Walking Out: One Teacher's Reflections on Walking Out of the Classroom to Walk America

In February of 2015, two-decade English teacher Amie Adamson left her job, put her entire household in storage, and drove to the east coast to embark on a 2200-mile backpacking trip across the United States. Burned out and frustrated by the public education system, a system which finds increasing numbers of teachers profoundly unhappy, she basked in the restorative task of hiking all day, gradually wending her way west and penning her daily thoughts on seeing America at walking speed. Walking Out is her reflections of this hike: how far she went each day, what she thought about, things that happened, and what it was like walking halfway across America as a woman alone.

Interspersed among her backpacking journal are her long-form essays about teaching English in the modern public schools. Looking askance at the public education system, her thoughts lend insight into why so many teachers leave the profession, or want to. Combining humor and inner reflection about things for which we all search, contentment, joy, peace . . . she writes about the goodness of people she met along the way and the serenity that's achievable one step at a time and in a relative state of privation, such as walking from the Delaware coast to central Kansas with all of one's possessions in a backpack.

Walking Out is a meditation on why moving our bodies and taking on physical challenges feels so good. Her journey revives the notion that people are mostly kind, and that America is safe. Walking Out is for the hiker, the endurance athlete, the teacher needing catharsis or a deep belly laugh, and anyone who has longed to leave real life behind for a while and strike out on an adventure.