People walk every day; to work, to school, to the gym. Some walk for exercise, or for a cause. 

There are people, however, that just walk to get in touch ­­— with their surroundings, or their feelings, or maybe just to clear their mind.

Susan Raffo is walking in search of the answer to a question she has had since she was 16 years old: How do we live here, on this land, in a good way all together?

Raffo, who lives in Minneapolis, Minn., was in Great Bend last week as part of a 4,200-mile walk across the United States. She began her trek last April, in Castine, Maine — a spot where she has a family history. Historically, Castine is the second-oldest settlement in the country; older than Plymouth, Mass. and Jamestown, Va. and younger only to the Spanish colonial sites in Florida. 

She started her walk at the age of 60, and has since had her birthday on the road.

Her goal, which she intends to reach sometime in January or February, is Turtle Island off the coast of California. 

“It felt right to start in Castine, one of the places where the opposite of living on this land in a good way was strategized,” she noted. She was speaking to the colonization — basically takeover — of the land from indigenous Native Americans.

It took her a while to walk through New York state, where she spent about two weeks with family. But now that she’s more than halfway, logging about 2,400 miles as she trekked through Kansas, she’s making good time.

“In Kansas, I talked to people just to get a sense of what I need to know,” she said. “I stayed with a wonderful family in Ellsworth. They gave me a ride just down the road because it was cold and windy.” In her habit of calling ahead, she arranged for a stay with the Dominican Sisters in Great Bend.

“Kansas has been so kind; oh, my goodness,” she gushed. “I have been hosted constantly.  Kansas has been extraordinary. I don’t think about favorites so much because each state has been so different. Sometimes the things I’ve learned have been hard, but I have been really grateful for them. There are places that have felt strangely familiar like central Massachusetts, I can’t explain why. 

“The prairie has always felt familiar to me; I’ve always loved prairie. As the land shifts from sowed corn to milo and ranchland, my exhales get really big. My 22-year-old daughter walked with me for two weeks when I was in Iowa and we camped in a raggedy campground along the Mississippi River just south of Muskatine. We got up as the sun was rising and there were flocks of pelicans that were migrating. It was so beautiful, the pelicans were extraordinary. There have been a lot of moments like that.”

Raffo was also careful to say that she wanted to visit Heartland Farm before leaving the Great Bend area. 

“While I’m walking, I’m really wanting to learn histories starting with the indigenous people of the area. So I’m not just learning about the land itself, but also the original peoples of the land and how colonization or settlement happened. The so many different layers of history.”

As she is walking, she does get questions, ranging from what she’s doing and why she’s doing it, along with “You’re walking alone? Aren’t you scared?”

She takes them in stride, stressing that taking on other people’s fears aren’t part of her makeup. 

“I’ve learned that walking is not slow enough; it’s just slow enough to start to learn what the interesting questions are,” she said. “There are teaching moments constantly, in the most unexpected ways. One of the teaching moments of this walk has been my own fear. I’ve met a lot of people who are afraid for me, and they tell me over again about the dangers, but I ask them whether those things you’re afraid of are thing’s you’ve experienced, or things you’ve heard about. Ninety-five percent of the time its heard about.”

She’s been stopped by the police eight times because people have called 911. “I think that people are just afraid now a lot more than they were 8-10 years ago,” she noted. 

“But I’m not going to carry fear, it is not intimate. There is already so much fear around and my own fear is a gift that’s continually changing. It’s estimated that there are between 20-25 people who cross coast to coast every year, and I’m in communication with about four of them right now. 

But we’ve agreed that the most invigorating piece of this is that you have to face your fear and find other ways of being.”

She has her own website that has a map of her trip, and some key spots marked along the way. She writes long essays in the form of blogs, and she keeps a journal. But the writing isn’t part of her reason for walking, although a lot of people have told her they think it is.

“I’m a writer, so I have some books out. I’m writing blog posts but they are really just long essays on my website,” she said. “ I’m doing photos and bits and pieces. And I have a journal, so I don’t forget things. I assume I’m going to write about it but I’m not walking thinking that that’s the purpose.

“Right now, I’m wanting to just keep walking.”