newlyweds at that point. And I wasn't going to get the hell out because I wanted to give it a shot. I'm not a quitter. And Peter and I were married 12 years and had walked across America and had three children. So I'm not a quitter. And I wanted to give it my best shot. And I think most people do. You don't want to just throw in the towel without doing everything you know to do to preserve a home and a family.

24:42When Ruby encouraged me to keep going and not to focus on Peter, but to focus on myself and what I could do, I really needed that at that time. Yes, there is a time in many relationships people need to get out for any number of reasons. But in the context of the story and where I was at that time, Peter and I were newlyweds. So, you know, I wasn't going to, it was too soon.

25:22so you answered what you learned about people in that we're more similar than we're different what did you learn about yourself on this journey i had a lot of preconceptions and a lot of prejudices because of growing up in the Ozarks, growing up a hillbilly. We were very poor. And I thought anybody who had money or prestige or wealth, they were all born with a silver spoon in their mouth. They were all stuck up. They were all this, that. That's not true. There are wonderful, successful people in this world. But when you grow up poor, you can look through the lens of seeing people, anyone who is prosperous or doing well, from your point of view, it's like, oh, poor pitiful me, but they're just stuck up and they think they know it all or they've got it all.

26:16And that's just not true. I learned many things about myself. In fact, it was an entire journey of self-discovery and breaking down prejudices about people and places, environment, everything. If you travel, it dispels a lot of your misconceptions about people and places. This is going to be an off the wall question that is going to, let's say, it's going to reveal some of my ignorance and prejudices and et cetera, et cetera. OK. OK. So with that caveat, I ask you this question, which is after I read your book, I said to myself, you know what? maybe she can help me understand this. And the question is, especially when you're talking about the people you met in Texas and Ruby and all this, can you explain the attraction that Donald Trump has to people like this?

27:17Like, what do they see in him that make them so loyal to him i think conservative people see donald trump as a voice for them i think they don't like a lot of his personality or mannerisms but i think that they see donald trump as a man who isn't polished with all the right things, isn't polished with saying one thing out of one side of your mouth and then doing another. I think they see him as a man who, if he says he's going to do something, he's going to do his best to try to do it. And for all of his failures and weaknesses, and every politician has them, no matter what side of the fence you're on, I think they trust him more than others.

28:18You can see my liberal bias, but I'm trying to embrace your thinking about understanding others and understanding where they're coming from as opposed to assuming you're right. I think all of us view life through our life experiences, positive and negative. And we see things through, I mean, there's so many layers, whether it's the way you grew up, it was your parents' beliefs and politics. It was what happened to you when you were at the bottom of the barrel and you needed some kind of government program. You needed some kind of help. Either you got help or you didn't. That's going to influence your thinking.

29:06Everybody views, particularly, I think, religion and politics through their own life experience. and what I say is when you meet people across the country, across the world, and you peel back all the layers, we're all just human beings, mind, body, and spirit, looking to do the best we can with what we've got and to find our way in this world. You're a wise soul, Barbara Jenkins. You are a wise soul. If I have any wisdom, it's because of my life experience. It's because of the things I've done and the things I have experienced in my life. And I've made many, many, many mistakes. And I fall short in many ways.

30:00But when I do learn a lesson, it sticks. Sounds like it, yes. So this is another off-the-wall question. But by any chance, do you still have that Nikon camera? Yes, I do. You do? I do. I have the Nikon camera and the lens that big semi truck ran over. Yeah. Yes. Oh, yes. And does it still work? Yes. Yes. That's a great story. Yes. Yes, it does. It's a little detail like that, that you talk about. Not that you just had a camera, but it's a Nikon and the lens got dented by the semi. And I just love those kind of stories. It may not be big picture, but it adds so much color to your book. Guy, did the book hold your attention?

30:52Absolutely. Because you got an advanced reader copy. I got a wonderful endorsement from Dolly Parton. I saw that. Yes, yes. Yes. And Hilary Swank. Do you know Dolly? My very best friend has been her backup singer for 35 years. I read that. Yes. Yeah. So that's how she got the book because Dolly does not endorse books. But Dolly is the big reader and she read this and loved it. So that made me very happy. But let me tell you the greatest compliment to me, because I came out of basically 40 years of silence. I didn't want to write this story because of my parents, my children. I didn't want to hurt anybody with any painful stories.

31:46But life does have pain. But I came out of 40 years of silence to write this. And so the greatest compliment I had was from this one editor. And nobody knows who she is. She's not Dolly Parton, and she's not Hilary Swank or Connie Britton or Jenna DiJenkin. She's an unknown but a brilliant editor who has edited many big books. And she thanked me for being able to edit the book. And she said, it was like Margaret Rinkle meets John Steinbeck meets Mark Twain. So it was all those great writers coming together. And to me, as a writer coming out of 40 years of silence, to be able to have an editor tell me that that's what it was like reading this book, was the greatest compliment.

32:48That's not a public endorsement. It's just for me. And at this stage in my life, Guy, I'm too old. I don't care about fame and fortune. It's a great story of encouragement and overcoming odds and finding joy in life, no matter where you are or what happens, because it's there. It's there. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm getting on my soapbox. That's okay. Why else get on a podcast if not to be on your soapbox? That's the whole point. Yeah. To that combination of what you said, I would throw in a little bit of Studs Terkel. I see a little bit of Studs Terkel in your book, too. Okay. And I mean that as high praise because Studs Terkel wrote some great books.

33:37Yes. Also, Salt of the Earth Americans, right? Yes. Oh, well, what was it? Abraham Lincoln said, God must love the common man because he made so many of them. Well, the other saying is you can tell what God thinks of money by looking at who she gives it to. Yes. Yeah. One of the points you brought up in your lessons from this journey and the 40 years is learning how to accept help. So what is the Barbara Jenkins theory of how to learn to accept help? If we're going to grow personally, spiritually, intellectually, whatever, we have to have a teachable spirit. And if you're going to have a teachable spirit, you need to approach everything with some humility.

34:34You don't know it all. You just don't know it all. And all of us need help. All of us need people we can lean on, people who will lift us up when we're down. We need friends. Several years ago, many years ago, I started a group called 12 Women, and my kids were still at home. I was a single parent. One of my children was very rebellious, and I didn't need to go out and look for love in all the wrong places and find another man. I just needed support and help for where I was in my life. So I started a group called 12 Women, and this was patterned after the 12 disciples. And I thought, we can come together in humility and together be a support system for each other.

35:31And so we met in my home for two years every week, and then we continued meeting on about once a month and then once every six months for another 10 years. But those kinds of support systems and friendships help you get through life, just help you in good times and bad times. Maybe you're at a flourishing, wonderful place in your life, and you have a friend over here whose life is falling apart. Well, you can be a help to that person. You can be a stable influence. You can be a guide. I've had enough ups and downs and joys and sorrows in my life that when I need help, I'm first in line with my hand out, looking for help, asking for help.