December 7, 2024 • 27 mins
Jack Carey, Executive Director of Live Oak Wilderness Camp in Mississippi shares an epic story about running solo across America and talks with passion about the Live Oak Wilderness Camp and its leadership initiatives and experiences for youth from New Orleans.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome back to What's at Risk. I'm Mike Christian. Jack
Carrey references the following quote from the noted author and
philosopher Joseph Campbell. People say that what we're seeking is
a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're
(00:24):
really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an
experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on
the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own
innermost being in reality, so that we actually feel the
rapture of being alive. And here's a quote from Jack
Carrey just after his epic run across the country this
(00:47):
past summer in late twenty twenty four, I spent two
months running from Los Angeles, California, to New York City.
I departed one coast in late July and arrived at
the other in late September. It was an unforgettable experience,
as you'd expect, and yet, like all things in life,
(01:07):
the run will ultimately be forgotten. Bit by bit, time
turns our memories fade, dulling the colors and sanding the
edges off of even life's most powerful experiences. Years from now,
my mind will retain only its most salient Memories. Our
(01:32):
guest today is Jack Carrey, who just completed an amazing
run across the United States. Jack, how you doing.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I'm doing great, Mike. It's good to speak with you.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
It's great to have you on the show. Maybe a
good place to start would be for you to tell
our listeners a little bit about your background.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I'd love to. I grew up in central Illinois, the
son of an architect and a public school teacher, and
was convinced I would never be a teacher like my mother.
And then, you know, ironically, that was the path I shows.
I joined to teach for America after college. I taught
in New York City, just north of Yankee Stadium, and
I met my now wife when we were both teaching
in that same area, just a few blocks from one another.
(02:08):
So we moved to New Orleans in two thousand and eight,
predicated just a quick trip here. We thought we'd lived
for a couple of years here and then onto something else.
She was just excited about getting back into a classroom
of teaching, and come to find out, here we still
are in twenty four So in the meantime, I worked
for a Teach for America for about ten years, and
then sort of became obsessed with a couple of questions. One,
(02:32):
I really was thinking hard about how kids get outdoors
that have been a huge part of my formative development, camping, backpacking, hiking, etc.
I studied forestry and natural resources management as an undergrad,
worked for the Forest Service in college, so it really
was at home outdoors. And Two, I kind of couldn't
shake the question of how kids from different backgrounds meet
one another. In a place like New Orleans, the three
hundred year old city networks drive everything you know. Really,
(02:55):
it's true in life, it's particularly true here. And yet
the networks that I saw super bifurcated. You had differences
across racial class lines, felt like kids navigated adjacent spaces,
but not connected spaces. And I started thinking about summer
camp as an institution that affluent people have known for
century and a half is part of a well rounded development.
(03:15):
Oftentimes for a young person, you get to run your
own life, you build independence, you get to be outdoors
and be a kid. And so it was thinking how
that sort of an institution could be reconceived of as
a place where young people from different backgrounds could meet
and connect and beyond the same team. I sort of
hung out a shingle to see if there were any
young educators who are interested in starting a summer camp,
and all the while I was working my day job
(03:36):
at TFA. And then I just had the great fortune
of meeting folks who became my best friends, godparents to
my kids, and for the last eleven years have tied
my boat together with them to build the summer camp.
For the last this would be our eleventh summer operating
Live ooat camp. We started with fifteen kids on a
weekend to test the idea, and now this coming summer
will have six hundred young people from one hundred public
(03:57):
and private schools, all united around kind of sh set
of values about being a values aligned young person but
coming from really different walks of life in New Orleans.
And so as a part of Live O Camp, go
to summer camp together and then really build connection and
community across an array of things we do all year round,
all in service Mike to building a network of future
leaders for New Orleans or reimagining leadership for our people
(04:18):
in our community.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
And before we start to talk about your epic run,
let me just ask a couple more questions about Live
open what's sort of the formula for teaching leadership? How
do you because that's really the root of what you're
looking to do is make more leaders, you know, build
a diverse community of New Orleans future leaders. What's the
magic potion there?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Well, there's folks far smarter than me who've dedicated themselves
to that very question. So I don't pretend to have
anything necessarily new. I think we've been successful in considering
Live Oak is almost like open source code. We can
pull in the best of other places. And that's been
true in terms of pulling in rituals and traditions from
the summer camp experiences of our staff members, so that
we're kind of building off of the best of hits
(05:01):
from elsewhere. I think we've taken a similar approach to
thinking about the overall formative development of young people with us.
So just sort of break it down the vollingways. Young
people attend Live Book summer Camp as young as seven,
and then they grow with us, and so that means
you become a junior staff member at sixteen and seventeen,
but between seven and fifteen, y're a camper. You get
to kind of consume the beauty of summer camp sixteen
(05:24):
seventeen to junior staff member experience in eighteen plus you
could be hired to work on our full time staff.
So that's the summer we run a wilderness trip program
around the country and the world. Now that further sort
of invests into young people individually and as a collective group.
But because we have a summer camp in Mississippi, but
all our kids are from New Orleans, we get to
invest all year round in a range of programs, and
I think that's where the investment in leadership may take
(05:46):
shape even more proactively. Over the course of the summer
camp feels like camp, and then you kind of adjust
the ratio of what feels like leadership development explicitly as
young people get older. So between ages fifteen and eighteen,
what that looks like as a four year leadership seminar
one Sunday a month that you're attending. You can fictur
it almost like a gnostic youth group. Will it takes
shape for us as a twenty eight session curriculum where
(06:08):
there are some kind of constant lessons that include a
real focus on our values. I think that's a part
of being a strong values aligned leader and then discrete
skill development in specific areas, and young people get to
kind of choose the path they want to pursue. They
get to pick sessions that they want to opt into
and grow, and that could be everything from how to
run a meeting, to how to build a strategic plan,
(06:29):
to how to be a sports team captain. But I
think it includes setting a strong vision, building a strong
team culture, holding people accountable for results, the things that
strong leadership models in any context I think would depend upon.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
That's great. Now, you just ran across the United States,
Santa Monica, California, the Central Park in New York City,
but over twenty eight hundred miles, fifty miles a day,
fifty seven days. How did you possibly think that was
a good idea?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, you should ask my wife that question, Mike. We've
been together for twenty years and married for fifteen this month,
and so, jokes aside, she is the best partner you
could ever imagine, and in every way, but as a
mother of t our two kids, eleven year old Eddie,
eight year old Frances, she's been a school principle. She
now manages a set of elementary schools here in New Orleans,
(07:17):
and so she'd got to do it all. She's really spectacular.
