Walking with a mission: A coast to coast odyssey

By Tay­lor Kaser -
Over a month ago, Ster­ling Cleve­land set out from his native New York City with a lofty goal in mind — to reach the west coast of the United States, entirely on foot.
His main objec­tive is to raise aware­ness and funds for the Amer­i­can Dia­betes Asso­ci­a­tion; he hopes to raise $10,000 for ADA along the way. Cleve­land said that his grandmother’s fight with dia­betes was the main inspi­ra­tion for him to embark on this walk. Although his grand­mother passed away, he pointed out that dia­betes is a dis­ease that can be pre­vented and main­tained.
A life long res­i­dent in and around New York City, he says he’s never taken on a chal­lenge quite like this before. Many peo­ple embark on sim­i­lar walks, he noted, and there are a vari­ety of trails to fol­low. He plans on reach­ing Los Ange­les some­time this sum­mer.
Speak­ing with Cleve­land, his resiliently pos­i­tive atti­tude is as sur­pris­ing as it is infec­tious. Despite extreme weather con­di­tions, Cleve­land remains undaunted, and the count­less hours walk­ing haven’t chipped away his con­fi­dence in achiev­ing his goal one bit.
Along the way he’s been stay­ing in motels, “couch surf­ing”, and camp­ing — despite the frigid tem­per­a­tures. One of his favorite aspects of the trip so far, he said, are all of the great peo­ple he’s met. Last week he passed through Mor­row County and “surfed” one of the local couches.
At dif­fer­ent stops along the way, Cleve­land will have pack­ages wait­ing for him with addi­tional sup­plies and gear as needed. He looks for­ward to trav­el­ling through the west and enjoy­ing all the scenery along the way.
Cleve­land expressed his grat­i­tude to all the peo­ple who helped him thus far and offered their sup­port and encour­age­ment. He’s thank­ful that his work as a concierge for Cipri­ani Wall Street allowed him the time off to pur­sue his goal.
As dif­fi­cult as his endeavor is, Cleve­land cer­tainly seems to be enjoy­ing this once in a life­time oppor­tu­nity for a real adven­ture. Even though most of us won’t be embark­ing on any bicoastal power walks, we can all ben­e­fit from his exam­ple of step­ping way out of your com­fort zone and tak­ing an excit­ing new leap.
Check out his web­site, www.soil trek.com to see pho­tos from his jour­ney and read his live jour­nal. The web­site also has a link to the ADA web­site where you can learn addi­tional infor­ma­tion and make donations.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Jan 9 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.