With just over a month until my departure to Find the
Founding Fathers, I want to spend some of this pre-trip time preparing you and
myself for the journey. As such, I want to share the story about how this
fellowship came to fruition. The story begins with a book I read five years ago
called “The Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road.” The author, Neil Peart,
faced a challenge nobody should have to face: How do you move forward in life
when your seventeen year old daughter and your wife die within ten months of
each other? Peart realized he needed to make the ultimate decision: Face his
own end or face a new beginning. He chose to live and he sought the solace of
the road to rediscover life and rebuild his soul.
Peart’s
journey in Ghost Rider is an amazing tale. On one hand, he documents in rich
clarity the observations and musings of a traveler who logs 55,000 miles on a
motorcycle traveling from Quebec, Canada to Alaska’s North Slope and finally
exotic Belize in Central America. While Peart is a celebrity on many levels he
eschews all such conveniences as he travels under an assumed name, he stays on
the back roads, he sleeps at discount hotels (most of the time!), and he eats
at the local diners. Peart’s style emulates a type of participant observer: He’s
living and moving among the people and cultures he’s writing about, yet he
retains his own sense of self and purpose.
Beyond
Peart’s musings about life on the road, Ghost Rider is an incredible story
about an individual who lives on the edge of self-destruction then fights his
way back to regain the semblance of a “normal” life. Peart left his cabin in
the woods a broken man with a shattered soul and returned with the sense that
he could survive incredible tragedy and begin to reclaim his life. It is a profoundly
powerful transformation and it reminds me that when we have the darkest hours
in our own lives we must find a way to allow healing to happen or we will
perish.
When I finished Ghost Rider I yearned
to create my own journey and I did. In 2009 I received my first Fund for
Teachers Fellowship. The FFT fellowship is a highly competitive grant only awarded
to 5000 recipients nationwide in the last twenty-five years. In my first
fellowship I focused on Native American cultures and American geography. I spent
two weeks and 3500 miles on the road discovering quiet America in an odyssey
that took me from Chicago across North Dakota, to the desolate peaks of
Yellowstone National Park, and a homestead ranch in South Dakota. It was a
journey of a lifetime and it forever changed how I viewed the world and how I
would translate travel experiences into meaningful classroom experiences. Of
course, when I returned from my first fellowship, I began to dream about
winning a second FFT Fellowship. My dreaming (and planning!) paid off and I am both
humbled and honored to continue the exploration of our country for my second
fellowship, titled Finding the Founding Fathers.
In the days and weeks ahead I
invite you to join me as I dive into our country’s rich history. As I share my experiences with you I
welcome your comments and your questions. Neil Peart blazed the trail of discovery
and self-discovery for me. I hope I can inspire all of you to take to the
road to be inspired by its beauty, and allow the experience to help you understand who you
are in this world…Start dreaming now...where do you dream to go? ~Mr. K
