He Walked 4,000 Miles Across America. What Did He Learn? — Andrew Forsthoefel

 

Airdate: October 29, 2025

Julie Rose: How vulnerable are you willing to be?

Andrew Forsthoefel: They invite me to come with them into the forest, and we do have to be discerning, right? You know, we have to protect ourselves and take care of ourselves, but I was also learning how to trust my gut, and my gut said, "Go," you know, and so I went with them.

Julie Rose: Hey, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy, a show about sticking with moments that challenge us even when they're uncomfortable. And I get it, nobody likes to be uncomfortable, but I've learned from experience, and maybe you have too, that sometimes a little discomfort has benefits if we can stay open and curious about it. And that's what we're here to explore, so let's get Uncomfy. I'm joined today by Andrew Forsthoefel. He's an author and a restorative practices consultant for public schools in Maine where he lives, and get this: in 2011, right after graduating college, he walked across the United States on foot, walked carrying a sign that said, "Walking to listen," and "Walking to Listen" is the name of his memoir. Andrew is with me to share some of the many Uncomfy moments that he had on his journey. Welcome! Thanks for your time.

Andrew Forsthoefel: Thank you for having me.

Julie Rose: What were you thinking when you went on this journey?

Andrew Forsthoefel: Yeah, I guess I wasn't thinking so much as feeling, just feeling a call to find out who we really are, um, and it was through, yeah, walking across America, so you can do that a million different ways. Why, why walk across America? For me, I'm doing this to find out I'm trying to find out who we are and learn more about how to live, live this thing we call life, and then eventually over the course of the year, it became clear to me, like, "Oh, right, of course. Like, who am I? Who," this is, this is the, the reason that I wasn't aware of when I started.

Julie Rose: There's a moment in the book early on, you, uh, you've only been on the road for, I don't know, a couple hours, you haven't gone very far, and somebody, you know, shows up. Actually, your mom kind of sent him to kind of maybe, I don't know, talk you out of this craziness. Tell us what your conversation with, you call him Bob, what was that conversation?

Andrew Forsthoefel: Bob, my mom's landlord, God bless Bob, you know, just looking out for me. He tracked me down maybe a mile down the road. I was actually on, on these train tracks at the time, and he climbed through the trees and got to the train tracks I was like, "Oh, Bob, amazing." And I, I was trying to, like, as soon as I started this walk, I was committed to seeing each and every person as my teacher, so kind of like putting on these goggles of like, "I may not initially have thought of you as someone worth listening to or as someone who has something really valuable to share with me, but because I'm wearing these, these goggles now of 'walking to listen,' I'm now seeing you as a teacher, a prophet, a mentor," and so, so here comes Bob, and I'm like, "Okay, Bob, I guess it's you. I guess you're the first one," you know? I'm like, "Bob, thanks so much for coming." He goes, "Don't thank me. Your mom's a wreck back at the house. You don't have to do this." I was like, "Okay, all right, thanks Bob." He goes, "This gonna be six months or, uh, six days, you know, six hours?" When I kind of caught that curve ball, I was like, "Thank you, Bob. Like, I'm gonna keep, I am gonna do this." He goes, "Well, here, here's a knife. Whatever you do, don't trust anybody." And I had received his, his teachings,his instruction, his gift, and, and kept going. And, in retrospect, just processing it a little bit, it's like, of course, we all have that guy inside us, right? We all have Bob inside us who's giving us a knife saying, "Don't trust anybody. Look at us! Look what we do to each other! Why, why would you ever trust anybody, let alone open up to somebody? Like, trust, sure, keep it transactional, keep it, keep it at a distance, but, like, definitely don't open up and definitely don't put your own vulnerability out there for someone else to exploit." We've all got that guy, so my intention on this walk and my commitment and then my practice was using the different privileges and advantages and resources I had at my disposal to do that often prohibitive act of being the first one to open up, and I, I was doing that by putting myself out there on the highway and making a statement, being like, "Yo, I'm out here. I am vulnerable, you know, and I'm, I'm doing it for you to listen to you and for us, you know, so that we can connect," and, um, yeah, some people got it and some people didn't, you know?

Julie Rose: Yeah. Tell me about somebody who got it.