We've had a range of adventures together, traveling internationally, moving
to different cities. She's really been willing to go along
and willfully embrace the spirit of adventure in our life together.
And so she knew for a while this was something
I'd had on my mind. I'd read a bit about it.
I'd read a really powerful book called Meditations from the
(07:41):
Breakdown Lane, written by a gentleman who ran across the
United States in nineteen eighty two in a totally different error,
obviously with respect to technology and so forth. I remember
calling her and asking her if she thought it could
work to, you know, not sort of delay this dream,
push it out in ten years or twenty years when
I see maybe somebody I could do that, but if
the time it could really work. After our summer camp
(08:02):
session drew to close to take a shot at this
in August and September of this year, twenty twenty four,
and I remember saying, you know, if you think you
can do it, we'll make it work. So I thought
it was a good idea, boy. I mean, practically speaking,
it's a crazy idea for a whole bunch of reasons
which we can get into, but in terms of a
real quest, you know, a journey, a tilting at Windmills
(08:23):
sort of adventure, I just thought there was nothing like
it I could think of, and so I thought if
I could do it physically, which I was decently confident
in that it could be this just whole new dimension
of the human physical, emotional, mental set of experiences and
would access a whole new way of sort of seeing
yourself through that crucible of two months on the road
(08:46):
running fifty miles a day.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
So I did a little research for this, and I
discovered that it's about ten to twenty people a year
that run across the country. It's solo like you did. Yeah, yeah,
if you add them all up, more people of climbed
to the top of Everest that of actually run solo
across the country. Have you ever talked to any of
anybody else that's run across the country.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I had a few folks that played a really key
role as I was formulating the colleagues, who Lucy Sholes
I run Live Oak with Lucy Chodell. I run Live
Oak with her for the last ten years, and she
helped build the plan that sat behind this in operational
whiz in every single way you could ever dream them.
So she kind of helped me conceive of the plan itself.
And then Lucy introduced me to a couple people, one
(09:28):
of whom had run across the country named Robbie Balinger,
who was great as the thought partner, had a couple
beers with him. I went running with him in Colorado
when I was there. I really got a ton from
learning about Robbie's experience. My mother had an old childhood
friend whose daughter had also run across the country named
Katie Visco. She was a great thought partner and willing
to share everything about her experience. Through Robbie, I introduced
(09:48):
a guy named Mike Wordion who lives in Maryland, I believe,
and had run across the United States as well, And
so all of them added, I think different texters to
kind of building out the theoretical plan for how this
was going to take shape. And Mike's in particular was
really stark. I wrote about it in reflection afterwards because
I remember calling him and saying being probably too lighthearted
about it, if I'm honest, Mike, So you know, how
(10:10):
safe did you feel out there to Mike Wardy, and
I asked him this question, and he really abruptly told
me at the beginning to call you know, I just
felt I felt very unsafe, and if you feel too safe,
you're probably doing it wrong, meaning like there's just an
inherent danger to running on roadways for almost three thousand
miles that can't be understated. GIF, you overstated, excuse me?
And it was so existential.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yeah, I've run some marathons, and I always feel like
the training for a marathon is pretty extreme. Now, a
marathon is less than one percent of what you did
running across It's only twenty six miles. It's nothing. Yeah,
and I saw your training plan. I noticed it's fifty
miles a day, and I said, there's no wayte going
to be able exactly days. Impossible. And yet as I
(10:52):
followed you across the country, you pretty much hit the
nail on the head every single day, fifty to fifty
two miles a day. It was remarkable. How did you
train for that? How did you get to a spot
where you were in shape to be able to do that?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
I think what I loved about this, what I love
about running, is that you could challenge yourself. You can
sort of see deep down into the well of who
you are, no matter that distance, whether that's a person
running a five k, a person training for their first
half marathon, a person running a ultra marathon. I mean,
the bottom line is anybody who's listening, he says, goodness gracious,
that's never going to be something I do run across
the country. That may or may not be true. But
(11:27):
who says I'm going to get I'm reasure for ten
k next month or next six months from now. I
just get after it. I just think that no matter
of the distance, I would not compare them in a
way that makes this makes it any of the distance
more diminutive. I think it's all about putting yourself in
that challenging situation. So what that said, the training I
did was really the beautiful part about running Summer Campssissippi
is it's a very active day. I mean you're getting
(11:50):
you know, thirty thousand steps on your watch every day
because you're moving constantly. And then I would run every
morning with Caleb and Lucy from who run camp with
the last decade, and those were mornings spent you know,
between ten let's say and fifteen miles on these back
roads as soon as the sun was up through out there.
So it's laying down a good base smileage. But really
(12:10):
two things were true. One, I just really didn't want
to get injured, Mike. And then secondly, I kind of
thought to myself, having trained for one hundred mile races
and two hundred mile plus runs, two, I thought, there's
a certain number you're going to get up to, but
anything beyond that I just didn't sort of diminishing returns
of value, I thought. So I maxed out about one
hundred miles a week, I think eighty to one hundred,
and just kind of knew once I was in it,
(12:32):
this was gonna be a whole new terrain of three
hundred and fifty miles a week, which is unprecedented. But
I knew so much of it was going to be
the mental load that you carry day after day after
day of getting back out on the road and pushing
through small valleys and deep valleys emotionally and mentally. So
I sort of said, eighty one hundred miles is going
to be a good base, and I wasn't probably gonna
get past that.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
How were the sort of highs and lows of doing it.
I mean, you're going, you're running, You're sort of year
fork at the beginning, and here you going, and then
you get into day ten, twelve fifteen, you're in the
mountains and out yourself and yeah, how did you work
through those ups and downs?
