Walking Off the Fat, Across the Land

He is a big guy, 6-foot-1, a former Marine and longtime tow-truck operator who, as the fat melts away from his cheekbones and jaws, is beginning to bear a slight resemblance to the buffed-up actor Jerry O'Connell, but with a lumberjack beard and shock of hair like an unmowed lawn.

Well, that depends on what you mean by "insane." Doctors, certainly, would call it inadvisable. A seriously overweight person who embarks on any kind of strenuous physical activity could place dangerous stresses on his joints and heart, said Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis.

And such activity is especially worrisome in an area of environmental extremes, without someone to support him, Klein said. Even if he weighed 100 pounds, "walking across a desert without someone standing next to him with an umbrella and a fan and Gatorade might really be a problem."

Vaught, meanwhile, has been almost completely on his own. For the first few days after he set off from the Pacific Ocean, his wife, April, would pick him at up the end of the day to bring him home to sleep at her mother's house, where the family is staying. Soon, though, he had gone far enough that he had to start camping; now he has not seen his family in three weeks.

Now and then a friend catches up with him for a few hours or days. But mostly it is just him and his 75-pound pack and the left-hand shoulder of the road.

Since he entered the desert, he has had to cut back his walking hours dramatically. Now he walks from about 5:30 to 8:30 in the morning, when he has to stop and find shelter -- preferably in a store or post office if one is around, but usually under a bridge or in a culvert or bush.

He will sit there for 11 or 12 hours, until it is cool enough to walk again for a few hours. Just sit there. "I'm too bored to read," he says, or even take in the landscape more than he already has.

"It's beautiful for the first hour or so," he said. "And then it loses its impact."

Yet on the question of "insane," the responses to the Web site chronicling his journey -- http://www.thefatmanwalking.com/ -- appear to be running heavily against. On a recent afternoon, Vaught accepts a ride from a reporter 35 miles down the road to a public library, where he checks his e-mail.

There is one from a 37-year-old guy preparing to run his first marathon. A 62-year-old woman planning to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. People in such places as St. Louis and Altoona, Pa., offering food and water and a place to stay when he comes their way. Overweight people across the country begging to know Vaught's daily mileage so they can match it at home.

Only a few call him crazy. Almost all say what an inspiration he is.

It is something to think about, on those lonely and terrible days on the road, he says. "Now I have all these people not to let down."