A Single Pebble

New Route

2010-05-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

In case anybody checks, I'm walking again and have another blog. walkforshoes.blogspot.com

Coaldale

2008-12-16T09:27:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry that this will be a partial list. There are a lot of names that I didn't think to write down, or that I'll miss when I'm looking through my journals.

To everyone who poured something in my cup.

The Gardiners - Tacoma, Washington
Debbie DeRose and Dan Reed Miller - Portland, Oregon
The Pedro Family - Maupin, Oregon
Rodeo Family - Spray, Oregon
The Dayville Presbyterian Church - Dayville, Oregon
Joyce and Family - Wilder, Oregon
Dee and Bill Pilcher - Caldwell, Idaho
Daryl Crandall - Murhpy, Idaho
Jerry Michael and Company - Paris, Idaho
Jim and Cyndee Slater - Rangely, Colorado
The Jouflas Family - Fruita/Grand Junction, Colorado
Tom McMurry - Crestone, Colorado
Tim and Jill - Colorado
The Kirtleys - Salida, Colorado
Great Aunt Gladys and Aunt Sandy - Salida, Colorado
The Parkers - Coaldale, Colorado
Eugene and Barbara - Coaldale, Colorado
Janet Pegg - Cotopaxi, Colorado
Uncle Randy and Grandma - Canon City, Colorado
The Flemings - Penrose, Colorado
Carlos and Friends - Lakin, Kansas
Danna and Bill Jones - Garden City, Kansas
Steve and Leah Hanson - Council Grove, Kansas
Uncle Lynn and Aunt Barbara - Lee's Summit, Missouri
Southern Hills Baptist/Gary and Connie Urich - Bolivar, Missouri
Grandpa and Grandma - Kennett, Missouri
Pastor Jim Davis - Kennett, Missouri
The Dickson Presbyterian Church - Dickson, Tennessee
David, Kevin, Julie, Chris, Kirk, Pattie, Aubree, Morgan, Kim, and the entire Soles4Souls team - Nashville, Tennessee
Tiffany Johnson - Nashville, Tennessee
Lynn Taylor - Manchester, Tennessee
Rodney Thompson and the Greenleaf Inn - Manchester, Tennessee
Bill and Beata Mueller - Chattanooga, Tennessee
Paige Sosebee - Dalton, Georgia
The Life Way Baptist Church - Rocky Face, Georgia
Gunnar and Family - Adairsville, Georgia
Mike King - Forsyth, Georgia
Randy and Terisa Jones - Eastman, Geogia
Kathy and Fran - Jacksonville, Florida

Also:

Wayne Elsey - CEO by day, Poor card player by night, Great man 24/7
The Hamelins - My new set of relatives and the best support crew ever
My entire family - on and off of the route, before, during, and after. Aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins, you were the backbone.

But most importantly:
My parents. The bread and butter of my being. Thank you for raising me to be who I am, for showing me the things in life that really matter. Thank you for helping me to dream my dreams.
You were, and are, my inspiration every step of the way. I love you very much.

Dashiel

The Other Ocean

2008-12-09T16:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, going downstairs for breakfast, I got a wonderful surprise. Don and Carol handed me a t-shirt that I'd left in Chattanooga and I had no idea how they ended up with it, and then my mom stepped out from around the corner.
My parents had discussed, quite a while ago, that they might come out for the end of the walk, and then we hadn't said anything else about it in a long time. But behind the scenes and away from my knowledge some phone calls were being made.
So when I walked the final mile, yesterday, I wasn't alone. My mom and I walked down through the oceanfront cottages, up the planked beach walk and onto the little stretch of dunes.

