SAUGUS – As the proverb says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.Ed Fallon, a Saugus native who now lives in Iowa, could speak to that. He and a group of 55 people from the Great March for Climate Change didn’t just walk a thousand miles. They walked 2,738, from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., all in the name of awareness on the issue of climate change.As befits the name of his group, Fallon and his fellow walkers left Los Angeles in March. Last Saturday, a considerably smaller number of walkers – four to be exact – made it to the nation’s capitol.Fallon started the company in 2013.”We were the Paul Reveres of climate change,” he said, adding that there have been few other organized efforts against the environmental hazard.Fallon, joined by 55 participants, said there was a significant rainstorm on the first day of the walk, compelling some people to drop out before even leaving Los Angeles. Prior to that day, he said the city had endured an 18-month drought.Walking up to 100 miles per week, Fallon said snow and reduced oxygen were some of the obstacles that he and his group experienced early on as they as ascended into the Rocky Mountains.However, he said the most difficult part of the journey was traversing the vast landscape west of Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri. Fallon said his group was almost constantly plagued by inclement weather as they walked through the plains states. On one occasion, they were forced to set up camp during a dust storm packing 40 mph winds.”We had so much sand in there, you could just taste it,” he said.Continuing east, Fallon said they deviated from the more direct route to go through Nebraska. Although the detour added 300 miles to the trip, Fallon believed the decision was worthwhile “because of the symbolic importance of stopping the keystone pipeline.”According to TransCanada Corp., the final phase of the oil pipeline is slated to pass through Nebraska as it intersects with another branch.In addition to Nebraska, Fallon said farmers in New Mexico have been impacted by climate change as they are constantly dealing with water shortages. The farmers in Pennsylvania have water, however, pollution has made it unusable.Fallon said he and his group had narrowly missed a hailstorm “eight miles wide and 100 miles long.””Had we been there, we would have been in big trouble,” he said.Fallon said it was not until he arrived in Cleveland that he felt himself struggling to continue.”It was pretty grueling,” he said.However, the Appalachian Mountains still lay ahead.”Those mountains are harder than the Rockies,” he said, adding that they were steeper and caused him knee trouble. Fallon and his group walked 20 miles a day for four days to get through the Appalachians.By the end of the walk, Fallon said that he and four others were the only ones who walked every step of the way.”I never knew I was going to make it all the way,” he said.Having grown up on Baker Hill in Saugus, Fallon moved to Iowa in 1984.He grew to enjoy the farming industry, having frequented his grandparents’ farm in Ireland when he was younger.Eight years later, Fallon was elected to the Iowa State Legislature where he served as a state representative until 2006. Fallon said that he and Steven Angelo, a former state representative and town manager in Saugus, were state representatives at the same time, only in different states.”Steve Angelo and I used to joke that Saugus had two state representatives,” he said.