I finally decided, looking myself in the mirror.

One day I was telling people when I worked there tables, I'm a writer.

But the truth is, I was hardly writing at all.

And I finally said, I have got to take the plunge.

This week on the A-list will take you on an epic journey across the Trail of Tears with bestselling author Jerry Ellis.

And take a look at how his quest for spiritual fulfillment made a profound impact on the legacy of his Cherokee ancestors.

Jerry Ellis has lived his life by the belief that travel and experience are the keys to human growth and understanding.

If that's the case, then the Pulitzer Prize nominated author is doing pretty well.

He's been called a professional pilgrim, which seems an apt title for a man who's made his living writing about his experiences trekking across the country and beyond.

Most notably, he was the first person in modern history to walk in reverse the 900 mile Cherokee Trail of Tears.

But Jerry's wandering spirit began at a much younger age, and the road he traveled that led him to the trail was full of adventure.

From day one.

Well, Jerry, welcome to the ALA's.

Thank you for having us in Fort Payne and your home.

It's all my pleasure.

Well, I should say your temporary home.

So you go between Alabama and Italy to spend your life.

Tell me how that came about.

Can you believe it?

I go from grits to pasta.

I go from isolation here to metropolitan City that's just totally alive with people.

My wife is a tour director there.

And this started about 12 years ago.

So I'm stationed, so to speak, in Rome while she's visiting the major city with her clients.

And she's in and out of there.

And occasionally I'll take the train up to Florence or Venice or wherever and get to stay in those fancy hotels with her.

But frankly, I always like getting back to Rome, to my neighborhood, where I know so many people.

And Fort Payne, though, will always be considered home, I assume.

Born and raised here, my ancestors who were part Cherokee settled here in 1837, but at the age of 17, I felt these mountains were suffocating me.

So I did what every good blooded American boy does.

I ran away from home.

I went a little far down the creek, as we might say here.

I hitchhiked all the way to New York City, stayed there two weeks, and I got bitten by a very, very strange bug there.

The hitchhiking bug came home in two weeks.

By the age of 26, I'd hitchhiked enough miles to circle the planet five times.

Now, the bug for hitchhiking.

I know that's probably such a foreign concept in today's world where I think people look at hitchhiking is, you know, precarious at best.

You know, you just never know what's out there.

But you're living in an age where that was full of adventure and excitement, and every thumb you raise was another opportunity to meet somebody new.

What were those adventures like?

Oh, they they they ran the gamut.

I'll give you a couple of extremes.

Hitchhiking back from New York, my second trip up, I was on the New Jersey Turnpike, which was illegal, had my sign saying Chattanooga, because no one had ever heard of Little Fort Payne, a Volkswagen pulled over a bug.

We've seen the movie Men in Black.

A guy gets out dressed in a suit, dark shades.

Look at him.

The guy driving is dressed the same way.

And they said, You going to Chattanooga?

Do you know so-and-so there?

And I got in like the tone of his voice.

I said, Wait a minute.

Who are you guys?

Because they had a sense of familiarity.

Long story short, the guy who had gotten out and invited me in was Dennis too narrow?

He had just the week before one teenage Mr. America, and the driver was Joe Bender, who had won all the big titles, including Mr. Universe.

They said, Hey, we're going to your Pennsylvania Olympic headquarters and where they publish various magazines, including Strength and Help.

Want to go with us.

I thought, let me see.

Do I have time to have lunch with Mr. Universe and teenager Mr. America or go to Fort Payne?

Lets have lunch.

Another time hitchhiking in the South.

I was picked up by the motorcycle group that we all know as the Hells Angels and they were in an old station wagon sounded like a washing machine an old washing machine.

And the story was in New Orleans.

They had had their motorcycles impounded where they got into a bar fight.

They had gone back to New York to bar big money.

And they had this old car they were driving down to get their bikes out of hock.

We didn't have a nice lunch, as I did with the Mr. Universe and teenage Mr. America.

They pulled over at a rest area and dug into garbage cans, and though they were wrapped up their sandwiches from there.

Who are mainly though, and all these years hitchhiking, who are who on that were you?

