Changing Roads Podcast
Changing Roads Podcast unveils the profound essence of travel, exploring not just the destinations, but the personal transformations within. We unravel the various themes, aspects and narratives of travel that define us, shape us, and lead us to the heart of our own stories.
Changing Roads Podcast
Walking America Couple: Change the Inside, Change the Outside
Join Ranger and I as we sit down with Paige and Torin, the "Walking America Couple", who have taken on the extraordinary challenge of walking across all 50 states! The core message they share to the world: "Change the inside, change the outside." Discover how personal growth, gratitude, and resilience can redefine our interactions and inspire us to create a better world by working on ourselves first.
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Welcome wanderers, dreamers and fellow seekers of the open road. This is Changing Roads, a sanctuary for explorers of the world and the self. When they started this walk, people thought that they were chasing the horizon, wandering aimlessly across the country. But every step they take is a step towards something bigger, something that goes beyond the miles and the blisters. You see, they're not just walking for themselves, they're walking for everyone who's ever felt stuck, who's ever looked at their life and wondered if they could really make a difference. The message that they carry is simple, yet it's the most powerful truth they've discovered Change the inside, change the outside. It's about realizing that the power to change the world starts right here within us. When we shift our own thoughts, when we let go of the fears and the doubts that hold us back, we start to see the world differently. They've learned that by becoming the change they wish to see, they give others the opportunity to do the same. It's not always easy. Sometimes the hardest part is taking that first step, believing that one small change in themselves can ripple out and touch the lives of others. But every time they share their story, every time they show people that change is possible, they see the spark ignite in others' eyes. People start to believe in their own power, in their own ability to transform their lives, and that's why they keep walking, because this isn't just a journey, it's everybody's. They're walking to remind people that, no matter what they are, no matter how far they think they've fallen, they can always change, they can always choose a new path, a new way of seeing the world. So they keep moving forward, one step at a time, knowing that with every mile, they're spreading the message Change the inside, change the outside. It's a journey that doesn't end with them but begins in the hearts of everyone they meet along the way.
Speaker 1:Hi, welcome to Changing Roads. I am your host, brad, joined by my co-host, ranger, my loyal service dog and travel companion, and super stoked for this episode, because the guests that we have on today completely embody what Changing Roads is. When you come across people that have the same vision as you, that's very rare, so I'm very excited to have them share their story. I'd like to just really quickly go back and reiterate what Changing Roads is about. Changing Roads is about the fact that we all have roads in our lives, and sometimes those roads are out of our control, and sometimes they're roads that we have control of. But at the very end of the day, it is us that have the power to change those roads, and they define who we are at the end of the day and how we view and experience the world. So I would like to introduce you guys to Paige and Torrin of Walking America Couple. How are you guys doing?
Speaker 2:We're doing well.
Speaker 1:Good, it's a pleasure to have you guys on.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having us Pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:Where are you guys at right now?
Speaker 2:We're just a little north of Coal Harbor and south of Max, north Dakota.
Speaker 1:You guys are having a down day.
Speaker 2:Been seven days on the road without any rest, so we try to factor in one rest day a week.
Speaker 1:I do the same. I think down days are important for everybody, whether you're on an adventure or just traveling. But everybody, at the end of the day, needs to take a down day even in their daily lives, to regroup, think and recharge. Do you agree?
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Pretty big thing that you're doing, and you've been doing it since May of 22, right? Yeah, May 16th of 22. Cool, can you guys give us some background on yourselves and what you're doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. How far back do you want us to go? Do you want us to go back to the inception of the walk, or maybe some of the steps that catalyzed us even wanting to do that sort of a?
Speaker 1:thing. I want to go back to the very beginning. So let's go back to day one.
Speaker 2:You know, there are a lot of things that lead up to wanting to do something like walk across all 50 states. I had worked for corporations my whole life and, even though I was able to buy the things that are supposed to make you happy, I wasn't happy. I was pretty miserable, actually, and very cynical. So after I had enough of it, I decided I was going to do something to reset my perspective. I got rid of everything I owned, backpacked a few hundred miles through the mountains. It really did reset my perspective for the years to come.
Speaker 2:You find sometimes that you can reach greater levels of contentment under significant duress and hardship than you would ever expect. Most of us spend our lives avoiding those sorts of situations. Right, one of people's biggest fear is becoming something like homeless, even forced to live on your feet with only the things that you can carry on your back. You can find happiness because it takes you back to roots and resets your priorities. It takes you back to roots and resets your priorities. So after that I bought a van and built it out, because the seasons kicked me out of the mountains and I traveled the States in a van. For a couple of years mostly the West, I had been floating on corporate savings so I had to come home and make a little bit more money with my buddy who owns a commercial roofing company.