Andrew Forsthoefel: Well, just a few miles down the road from Bob, I came across these four men on the train tracks and got a little closer, a little closer, and I started to feel my own fear come up, Just the questions of like, "Who hangs out on train tracks outside of town?" You know, and my, whatever assumptions I had there. Got a little closer, um, uh, they appear to be Latino men. A little closer, it's four of them. "Okay. Maybe they're unhoused. There's some boxes lying around with their belongings, who are these people?" And now is the pivotal moment, right, of like, "We can turn our eyes away from the other and move past them as if they don't exist," which is kind of the culture we've created for ourselves here in this society, just, like, pretend people around you like don't exist, you know, "Just keep your head down and keep moving, keep separate, or try to engage," and this was a year of engagement for me, and so I kind of stopped, and I was like, "Hey," and keep in mind I was wearing, like, a backpack, a huge backpack, with an American flag and an earth flag. I was wearing a cowboy hat for some reason, definitely not a cowboy, but I was like, "You gotta look the look," and so I looked weird. I looked bizarre, right? And, um, these guys go like, "Okay," we're kind of like checking each other out, and I told 'em what I was doing, "I'm walking across America." I felt a little silly saying that because I'd only been walking for, like, four miles, five miles at that point, but I, I, I pulled that card, and, uh, they say something to each other in Spanish, and the one guy reaches into the, into his, his box and pulls out a package of cookies and a sleeve of apple juice boxes, and I take out my mandolin and play a song for them. It starts raining, um, they invite me to come with them into the forest. I'm thinking of Bob, "Don't trust anybody." I got his knife in my pocket, um, and we do have to be discerning, right? You know, we have to protect ourselves and take care of ourselves, but I was also learning how to trust my gut, and my gut said, "Go," you know, and so I went with them into their home where they'd made little houses out of wood pallets and blue tarps, and Martín took me into his house, and we waited out the rain there together, and, um, then they sent me on their way, and, and Martín said as I was leaving, he goes, you know, "Good luck, God bless, and always sleep with a knife by your side," and I was like, "Dude, I think you and Bob would get along." Yeah, exactly. We all, we're all scared of each other for good reasons, so how do we use what resources we have at our disposal, and those could be relationships, it could be practices, "How do we use our lives to take a step a little bit closer to each other in the truth and in the vulnerability of the truth?" So, I think of those guys, yeah, just a few miles down the road from Bob.

Julie Rose: Yeah, there were people who didn't wanna engage or didn't open up or kind of returned your vulnerability with hostility. So, tell me about a situation like that and kinda how you handled it and why, why it was worth leaning into.

Andrew Forsthoefel: Yeah, I mean, I heard of a thing called rejection therapy where it's like you, like, intentionally put yourself into situations where you're gonna get told no, as a form of de-stigmatizing the experience of, encountering a boundary, and so that was a big part of every day. I would sometimes knock on doors at the end of the day to look for a place to camp, and people would say, "No,"or even walking on the road, you know, like, a much simpler moment of, like, reaching out to, like, wave, to wave to a car as they pass, and, like, they see me but they don't wave back and accepting that, understanding, "I don't know what's going on for them. I don't know what's behind their 'no,' and maybe the worth of my extension has nothing to do with whether it's reciprocated or not. Maybe it's, it's worthy of and on its own,because I reached out and I feel good about that, right, and maybe my worth has nothing to do with whether people say 'yes 'or 'no' to me," you know? So, again, I was learning all that, um, but I think of one story in particular, and it's, it's a longer story, but I'll, I'll give just the quick version of it, which is, um, approaching New Orleans, I'd been told to not walk through New Orleans because of all the dangerous people there, right? So, my question was always, "Is that true?How safe am I to take a risk to find out," 'cause not always, it's not always prudent, but I decided to, to make the attempt to walk into New Orleans, and on the outskirts of the city at the end of the day, I hear this guy shout out from the other side of the road, and I thought he was calling out to me, so I crossed the road to meet him. He was a white guy, middle aged, standing on his stoop. He goes, "What are you doing?" You know, and I'm like, "Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm Andrew. I'm walking across America to listen, and started in Philadelphia." "Oh, Philadelphia? So, you're a damn Yankee. Who the eff invited you down here?" You know, "Oh. Okay. All right. Yeah, um, no one, and I'll just keep, keep on my merry way," you know, and, uh, I go to turn, but I didn't, I didn't throw it back at him. I stayed in my own center of love, really trying to stay in love, but love also has to take care of itself, and so it's like, "Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk on." I don't know if it was that or why, but he, he then kinda reached back out again and he goes, "Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute." I go, "Yeah?" He goes, "You like beer?" I'm like, "Yeah." He goes, "You want one?" And I go, "All right, sure." He invites me into his house. He's like, "You gotta leave your bag out here 'cause, uh, you might have a gun in there, and, you know, I don't want you bringing a gun in." So, again, okay, this is a vulnerable thing that we're both engaged in here. I'm out here on my own, laying my body on the line in a way, and you're now welcoming me into your home, so this is, this is an exchange of intimacies, and we haven't learned how to really protect and respect, vulnerability in our culture and honor it for what it is, so we were just fumbling our way into that with each other in this live moment, and, uh, he gets out these beers, we sit down and he starts sharing with me about his life, and he kind of, it's like a nonstop, it was almost as if he'd been waiting his whole life for someone to actually listen and care enough to share, and then all of a sudden it's this torrent, and most of it was pretty racist and violent and just, like, stuff that was just hard, hard to listen to, hard to accept, and then there's a question of, "Well, when do you say something? When do you challenge?" So, I was imperfectly listening, right. Not always knowing what to say or do all across America, certainly in this moment, and then he, he's, he starts telling this story. He's like, "I was really pissed off that day because I, uh, had to bury my son, and so, like, I fought these three guys, and one of 'em walked away with a knife, you know," and it was just this little shining moment of the vulnerability underneath his pain, his pain, which led to his racism, his pain, which led to his feeling of, uh, all these toxic experiences that he created to pass his pain on. There was pain there, unresolved pain of his son dying, and what I say about it now is like, "Our pain doesn't justify causing more pain to others, but it, it explains, at least in part, why we might, um, behave harmfully to other people, and, um, without proper, without healing, without the proper resources and relationships to heal that pain, we pass it on." That's just how it works, and so I don't know, you know, what that did for him, but I just, I said eventually, like, "I gotta get going. It's getting dark. There's a fire station down the road I'm going to. He goes, "Oh, well, there's a fire station, you know, if they say, uh, if they say you can't stay there, then, um, I guess I'll have to put you up here, so, uh, you let me know." It's like, "Okay, thanks, you know, and, uh, time to go," and at the end, I go, "Hey, I, I realized I didn't get your name. What's your name, man?" And, uh, his eyes narrow and he kind of looks at me kind of back into that fear story, and, um,he goes, "Uh, my name? My name's Bond, James Bond." I'm like, "All right, man. I'll never forget you, James Bond." Yeah, so you just never know what someone's working with.

