Why Ed Walks – Portsmouth Daily Times

Hiker Ed Talone, of Portsmouth, at the start of the Mississippi River in Minnesota.

Ed Talone has always preferred to walk everywhere.

Key West to Canada? He checked that off in 2011. Hiking the Mississippi River from its starting point to where it dumps out into the Gulf of Mexico? Done. Camping on the Appalachian Trail? Child’s play.

Even when he lived on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., he still would choose walking over other forms of transportation. Upon retirement as a federal financial investigator, he took off walking and is now living in Portsmouth while continuing to plan and go on hiking adventures across North America.

He says coffee shops and post offices are the best places to find out where to set up camp while on a hike. The people there are used to dealing with the occasional oddity and, certainly, Ed considers what he does can seem odd. And some parts of the country are simply more open to a stranger’s needs than others.

“The best of all is that way over 99 percent of everybody are nice people,” Talone said. “The most heartwarming thing is how good people are. They really are. Not because they helped me … If it says welcome, I’ll knock on the door.”

The walking pace allows Ed to see more than just a blur and highway noise that motorists often experience.

“Every town has something wonderful to visit. Every town does,” he said. “There’s something to see. Nice old buildings, fascinating people.”

So why pick a house in Portsmouth to put down roots?

“First thing I’ve ever owned, really,” he said. “It’s a very friendly town, a nice town. It has problems like every town. Every town this size struggles in America.”

Ed said hiking in the south, which he has done on multiple treks including his hike of the Mississippi River, and his Florida hikes, allowed him to interact with people who were not as guarded and suspicious as other parts of the country. Locals would open their doors at midnight and offer their hospitality or, when word got around, would even bring him food wherever he happened to be staying; whether that was the stoop of a church or the window of a beauty shop.

Ed is currently working on walking the length of Canada, from east coast to west coast. He also wants to walk more of Ohio’s rail trails. The state is one of 10 that have done extensive conversion of unused railroad tracks to biking and hiking trails.

“I never get tired of discovering places I haven’t been and seeing, especially, towns that have old historic districts. I never get tired of that,” he said. “What I do is very unusual.”