Speaker 1:We were on the road to Jefferson City, which is where Paige lived and she was my waitress. Really, that's how you guys met. I love that. That's serendipitous. I also have a similar experience regarding how you got started on this journey. I had a pipe explode in the apartment that I was living in in Texas and it destroyed all of my things. I had been in this really dark black hole for a few years and when that happened, I had a choice to either continue to sit in that dark place or to go do something big, and what I decided to do was to step out of my box and take Ranger, my dog, and just go do something big and share a message that you don't have to be trapped in these dark places. Does that make sense? I know, you know.
Speaker 3:Definitely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny, people react to those same circumstances in different ways, and I would love to figure out what the linchpin is causing a person to go down this road or that road. But similar to your situation, that's what it was for me and some of the other people that we've talked to along this big giant journey. When, faced with that obstacle, they had the opportunity to either cower and sort of retreat within themselves or do something about it, and sometimes it resulted in uprooting their whole lives just to find the contentment that they wanted to find.
Speaker 1:What about you, Paige? What situation made you put your feet on the ground or your boots on the ground? That got you into this?
Speaker 3:I didn't quite have the adventure bug when we first met, but Torrin kind of drew me into it. He wanted to do something on foot. As soon as we started dating he was already talking about doing something with backpacks together, finding a way to adventure other than the mountains. He wanted a more social journey, so I wasn't quite ready to jump into the deep end yet, so we moved into the van together. But it was just a month and a half in the van that I was like this doesn't feel quite right. This isn't the difficult adventure that I was expecting it to be. And I was ready to do something on foot pretty fast as soon as I told Torin that I was feeling that way. We talked about it for about an hour and then we're like all right, we're walking across some States.
Speaker 1:And now it's all of the States.
Speaker 3:Missouri, kansas and Colorado, but after that we tacked on all 50.
Speaker 1:That's super cool. I have your map actually here of where you've been. It's pretty impressive. Personally, I think you guys need to make it up to Alaska at some point. Epic, can you go into your story and how that turned into what it is and why you are doing this?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, like Paige said, the original goal was to not block all 50 states. We were treating it more like a through hike. We wanted to subject ourselves to something that would really test our limits and develop as much psychological resiliency as possible. So the goal was to walk across Kansas during the heat of the summer, and the mountains of Colorado were going to be the big reward at the end of it. What we weren't expecting was the kindness that we were going to experience along the way, people that I had written off in my life, you know, because I felt like they were ideologically ab the woodwork, helping us along the way, giving us places to stay, dropping off cold water or refreshing snacks during that hot Kansas summer, and that's especially meaningful when you're going through something like what we were going through.
Speaker 2:That was probably one of the hardest parts of the walk, because Kansas doesn't have much for shade and it was very hot. In fact, there was one night we pitched our tent on the side of the road. The sun had finally gone down and we were sitting in there going wow, it's really cool. I can't believe how cool it is right now it must be like 70, 80 degrees, and we looked at the weather, it was still 90 degrees outside. We'd been going through like a week of 100 degree days, so it changes your experience of the heat itself.
Speaker 2:So after that and when we started the journey also, we didn't have any social media. We weren't really doing much more than to just try to survive the walk for ourselves and we wanted to give something back and talk to people about the lessons that we were learning, both about the nature of mind with our experience of overcoming, but, even more so, create a sort of positive filter bubble for people to get the good news out there that they're not exposed to. It had totally rewired me because prior to that I considered myself a bit of a misanthrope. I just absolutely hated people. I was very cynical and I looked down on my fellow man and I was really just doing it for myself. But you know, it was around every corner. They were just rounding out my sharper edges.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's my experience as well. It's amazing what interacting with people and experiencing their kindness can do to you. One of my favorite parts of traveling actually, my favorite part of traveling is meeting people, interacting with them, learning how they live in the place that they live and taking those lessons back for yourself. As much as you're giving, you're trying to give the lessons that you've learned to other people, right? That's the true nature of sharing the world and experiencing kindness and support and interactions and that's what really changed my journey, the way that I view travel, and it eventually turned into the podcast that is Changing Roads, because that changed my life in a very huge way. And it wasn't the journey as fun and amazing or terrible as parts of the journey are it's the people, and I think that's what you guys figured out.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, you're absolutely right yeah, we're really glad that we started it without the social media and the website and all that, because we saw how welcoming people are, even if you have nothing to show for what you're doing. They can't look you up and verify that you're a decent person or you're not going to rob them. And people were just inviting us into their homes and we slept inside of churches, businesses, restaurants and we were just amazed with the kindness that was out there.
Speaker 1:It's pretty cool. They see you for you at that point and not for what your social media is. And I completely understand that's how I started was just completely for myself, and then the social media came afterwards. So, yeah, I know your story and you've been walking across all these states and it started out as a way to find yourself, find your happiness and see how there are things in this world that maybe you don't see at first that turn into something else. So now you guys started this journey and you figured out that through all of it, you have the opportunity to share this with other people. That's really cool, and I really want to get into the message you guys have to give to people, because, at the end of the day, that's truly what's important. It's something that we take on, and now you have something to say that might change somebody's life. So can we get in a little bit to or a lot of it, maybe into what that message is?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can start simple and expound on it from there.
