Sometimes pieces of the past and present connect in eerie and unexpected ways, like arcing electricity. Earlier today I was looking at the work of photography Aaron Huey, who spent years documenting lives of the Oglala Lakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation. According to Huey’s bio, he became known for walking solo across the country in 2002 with his dog Cosmo.

Naturally, I started wondering about the history of transcontinental walking. Wikipedia has a list of people who have walked across the United States that includes 27 entries, most dating from recent decades, and a preface that defensively warns that it “may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness.”

Not on this list is someone I already knew of, except not as a cross-country walker. I knew Charles Fletcher Lummis primarily because of his incredible photographs of the Pueblos, some of which I relied on in my thesis research. He had a fascinating and wild life. I want to learn more about it.