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, I appreciate your question, just as situated for folks listening.
So I balanced the entire two months, you know, fifty
seven days with kind of two different modes. One was
I had friends and family there with me, either following
along in a vehicle, you know, kind of leapfrogging ahead
five or ten miles. I'd meet them like having a
mobile pit crew or aid crew. And that was incredible.
(13:31):
I mean it meant I could get food and hydration, nutrition,
I could get camaraderie, jokes and lightness and laughter and
sort of reset my bearings every five or ten miles.
And so that was incredible. And I had that for
about fifty five sixty percent of the time out there.
I started the race in California with my or the
run a race with my parents and my two kids,
(13:52):
and then my wife Jenny came and surprised me out there,
which is incredible. The first week or so was in
Mode A, which is with friends and family. The Mode
B was solo, and that meant I was pushing a stroller,
an old Bob Ironman stroller that I bought on eBay
and had a set designer here in New Orleans kind
of configure almost like with a bow on it made
(14:13):
out of PBC, so I couldn't close it weather proof.
I could put my water and food and rain gear
for the first section, my tent and sleeping equipment, so
I sort of have my home on wheels there with
my stroller. And so Mode B was about forty percent
of the time, and that was by myself during the
day running. I then had a network of friends of
(14:34):
friends who were willing to put me up for a night,
And so I'd spent the year ahead asking friends across
the country, do you know anybody if you're from Kansas,
do you know anybody who's still there who'd be willing
to put me up along this path or along this route.
And so I just had the amazing good fortune of
having friends friends and friends of friends who were willing
to host me for a night, come pick me up
when I was finishing my knowledge, take me have a
hot meal and a shower and then get back out
(14:56):
the next morning. That was really remarkable. I learned some
hard lessons in the beginning about it. How you can
stop extrapolating when a bad signal comes across your radar.
So real, what felt like a real injury pop up
about eight days in right as I was heading out
solo for the first big section into Arizona, across the
Navo Nation and up into Colorado, and so I was
really spooked by this. Miraculously, this injury sort of faded away.
(15:18):
The Achilles pain dissipated over the course of five or
six days. I iced it a lot, I kept up
my mileage. I sort of got over it, and then
in any given day I would just go. What I
found was useful was to focus on small increments throughout.
So I had milestones every day of if I could
make thirty miles by one pm, I knew I was
going to be good for the day. And so as
long as I kept my eye on that sort of
(15:38):
near term horizon or the next town that I could
see assigned for, I could sort of take the aperture,
which is really wide across the continent, and close it
to say I've got five miles I've got to get
to before I could get a soda or a couple
of slices of pizza at a gas station, and I
could kind of cobble together small bite sized winds that way.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
How did you eat? You have to constantly feed yourself
in your fifty miles a day. What was your plan
for nutrition and hydration?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I'd give a shout out to this company called Scratch
Labs from Boulder, Colorado. I don't have any social media presence.
I had a friend who was putting some stuff up
on Instagram to share with folks that we know, but
I really didn't have anything to offer. A few brands
that were critical and so so helpful to Scratch Labs
was one of them out of Boulder. They gave me
these nutrition supplements that were organic, tasted really good, and
(16:27):
were packed with the sort of hydration and nutrition that
I needed. So I used that a lot, particularly when
I was so low. I'd have a few bags of
that in my stroller that I was pushing, and then
I would really go for whatever I was hungry for.
That was sort of a general principle, and that meant
if I was coming across a gas station, I would
load up on calories. I mighty half a dozen donuts
that I'd take with me and a couple slice of pizza.
(16:49):
I hadn't had a soda in probably fifteen years of
I'm honest, but I drank mountain dew and doctor pepper.
I mean, I was just craving, particularly in really hot sections.
When I made my way across Kansas it was one
hundred and seven degrees no shade. You're on this open
road and you're just brutally hot. And so I would
eat whatever I was comfortable for comfort with and sort
(17:10):
of had a craving for. And then when I was
pattern I got into is. Whatever I had for supper,
I would get two of and then i'd save one
and have it for breakfast the next morning. So I
was trying to get between eight and ten thousand calories
a day, and scratch I think made a huge difference
in sort of getting there calorically and feeling good.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Now you're a pretty reflective and philosophical person, and I
know you develop some insights after this run, and I'll
just share with our listeners a couple of them. Running
is the gateway to a place and to ourselves. Human
connection is what we long for, and running has it
if you look for it. You want to just reflect
(17:49):
a little bit on the insights that you came across
as you finished this epic endeavor.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Love to the mental fortitude of doing long distances and
riding through the ups and downs. I've just come to
love it. I think it's a metaphor for life in
so many ways. And recognizing when you're in what I
would call kind of easy miles times just sort of
rolling by and you feel good, embrace it. When you're
in hard miles, understand you're in it, and also that
(18:18):
it'll change at some point, and so that that's important
to keep kind of the long view on. And then
those hard miles, I think you can kind of go,
as I've referenced, kind of deep into the well. You
can figure out new things about yourself when you think
you're at the bottom and you can realize there's more
to go down there, and it can get even worse.
And then when you climb back out of that, you
realize that everything's temporary and this too shall pass. And
(18:41):
so I think those were nice lessons to be reminded
of on ever given day. That was true. I think
the other comment you mentioned about running has human connection
all through it. It can be this really solitary experience. I mean,
you're on There were days where I was on the
road myself solo for fifty miles. Human connection I found
along the way. And then I talk to my family
every day at certain moments in the morning and the evening,
(19:04):
which is what I longed for most was time with them.