Julie Rose: You said something a moment ago, I think you said, "We as a society haven't, we haven't figured out how to protect and respect vulnerability."

Andrew Forsthoefel: Yeah.

Julie Rose: What, what would it look like to be a society that protects and respects vulnerability?

Andrew Forsthoefel: Gosh, I would love to know, um, I think for one, I don't know what it would look like, but I know we can't get there if we continue to misunderstand vulnerability to be a weakness, something to be ashamed of or embarrassed of when in fact the opposite is true. Vulner, vulnerability and the, the ability to stand in the truth of your vulnerability is the most powerful thing a person could do. What would be possible if we really were safe to open up? It's not something the world has seen in many places. I mean, I think there are some, I'd like to believe that there are some societies and cultures and villages who have found their way there, and there are some, you know, pockets where we're trying, where we're making experiments in that, even in our just personal relationships, friendships or romantic relationships.

Julie Rose: Well, this is some of what you, um, I guess are aspiring to in these restorative listening circles that you do. So, um, I guess we'll just kind of let people know, they'll have to read your memoir, "Walking to Listen," but 4,000 miles, you actually make it. You did it, took you almost a year, um, and I mean, how many shoes, pairs of shoes did you have to wear out? Like there's

Andrew Forsthoefel: it was five, or was it four? I can't even remember at this point.

Julie Rose: I don't know, at one point you're, like, pushing your stuff in a baby stroller. I mean, talk about, like, a spectacle, but there are really some beautiful stories, too, of people, I love the story of the truck driver who kind of, like, adopts you because you're on his route, you know, for a good chunk of the time. Um, okay, so but now take us then to, to the work that you're currently doing. These, what, what is a restorative listening circle in,

Andrew Forsthoefel: yeah,

Julie Rose: in a high school setting?

Andrew Forsthoefel: Yeah, so to say, first, I, one of the great gifts of my walk was that I, I was able to meet and enter into relationship with several indigenous people along the way. So, I was welcomed into what I eventually understood was an ancient practice of, of being in circle together and in ceremony together, listening to each other all night long, sharing honestly, and, and grieving and praising and doing all these things that, um, I had never really seen done before in my life and in my culture. And so, the work I do in schools is to create refuge spaces that are circles, using simple frameworks that, um, give students and faculty and administrators a chance to be real with each other and to experiment with risking a little bit more of our humanity and to see what happens, and then to know that it's gonna be, there's gonna be a circle again next week, and let's, we'll, I'll get to make another experiment and receive more data from that.

Julie Rose: So, people come together, you have students who will come together once a week during a specific time in a study hall or something, you sit together in, I don't know, the library or whatever the place is, and is there a prompt? Is it, does everyone go around the room and has to share,

Andrew Forsthoefel: yeah, 

Julie Rose: or how does it work?

