Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino’s progress.

…and I am a material guy. I must be. Otherwise, how do you explain the attachment I’ve developed towards, well, stuff? Stuff like my backpack, my walking sticks, my pocket knife, even my notepad; these things have become so important that I feel a certain anxiety when I don’t have them on my person.

I also feel a certain amount of pride in my gear. Some of it showed when I talked about how great I think my shoes are. But I also think my backpack is the perfect size (85L), and (pardon the awkward moment), I think anyone going on a long trip needs to invest in a few pairs of these.

Anyone who has ever lived with me, starting with my parents, will attest to the fact that I have never been the most organized person in the world. And yet I keep everything in my backpack neatly classified in Ziploc bags. Necessity, I suppose, is the mother of self-reinvention. I once had a minor freak-out when I thought I had left my stash of reserve bags in a hotel. Luckily, I had just moved them to a different pocket.

One thing I keep losing is toothpaste. Many of my hosts have found tubes of it as mementos of my visit. Had I known that I would be prone to this annoying (and so specific) absent mindedness, I would have established a Toothpaste Replacement Fund from the beginning.

My Moleskin reporter’s notepad, with the hard back that allows me to use it standing up, anywhere I am, has become my best friend. I don’t want to say that, merely in my 30s, I’m an old man, but I do tend to forget things. So I’ve become one of those people who obsessively write stuff down. And I love writing with the Smith & Wesson tactical pen that a friend got me before I left. Made out of aircraft aluminum, the non-writing end of this pen is a solid tip which I could use as a weapon to defend myself. I hope I never have to use it (or the probably more efficient pocket knife I carry), but I think it’s kind of cool to say that I’m a writer whose pen is literally a weapon.

This trip has been an emotional journey just as much as a physical one, and I know it will change me on a spiritual level. But I have never been one to decry materialism. I love that I live in a world and a country where I can purchase pretty much any product I can conceive of needing. I love the fact that I have access to all kinds of information-much of it life-saving-literally in my pocket. I love that even though people lament the dangers of the modern world, the great inventions of the human mind have made this trip in many ways safer for me now than it would have been in 1950. If materialism means being proud of the products that human ingenuity has created, then I am an unashamed, and unabashed, material guy. And this walk has proven it.

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*Photo by Constantino Diaz-Duran.