Speaker 1:Perfect.
Speaker 2:So our slogan or motto is printed on the back of our shirts. It says change the inside, change the outside. If you want to fix the world, as a lot of people want to do, they see a lot of room for improvement you have to fix yourself. If you imagine a world in which everybody solely worked on themselves internally, that world would naturally become a better place without the need for any sort of imposition. So I think the biggest thing that we're trying to convey to people is just how much you can change. I think a lot of people don't realize what they're capable of becoming.
Speaker 2:If you could imagine just sitting a month aside where, within that month, you only did all of the best things that you possibly could for yourself, you started reading, and even reading things that might be difficult to read but that expand your mind in some sort of way. You started eating a healthy, wholesome diet and you were exercising regularly and you were expressing gratitude and interacting with people in a more communal fashion. You were just doing all of those right things. At the end of a month, it would be just about impossible to not emerge anew, Because we often integrate these little changes one step at a time. Often integrate these little changes one step at a time.
Speaker 2:Most people don't even realize how dramatically their perspectives can change, how dramatically their lives can change, and we're trying to give people the tools that they can use to change in such a way as to become more open-minded and less judgmental and integrate with people in a better way, but also become more resilient and a little bit hardier, so that they could deal with the hardship and uncertainty of something like walking across the country. The whole walk is a fantastic catalyst for learning these lessons. It's also a really good means of setting the example. That is what you can do if you train your thoughts properly. If you train your thoughts properly, you can go so far as to walk across the country, deal with all of the difficulties that come with that, whether they're the elements or the judgments of people along your way, and you can also make friends with nearly if you know how to put yourself in their shoes and you seek common ground before differentiation.
Speaker 1:It's amazing how much people will open up and hear you when you put yourself in their shoes, Rather than preaching to people. If you relate to them, they see that and then they want to be a part of that. That really opens people up and gives you the opportunity to share your message with them.
Speaker 2:I think you're right and I think that we have to develop those qualities within ourselves. The mind is, in many ways, just as much a muscle as anything else. Neuroplasticity we actually just recently released a video on neuroplasticity your brain essentially reorganizes itself. It actually physically changes according to the way that you exercise your mind and your attention and we can develop a greater capacity for empathy. But the only way that we can do that is if we do work to place ourselves in other people's shoes.
Speaker 2:If we do work to place ourselves in other people's shoes and the best means of doing that is connecting with people and talking to people and hearing their expressions of their own viewpoints we often, if we are not regularly socializing, sit within our own sort of echo chamber. Right, social media creates what's known as the daily me. It's our feed, it's our social media feed, but it's just designed to give us the thing that's most likely to be something that we like already, and when that's the main thing that we're exposed to, we're not really expanding our horizons. We're not growing as a person, we're just reinforcing our pre-existing ideas and notions, and I think with our ability to just take out our social needs on our phones now, we're losing a lot of what we gain from the actual interactions that we have with people in person. They're a lot more challenging, and I think that's part of the reason that people gravitate toward well.
Speaker 2:This is one of the things that I did right when I was working a normal corporate job and just living your conventional life. I I had friends that would invite me out to go do things, and I never wanted to do anything because I could stay home and just do the things that I wanted to do and I didn't have to put forward the work that it takes to be friends with somebody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. That's a big step to step out of yourself and you know that takes a lot of bravery. I've been there. That you have done that is admirable, first of all, but it's a message that other people need to hear these days so that they're not trapped in their own lives and their own social media feeds. It's such a big world out there. There's so many people to meet and there's so many things to experience, not, like you said, just from the outside, but from the inside. And, like you said, a lot of people experience their lives from the outside and the importance of getting out into the world and knowing yourself. That takes a big step and it's not easy to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we met someone. It was in the South somewhere, I don't remember what state exactly, but one of the things that he said he was an extremely warm hearted older gentleman. He said I've never met a stranger, just friends I haven't made yet.
Speaker 1:That's perfect. I did my all 63 national parks with Ranger in 11 months, so we didn't really have time to sit down and truly get to know a person. There are these fleeting moments where you meet someone, you have your time together and it's beautiful because that exchange, that quick exchange, they see what you're doing and you see how they're living. Even though it's such a fast interaction, it can be lifelong, lasting. You can change their lives by what you're doing. But they're also changing your life. They're also affecting how you view what you're doing on a daily basis and I think that with every interaction, with every person you meet, I think that hits home a little bit more for both you and them.
Speaker 2:We're rubbing off just a little bit on the people that we're interacting with, even if it's only to this tiny little, minuscule degree. I think it's really important to keep that in mind. It's good to keep it in mind for yourself so that you can be aware of the way that other people are impacting and affecting you, but it's good to keep in mind with regard to your impact on other people because I think it places a greater responsibility on the way that you're delivering yourself the things that you're talking about and the value that interaction could have. A lot of people have hosted us because they had experienced just one act of kindness that reset the way that they looked at things that were to come in their future. Some of the stories are just they're incredible. We just keep bumping into more stories and more stories about the way that paying it forward dominoes exponentially into the future.
