The trip was 100 percent successful. I got there. For the first two weeks, I didn't know if I was going to be able to do it. I think the takeaway is a bit of a cliche, but it's somewhere along the lines of having faith and taking the leap.”

David Euglow

There’s a secondary highway somewhere between Lloyd’s Beach and Nashville — David Euglow can’t recall exactly where.

He remembers a few lanes, an overpass, trash on the side of the road. It’s unremarkable. As he walks, a 35-pound pack on his back and the fourth pair of shoes in a month on his feet, Euglow unknowingly kicks a screw which tumbles up into the air, spins and comes down point side up, embedding itself in the sole of his right shoe. It goes all the way through the worn rubber sole but stops just shy of drawing blood. He pulls it out and keeps on walking.

It’s only a tiny event on a trip that took more than three million steps. But it was significant to Euglow, a Little Compton-based songwriter who goes professionally by the name Providence David.

“It felt like grace,” he said.

Euglow didn’t stop that day, and kept walking until he reached Nashville exactly 50 days and 1,207 miles after he set out on foot from Little Compton. Along the way, he found friendly strangers, physical pain, poverty and the crime that sometimes comes along with it, solitude, and plenty of grace.

Song for Little Compton

Euglow is a big, muscular man with a soft demeanor who most recently worked building nuclear submarines at Quonset Point. He is into martial arts, loves cats and his rented home on West Main Road smells of palo santo, a fragrant South American hardwood used in traditional folk medicine to ward off bad energy.

Over his 45 years he has bounced around a lot — Block Island and Smithfield. Stints in Nashville and New York City as he got to know the music business. And most recently, in a rented home on West Main Road that gave him the space and quiet he needed to concentrate on music.

Listen to Providence David's "Song for Little Compton"

With a catalog of songs written before and during his time here, he decided about a year ago to quit his job, travel to Nashville to meet with industry contacts and share what he'd written, and go for his dream.

It’d be easy to fly, almost as easy to drive, but as he thought about the trip and how to make it memorable not just for him but for the executives he’d meet, he decided to walk.

“I believe in the work,” he said. “I knew I wanted to go back and I was just thinking about my strategy. I was like, ‘Man, I think it would be cool if I walked there.’ I knew it was going to require courage on my part by putting myself in an uncertain situation. But as a human being, I thought that was something I should go after."

So after months of planning, he found himself Tuesday, July 9, at Lloyd’s Beach, one of his favorite local spots. With him were the basics — a backpack, tent, sleeping bag, water filtration system, buck knife, headlamp, journal, two pens, a phone charger and water. After taking a quick video, he grabbed his pack and started walking north.

Kindness of strangers

The goal was to walk 25 miles per day — no hitch hiking, no buses, no cars and no planes. He made it to Providence that first night and slept in a fire station, one of seven he stayed in along the route.

By the time he made it to eastern Connecticut a day later, he found one of the first bits of grace when a woman in a Chevy Suburban stopped along the side of the road and asked if he needed anything. By then, the Northeast was in the midst of one of its July heatwaves, he was dehydrated and chafed from the walk and his feet were a mass of blisters. He told her his story.

"I desperately wanted a shower," he said. "She got me some water, gave me her address and said 'If you want a place to stay for the night I'm right down the road.'"

He took her up on the offer.

"She was incredibly generous and kind and sweet," he said. "She cooked me dinner, gave me medical supplies and I did some laundry."

With a freshly gifted jar of ibuprofen in his pack, he got back on the road the next day and began meandering his way through Connecticut and New York.

In the coming days and weeks he pushed on to the southwest, traveling through Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virginia.

On most nights he'd find a secluded place to pitch his tent. But a few times, when he needed a break or the area he was in wasn't conducive to camping, he'd get a hotel room. Steadily, he tore through shoes — four pairs by the time he was done.

The trip gave him a lot of time to think, and he took small side journeys if they were convenient. As he traveled along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, he set up his camera at a small ridge known as McAfee Knob, and walked out to look over the valley.

Later, he wrote, "I felt a tinge of pride and a sense of accomplishment."

"Then it struck me. I am not out on that ledge alone. Out on that ledge with me are my grandparents who have passed, my mother, father, brothers, sister, family, friends, and people in my community that I cherish. Out on that ledge with me are the people I admire, who inspire me to do better, climb higher, and reach greater heights. However solitary we may feel at times, we are never islands. So, if I have been privileged to call you my family or friend, I hope you can see us standing out on that ledge together, looking out over God’s work and contemplating what victories are yet to come."

Keep moving

As Nashville grew closer, he met hitchhikers, diner workers and people from almost every walk of life. The trip was always an effort and sometimes, scary.

The extreme heat had cost him a lot of weight. When he reached Knoxville, Tn., he decided to get a cheap hotel and went to a convenience store at about midnight to get some ice cream — "I was trying to eat as much as I could."

The area did not have a good vibe, he said. As he walked back from the store, he looked across to the other side of the hotel parking lot and saw two people holding a third at gunpoint. They were some distance away, he was unarmed and he didn't know what was going on, so instead of interceding he called the police — "I didn't know what else to do."

The next morning, he asked the hotel clerk about the incident and she said, "Oh, it's like that everywhere."

"No, it's not!" he replied.

With about 160 miles to go, he started seeing more signs for the city. He was walking now through religious country and he forgets how many time passers-by offered to give him bibles as he walked. But the overtures from kind strangers were always heartening, he said.

"I learned that the people who were most helpful, or who went out of their way to ask if I needed food or water, were the ones who had the least to lose," he said — most of the people he met were good and sought to help him with no expectation of anything in return.

Arrival

Finally, on Tuesday, August 27, he arrived in Nashville. True to his original plan, he'd never taken a car along his journey but when he got to Broadway, one of the city's main drags, he decided to call an Uber to get him to his hotel. The app spit out what car to look for — a white Toyota. So he looked and waited and a few minutes later, a white Toyota approached and he flagged it down.

When the car pulled over he opened the door and the driver cleared a mountain of trash from the back seat, told him to hop in and asked him where he was headed. That seemed odd, as he'd typed his destination in to the Uber app.

A minute or so later, as they drove toward the hotel, his Uber driver called and asked where he was. He laughed and he and his new friend, who apparently didn't work for Uber but just decided to stop for him, carried on toward the hotel. More grace.

The bed felt especially good that night, and in the coming days he polished his pitch (see video below), got a guitar and met with a music publishing contact and another from ASCAP, a music licensing agency.

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He stayed in town a bit and finally flew home last Friday, Sept. 13.

Back home

Euglow has been back about a week now, and is waiting to hear back on how the meetings went.

"The trip was 100 percent successful," he said. "I got there. For the first two weeks, I didn't know if I was going to be able to do it. I think the takeaway is a bit of a cliche, but it's somewhere along the lines of having faith and taking the leap" not just on a trip, but toward a dream.

"That's what the whole walk was about for me. In a larger sense, it tells me I can keep going, I can do it."