Outdoors: Tim Kaine's 'Virginia nature triathlon' deepened his appreciation of the state

Does the world need another political memoir? More boilerplate self-aggrandizing about hard-scrabble upbringings? More seminal moments from formative years? More battles won and lost in formerly smoke-filled rooms all offering little insight into the author or real news about his or her triumphs and defeats? If your answer is yes, if these things don’t cause involuntary eye-rolling, Tim Kaine’s "Walk Ride Paddle" won’t float your john boat.

The former Richmond mayor, Virginia governor and current U.S. senator released his first book earlier this year, and it succeeds by defying classification.

"Walk Ride Paddle" is an adventure travelogue, a Virginia natural history primer and just enough autobiography to ground the narrative – to make us interested in our narrator. It’s a paean to our commonwealth, to his family, and to the friends who join him on his journeys. There’s philosophical commentary, ruminations on current events, and personal anecdotes. Those are the flesh.

The skeleton they hang from is a deceptively simple idea: A lifelong outdoors enthusiast, Kaine decided in 2018 to test himself, and celebrate both his 60th birthday and 25 years in public life, by embarking on an “epic Virginia outdoor quest” of his own creation. He would hike all of the Appalachian Trail in the state, bike every Virginia mile of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and paddle the James River from source to bay: the Virginia Nature Triathlon.

“I don’t know exactly what I would call [the book],” Kaine said in an interview from the campaign trail last week. “I told people I’ve never written an autobiography, but I’d never need to write one because there’s enough autobiography in there. I would call it a nature journal but nature [experiences] over the course of my life. Some people have come up to me and said, ‘This is a book about friendship.’ Some people have said, ‘This book is a tribute to your wife.’”

Kaine always intended to keep a journal about his adventures – the hike took place in 2019, the bike in 2020 and the paddle in 2021 – but it was their overlap with the extraordinary events unfolding across America during that time that got him thinking his journal might be more than something he’d “bind up and give to all my family and friends.”

“I did the whole thing with no agent, no publisher,” he told me. “I don’t know anything about the book business. So, when I had the manuscript done, I went shopping for an agent. I got turned down by two on the theory that, ‘Oh, I like this, but it doesn’t fit into any category.’ Then I found my third who said, ‘I like this, I’d like to try to get this published.’”

If the first hurdle a book by a politician must clear is the eye-roll test, the second is a product of our current political identity malaise. Does anyone want to hear from someone whose political views they disagree with anymore, even if the topic is only very occasionally political? When Kaine dives into the events of Jan. 6th, or the global pandemic or the racial protests following George Floyd’s death, you won’t mistake him for a Trump voter. But those moments in the narrative are fleeting, and, agree with his takes or not, Kaine’s narrative is an engrossing read for any lover of the natural world and the adventures available to us in Virginia.

For his part, Kaine wasn’t worried readers from the other side of the political aisle might judge the book by the name on its cover. “We are living in a politically polarized moment, and there’s no sugarcoating that.” he said.

“But what I realized when I was out there is that there are a whole lot of areas of life where we’re not polarized. Out in the wilderness, everybody in Virginia appreciates our natural beauty. People that you meet out on the trail, they don’t care [if you’re] Democrat, Republican or politically unengaged, we all have this appreciation for Virginia’s nature that we share. That doesn’t mean we aren’t politically polarized; it just means that there are other really important areas of life where we aren’t polarized.”

"Walk Ride Paddle" unfolds in the order its title suggests. In late summer and fall of 2019, Kaine spent 42 days section hiking the 559 AT miles in Virginia, many of them alone, many others with family and friends. Then in summer 2020 he biked the 321 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway (over eight consecutive days) from Cumberland Knob just over the North Carolina border to Rockfish Gap near the southern end of Shenandoah National Park. He did that trip with a group of old friends, the “Nightwingnuts.”

For the 348 miles of the James River from where the Cowpasture and Jackson rivers meet to the Chesapeake Bay, Kaine is joined by a host of friends, neighbors, family members and others. This rotating cast of characters offers a lifeline to Kaine when the journey is hard and the solitude closes in. (“There was one stretch along the AT where it was so hot … when I was doing it. I went multiple days in a row without even seeing anyone. I like solitude, but let’s not go overboard here,” he told me.) It also gives the reader a window into what he values most. He mentions a quote that UVA basketball coach Tony Bennett has been known to employ: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

And Kaine isn’t just joined by friends and family. Some of my favorite passages are when he presents writers, thinkers and philosophers from long ago to act as guides and companions for both him and the reader. Henry David Thoreau, Bertrand Russell, Robert Lowell, Heraclitus and many unnamed biblical authors make appearances. Even Franz Kafka has words of wisdom to offer, a koan Kaine only cracks after completing the AT hike: “Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness:” Kafka writes, “believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving toward it.”

Kaine said the Virginia Nature Triathlon has changed him in ways both large and small. He hasn’t seen the inside of the Senate gym since his hike ended in 2019, preferring to exercise outdoors. “I really use it for stress relief,” he said. “There’s always issues I’m worried about here in the Senate… Yet, I find if I spend time outdoors, it gives me a little more equilibrium to grapple with these issues and probably make better decisions.”

And then there’s one we can all appreciate: “I’m a little bit better at not being yoked to my cell phone. I could do somewhat better of not always being connected. But I’ll often leave the cell on my desk or leave it at home when I go out to do some outdoor thing. That definitely was the trail helping me realize I was too yoked to my phone.”

It’s a certainty that if you spend as much time outside as Kaine did on this trip you’ll experience countless moments of serendipity. Watching wild ponies emerge from a thick fog on Mount Rogers; beaching his canoe on Jamestown Island and, after 400 years, seeing hardly any evidence of human habitation; watching sturgeon breach all around him as he paddled his kayak a couple of miles from Richmond. These were Kaine’s favorite moments, but they’re available to all of us the moment we hit the trail, the road or the water.