Wanderer – The Ultimate Hippy Trail Journey by F.T. Burke and Steve Reifman is a book that tells the remarkable story of a young man’s year-long journey of discovery wandering across the globe in 1970-71. As the authors issued their weeklies, the concept of a mini-series or other serial took shape with a chapter based on each week’s adventure.
During the height of the pandemic while in quarantine, Attorney Steve Reifman on whose travel the book is based, recorded the fictional book for posterity in his own home on a podcast type recorder.Then as the 50-year anniversary of the travel approached, Steve was inspired to commemorate his incredible journey of a lifetime by recording and publishing a week-by-week video relying heavily on his handwritten travel journals and readings from the book. Steve and co-author, F.T. Burke, enlisted the services of their media arts specialist, Xavier Vance, and they were “off to the races”. Each week, without fail, the trio have published, all the way to week 42 with the end in sight.
The Weekly Adventures kicked off on September 30, 2020, and now are in the 42nd week, closing in on the exciting homecoming of this prodigal son on his year-long adventure. Here is the latest installment link. Click on this playlist link to get introduced and catch up with all the adventurous clips in this Weekly Wanderer series.
You can learn more in this interview.
Why did you originally write the book?
I kept journals while I traveled for a year which I transcribed digitally. Mr. Burke, my good friend and co-author, wrote a Jack Kerouac style novel based on his own adventures. Therefore, Mr. Burke suggested he could do the same for my grand adventure by creating a fictional character “Woodstock,” based on myself and have that character experience many of the same situations and places that I did in my actual adventure. He wrote the book in the active voice and created the dialogue necessary to bring the story to life. We both thought this novel would be an incredible book, and it is.
The book started as my handwritten contemporaneous journals which were “typed in” to word processing files over the years. The story of my Hippie Trail journey has served as an inspiration to me throughout my life. I feel I’ve lived and am living an inspired life because of my adventure. It’s been 50-years but sometimes these memories are as fresh as if it happened yesterday. At one point while Mr. Burke and I were working on other projects we made a commitment to him taking on the task of turning the journal and the stories into a novel. So, the answer, it was an evolving project but we had a burning inspiration to get the story out there.
What can people learn from following the travel stories of others?
Life is all about experiences and some of the most memorable experiences in life occur while traveling. There's a lot to learn from travel. When we travel our self we can't help but relate our stories to others because travel stories are something out of the ordinary. To be able to learn from other people's stories of their journeys and travel can be educational, enlightening and fun to enjoy adventurous storytelling. We learn about places, times, people and culture.
What was one of your most surprising lessons that you learned while traveling?
Life is an amazing adventure. Fifty years ago, at this very time I was leaving the city of Banaras in India on the banks of the swollen Ganges River. I spent a week there in that holy city meditating and floating with the various cultures and the holy spots, even visiting the Deer Park where Buddha first taught his gospel. Weeks earlier I had a personal audience with the Dalai Lama, and months before that I had seen the Pope in Rome. Exposure to all the various diverse cultures on my journey opened my mind and soul to a new way of being. I did not feel I was looking for that Spirit but it found me while wandering and seeing so many incredible churches, mosques, temples, etc. Frankly, I didn't see that realization coming and that Spirit becoming an overwhelming force in my life. I was basically a non-religious person, but open to all types of spirituality. Ultimately, I was surprised to find that I had in some way become enlightened by experiencing God on my journey, by accident, and inspired for the rest of my life.
Author F.T. Burke is a lifelong resident of the state of Michigan, with his wife, Lorie. He enjoyed a prior career in the high-tech sector, serving as a systems engineer and project manager. Burke's debut novel, The Bohemian Adventure, traces the journey of one who meets up with devoted “deadheads” who followed the psychedelic rock group, the Grateful Dead.
Steven W. Reifman is a practicing lawyer, activist and businessman. He took a journey similar in time and place to that of Wanderer’s main character, Woodstock. Steve was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and has three children, two grandchildren and an enduring, love-filled marriage of over 40 years.
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