And so there's sort of the virtual dimension, and that
I think it was really beautiful to realize how generous
strangers are. So you'd have these unexpected moments where you'd
meet somebody on the side of the road and stop
to see if you're okay, and you build a connection
with them. Maybe they'd run with you at this profound
moment where that happened on the NATO nation, or maybe
they'd offer you a bottle of water or the snacks
(19:26):
out of their car. And so these kind of spontaneous
moments of human generosity and kindness emerged all from coast
to coast, truly all across the country. And then to
sort of bookend it, at least this little reflection, i'd say,
the willingness people to open their homes to you, and
how's this total stranger, you'd have a nice, big cast
role for dinner, and a warm shower and a comfortable
(19:46):
bed to sleep in. Was just really beautiful and I
think brought to the for the human connection that I
think we all long for. If you look at the
loneliness epidemic that we experience in our country right now,
it's really striking. And this felt like a real reminder
of how good people are to one another can be
up close and personal, from coast to coast.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Now, you quoted Joseph Campbell in your reflections, I'll just
do one line of a longer quote. I think that
what we're seeking is an experience of being alive. It
sounds like you certainly experienced being alive. But it's interesting
that you quoted Joseph Campbell, who wrote The Hero's Journey.
Do you view this as somewhat of a hero's journey
(20:28):
for yourself?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Oh, to the extent that life's journey is about figuring
out who you are, and whether we're explicitly focused in
the question or it's playing in the background, that is
the operating system. The run certainly gave a ton of
time to reflect on what matters to me, Who's important.
What are the values that I want to live by?
And so I think there's no question that the arc
(20:50):
of the hero's journey. You know, if you were to
overlay that model onto running across the country, you could
certainly find it. The plotline and the rising action and
the elements of that story are there. I wasn't necessarily
think about that actively, I will say, because I was.
I think even the individual times felt like I was
(21:11):
connected to other people. And that may sound hokey or
silly or abstract, but the truth was that in all
the ways I just commented on, you felt connected to
friends and family from afar, You felt connected to strangers
in these sort of brief or extended moments.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
So what do you think you bring back to your
day to day life and live Oak after this amazing experience.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, I would say that Live O ten years, eleven
years into this experiment, in building a summer camp and
a community for our hundreds and now thousands of kids
and families in New Orleans, we've really centered it on
the set of four values be honorable, be kind, be brave,
be aware, and really specific ways we think about each
of those tenets. And so if you think about value
(22:00):
as who you want to be at your very best.
Then one way I've thought about that for myself forty
two years in the life is they can often challenge
you to do something that you're not by default going
to do so. To be specific, I'm not always a
patient person, and that can lead to real moments of
frustration for me and certainly for those who I spend
(22:24):
my life with who loved me, I can frustrate them
with impatience, and I think the run was a reminder
of the importance if I can sort of remind myself
more frequently to be patient, and that running from quarter
six to quarter six and being on the road for
twelve hours, making your way from point to point b
(22:45):
bit by bit across the continent was an exercise in patience.
If nothing else, you just really had to kind of
you couldn't get ahead of yourself in your expectations for
the day would take you or what would happen by when.
So I think I aimed to be more patient and
have that for my folks I work with folks I
have built a life with professionally, and then for my
(23:06):
family certainly I think I owe them more of that
than less of it. That's one. I think two is
just really pursuing adventure, Mike, I don't. I don't need
to take a trip to the Pyrenees and go wing
suiting through valleys. It's not that type of adventure I crave.
Certainly there's danger in running, but it's not the dangerous
so that I sort of am longing for. But I
(23:27):
do think adventure seeing the world, seeing yourself in it,
meeting people, sort of saying yes to adventures that come
your way feels like a reminder of the way I
want to live alongside Genny, And I'm thankful enough to
type of a wife and partner who I think also
seeks that out. So I'm thankful for those two things.
I'm sure I could think of others, but those are
two that come to mind right away.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Mi. So what's what's match? Jack? Are you gonna bike
across the around the world? Are you gonna roll across
the Atlantic?
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Man?
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Possibly be the next adventure? And I say that a
little facetiously.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, it's fun to know each other well enough that
you know that is something that animates me. And having
a plan for what's next, and also being patient with
respect to not needing to put the next big thing
on the conquest list, and I'm conscious of that and
have tried to think hard about it and only embark
on things like this that are solo with the explicit
(24:20):
blessing of the person who you tied your life together with.
I will say the most fun adventures are ones that
I get to be side by side with Jenny on.
So if I were to bet it will be some
you know, it certainly won't be a solo undertaking. I'll
tell you that it will be something with Jenny, and
I think it's probably on the more distant horizon than
your term, given all the capital I exhausted and undertaking
(24:43):
this one, and the sacrifices she made. So that's what
I'm kind of thinking about. I love one hundred mile
run we run every year. We go to Texas and
run one with a group of friends, so I think
that'll be on the horizon for February. My legs are
healing up pretty well, have been the last few weeks
a little tight my hamstrings, but I think a general
excited to get back out and take on a distance
(25:03):
like that, which I feel really shows you teaching about yourself,
even if it's the same course you've done for seven
or eight times, it's new every time.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Well, we've been speaking with Jack carry Jack, congratulations on
the incredible experience and accomplishment of running solo across the
United States. But maybe even more importantly, thank you for
all the work that you do for the youth in
New Orleans at Live Oak Camp. And I appreciate you
being on the show at a blast.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Talking to you about it, Mike is the first time
I've spoken in a setting like this about it, and
it's really fun to have a chance to reflect, and
hopefully it's some value to somebody out there who's chasing
something big, be it a run or a new job,
or an adventure with their family. I hope that it
makes you more inclined to get after it and to
say thanks to Mike. It's been real privilege to get
to know you and in this respect as friends here
(25:49):
and also to get to know you in the context
of Live Oak and the work we're doing here in
New Orleans. I shuld appreciate you. Never count mesty.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Now. One last post run reflection from Jack. Every day
of the run brought challenge, inspiration, frustration, and joy every
day of our lives offers that too. Every day of
the run had moments that felt absolutely pure, the sort
of moments in which we can feel utterly alive, like
we are squeezing the most out of our limited time
(26:28):
on earth. May our lives always be full of those moments,
now and forever, and may every step, every mile, every
day bring variety, adventure, connection, and moments to push through
limits that are placed upon us. Well, that's all for
this week. I'm Mike Christian inviting you to join us
again next week on What's at Risk. Also check out
(26:52):
our podcast at Wbznewsradio dot iHeart dot com. What's on
your Mind? Send us your thoughts, comments and questions to
What's at Risk at gmail dot com. That's one word,
What's at Risk at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
A big thank you to our producer, Ken Carbury of
Chart Productions.
