One Man Pushes His Painted Wheelbarrow Across America

"People just won't leave me alone," Marc CharleBois said. Artist CharleBois, has been pushing a wooden cart across America since 1992.

Born in North Dakota, a Chipewa/Viking mix, CharleBois began his walking journey in California after a back injury that doctors could not fix. "It was not until I had the cart for eight years that I discovered Bois meant wooden cart," he said.

CharleBois has a strong sense of what he calls the slavery of material things that people are attached to like a milestone around their neck. "A year ago I threw away a lot of my stuff. I knew that I didn't need it because I couldn't remember what it was that I needed it for," he said.

During his journies, CharleBois has been interviewed 47 times for newspapers and radio. He has also been arrested about 100 times for walking along the highway, he explained. CharleBois sees nothing wrong with his way of life. He says he is constantly pestered by people who do not understand his attitude towards the meaning of freedom.

He explained that people want to feed and shelter him in their little boxes, not realizing that the sky and the stars are his roof, the open road his job and relating his idea of freedom to others, his lifelong quest.
"It gets spooky," he said. "I have had people stopping to help me all over," he said. "People don't realize that back in the last depression, people with wooden carts would go from town to town [peddling their wares] and they survived that way," he explained.

CharleBois makes his living by selling his artwork. He does commissions, oil paintings and signs;. He uses various techniques."It comes down to whatever technique works," he said. "If you learn from your mistakes, I've got a PhD," he added. This year CharleBois walked from Oregon across much of the country."In three weeks I'll hit 20,000 miles."

CharleBois does not know where his next stop will be; he just keeps on walking. He believes that he will change the world in his way by talking to as many people as possible and changing the way they think about what freedom is.