And the next person you're going to meet when you stop at the corner store to get gas?

Ah, the person that comes to adjust the cable for your internet or TV.

In other words, I met an incredible range of people all the way from farmers and doctors, loggers, rodeo riders to to the incredible spectrum of the human condition.

And these are the people, their stories.

As I begin to listen, because they were doing me a favor, they were giving me a lift.

But I was also I came to learn the psychology of it.

I was doing them a favor because I was listening and I learned how to get them to talk to me and feel safe with me.

And that allowed me to feel more comfortable with them.

All these stories coming together is in part what led me to want to become a writer, to see if I could express the thoughts and feelings and the complexities of all these stories I had been encountering, thus that I might pass them on to other people in a way.

Over the years I was without realizing it.

I was a confessor for these people and it was safe for them because they could tell me whatever was on their mind and their heart.

And they could always, of course, leave me at my spot and never see me again.

So it was great safety in that.

It wasn't until Jerry was in college at the University of Alabama that he began putting his experiences to paper, and though he achieved some early successes with his writing, he still struggled with his own sense of purpose.

And so Jerry sought guidance from his oldest and closest friend, the road writing occasionally as he traveled from city to city.

It wasn't until he was waiting tables in New Orleans that Jerry realized he was approaching 40 and, despite his years of traveling, had yet to figure out his own worldly contribution.

It was then that he finally decided to take the plunge and begin writing full time.

One of the scripts I had written was about a man who had a vision, a Cherokee man who had the vision that he must walk the Cherokee Trail of Tears and reverse to metaphorically and poetically bring home the spirits of those wanting to come.

With the 4000 who died in the Trail of Tears in 1838.

I took it to Hollywood.

I thought, this will be on the big screen.

I have something important.

I had another script that had been optioned.

No one wanted it.

They said, This is 1985 before Dances with Wolves.

They said, Important part of history.

Writing is good, but really, people don't care anything about American Indians.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I was disintegrating.

No one cared about my heritage.

No one cared about me.

No one cared about my writing.

And frankly, I was getting homesick.

So in a cathartic moment, I had a tiny little apartment overlooking Paramount Studios, and I went up on the roof where people go up and sunbathe and have coffee or whatever.

It was late one night and over the smoggy city of the lights, kind of twinkling in the distance and paramount over there that I couldn't get into.

It was a cathartic moment, truly, that I was the person in the script I had written about.

I must Walk the Trail of Tears for me.

So it'd be nice to say I immediately jumped on a bus and went to Oklahoma.

But it took a few more years to get up the courage and the desperation, frankly, to do it.

I finally sold everything I had, took a bust.

Oklahoma and with 900 miles before me, I began what became an incredible odyssey.

Until that point, what, if anything, did you really know and understand about your heritage?

I knew that Sequoyah had been here and then in the Cherokee alphabet here.

I was aware of the the fort.

That's how Fort Pain gets its name.

The Indians that were incarcerated here in the stockade before they had their own their own detachment to go to Oklahoma.

I knew more implicitly the values I was given from my father's side of the family, and that was a great response for nature.

It was honestly a suspicion of outsiders, which anyone can have.

But in retrospect, I see it as being related to the Indian sense of questioning the outside world.

And there was also a sense of respect within the family unit that I would understand later.

There is a sense of roots here in Fort Paine and true across America.

Wherever one is that one grows up with a sense of pride and a sense of depth and meaning and home that ironically, I ran away from at the age of 17.

In the years to come, would have profound meaning to me because, as corny as it sounds, if we're blessed at all, there is no place like home, and it's the most sacred place in the world.

And home was taken from the Cherokee.

And that's one of the main reasons I walked it in reverse.

Besides what I mentioned about the story and the screenplay I had written was to come home in celebration, so to, so to speak, to meet the Cherokee, figuratively, that were being marched out Oklahoma.

I would come home in celebration to to my home.

And I knew it was sacred.

Not only from common sense, but because I had traveled so much in my life doing all that hitchhiking.

A pattern had developed where to go out in the world.

And I would come back and it was a sense of accomplishment to come back and always find that I was welcome and that my parents were alive and loved me.