Welcome back to What's at Risk. I'm Mike Christian. Jack
Carrey references the following quote from the noted author and
philosopher Joseph Campbell. People say that what we're seeking is
a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're
(00:24):
really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an
experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on
the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own
innermost being in reality, so that we actually feel the
rapture of being alive. And here's a quote from Jack
Carrey just after his epic run across the country this
(00:47):
past summer in late twenty twenty four, I spent two
months running from Los Angeles, California, to New York City.
I departed one coast in late July and arrived at
the other in late September. It was an unforgettable experience,
as you'd expect, and yet, like all things in life,
(01:07):
the run will ultimately be forgotten. Bit by bit, time
turns our memories fade, dulling the colors and sanding the
edges off of even life's most powerful experiences. Years from now,
my mind will retain only its most salient Memories. Our
(01:32):
guest today is Jack Carrey, who just completed an amazing
run across the United States. Jack, how you doing.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I'm doing great, Mike. It's good to speak with you.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
It's great to have you on the show. Maybe a
good place to start would be for you to tell
our listeners a little bit about your background.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I'd love to. I grew up in central Illinois, the
son of an architect and a public school teacher, and
was convinced I would never be a teacher like my mother.
And then, you know, ironically, that was the path I shows.
I joined to teach for America after college. I taught
in New York City, just north of Yankee Stadium, and
I met my now wife when we were both teaching
in that same area, just a few blocks from one another.
(02:08):
So we moved to New Orleans in two thousand and eight,
predicated just a quick trip here. We thought we'd lived
for a couple of years here and then onto something else.
She was just excited about getting back into a classroom
of teaching, and come to find out, here we still
are in twenty four So in the meantime, I worked
for a Teach for America for about ten years, and
then sort of became obsessed with a couple of questions. One,
(02:32):
I really was thinking hard about how kids get outdoors
that have been a huge part of my formative development, camping, backpacking, hiking, etc.
I studied forestry and natural resources management as an undergrad,
worked for the Forest Service in college, so it really
was at home outdoors. And Two, I kind of couldn't
shake the question of how kids from different backgrounds meet
one another. In a place like New Orleans, the three
hundred year old city networks drive everything you know. Really,
(02:55):
it's true in life, it's particularly true here. And yet
the networks that I saw super bifurcated. You had differences
across racial class lines, felt like kids navigated adjacent spaces,
but not connected spaces. And I started thinking about summer
camp as an institution that affluent people have known for
century and a half is part of a well rounded development.
(03:15):
Oftentimes for a young person, you get to run your
own life, you build independence, you get to be outdoors
and be a kid. And so it was thinking how
that sort of an institution could be reconceived of as
a place where young people from different backgrounds could meet
and connect and beyond the same team. I sort of
hung out a shingle to see if there were any
young educators who are interested in starting a summer camp,
and all the while I was working my day job
(03:36):
at TFA. And then I just had the great fortune
of meeting folks who became my best friends, godparents to
my kids, and for the last eleven years have tied
my boat together with them to build the summer camp.
For the last this would be our eleventh summer operating
Live ooat camp. We started with fifteen kids on a
weekend to test the idea, and now this coming summer
will have six hundred young people from one hundred public
(03:57):
and private schools, all united around kind of sh set
of values about being a values aligned young person but
coming from really different walks of life in New Orleans.
And so as a part of Live O Camp, go
to summer camp together and then really build connection and
community across an array of things we do all year round,
all in service Mike to building a network of future
leaders for New Orleans or reimagining leadership for our people
(04:18):
in our community.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
And before we start to talk about your epic run,
let me just ask a couple more questions about Live
open what's sort of the formula for teaching leadership? How
do you because that's really the root of what you're
looking to do is make more leaders, you know, build
a diverse community of New Orleans future leaders. What's the
magic potion there?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Well, there's folks far smarter than me who've dedicated themselves
to that very question. So I don't pretend to have
anything necessarily new. I think we've been successful in considering
Live Oak is almost like open source code. We can
pull in the best of other places. And that's been
true in terms of pulling in rituals and traditions from
the summer camp experiences of our staff members, so that
we're kind of building off of the best of hits
(05:01):
from elsewhere. I think we've taken a similar approach to
thinking about the overall formative development of young people with us.
So just sort of break it down the vollingways. Young
people attend Live Book summer Camp as young as seven,
and then they grow with us, and so that means
you become a junior staff member at sixteen and seventeen,
but between seven and fifteen, y're a camper. You get
to kind of consume the beauty of summer camp sixteen
(05:24):
seventeen to junior staff member experience in eighteen plus you
could be hired to work on our full time staff.
So that's the summer we run a wilderness trip program
around the country and the world. Now that further sort
of invests into young people individually and as a collective group.
But because we have a summer camp in Mississippi, but
all our kids are from New Orleans, we get to
invest all year round in a range of programs, and
I think that's where the investment in leadership may take
(05:46):
shape even more proactively. Over the course of the summer
camp feels like camp, and then you kind of adjust
the ratio of what feels like leadership development explicitly as
young people get older. So between ages fifteen and eighteen,
what that looks like as a four year leadership seminar
one Sunday a month that you're attending. You can fictur
it almost like a gnostic youth group. Will it takes
shape for us as a twenty eight session curriculum where
(06:08):
there are some kind of constant lessons that include a
real focus on our values. I think that's a part
of being a strong values aligned leader and then discrete
skill development in specific areas, and young people get to
kind of choose the path they want to pursue. They
get to pick sessions that they want to opt into
and grow, and that could be everything from how to
run a meeting, to how to build a strategic plan,
(06:29):
to how to be a sports team captain. But I
think it includes setting a strong vision, building a strong
team culture, holding people accountable for results, the things that
strong leadership models in any context I think would depend upon.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
That's great. Now, you just ran across the United States,
Santa Monica, California, the Central Park in New York City,
but over twenty eight hundred miles, fifty miles a day,
fifty seven days. How did you possibly think that was
a good idea?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, you should ask my wife that question, Mike. We've
been together for twenty years and married for fifteen this month,
and so, jokes aside, she is the best partner you
could ever imagine, and in every way, but as a
mother of t our two kids, eleven year old Eddie,
eight year old Frances, she's been a school principle. She
now manages a set of elementary schools here in New Orleans,
(07:17):
and so she'd got to do it all. She's really spectacular.
