In one year, a Yale grad walked 9,000 miles up, down and across the country, shunning modern technology and even his voice.
On July 9, his 23rd birthday, Greg Hindy walked into his friend’s Murrieta, Calif. home, now bearded and clearly a changed man.
“I think … of. I think of being so thirsty that the desert seemed to be still and everything silent,” Hindy said, laughing and crying, his chest heaving as he uttered his first words in a year last week.
The incredible journey, described by his father, Carl Hindy, as a Forrest Gump-like trip, was done as performance art for the young Nashua, N.H. man inspired by Tehching Hsieh, a Taiwanese artist who performed yearlong performance art in the 70s and 80s.
Greg Hindy walked entirely on foot, taking photographs on a 4×5 field camera and mailing the film home to his parents, who tracked his route by examining his debit card purchases. Carl then tagged his son’s progress on a Google Map as he made his way across the country.
“During this year, I will walk across the country, taking a southern route to avoid a harsh winter,” Greg wrote on a Kickstarter page he used to raise some $8,000 for the trip. “I will completely abstain from all noisemaking of any kind, including talking, and will abstain from reading, writing, listening to music, watching television, or any other kind of entertainment. The golden rule is that unless it is walking, photographing, or completely necessary to my survival, I am not allowed to do it.”
Greg’s incredible journey took him south to Florida, across Alabama and through Arkansas before dipping back into Texas, up into Utah and Idaho before cutting across to California and trekking south to the Los Angeles area.
Only twice, to get over long bridges without pedestrian access, did Greg not walk the incredible distance. And never did he use his voice, his dad said.
On Monday, Greg posted his video which shows him speak his final words on July 9, 2013, and his first words, nearly to the hour, he spoke on July 9, 2014. In between is a blank space, which “is yours to fill,” Greg writes in the description.
Carl, a clinical psychologist, says the raw emotion his son shows in the video as he recites a poem he wrote and memorized, was jarring to some, who worried the trip had negatively changed or harmed his son.
“Some people were not ready for the emotional punchline of this that I think he’s delivered with the split screen video,” Carl Hindy told the News on Monday. “It’s a very emotional thing – what did people expect, for him to come out with some Triple A catalogue? No, it’s an emotional thing.”
Unprepared for how intense the experience would be, Greg later told his father speaking felt like a “violent act” that nearly sent him to the ground with the power of it all.
Greg used paper and pen to communicate with people, several of whom helped him with food or water or even housing. Most nights, Greg slept in a tent as he wheeled along a cart containing most of his gear.
Carl encouraged people who ran into Greg to take photos and write about their encounters and send them along. Carl would them post them to a Facebook groupthat now has some 5,400 members following the young artist’s journey.
Many people were inspired by their encounters and told the proud parents of their experience.
“He didn’t know the trail of good will he has created because he just never saw it,” Carl said.
Two of the most startling moments of the trip happened in Utah, Carl said. Greg nearly became lost in Zion National Park during an intense snow storm, and he was taken to the hospital after he fainted during a bout of food poisoning one day south of Salt Lake City.
Greg also visited a walk-in clinic after a nasty spider bite.
“As parents, of course we were worried about his health and safety,” Carl said. “But he’s a brilliant kid who succeeds at everything he does in life.”
The family and friends from Yale reunited in the Los Angeles area last week as Greg decompressed from his trip. In just two hours of talking, Carl said he could see his son re-emerge from the trying test of will he underwent for his year as a walking ascetic.
The journey is not over. Greg plans to spend another week or so with friends before jumping back on the road – this time with a cellphone and his voice and a more direct route home.
His parents expect him home around Thanksgiving.
“He’s transformed himself from a sophomoric, intellectual kid into a whole man much more willing and able to express his emotion,” Carl told the News. “It scares many of us that he did it so well.”