And so that family unit is something I think most others can relate to, unless their lives have been totally shattered by dysfunctional families.

Well, speaking of your parents, so let's go back to that day.

You're about to embark on what will be a 900 mile journey about to board a Greyhound bus, about to leave home for two months.

What did your parents think of this?

They knew I had been groping for a number of years to try to do something of worth and value in the eyes of the world as well as that would give me more sense of fulfillment spiritually, intellectually and I think they both knew that maybe I had found what was paramount in my life.

First of all, to walk a great distance is archetypal.

I mean, we all do that.

I mean, whether you go for a walk in the woods, the pilgrims I'm talking about on pilgrimages, you know, seeking miracle mills or salvation or whatever.

And from our nomadic ancestors, no matter what we are, whether whether we're Jewish, whether we're Indian, whatever we are, we all have the historical significance of being wonders, trying to find our home.

It may sound a little far fetched, a little corny to some people.

Other people will gobble it up.

But I felt like it was my destiny.

It was something I had to do.

A physical challenge, a mental challenge, a spiritual challenge, something very internal and complex on one hand and simple on the other.

I want to do something to honor my ancestors and give.

Give me more substance.

Give me more meaning by shedding light on something else.

I wanted the story, the Trail of Tears to be revealed and greater doubt and understanding to the world and so to the bone.

As I walk through a storm down a country road in western Arkansas, I don't mind the wind and rain so much, but I'm scared to death of lightning.

If a bridge or barn were in sight, I'd run for shelter.

But forget it.

There's just me and trees swaying in the wind.

For the first time in my life, I imagine how a mouse might feel the moment he looks up to see a hawk shoot from the sky to drive claws into his tiny heart.

Lightning flashes yellow once again, as if to see if I'll try to run under a rock.

I'm tempted.

The road is flooded in small waterfalls.

Shoot from the rock banks.

My feet are blistered.

Oh, my back is a red and blue backpack weighing £50.

I've walked 100 miles in six days and I have 800 more miles and seven states to go.

I promised myself I'd walk the whole way, but have I lied?

In 1989, Jerry boarded that Greyhound bus to begin his life changing journey over the next two months, he would walk 900 miles across eight states.

And though it was difficult in the beginning, eventually Jerry got into the spirit of the trail and the spirit got into him.

Following in the footsteps of his ancestors, Jerry traveled through small towns, winding roads and quiet forests.

He shared stories with those he met and forged a spiritual connection with the ground he traveled.

And when he finally reached his homecoming, it was as a changed man.

I know it's hard to possibly pinpoint the absolute highlight because there are many.

But when you look back on that journey, when you look back over those two months, was there a point where there was an aha moment for you where you thought, This is why I did this, This is the moment that I'm really going to remember and tre When I got on, I got I was walking in the night.

I've been walking for almost two months and I got to the Brown Signal Mountain and I could see the lights of Chattanooga down in there.

And I think the line is, and now I'm back in the old Cherokee Nation.

You know, I knew unless something horrific happened, I knew I was going to make it on home.

So it was all the experiences up to that.

And I know you've read the book and, you know, there's a tremendous variety of things that happen.

I think it was a sense of kind of starting to let go.

When I started getting into the into the valley there, from looking down from the mountain that I was going to make it and something was going to come out of it, not just for me, but that I had done something that that transcended me and would reach other people.

It was intuition.

Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I knew one thing for sure.

The journey within next week would, barring anything happening, would come to a conclusion.

So it was it was a it was a kind of like a vibration, if you will, of all that had happened before coming together.

When I when I reached that area.

Did you ever feel this, I guess, sense of responsibility, more so a burden and not in a negative sense, but of being this representative of the Cherokee Nation of of Native Americans and wanting to be the voice for them and wanting to make sure that that authentic voice that was yours also represented people that you'd never met or will never meet.

No, because I tell you why.

Because I'm a I'm in a unique situation as the majority of people with some Cherokee blood are.

You know, I mean, I walk into a place no one would see any Indian, no one.

Most people, unless they're really aware of facial features and sensitivities, I wouldn't and cross their mind they have any Indian blood and they really wouldn't.