We've had a range of adventures together, traveling internationally, moving
to different cities. She's really been willing to go along
and willfully embrace the spirit of adventure in our life together.
And so she knew for a while this was something
I'd had on my mind. I'd read a bit about it.
I'd read a really powerful book called Meditations from the
(07:41):
Breakdown Lane, written by a gentleman who ran across the
United States in nineteen eighty two in a totally different error,
obviously with respect to technology and so forth. I remember
calling her and asking her if she thought it could
work to, you know, not sort of delay this dream,
push it out in ten years or twenty years when
I see maybe somebody I could do that, but if
the time it could really work. After our summer camp
(08:02):
session drew to close to take a shot at this
in August and September of this year, twenty twenty four,
and I remember saying, you know, if you think you
can do it, we'll make it work. So I thought
it was a good idea, boy. I mean, practically speaking,
it's a crazy idea for a whole bunch of reasons
which we can get into, but in terms of a
real quest, you know, a journey, a tilting at Windmills
(08:23):
sort of adventure, I just thought there was nothing like
it I could think of, and so I thought if
I could do it physically, which I was decently confident
in that it could be this just whole new dimension
of the human physical, emotional, mental set of experiences and
would access a whole new way of sort of seeing
yourself through that crucible of two months on the road
(08:46):
running fifty miles a day.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
So I did a little research for this, and I
discovered that it's about ten to twenty people a year
that run across the country. It's solo like you did. Yeah, yeah,
if you add them all up, more people of climbed
to the top of Everest that of actually run solo
across the country. Have you ever talked to any of
anybody else that's run across the country.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I had a few folks that played a really key
role as I was formulating the colleagues, who Lucy Sholes
I run Live Oak with Lucy Chodell. I run Live
Oak with her for the last ten years, and she
helped build the plan that sat behind this in operational
whiz in every single way you could ever dream them.
So she kind of helped me conceive of the plan itself.
And then Lucy introduced me to a couple people, one
(09:28):
of whom had run across the country named Robbie Balinger,
who was great as the thought partner, had a couple
beers with him. I went running with him in Colorado
when I was there. I really got a ton from
learning about Robbie's experience. My mother had an old childhood
friend whose daughter had also run across the country named
Katie Visco. She was a great thought partner and willing
to share everything about her experience. Through Robbie, I introduced
(09:48):
a guy named Mike Wordion who lives in Maryland, I believe,
and had run across the United States as well, And
so all of them added, I think different texters to
kind of building out the theoretical plan for how this
was going to take shape. And Mike's in particular was
really stark. I wrote about it in reflection afterwards because
I remember calling him and saying being probably too lighthearted
about it, if I'm honest, Mike, So you know, how
(10:10):
safe did you feel out there to Mike Wardy, and
I asked him this question, and he really abruptly told
me at the beginning to call you know, I just
felt I felt very unsafe, and if you feel too safe,
you're probably doing it wrong, meaning like there's just an
inherent danger to running on roadways for almost three thousand
miles that can't be understated. GIF, you overstated, excuse me?
And it was so existential.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yeah, I've run some marathons, and I always feel like
the training for a marathon is pretty extreme. Now, a
marathon is less than one percent of what you did
running across It's only twenty six miles. It's nothing. Yeah,
and I saw your training plan. I noticed it's fifty
miles a day, and I said, there's no wayte going
to be able exactly days. Impossible. And yet as I
(10:52):
followed you across the country, you pretty much hit the
nail on the head every single day, fifty to fifty
two miles a day. It was remarkable. How did you
train for that? How did you get to a spot
where you were in shape to be able to do that?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
I think what I loved about this, what I love
about running, is that you could challenge yourself. You can
sort of see deep down into the well of who
you are, no matter that distance, whether that's a person
running a five k, a person training for their first
half marathon, a person running a ultra marathon. I mean,
the bottom line is anybody who's listening, he says, goodness gracious,
that's never going to be something I do run across
the country. That may or may not be true. But
(11:27):
who says I'm going to get I'm reasure for ten
k next month or next six months from now. I
just get after it. I just think that no matter
of the distance, I would not compare them in a
way that makes this makes it any of the distance
more diminutive. I think it's all about putting yourself in
that challenging situation. So what that said, the training I
did was really the beautiful part about running Summer Campssissippi
is it's a very active day. I mean you're getting
(11:50):
you know, thirty thousand steps on your watch every day
because you're moving constantly. And then I would run every
morning with Caleb and Lucy from who run camp with
the last decade, and those were mornings spent you know,
between ten let's say and fifteen miles on these back
roads as soon as the sun was up through out there.
So it's laying down a good base smileage. But really
(12:10):
two things were true. One, I just really didn't want
to get injured, Mike. And then secondly, I kind of
thought to myself, having trained for one hundred mile races
and two hundred mile plus runs, two, I thought, there's
a certain number you're going to get up to, but
anything beyond that I just didn't sort of diminishing returns
of value, I thought. So I maxed out about one
hundred miles a week, I think eighty to one hundred,
and just kind of knew once I was in it,
(12:32):
this was gonna be a whole new terrain of three
hundred and fifty miles a week, which is unprecedented. But
I knew so much of it was going to be
the mental load that you carry day after day after
day of getting back out on the road and pushing
through small valleys and deep valleys emotionally and mentally. So
I sort of said, eighty one hundred miles is going
to be a good base, and I wasn't probably gonna
get past that.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
How were the sort of highs and lows of doing it.
I mean, you're going, you're running, You're sort of year
fork at the beginning, and here you going, and then
you get into day ten, twelve fifteen, you're in the
mountains and out yourself and yeah, how did you work
through those ups and downs?
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, I appreciate your question, just as situated for folks listening.