Speaker 3:I think you really underestimate how much they can affect others. People have this pessimistic idea sometimes oh what can one person do to change the world? But we're all changing the world all the time, every interaction, whether it's little or big. That's all we can do. Let's hope to change one person at a time, even if it's just a little bit.
Speaker 1:What I love about what you guys have done and what I've experienced is, like you said, sometimes people don't know the power that they have to make impacts on others in the world. These little interactions that you have, these little acts of kindness, they make people realize their own power to reach out to the world and change it. That's within themselves and anybody has the power to do that. Like I said, we have the power to change our own roads, right, but we also have the power to influence the roads of other people so that they might not go through the darkness that we've gone through. Maybe there's a branch in the road that they can take through selflessness, love and compassion. That's a big thing. It might be one of the biggest lessons in life. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:I think you're absolutely right. I think a lot of people want great big results that are very outwardly apparent and if they don't get that or they don't see that, they feel that all is lost and it's a hopeless cause. But it would be better to just not expect to ever see that what you're doing is working and instead just take it on as your responsibility as a human being working in a very social way in a world with other human beings, working in a very social way in a world with other human beings, that it's your responsibility to just do the best that you can, to be the best influence you can, by recognition of the fact that you're influencing people around every corner with every interaction and everything you're doing. And we can learn that intuitively if we just introspect enough and we observe the way that we're changing according to the way that the world is pressing in on us. But oftentimes our attention's hijacked and we're drug along by our inner monologue, so these things go unrecognized. But if we pay close attention we'll start to see that everything has an effect. See that everything has an effect.
Speaker 2:Paige and I, for example, we regulate the amount of lyrical music that we listen to because, for one thing most lyrical music is talking about things which are very emotive, and it can also ramp up your inner monologue. So we found that a better way of achieving a tranquil state of mind is to listen to mostly instrumental music. We listen to a lot of lo-fi, and then something lyrical can be used as like a treat, in a way that help you return to yourselves and your message and not lose sight of that.
Speaker 1:You throw a few more of those at me because what you just said is great and it's one example and one way that you can do that, but there are many ways not just walking across the country, but there are other ways that you can come back to yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, paige can probably expound on some of our practices.
Speaker 3:Cool, let's hear it. Paige, I would say the most important tool that I've found is meditation and just mindfulness practices in general trying to be present, learning how to train your mind to not get drug along by your thoughts, worries and stresses, practicing letting go of like oh, what is that person thinking about? What I look like, or what are they thinking about what I'm saying? And pulling away from those. Meditation has been a huge tool in changing myself as a person. I've grown more from that than just about anything else.
Speaker 2:It can be difficult to think yourself out of certain things.
Speaker 2:A good example would be negative thoughts. Right, it's nearly impossible to think your way out of negative thoughts, because if you're thinking about how to solve the negative thought that you're thinking about, you're giving your attention to that negative thought and thereby perpetuating that thought, and meditation is a means of figuring out how to let go, how to direct your attention away from that and towards something else, how to direct your attention away from that and towards something else. I mean, there are things that we obviously need to reflect on, but often we're caught perseverating and ruminating and we just continue to loop back over the same thing over and over again Conversations that you have with a person. If you feel it didn't go your way or you're expecting an upcoming difficult conversation, you can just continue to reflect on it ad nauseum, to the point that it's not creating any benefit for you. It's only to your detriment, it's causing you to become more neurotic and less in the moment, and it actually makes that let's say, future conversation much worse for it.
Speaker 3:It's a very unfortunate misconception that meditation is quieting your brain, because so many people try it and then they give up so quick because they're like, oh, I can't make my thoughts stop, but that's not the goal. You might have some of that from meditating, but it unfortunately turns people away and there's a lot more to it, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think people have this idea that I can't meditate because I can't stop thinking thoughts, and it doesn't really work that way. It's actually a means of training your attention on something of little stimulation so that you kind of trick your mind away from the voice inside your head and towards something physical in the here and now. The primary practice of mindfulness meditation is to focus on the breath, where you're tracing the air from the end of your nose all the way to the inhalation and exhalation. And every time thoughts arise you don't even seek to quiet them, you just observe them and you try to observe them objectively and then return back to the breath and thoughts are going to keep coming. They'll just keep coming. Eventually they're likely to dissipate and your inner monologue will. It will be I don't even want to use the word suppressed. It kind of it dissolves into the heights of meditation. But to get to the point that you're actually reaching quietude internally, we're talking about more than a month of practicing regularly. It's very hard yeah.
Speaker 3:Hours back to back, but if it's helping you become more present, even just here and there, gradually, that's the ultimate goal, I think.
