NEWBERG, Ore. — Tish Hawkins travels light because she has to. She pushes a cart — similar to one you’d see towed behind a bicycle — filled with food, water, medical equipment, and other survival supplies.
Oh yeah, and her cat, Bullet, who rides in the cart while her chocolate Labrador retriever, Moose, walks alongside.
“Well, thankfully, I do love walking,” she said.
Hawkins is 30 days and approximately 100 miles — or an estimated 250,000 steps — into her journey, though she says she isn’t counting. She has taken a few rest days along the way and is careful not to push Moose too hard.
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She did train a bit, walking every day leading up to the journey with a weighted vest. But for the most part, she hit the road walking.
She is headed across the country from Fort Stevens, near the northernmost point of Oregon, to an unspecified location in Florida — a trip she hopes will take around a year. She plans to travel south through Oregon and into California to take advantage of the warmer southern weather during autumn and winter.
“That part, I’ll figure out later,” she said. “I have a lot of time to decide where I want to end.”
Hawkins is walking across the country to raise awareness and build a neurodivergent network that challenges what she sees as an economic and social system ill-suited to people who “operate so differently than neurotypical people.”
According to the Associated Clinic of Psychology, neurodivergence is a non-medical umbrella term that describes people whose thinking, learning, or behavioral patterns differ from what is considered typical. The term can cover conditions including Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and dyslexia, among others.
“A lot of neurodivergent work from the heart,” she said, resting on a bench in downtown Newberg on Monday, June 29. “If I could somehow figure out a way to take care of like the basic needs, like food, water, shelter, in exchange for like what they do from the heart, that would be the goal.”
Hawkins said she learned she was neurodivergent after dramatic changes in her life. A California native and former member of the military, she said she found herself struggling with traditional work environments. After losing an ex-boyfriend to suicide, she said her perception of life shifted dramatically.
“It’s kind of how I woke up to the world,” she said. “It was a spiritual awakening, where you become less concerned about what is happening in the broader society. But there becomes an evolutionary point where you need to come down to earth, and I feel I can officially say I’m back down.”
She sold most of her belongings last year and began living in a van. While traveling around, she said she fell in love with Oregon. She came to understand that, as a neurodivergent individual, she was still very mission-driven but needed a different way to pursue that mission — one that made more sense for her.
“I’ve been a really hard worker most of my life, and then I found out I was neurodivergent and I unmasked,” she said. “I couldn’t be what people call ‘professional’ anymore because it felt like I was putting a mask back on, and I don’t like wearing a mask.”
The walk is how she feels she can make a difference and draw attention to what she believes needs to change.
“A common trait with neurodivergence is a strong sense of justice,” she said. “And, when I look around, I think we’re living all wrong. It’s all backwards. Our food system — we have no idea where most of our food is coming from, when it could be grown in our backyards.”
Through her trek from Oregon toward Florida, she hopes to inspire people and eventually help build eco-villages and campus-style communities where basic needs like food, water, and shelter are met in exchange for work done “from the heart,” paired with regenerative practices such as litter cleanup, native planting, and food forests.
Her broader aim is to push the country toward a more natural, walkable, community-based way of living and away from what she calls an overreliance on cars, industrialized food systems, and a narrow nine-to-five definition of work.
“There have been points in history where people stop and look around at where we’re at, and decide that society is in need of change,” Hawkins said. “I think we’re at that point now.”
Hawkins left Fort Stevens with whatever she could carry and did not seek prior funding for the journey. She said people she has met along the way have helped her with food and lodging — assistance she said is invaluable for her and her pets.
“Camping is great when you’re in the woods, and it’s a nice summer night,” she said. “But when you get closer to the cities or in bad weather, it’s different. Having a place to sleep safely becomes very important.”
She hopes a social media account chronicling the journey will raise awareness of her cause and generate some fundraising. But before setting out, she spent time living as simply as possible to understand how little she, Bullet, and Moose would need to survive — and once she had a grasp on that, she felt ready to take the first steps.
“I think I just want to inspire people to realize that we do have a choice,” Hawkins said as she stood up from the bench and headed toward the Community Drop-In Center in downtown Newberg to rest and refuel. “It’s not, ‘This is how it is, just accept it,’ or, ‘You don’t want to work a nine-to-five? You’re lazy.’ There is another way.”
Follow Hawkins’s journey at @tishwalks on Instagram.
