Walk info:

Time: 5 months

Mileage: 3,562 miles

States: California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey

Boarding: Stayed in tents, cars, people’s homes or motels (most of the time they stayed with people who opened their homes to them)

Talks: Forty talks along the way (still giving talks individually)

“The reason was prayer.” That’s how my interview started with 2007 Loras graduate and now adjunct professor Jesse Weiler, on his walk across the country last summer. But he had gotten ahead of himself, so we backtracked a bit to get to where it all started. Jesse told me that Jon Leonetti, another 2007 Loras graduate, called him in January of 2008 asking what he had planned for the upcoming year. Jesse was in the midst of trying to figure this out so he told Jon that he had no plans set in stone. Jon then proceeded to ask Jesse if he would like to join him in walking across the country. The next words that came out of Jesse’s mouth were, “You’re nuts!” That was not what he was looking for at that time in his life. But to Jesse’s dismay, he couldn’t get the idea out of his head for the many weeks to come. Then after enough fretting over it he called Jon up to say that he was in for the walk. Jon proceeded to say, “You’re nuts!” Jesse then had to talk Jon into the idea that Jon originally came up with. Oy vey!

As Jesse Weiler ‘07 and Jon Leonetti ‘07 walked and prayed, they captured parts of their journey on camera.

After both decided to commit to the walk, they started thinking about what they were going to walk for. This is where the prayer came in. When I sat down with Jesse to ask him about the walk, I knew going into it that Jesse was a very humorous person. It was interesting to talk to him one on one about the walk because his entire body language changed. Where I really noticed it was when he talked about the prayer aspect of the walk. They wanted to walk for something that had a great need. and after much consideration they decided to walk for prayer. Jesse said, “The base of our spiritual life is prayer. If you don’t have a prayer life, you don’t have a faith life.” So for 14 months Jesse and Jon prepared to not only walk, but pray and talk and endure some of what could be the most influential time of their lives. 

Being a media studies major, Jesse decided that he wanted to document this journey. From the 50 hours of video that was taken on the trip, Jesse and Jon made a documentary of four episodes through Outside Da Box Productions. The documentary will be released late May this year. All four episodes will include discussion questions designed for catechists to use for their retreats or classes but will apply to all. 

Along the walk there were many trials and ordeals that the duo dealt with. “The hardest part of the trip for me was about 70 miles out of Phoenix when Jon hurt his knee.” Jon tripped on the side of the road and fell on his knee. To make matters worse, he was carrying a fifty pound pack on his back that increased the weight on his knee when he fell. After a week in the hospital they were told that he was okay to walk again. They returned to Phoenix to continue the walk but soon found out that Jon’s knee would not allow him to walk the long distances of the days with the pack on his back. “Then we made the most difficult decision of the whole trip. We decided to get a support vehicle.” The reason that this was such a major decision was because now they would be walking alone. One would be driving the vehicle while the other walked the miles. “This was hard for me because I’m a social person and being out on the open road alone with no one to talk to was not fun.” It was just Jesse and his thoughts, or rather his prayers. So that’s exactly what he did; he walked and he thought and he prayed. “I did make it a point every day to talk to someone. Sometimes it was for two or three minutes and sometimes it was for hours. But that was the most rewarding part of the entire trip, meeting hundreds and hundreds of people. Some of them are very memorable, and some were just in passing.”

I finished by asking Jesse if there was one thing that he knew about the walk now that he didn’t know before but wishes he had, what would it be. He surprised me by saying that he had to think about it for a second because he had never been asked that question before. After some thought Jesse said that he wishes that he would have known to take his time. He confided to me that even though he was all alone on the road, he was often so focused on getting the miles in that he didn’t stop to take a deep breath and get a good look at the land. He realizes now just how beautiful the landscape of America really is and wishes that he would have taken more moments to bask in that beauty. America, he has noticed, is in such a hurry and we all just need to take time to look at the landscape. We need to stop and take a look at the landscape of the land, and the landscapes of our hearts and souls. Prayer is a great way to do that; prayer and a little walking.