Barbara Jenkins is returning to a story that brought her national attention in the 1970s. The Middle Tennessee resident has been sharing her perspective through speaking engagements and her memoir, So Long as It's Wild: Standing Strong After My Famous Walk Across America. She and her then-husband Peter Jenkins walked about 3,000 miles across the country; their journey appeared in National Geographic and made them minor celebrities, according to NewsChannel 5.
Jenkins was born in southeast Missouri and later moved to New Orleans, where she was studying for her master's degree when she met Peter Jenkins, according to News Channel 5 Nashville. Peter had set out to walk across the country for National Geographic, hoping to learn about the country by meeting people along the way, the station reported. They married and left New Orleans on foot in July 1976, headed for Oregon, as Barbara Jenkins recounted to HuffPost.
The couple covered 15 to 20 miles a day, carrying packs weighing between 35 and 75 pounds as they crossed Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Oregon, HuffPost reported. National Geographic published photographs of the journey and featured the couple on the cover of its August 1979 issue, according to HuffPost.
Risks Along the Route
Jenkins told Belmont University that a car hit her as the couple walked into Salt Lake City, Utah. NewsChannel 5 also reported that she survived a tornado and was nearly struck by lightning during the journey.
Pedestrian Safety in the 1970s
Jenkins's account of a road collision took place during a period when pedestrian deaths nationally were high. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, pedestrian fatalities reached 8,096 in 1979, a high in its long-term trend. That national figure provides a broad benchmark for the years of the Jenkinses’ walk, but it does not measure the risk on their route or, by itself, allow a comparison with today.
During the trip, Jenkins learned she was two months pregnant with her first child. She still had 400 miles to walk when she became sick, according to the station's report. In Texas, Ruby Martin, who had once picked cotton for 25 cents per 100 pounds, encouraged Jenkins to continue, the station reported. The couple completed the final mile on Jan. 18, 1979, with Jenkins two months pregnant. In her account for HuffPost, she wrote, “It was Jan. 18, 1979, when we walked the last mile.”
The Walk's Public Afterlife
The Jenkinses turned the journey into three books: A Walk Across America, The Walk West and The Road Unseen, HuffPost reported. Barbara and Peter Jenkins collaborated on The Walk West, released in 1981, according to the station. They had three children and later divorced; Library Journal also notes the divorce.
That limelight returned in September 2023, when Jenkins published her own 304-page memoir, So Long as It's Wild: Standing Strong After My Famous Walk Across America, per Library Journal's review. The book reportedly explores nature's beauty and the generosity of strangers the couple met along the way, but it also delves into near-death experiences and what Library Journal described as her husband's verbal abuse during the walk. Jenkins has said she had been silent for almost 40 years before deciding to publish her story, writing in the preface posted to her website, “I have been silent for almost forty years, until now.”
What Prompted Her to Write
Jenkins has said the push to finally write her account came from an unexpected source: her granddaughter Josephine, who asked whether she really walked across America, according to the station's report. Jenkins also credits a 2016 picnic in Telluride, Colorado, where friends of her son Jed, described on her website as television actors named Aaron and Sophia, suggested she write her story. “A group of us were enjoying a picnic lunch on a perfect fall day in Telluride, Colorado in 2016 when my son Jed's friends, television actors named Aaron and Sophia, suggested I write my story,” she wrote in the preface. By her own telling, people had been asking her to write a memoir for 25 years before she finally did.
Jenkins has said her memoir is being optioned for a movie or series, according to the station's reporting. She now lives in Middle Tennessee and recently spoke at Woodmont Christian Church in Nashville, where she encouraged the audience to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep going, NewsChannel 5 reported.