Speaker 2:And to just observe your thoughts for what they are, rather than identifying with the thoughts themselves. You can observe them and then judge them more objectively. Is this a reasonable thought that I'm having or not? You can exercise your metacognitive abilities better.
Speaker 3:That's a judgmental thought or that's a hateful thought. You can see your thoughts for what they are a little better.
Speaker 2:It's just a means of stepping back. See your thoughts for what they are a little better.
Speaker 1:It's just a means of stepping back. I think a lot of people don't want to go there because of the negative thoughts and from my research and my experience, these negative thoughts that come into your brain are normal and I think people feel bad about these negative thoughts about themselves or the world. So when you meditate, the brain is trying to process those thoughts right. You can't hide from them. So the more you sit with them and, like you said, objectively look at them that's the brain's way of then passing them through. Passing them out and I think that is part of finding peace is if you never look your demons in the eyes, then you will never be happy. And if you think that I'm right and say that meditation isn't just about feeling positivity, it's about looking deep into yourself and knowing those things so that you can move past them yeah, yeah, I would say.
Speaker 2:In many ways, meditation is a means of confronting your ego directly. And when I use the word ego, I don't mean it in the way that people often refer to it colloquially. I mean it is our entire identity system, it's our sense of personhood, the things that make Torrin who he is right, my opinions and preferences and judgments and conceptions and all that sort of stuff that would all be included within the ego, and most of us identify this as the self. But those things about yourself are alterable, right, they're not constants. They can change throughout the course of your life and if you're meditating, you can observe them more directly, confront them more directly and then figure out how to go in there a bit more surgically and alter them in such a way as to become a better ego, to interface with the world in a healthier way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what you guys do right now is you walk, and I know you guys walk for days and days and days and days and days. I feel like part of your meditation is walking, and I think that you guys probably walk in quiet a lot, even though you're with each other. Would you think that is a part of the way that you found to go into that place with yourself, with the beautiful environment around you and just you and yourself, and not knowing what's going to happen next, but just foot forward?
Speaker 3:what's going to happen next, but just foot forward, I think, especially in the beginning, before we had the social media and right now we have phone mounts. We can work online while we walk, which takes up quite a bit of our day, although I am always looking for those little moments of quietude and just looking out at the nature but it was definitely a practice of being present, even though I don't ever feel like I can 100% meditate while walking, because it's very stimulating. It is a mindfulness practice of its own.
Speaker 2:It's especially stimulating when you have traffic flying by you at 60 miles an hour. What you're saying is especially true of something like a through hike, when you're actually out in the middle of the wilderness and there's not much to hijack your attention but other than the things which actually pull you into the present, like the sun on your skin or the wind blowing against you or the sound of the insects in the background. That's definitely true, and walking meditation is practiced in a variety of meditative schools in a variety of meditative schools.
Speaker 3:I think walking and trying to practice mindfulness in the beginning was a huge growing point. To be mindful while being extremely uncomfortable, like trying to reorient the way I'm thinking about how much I hate, how hot it is and gosh, this hill has never ended. There's so many bugs or that kind of stuff. Learning to Be mindful through that is a huge thing to overcome. It's a great opportunity for growth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I know that you interact with people all throughout your travels. I know what that's like, and you're rubbing part of yourself and part of that message onto other people so that they might see these things. What about you two doing this together, as a couple? What do you guys learn from each other?
Speaker 3:Well, when we first started walking, we were just dating, so that part that's kind of funny. We dated for six months while walking before we went home and were proposed on Christmas and we got married a month and a half later and then resumed walking.
Speaker 2:You definitely learn a lot about each other. One of the things that I'm most impressed by with Paige is she's not a complainer. She's incredibly resilient and she really reserves complaint because I think she recognizes that it doesn't really make anything better. It doesn't change what you're going through. It really only furthers the suffering that you're experiencing.
Speaker 3:It kind of reinforces the idea to yourself like I am suffering, this is miserable and you don't have to think about it that way. You're convincing yourself that it's awful. You don't have to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as Seneca said, we suffer more in imagination than in reality. Really, in reality, most of it is just these sensations that occur throughout our body. That's the one thing that we're trying to avoid is the physical experience of what's really just a dis energy, almost, that your brain is processing, for lack of a better word. But really, you know, know, sensation, that voice inside your head, can make it so much worse to continue to talk to yourself about the suffering that you went through, the suffering that you're going to go through. You're now suffering in the past and the future rather than being here and now, and it might be that the here and now doesn't really have much of anything that bad going on. So I really appreciated that about page, because the company that you keep on, something as arduous as walking across the country, can really make or break your experience, and she's only been a support.