So I balanced the entire two months, you know, fifty
seven days with kind of two different modes. One was
I had friends and family there with me, either following
along in a vehicle, you know, kind of leapfrogging ahead
five or ten miles. I'd meet them like having a
mobile pit crew or aid crew. And that was incredible.
(13:31):
I mean it meant I could get food and hydration, nutrition,
I could get camaraderie, jokes and lightness and laughter and
sort of reset my bearings every five or ten miles.
And so that was incredible. And I had that for
about fifty five sixty percent of the time out there.
I started the race in California with my or the
run a race with my parents and my two kids,
(13:52):
and then my wife Jenny came and surprised me out there,
which is incredible. The first week or so was in
Mode A, which is with friends and family. The Mode
B was solo, and that meant I was pushing a stroller,
an old Bob Ironman stroller that I bought on eBay
and had a set designer here in New Orleans kind
of configure almost like with a bow on it made
(14:13):
out of PBC, so I couldn't close it weather proof.
I could put my water and food and rain gear
for the first section, my tent and sleeping equipment, so
I sort of have my home on wheels there with
my stroller. And so Mode B was about forty percent
of the time, and that was by myself during the
day running. I then had a network of friends of
(14:34):
friends who were willing to put me up for a night,
And so I'd spent the year ahead asking friends across
the country, do you know anybody if you're from Kansas,
do you know anybody who's still there who'd be willing
to put me up along this path or along this route.
And so I just had the amazing good fortune of
having friends friends and friends of friends who were willing
to host me for a night, come pick me up
when I was finishing my knowledge, take me have a
hot meal and a shower and then get back out
(14:56):
the next morning. That was really remarkable. I learned some
hard lessons in the beginning about it. How you can
stop extrapolating when a bad signal comes across your radar.
So real, what felt like a real injury pop up
about eight days in right as I was heading out
solo for the first big section into Arizona, across the
Navo Nation and up into Colorado, and so I was
really spooked by this. Miraculously, this injury sort of faded away.
(15:18):
The Achilles pain dissipated over the course of five or
six days. I iced it a lot, I kept up
my mileage. I sort of got over it, and then
in any given day I would just go. What I
found was useful was to focus on small increments throughout.
So I had milestones every day of if I could
make thirty miles by one pm, I knew I was
going to be good for the day. And so as
long as I kept my eye on that sort of
(15:38):
near term horizon or the next town that I could
see assigned for, I could sort of take the aperture,
which is really wide across the continent, and close it
to say I've got five miles I've got to get
to before I could get a soda or a couple
of slices of pizza at a gas station, and I
could kind of cobble together small bite sized winds that way.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
How did you eat? You have to constantly feed yourself
in your fifty miles a day. What was your plan
for nutrition and hydration?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I'd give a shout out to this company called Scratch
Labs from Boulder, Colorado. I don't have any social media presence.
I had a friend who was putting some stuff up
on Instagram to share with folks that we know, but
I really didn't have anything to offer. A few brands
that were critical and so so helpful to Scratch Labs
was one of them out of Boulder. They gave me
these nutrition supplements that were organic, tasted really good, and
(16:27):
were packed with the sort of hydration and nutrition that
I needed. So I used that a lot, particularly when
I was so low. I'd have a few bags of
that in my stroller that I was pushing, and then
I would really go for whatever I was hungry for.
That was sort of a general principle, and that meant
if I was coming across a gas station, I would
load up on calories. I mighty half a dozen donuts
that I'd take with me and a couple slice of pizza.
(16:49):
I hadn't had a soda in probably fifteen years of
I'm honest, but I drank mountain dew and doctor pepper.
I mean, I was just craving, particularly in really hot sections.
When I made my way across Kansas it was one
hundred and seven degrees no shade. You're on this open
road and you're just brutally hot. And so I would
eat whatever I was comfortable for comfort with and sort
(17:10):
of had a craving for. And then when I was
pattern I got into is. Whatever I had for supper,
I would get two of and then i'd save one
and have it for breakfast the next morning. So I
was trying to get between eight and ten thousand calories
a day, and scratch I think made a huge difference
in sort of getting there calorically and feeling good.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Now you're a pretty reflective and philosophical person, and I
know you develop some insights after this run, and I'll
just share with our listeners a couple of them. Running
is the gateway to a place and to ourselves. Human
connection is what we long for, and running has it
if you look for it. You want to just reflect
(17:49):
a little bit on the insights that you came across
as you finished this epic endeavor.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Love to the mental fortitude of doing long distances and
riding through the ups and downs. I've just come to
love it. I think it's a metaphor for life in
so many ways. And recognizing when you're in what I
would call kind of easy miles times just sort of
rolling by and you feel good, embrace it. When you're
in hard miles, understand you're in it, and also that
(18:18):
it'll change at some point, and so that that's important
to keep kind of the long view on. And then
those hard miles, I think you can kind of go,
as I've referenced, kind of deep into the well. You
can figure out new things about yourself when you think
you're at the bottom and you can realize there's more
to go down there, and it can get even worse.
And then when you climb back out of that, you
realize that everything's temporary and this too shall pass. And
(18:41):
so I think those were nice lessons to be reminded
of on ever given day. That was true. I think
the other comment you mentioned about running has human connection
all through it. It can be this really solitary experience. I mean,
you're on There were days where I was on the
road myself solo for fifty miles. Human connection I found
along the way. And then I talk to my family
every day at certain moments in the morning and the evening,
(19:04):
which is what I longed for most was time with them.
And so there's sort of the virtual dimension, and that
I think it was really beautiful to realize how generous
strangers are. So you'd have these unexpected moments where you'd
meet somebody on the side of the road and stop
to see if you're okay, and you build a connection
with them. Maybe they'd run with you at this profound
moment where that happened on the NATO nation, or maybe
they'd offer you a bottle of water or the snacks
(19:26):
out of their car. And so these kind of spontaneous
moments of human generosity and kindness emerged all from coast
to coast, truly all across the country. And then to
sort of bookend it, at least this little reflection, i'd say,
the willingness people to open their homes to you, and
how's this total stranger, you'd have a nice, big cast
role for dinner, and a warm shower and a comfortable
(19:46):
bed to sleep in. Was just really beautiful and I
think brought to the for the human connection that I
think we all long for. If you look at the
loneliness epidemic that we experience in our country right now,
it's really striking. And this felt like a real reminder
of how good people are to one another can be
up close and personal, from coast to coast.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Now, you quoted Joseph Campbell in your reflections, I'll just
do one line of a longer quote. I think that
what we're seeking is an experience of being alive. It
sounds like you certainly experienced being alive. But it's interesting
that you quoted Joseph Campbell, who wrote The Hero's Journey.
