The title is Walk Ride Paddle: A Life Outdoors. It’s Senator Tim Kaine's attempt to celebrate turning 60 and 25 years since his first campaign for Richmond City Council.
The idea was to create a kind of nature quest that was based in Virginia. "So I thought if I wanted to create one of these quests for Virginia, what would it be? And then I thought walk, ride, paddle. Walk on the 560 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Harpers Ferry to Tennessee, cycle from the Virginia-North Carolina border on the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive all the way to the Front Royal and then canoe the whole James River."
Parts of the book detail what it's like to hike the Appalachian trail in the summertime heat or paddle the James River with his chief of staff. Along the way, he reflects on stories in the headlines during a momentous period in American history.
"I was a juror in two impeachment trials, an attack on the Capitol, COVID and long COVID, the murder of George Floyd, a contested presidential election. The nature journey became the window through which I was looking at this unusual chapter in American life," Kaine says.
The book has no index, so it's not a traditional Washington memoir where people can see if they are mentioned while browsing the bookstores of DC. And it's not a campaign book even though its launch coincides with his official announcement for reelection. It's also not quite a nature book because so much of it is about Kaine's life in politics, his love of milkshakes and his thoughts about the Book of Job.
"I've been seeing it listed as a travel book, a Southern Atlantic travel book on lists with Insiders Guide to Disney World 2025. So, it's kind of a travel book and a memoir and a political book all at once."
He opens the third and final chapter of the book with a gripping account of being at the Capitol during the insurrection. The lesson, in the end, is that it's important to put down the smart phone and listen to the sound of birds and running water— escaping social media long enough to appreciate the great outdoors.
"Virginia is gorgeous. It's my adopted state. I moved here 40 years ago," Kaine notes. "The natural bounty of Virginia, and everybody's got their favorite place. And that's a unifier in a divided time, wanting to protect these beautiful places so that our kids and grandkids can derive the same joy from them that we do. That's a unifier."
Kaine ends the book by saying that the journey was humbling, a word that has its roots in the word grounded. For the senator-turned-author, the journey was the destination.
"You need time to let these thoughts bubble up in your head. If you are just running around doing your schedule every day, sometimes the thoughts don't bubble up or they don't crystalize. And one of the things about the journey is that thoughts that were kind of inchoate or that were just sort of rattling around in my head could connect together and give me a greater understanding about the value of humility."
The book is also a lesson in tenacity. He said several publishers turned him down before he found one willing to take a chance on the quirky premise of a Virginia nature triathlon.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
