#12 Ken's walk

 Oil independent or Opec dependent seem to fuel the political landscape.  A young writer who is an environmentalist, Ken Ilgunas, wanted to see first hand what the 1900 miles were all about so he set out on foot to experience the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Texas.  Ilgunas stated, “When I think about our culture’s addiction to fossil fuel, its indifference to the natural world, and the sheer impossibility of any major change happening soon, I can’t help but despair. Almost as depressing as an inevitable collapse is how powerless I feel as an individual.”

Llgunas was 28, broke washing dishes, and thought his life didn’t have much meaning, just many grand ideas. So in September 2012, Ken Ilgunas began hitchhiking in Denver, north to the Alberta tar sands. He hoped that the journey down the pipeline would explain why conservatives and liberals united against the pipeline in some states but not in others. The proposed pipeline’s route was all private property therefore he would be “trespassing”. When he tested his limits, little did he know that personal growth, life experience, and people he would encounter.

His adventure is captured in a book called "Trespassing Across America: One Man's Epic, Never-Done Before (and sort of Illegal) Hike Across the Heartland." From aggressive bull moose, mongrel dogs attacked him, a cow who chased him and dodging bullets while trespassing. His appearance as a vagrant with a beard and backpack led him to be harassed by law enforcement. Along the way, he became a philosopher: “To travel alone, I’d learned, isn’t to rely on yourself. To travel alone is to force yourself to depend on others. It is to fall in love with mankind.”

Meeting people along my journey helped me gain perspective by listening to people's stories, especially the ranchers' helped me gain "I'm an environmentalist and I certainly had a bias against the Keystone XL, but I was also seeking contextualization and nuance." His trip further entrenched his stance against the pipeline expansion.