Speaker 1:yeah, there's something beautiful to be said about mosquito bites. I think that's what you guys just touched on, is it? You know it's going to happen. It's not fun later, but when they're biting you, I try and look around me and just be in that moment and know, man, we're in North Dakota or we're in Mississippi, and that's why I don't feel mosquito bites anymore when I'm out there until the next day. And it might be an analogy, but there's something to be said about mosquito bites and learning how to just be here and now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you can totally fixate on it. Everybody has experienced that moment where they've seen a bug on the floor or a creepy crawly thing of some sort and then they start getting itchy, they start feeling like they've got stuff. On One terrible example, or maybe a great example of it when we first started in Missouri and Missouri is just riddled with ticks we lost count over 200 ticks in like a three-day period, picking off 200 ticks in three days. And even when the ticks were gone, we crossed the border into Kansas and it's separated by the river there, so the ticks actually fell off almost immediately once we crossed the border. But you're still feeling the sensation of being crawled on and it's just your mind playing tricks on you. Yeah, you're right, and there are tools that we can use to get around those sorts of exacerbating thoughts.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, man. I wish we could keep going and going. Your message is so amazing. What you guys are doing is so amazing. I relate to it so closely and after this episode I'm going to be calling you guys as long as we're friends now. I have lots of conversations that are parts of your brain to pick.
Speaker 1:You know, I had a friend the other day and she said I just invented a new word and I was like okay, what is it? She said solular. And I was like what's solular? And she's like because you're doing something from your soul and your intentions are solular and I was like that's beautiful, that's perfect. I put it on a post-it note on my screen right here to remind myself to be cellular. So I think you guys are. I love that about y'all. Thank you, do you like the word cellular?
Speaker 2:I do like the word cellular. We should incorporate it as a new neologism into the dictionary.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we just can't not then spread it.
Speaker 1:It'll become a real word eventually. That's how that works, right? Yep, I think we touched a lot on your message and I hope that people follow you, watch your journey and hear the things that you have to say, because I think they keep rolling out. That's what I hope people are doing with Changing Roads now. Like I said, it was something different before and then it became a podcast because I didn't want to stop sharing that message, so I really hope that people will hear this and want to know more and keep hearing your voice and what you have to say. That's what I hope. I think you guys probably hope that too, yeah.
Speaker 3:Thank you. And after we complete all 50 states, we want to keep making content about the meaningful stuff. We really hope to create a passionate following people who care about the meaningful content and find ways to keep sharing it.
Speaker 2:In some ways the walk even though it's going to last another three years probably at the very least it's laying the groundwork for the opportunity to create even more in-depth content. Right now, we're just touching the surface of the things that we would like to talk about, but every day for us is a learning experience. We're intent on learning as much as we can about the nature of mind. It's the most fascinating thing to us, but it's not just an intellectual curiosity. I think it's one of the most valuable things we can learn about. That was something that we were exposed to at the earliest age, where we began to learn these different techniques that we can use to shape a more positive, resilient perspective, because our entire experience is shaped, and in many ways even determined, by the thoughts that we think and the thoughts that we're habituated to.
Speaker 1:Maybe the roads that you choose, or the ones that choose you. I love talking to you guys. I know we've touched so much on your message and I hope that we've got it across in a big way in such a short time. Can I ask you a few questions that I wanted to ask you, though, before we close this podcast out?
Speaker 2:Of course, anything.
Speaker 1:So I traveled with a ranger all over the world Arctic circle to the American Samoas, all over the country. That dog is very well traveled. Can I ask what it's like traveling with your dog? And then I have a follow-up question to that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's definitely challenging. It's really great, I think. More than anything, I'm so happy that we can give him the life that we do. He is so sad to be in a house. All the time. He acts depressed. He'll go back and forth outside inside play with the rope. If you stop playing with him just for a second, he'll just lay down and sigh all sad-like. He's with him just for a second.
Speaker 2:He'll just lay down and sigh all sad like and he's so happy to make new friends and be outside. And jack's incredibly intelligent and he requires a lot of stimulation. The breed although I don't know that he's a purebred border collie I actually found him as a emaciated stray over about 15 years ago, so he's an older pup at this point, but he's in incredible shape for his age and that's probably due to the fact that we feed him all homemade food. He has a really healthy diet and he's been very active his whole life. He's also good to himself in the sense that he won't overeat at all.
Speaker 3:Oh, and he rides on my cart essentially all day, every day.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 3:So no one needs to worry. We get so many questions about him. He's very well taken care of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jack has booties if we're in the kind of place that he needs booties just to get off the road, but he rides basically all the time on top of sleeping pads so he's got a nice squishy bed to lay on. We have a sunshade for him which also doubles as a rain cover, and he's even got a rain jacket. So jack is a pampered little puppy king getting toted around all day.
Speaker 1:It's challenging, very work. Can I have? Yeah, go ahead with another question, and this is something that I've been turning over in my head through my own adventures with Ranger and the time that he's spent traveling with me. I think there's so much that we can learn from dogs. Right, there's an innocence to them and fascination with the world, and there's a degree of anxiety and knowing about the world that they don't necessarily have all the time. Right, I view dogs as very pure creatures, animals.
