John Francis · 2005 · road

After an oil spill in San Francisco Bay in 1971, John Francis stopped riding in motor vehicles. Two years later he stopped speaking. He kept both up for twenty-two and seventeen years respectively, walking across the United States and taking three degrees on the way - and ended up writing oil spill regulations for the Coast Guard.

1. 1
   Bolinas

   January 1971, and two tankers collide under the Golden Gate and put half a million gallons of oil into the bay - and a young man who helps scrub the birds stops riding in motor vehicles, and does not resume for twenty-two years.

2. 2
   Ashland

   He walks to Oregon and takes a degree at Southern Oregon State - and on his twenty-seventh birthday he stops speaking, meaning to do it for a day, and does not speak again for seventeen years.

3. 3
   Missoula

   A master's in environmental studies at Montana, walked to - and a silent student who teaches classes by writing, plays the banjo, and finds that not arguing has taught him to listen for the first time.

4. 4
   Madison

   A doctorate at Wisconsin in land resources, still walking, still silent - and the dissertation on oil spills that will eventually put him in a job he cannot easily do without talking.

5. 5
   Washington

   Walked across to the capital, where the Coast Guard hires him to write oil spill regulations after the Exxon Valdez - and on Earth Day 1990 he speaks for the first time in seventeen years.

6. 6
   Caracas

   South by sailing boat and on foot through the Caribbean and into South America, as a UN Environment Programme goodwill ambassador - a man crossing continents at walking pace on purpose, which is the argument.