Do you view this as somewhat of a hero's journey
(20:28):
for yourself?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Oh, to the extent that life's journey is about figuring
out who you are, and whether we're explicitly focused in
the question or it's playing in the background, that is
the operating system. The run certainly gave a ton of
time to reflect on what matters to me, Who's important.
What are the values that I want to live by?
And so I think there's no question that the arc
(20:50):
of the hero's journey. You know, if you were to
overlay that model onto running across the country, you could
certainly find it. The plotline and the rising action and
the elements of that story are there. I wasn't necessarily
think about that actively, I will say, because I was.
I think even the individual times felt like I was
(21:11):
connected to other people. And that may sound hokey or
silly or abstract, but the truth was that in all
the ways I just commented on, you felt connected to
friends and family from afar, You felt connected to strangers
in these sort of brief or extended moments.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
So what do you think you bring back to your
day to day life and live Oak after this amazing experience.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, I would say that Live O ten years, eleven
years into this experiment, in building a summer camp and
a community for our hundreds and now thousands of kids
and families in New Orleans, we've really centered it on
the set of four values be honorable, be kind, be brave,
be aware, and really specific ways we think about each
of those tenets. And so if you think about value
(22:00):
as who you want to be at your very best.
Then one way I've thought about that for myself forty
two years in the life is they can often challenge
you to do something that you're not by default going
to do so. To be specific, I'm not always a
patient person, and that can lead to real moments of
frustration for me and certainly for those who I spend
(22:24):
my life with who loved me, I can frustrate them
with impatience, and I think the run was a reminder
of the importance if I can sort of remind myself
more frequently to be patient, and that running from quarter
six to quarter six and being on the road for
twelve hours, making your way from point to point b
(22:45):
bit by bit across the continent was an exercise in patience.
If nothing else, you just really had to kind of
you couldn't get ahead of yourself in your expectations for
the day would take you or what would happen by when.
So I think I aimed to be more patient and
have that for my folks I work with folks I
have built a life with professionally, and then for my
(23:06):
family certainly I think I owe them more of that
than less of it. That's one. I think two is
just really pursuing adventure, Mike, I don't. I don't need
to take a trip to the Pyrenees and go wing
suiting through valleys. It's not that type of adventure I crave.
Certainly there's danger in running, but it's not the dangerous
so that I sort of am longing for. But I
(23:27):
do think adventure seeing the world, seeing yourself in it,
meeting people, sort of saying yes to adventures that come
your way feels like a reminder of the way I
want to live alongside Genny, And I'm thankful enough to
type of a wife and partner who I think also
seeks that out. So I'm thankful for those two things.
I'm sure I could think of others, but those are
two that come to mind right away.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Mi. So what's what's match? Jack? Are you gonna bike
across the around the world? Are you gonna roll across
the Atlantic?
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Man?
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Possibly be the next adventure? And I say that a
little facetiously.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, it's fun to know each other well enough that
you know that is something that animates me. And having
a plan for what's next, and also being patient with
respect to not needing to put the next big thing
on the conquest list, and I'm conscious of that and
have tried to think hard about it and only embark
on things like this that are solo with the explicit
(24:20):
blessing of the person who you tied your life together with.
I will say the most fun adventures are ones that
I get to be side by side with Jenny on.
So if I were to bet it will be some
you know, it certainly won't be a solo undertaking. I'll
tell you that it will be something with Jenny, and
I think it's probably on the more distant horizon than
your term, given all the capital I exhausted and undertaking
(24:43):
this one, and the sacrifices she made. So that's what
I'm kind of thinking about. I love one hundred mile
run we run every year. We go to Texas and
run one with a group of friends, so I think
that'll be on the horizon for February. My legs are
healing up pretty well, have been the last few weeks
a little tight my hamstrings, but I think a general
excited to get back out and take on a distance
(25:03):
like that, which I feel really shows you teaching about yourself,
even if it's the same course you've done for seven
or eight times, it's new every time.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Well, we've been speaking with Jack carry Jack, congratulations on
the incredible experience and accomplishment of running solo across the
United States. But maybe even more importantly, thank you for
all the work that you do for the youth in
New Orleans at Live Oak Camp. And I appreciate you
being on the show at a blast.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Talking to you about it, Mike is the first time
I've spoken in a setting like this about it, and
it's really fun to have a chance to reflect, and
hopefully it's some value to somebody out there who's chasing
something big, be it a run or a new job,
or an adventure with their family. I hope that it
makes you more inclined to get after it and to
say thanks to Mike. It's been real privilege to get
to know you and in this respect as friends here
(25:49):
and also to get to know you in the context
of Live Oak and the work we're doing here in
New Orleans. I shuld appreciate you. Never count mesty.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Now. One last post run reflection from Jack. Every day
of the run brought challenge, inspiration, frustration, and joy every
day of our lives offers that too. Every day of
the run had moments that felt absolutely pure, the sort
of moments in which we can feel utterly alive, like
we are squeezing the most out of our limited time
(26:28):
on earth. May our lives always be full of those moments,
now and forever, and may every step, every mile, every
day bring variety, adventure, connection, and moments to push through
limits that are placed upon us. Well, that's all for
this week. I'm Mike Christian inviting you to join us
again next week on What's at Risk. Also check out
(26:52):
our podcast at Wbznewsradio dot iHeart dot com. What's on
your Mind? Send us your thoughts, comments and questions to
What's at Risk at gmail dot com. That's one word,
What's at Risk at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
A big thank you to our producer, Ken Carbury of
Chart Productions.
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