Speaker 1:So you talk a lot about the brain, neuroscience and neuroplasticity, how we grow and develop through the things that we experience in the world, getting out there. Right, they say that baby's brains develop more quickly the more that they're exposed to, and this is just something that I've been wondering myself. I haven't had a chance to talk to a vet about this, but do you think that having Jack out on the road with you guys and letting him experience what he experiences, do you think that his brain has developed differently than other dogs' brains, and is there something that we might be able to learn from that Big question?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Dogs aren't so genetically dissimilar so as to have a totally different means of formation in their brain. I mean, there are obviously cognitive differences between dogs and ourselves but yeah, jack's mind is getting shaped by his experience as well. Dogs, like humans, experience cognitive decline and even dementia. But they are less likely to experience cognitive decline and dementia if they're regularly stimulated with intellectually challenging things. So there's that old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. That's not totally true.
Speaker 2:If your dog gets so old and you haven't put in the time and work with them, it might be a lot more difficult because they have gone so long without exercising their mind. It's going to be even more difficult after they've neurologically degenerated to learn those new things. And Jack, for instance, I think he's still, as I watch him get older and a little bit less sprightly physically he's still all there. His mind is all there there and I don't know if it would be if he hadn't lived the life that he did. You know, he's getting up there in years and man he's just. His mind definitely has a lot more ambition than his aging body, I think at this point. Yeah, he wants to walk all the time too.
Speaker 1:But yeah yeah, I think there's a lot we can learn from our dogs, and I think that's a big one and I think it aligns with what you have to say.
Speaker 2:I think one of the things that I appreciate most about dogs, among the things that we can learn from them, is that they have preferences like humans, but they don't hang on to wrongdoing in the same way that humans do. Jack, I can tell that he has a sense of justice, and if he feels like he's been treated unfairly or that we're asking something of him that he shouldn't have to do, he's more likely to disregard it or become grumpy with us in that moment. Jack has so much personhood, even as far as dogs go, but he doesn't hang on to his judgments in the same way. Right, if you turn around really quickly and you go oh, you know what I shouldn't have done that, buddy, you were actually right. He's there, he's immediately. He's right back with you, just happy that you're there to be his friend again. I think that's something that we can. Happy that you're there to be his friend again. I think that's something that we can. And then death. It's an invaluable lesson to be learned from dogs.
Speaker 3:I also feel like Jack is more present than us humans are so much of the time, so I appreciate the moment. He's always there enjoying it.
Speaker 1:It's a good lesson. I love that you're traveling with him because I've been there and it makes such a big difference, not just for him but for you, that you're traveling with him because I've been there and it makes such a big difference, not just for him but for you. You guys get it and I love that. Travel dogs, adventure dogs, go, jack, jack's doing it, yeah, heck, yeah, guys, you keep going all day. Like I said, but deferring from that topic and ending this out, do you guys have any like really big highlights from what you've been doing that really have made an impact on you, or some beautiful things that you've seen that just jaw drop you.
Speaker 2:You know, I think the sites kind of get lost in the stimulation of it all. It's definitely not what the journey is about. It's all about the interactions that you have along the way. Some of the things that happened in the early journey are, in some ways, some of the most impressive, just because there was no way for people to verify who we were or that they could trust us.
Speaker 2:There was one person in New Mexico, on our way into Albuquerque, that stopped on the side of the road and offered us one of the Airbnbs that they owned in town. I think they did pretty well for themselves. If you know Halloween Spirit, they were one of the co-owners, so their family owned Halloween Spirit and they were also a property manager. And when they were taking us to the Airbnb, they said, oh, and I brought my car along for you to drive and I'm like I don't want to drive, I can't do that. No, it's really okay. Like no, I mean, I'm not a bad driver, I don't have a bad driving record, but I just don't feel comfortable driving your car. And he goes you can wrap it around a pole, I don't care, goes, you can wrap it around a pole.
Speaker 1:I don't care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so he, yeah, he let us borrow his car to pick up a few things that we needed in the town, and then he put us up in a an absolutely beautiful Airbnb. But among our experiences with him, he also gave us a tour of one of the nicest properties he owned. It was this Adobe mansion, and it was. I mean, the moment that you walked into it you were lost, but it was one of those things that you only see in the movies. It had the big, 10 foot tall double wooden doors that you'd like take both hands to open. It had an indoor pool that was turned into a wine cellar. It had a bedroom the size of a ballroom and it actually had a ballroom the size of a house, and the bathroom was the size of a bedroom. It was just absolutely and I say the bathroom, it was like filled with bedrooms.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually got lost. I used the bathroom and you guys walked away him and you guys walked away.
Speaker 2:Hello. But this guy put so much trust in us to show us around that and to let us into his airbnb, for two nights even, and borrow his car, when he had no idea who we were. He just wanted to help a stranger we barely even talked to him.
Speaker 3:We just met him on the side of the road for a moment. Yeah, well.