I did not grow up in Intel.

Acquire capital.

The Cherokee Nation are on the Kuala boundary up in Cherokee, North Carolina.

But I share a certain sensitivity with these people.

I'll give you a quick anecdote, I think, to address directly what you've asked me.

I was invited to be a guest speaker and tell Akua, which I just mentioned, is the capital, the Cherokee Nation.

I was one of many speakers at many events and the room was full and all Indians and some of them were full blood, you know, the stereotypical, the long black hair, the dark skin and all that good stuff, you know.

I got to speak and then my presentation and after I finished, I got a warm welcome of applause.

And some woman got out and she says she says, Mr. Ellis, she says, I think all of us here are very proud of what you did.

And they all started clapping and that's when I knew again.

But in a profound way, in that moment, I had done something for the Cherokee Nation.

The lot changed.

You.

If I hadn't walked the Trail of Tears, I don't know what would become of me.

It increased to myself.

It increased my belief in a higher power.

It brought me closer to my family and its meaning continues.

I mean, the book is now actually a Native American classic that when people read it for the first time, it's new for them.

And I think I think is, as we all know, what is true is timeless.

And though the Trail of Tears is steeped in a historical time, the human emotions are not and they will live on as long as mankind lives.

Walking the Trail was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and jury has traveled worldwide to lecture on his experience.

The book's success led to three others in its likeness as Jerri walked historical routes across the United States and England.

It seems he ultimately found his purpose in the same place.

He began seeking it forever.

The wandering spirit gaining fulfillment through his travels and the people he met along the way.

Walking the trail now holds a spot in the National Teacher's Hall of Fame, and it seems the true mark of Jerry success is in how his story continues to touch the hearts of those who read it.

So when someone reads it, whether they read it 20 years ago or they read it today, what do you hope they get out of the book?

What do you hope they learn from your journey?

Really, to some degree, the same thing that I did.

To understand better the tragedy of man's inhumanity to man like a sovereign nation.

Put him in prison.

Take him to another part.

Thousands die.

I don't know.

I don't think that's quite right.

Is it?

To see the strength of the nation go on the strength of a people, even after those tragedies?

As with other races, people are beaten down, people are killed.

And and yet something innate within the human spirit wants to always get up and walk on to love adventure, to lend themselves, to love, showing compassion, to believe that one person at least sometimes can make a difference.

Not that I did it, but the people along the way that I met helped me do it.

And I want them to laugh at themselves because contrary to what some people would think.

Oh, look on the Trail of tears.

Oh God, this is sad.

I don't want that.

You know yourself.

There's some humor in there.

You have to be for me.

And I think all of us, we have to be able to kind of mock ourselves and laugh at ourselves, not make light of of horrors and tragedy, but make light of our own frailty in the midst of our possible strength and what comes out of the book.

I don't know that I can beyond what I'm saying, I don't know that I can clearly define it is it is the complexity of a feeling that people come away with that goes, wow, that was somewhere to go and it stays inside.

To some extent, and some people read it over and over again.

It's amazing that the book is, you know, 20 plus years old.

And in that time you've written three more, you've written five plays, you've traveled across the world, you've lectured at places, you know, on many continents.

So since that walk, what have you been trying to accomplish and what have you yet to accomplish?

I always want to try to become a better speaker.

And like you mentioned, I've spoken on several continents to be a better communicator, to be a better communicator, and personally, which is tied into that communication because I speak very openly and in story form, not academic lectures.

It is to try to always to improve, to frankly be a better person, be more loving, laugh at myself more.

Become a better writer.

Be better to the people I love.

In a way, you may not be using your thumb, but you're still hitchhiking your way through life, right?

I'm still hitchhiking my way through life.

Honestly, as much as I love nature and I love being alone at times looking for American Indian artifacts and Canada wildernesses.

Passion of mine.

But if I didn't have people, I'd be sad.

When the things I came to learn early on was I need people.

And we all know that.

But I may need them more than some people.

Well, I'm thrilled to meet you.

And I felt like as I read your book, that I was along for the ride and it was fabulous.

I'm glad you came along for the ride.

Thanks, Terry.

My pleasure.