Be Prepared

On January 11, 1935, three Venezuelan Boy Scouts left the Plaza Bolívar in Caracas with five bolívars in their pockets, a hand-pulled cart loaded with their gear, and a single destination: Washington D.C. Nobody believed they would make it. They barely believed it themselves. What followed was one of the most extraordinary feats of human endurance in the history of the Americas. Rafael Ángel Petit and Juan Carmona walked across a continent. Through the suffocating jungles of the Chocó, where a jaguar stalked them through the night. Through the mountains of Central America, where illness nearly ended the journey before it had truly begun. Through the highways of Mexico and the border crossings of ten countries, surviving on donated meals, autographed postcards, and the moral authority of their scout uniforms. Over 11,000 miles on foot. 886 days after leaving Caracas, they climbed the steps of the United States Capitol. Be Prepared is the narrative nonfiction account of that journey. Drawing on historical sources, period photographs from the Library of Congress Harris & Ewing collection, documentary evidence, and Petit's own manuscript of the expedition, J.P. Lewis reconstructs the trek in cinematic detail: the hunger and the fever, the moments of unexpected grace from strangers along the road, the crisis that nearly tore the expedition apart in Bogotá, the reunion in a hospital in Colón, and the unbreakable bond between two young men who had made each other a promise — to reach Washington or die trying. Part adventure story, part history, part meditation on what it truly means to be prepared — this is a book about commitment carried to its ultimate conclusion. About the kind of courage that doesn't announce itself, but simply keeps walking. Petit and Carmona arrived in Washington in time for the first National Boy Scout Jamboree, where 27,000 scouts gathered on the National Mall. They were the only ones who had walked there from their country of origin. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was there. Some journeys are worth every step.