Speaker 2:Things like happen regularly, but that one was a pretty significant example, just because of all of the things stacked together. I mean he really was risking a lot for a couple of strangers. And there are a couple of things that have changed us, not because of the kindness itself but because of the interactions that we had with the people. We got passed on between about four different Mennonite families up in Wisconsin and that really reset our perspective for the way that people can communicate with one another, Because the Mennonites they don't have TVs or smartphones or anything like that. They have a different kind of psychology and the way that they formulate thoughts, if you're paying close attention, that itself is different. So when they have a conversation about something in contemporary society, we kind of topic jump, we hop back and forth I did this thing. And then the other person says, oh yeah, I did this thing thing, and you're just kind of trading experiences in the conversation. It's a little dissatisfying and it's usually a little more eye focused.
Speaker 2:Always trying to talk about yourself like so much of the time is what we do a lot of egocentrism in the conversations that we normally have in society, but the mennonites aren't like that. When they grab hold of a topic, they take that topic to its ultimate end. The conversation can last a whole hour on this one thing until they've fully explored the idea. More than that, the kids at least in the congregation that we had experienced, one of the families in particular, congregation that we had experienced, one of the families in particular they were just, I think, because Mennonites only are educated to the eighth grade. I think that they make more use of their schooling. And so these kids you know, five-year-old kids saying words like Nebuchadnezzar and Melchizedek with that same level of pronunciation just impressed us around every corner and you're able to conversate with the kids in a different way because there's more responsibility placed on them and so they develop more quickly than a lot of kids do.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I love how much we can learn from each other.
Speaker 1:Like you said, I think in this world today, we've done a pretty good job of separated ourselves from other people and COVID didn't help, you know and to go back to the knowledge that we're all humans and we are where we are at today because we've worked together and we've learned from each other and we've shared with each other and we've given love and compassion and selflessness with each other, and we've given love and compassion and selflessness. That's why we are a human race right now. So to be able to come back to that and be reminded of that light, that fire again in people, that's what we need right now in this world. And I have a lot of respect for you guys. I believe in what you're doing and I hope you know that you are making a difference in the world. You've made a difference in my life. Even just getting to know you guys and watching what you're doing it's made me see some things that I might have missed. So I really appreciate what you guys are doing.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that you don't always get to hear the impact that you're making or the change that's occurring, so it's good reassurance.
Speaker 1:If you could summarize in one to three sentences your entire message, all of my listeners, if there was one, one little paragraph that they could take home with them at the end of this boil it down. What do you think it would be? Let's do one sentence. I'm going to put you on the spot here. You're making me think.
Speaker 2:One sentence, gotcha that's kind of what our slogan is, but let me contrive something new here. Our thoughts largely dictate our internal experience, and our internal experience changes our external experience. So if we're going to go about improving anything, we should work on changing the way that we experience things internally.
Speaker 1:Perfect, perfect, well said, man, cool. So we're closing this episode out and I'm so happy that you guys just joined me. I didn't even know that this was happening until I woke up four hours ago. And me, I didn't even know that this was happening until I woke up four hours ago game mode. So I really appreciate you doing this and I know that you do a lot to most of what you're doing right now in this message that you have to share by the kindness of others, and I've donated to you guys today and I know that you take donations to keep what you're doing going. So I would like to encourage my followers and listeners, if you feel inclined, to donate to these wonderful people, because they have a mission to share and it's a mission that should not end. So would you guys want to say where people can go and do donations for you guys?
Speaker 2:well, first, find, well first thank you very much we weren't aware that you made a donation to us.
Speaker 3:So you didn't see the notification. Yes, we appreciate that forget it soon and if people would like to donate, they can go to the links at the top of our facebook page walking america couple, or they can go to our website, walkingamericacouplecom, and they'll find a section with links to donate.
Speaker 1:Perfect, and you have your Facebook. I'm assuming that you're easy to find just by typing that in. Do you guys have Instagram or anything else?
Speaker 3:Yes, facebook, youtube and Tik TOK, but.
Speaker 2:I will um. Tik TikTok and Instagram are definitely on the back burner. We don't prioritize them so much. So Facebook is the number one way of keeping up with us, but our website has all of our meaningful content consolidated into one space Perfect.
Speaker 1:I love your YouTube videos as well. I would recommend everyone go check those out, because it puts you right in there. It's awesome, awesome. Thank you guys Once again. I'm going to be calling you guys in the next days to pick your brain, so I'm glad you're on here. I think my listeners are going to take a lot away from this, as I have. Thank you guys again, and to my listeners, thank you guys for hanging out with us today. I hope that you walk away with something here that it take back with you so you can find us changing roads at Instagram and you can find our podcast at Spotify, apple Podcasts and Amazon Music. So, once again, thanks again. Guys, you want to say goodbye?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks so much for having us. It's been an absolute pleasure, heck yeah.
Speaker 3:Bye, all right, bye, guys, bye.
Speaker 1:Talk to you guys later. See you next week you.