I’m standing in the middle of Kansas ready to sign the Coast to Coast Border to Border bill that Congress has presented to me. There has seldom been a bill that has been passed with so much enthusiasm from so many groups and politicians. I am eager to sign it.

Before I do, I want to take these few moments to thank Congress for its co-operation with one another and its patience and high standards. I congratulate the staff and all the departments and companies that have worked on this bill. Finally, I want to tell the American people how much I admire you for pushing to come in contact with this great land we have inherited.

This bill will allow Americans the freedom to use their bodies to travel across our country. If we use this freedom, we will feel a greater love for our country, more enthusiasm toward one another and great personal pride for having seen on foot or by bicycle the extent of our land.

Hunger for land is what made our nation expand, and created this marvel we call the United States of America. Our new hunger is not based upon greed, but a realization that we were overzealous in our lust and that now we need to mature as a nation.

Our lust takes a daring direction. Though we have hungered for land the past 100 years, we labored in factories, offices and warehouses to get it. We were not physically attached to it.

Now, having been inside so long and so much, we have gotten hungry to touch, smell and wander through land – lots of it. Our homes and gardens and country property have tintillated us for something majestic.

We long for a breakdown in barriers. This is a majestic hope, for we have been fenced in a long time, literally and figuratively. Owning is not enough. Having refuge from each other is not enough.

We are eager to walk for days with someone of another color, another age, another walk of life, another class, another philosophy. We want to finally feel what it means to be free, to have confidence to listen without the need to interrupt and speak without being hurried or trying to win.

We are, in a sense, seeking truth. We are seeking to unite this nation of so many different types of people the way democracy is supposed to unite people. We are seeking to find our souls the only place that they can be found – outdoors with each other.

We are also redeeming the nation – cherishing land so many of our ancestors destroyed, seeking stillness and silence they did not understand. Where they hurried, we long to linger.

At last we live the enthusiasm of our visionaries Thoreau, Whitman, Muir, Bob Marshall. A land best serves its people when it is bicycled or walked across.

This bill, it is one of America’s greatest dreams and pronouncements, for we are saying we are ready to transform our fear of each other, that it is time to expand our hearts, find our essential love and participate in the greatness that has been promised to Americans who have the courage and wisdom to pursue it.

A new American Revolution has begun. I now put my pen to paper.

Copyright © 2025 by David Vaszko