Andrew Forsthoefel: Yeah. The, the framework I use is there's a welcome, which includes a certain, you know, there are a few bullet points you hit with the welcome. There's a grounding, which is kind of like a warm-up question, like, a gratitude, "Who, what are, what's something or who are you grateful for today?" Or, could be a breathing exercise and meditation, whatever, something to kinda help us ground in, and then there's a sharing, which is the heart of the circle. And so, depending on the circle and the trust and the respect and the space, it could be, you know, "What's something you're looking forward to?" Or something a little deeper like, "Who's someone in your life who taught you something important, you know, about, about life, and what did they teach you?" Or it could be "What, what do you know about forgiveness? You know, and tell a story about when you forgave somebody," you know,

Julie Rose: And, and high schoolers, high

Andrew Forsthoefel: Yeah,

Julie Rose: will do this?

Andrew Forsthoefel: Yeah, yeah. It takes time. It takes, I mean, a circle like this is a tree. You plant it. It takes time to grow. It's not gonna be the mighty redwood, um, for many years, it takes time to grow a culture. And so, at first, the room is gonna be cold, and we try to create opt-in circles so that students aren't feeling coerced or forced to be there and that, so that adults aren't feeling coerced or forced to have to, it's like, "I have to do this apparently, but I'm not even into this, so, like, I, I don't have buy-in, so the students aren't gonna have buy-in," so we try to create opt-in spaces where trust begins to happen, and then you have a closing of just, it could be as simple as a word, you know, but we like to close with intention.

Julie Rose: And when the, when the tree bears fruit, assuming it's a fruit tree, what is that fruit, then?

Andrew Forsthoefel: It looks different. You know, there's so many different moments. I mean, I can share two different ends of the spectrum briefly. One would be, you know, like, I'm thinking of a circle with, with these kids, maybe the fourth circle, this is the seventh and eighth graders, an alternative education classroom, where, finally after the fourth, third, fourth circle, one student risks sharing about what she's dealing with at home between her parents, right, and then she paves the way for the next student to jump in and suddenly he's sharing about what his mom is going through and how his brother committed suicide and how his mom's gonna go back in her addiction, and suddenly this, like, "Whoa, this is super, like, it's all coming out," and this is one of the reasons why I think a lot of adults are hesitant about restorative practices and sort of circles, 'cause it's like, "What if the truth, do we really wanna be with each other in the truth? Like are we ready to, like, field the complexities and the traumas and the intensities of what people are actually dealing with? No. Button it up. Much easier to just pretend it's not here. Let's just kind of avoid it." So, there are good reasons we need to be trained to catch and work with moments like that, but I would call that a "fruit," you know, folks realizing, "Whoa, you're going through that, too? Like, me too, oh my God, and here's this sanctuary space where we can be with one another and realize we're not alone." So, that's one end of the spectrum. The other is, I'm thinking of a student who came to a circle or two the first year and was very, very disruptive and disrespectful. The second year, never came to a circle, but almost always dropped in right before we started and would connect in, just pop in briefly and then, and then kind of, "No, I'm not gonna come, I'm not gonna come." And then at the end of the year, they came, and that circle happened to have, he, he decided he wanted to sit at a table far back, but it just so happened that 20 kids came, and so the circle expanded, had to expand, and he ended up kind of like being in it, and he was on his computer the whole time and we've kind of had to work out, like, "What are our boundaries there with cell phones and computers and stuff?" But he was on his computer and I felt that was okay, you know, 'cause it was hard for him to be there. He passed, he passed, and at the very end, uh, the closing round was like, "What's your intention for your summer? This is the last circle of the year," and, it got to him, and, like, "One word that's gonna describe your summer," and it got to him, and with sincerity, he said, "Good," and my heart just exploded with fireworks of delight and awe that he could muster, he felt safe enough to be sincere, even for just a single moment like that. That, to me, was a win, that was a "fruit."

Julie Rose: Andrew Forsthoefel is an author, speaker, a restorative practices consultant for Maine public schools, and his memoir is called "Walking to Listen." You can also read more of his writing about his current work at littlecourtyard.substack.com. Andrew, thank you for sharing your stories today. I've really enjoyed listening to you.

Andrew Forsthoefel: Thank you so much for having me, appreciate you.

Julie Rose: And thank you for getting Uncomfy with us today. What do you think about vulnerability? Do you have a place in your life or is there someone in your life with whom you can be completely and totally vulnerable? What does that mean to you? What would it look like to have more of that in your life? I'd love to hear your story. Email uncomfy@byu.edu or find us on social media to continue the conversation; we are @uncomfy.podcaston Instagram. Uncomfy is a BYUradio podcast. Samuel Benson produces it. The team includes Hyobin Kim and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.