The ocean greeted me, welcomed me in and I walked in a daze out in the surf. Stood for a long time and stared out into the infinite. How strange that it felt so familiar. Like a pen pal, perhaps, who I'd written letters to for years and finally got to meet. And the other ocean was in my mind, also. The two of them seemed to exist, briefly, as one, and all of the miles in between seemed to disappear, and it was like I was standing in Washington, again, staring the other way.
I didn't have to camp in the dunes, at this ocean. Or didn't get to - I'm not sure which. And I wasn't alone, this time. But for a few seconds, with the water around my ankles and the sand shifting under my feet, the camera flashes and the small procession behind me evaporated, and I was, again, just an ordinary kid, trying to picture infinity and feeling small in the failure, a single pebble at the edge of eternity.

Holy cow. I'm done. Hallelujah. Ring the bells and sing a sing-song. Sing a sing-song all day long and show me them pearly whites. Optimism won, folks. Put up some points for hope.

Is it bittersweet? I don't know, yet. I don't think so, just sweet. But the transition probably won't be easy, getting back home. My dad called this morning and reported that there are nine inches of snow on the ground, at home. And it sounded wonderful, if a little odd.
Will I miss walking? Probably. Will I miss sleeping under bushes in the rain? Not a chance. Miss the people and their stories? Yep. The open sky, the white line, the pop-tart feasts, the hours of fuzzy radio, the backwoods churches? Hard to say.

Today we drove all over town for different events. We walked a little over a mile into downtown, where Soles 4 Souls was handing out shoes and we had a little awards ceremony, a final gathering. Said the goodbyes to some great people - to some great friends.
Tomorrow my mom and I are hanging around town, and Thursday we part ways again. She's flying home, and I'm getting, once again, on a train.

There is no great wisdom to be found at the end of the road. No pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. How I change when I go back isn't known. What I take away isn't marked down in a book, isn't labeled and defined.
But I know that there is no country that I would rather have traveled. No nation I'd rather have felt beneath my feet. America is my home, and the people, from Washington to Colorado to Florida, are my brothers and my sisters, and this story isn't just about me. It's a story about us. About who we are and what we stand for. About the country we love. And if you shared your home with me, shared your stories with me, and poured some of your cup into mine, then this story is yours, too.
But we have to take care of each other. Have to remember, sometimes, that the boat is bigger than the street we live on. And if there's anything that comes from what I've done, I hope that it's a willingness to reach out, for someone to open themselves up and take a stranger's hand, to look at the world with a little more faith in fellow man. People are good. Believe in that.

You'll hear from me once more, I think, when I'm home. I'll try to tie up some loose ends.

Jacksonville

2008-12-07T20:10:00.000-08:00

When I left the ocean, in Washington, I had forty miles planned out on the map. The other 3380 were figured out along the way. And I didn't even decide that Jacksonville was the final destination until I got into Tennessee, if I remember correctly.
But Florida was always the end goal, the distant lollipop on the big stick. The ocean was, and still is, the true end, but Florida was the name that I kept polishing in my head. And it's amazing to me how something that was for so long only ethereal, has become real. Has suddenly become a solid thing, under my feet.

I didn't ever really question that I would get to Florida. Out of pride, I knew that I'd force myself, because I'm the kind of person who wouldn't let myself go home to friends and family unless I'd made it. I don't mean to say that I have to finish everything I start - because that would draw some major jeers from the peanut gallery - but mean, instead, that I needed to do this thing, in particular. That this trip, this one great notion of mine, needed to be finished.
But there was a nagging feeling, nonetheless, that Florida might not be there, when I needed it. As if it could have been some elaborate joke I'd let myself believe in, some childhood fantasy that wouldn't - that couldn't - come true.

Three days ago I crossed a river, and stood on holy ground. The moment came quickly. Though the line between states is always drawn brightly, this boundary, from Georgia, seemed clearer. There was no period of transition.

There are moments, for all of us, when life changes quickly, changes almost instantly and without warning. The 'Where were you when JFK was shot' syndrome. A particular time in our lives when we realize that in a single moment, everything changes.
But in the long run, these moments are few. Both truth and the change it instigates are dealt to us in small doses, on the norm. And though, in my story, Florida seemed to come quickly, it was obviously something planned, something expected. Something that wasn't based on one life changing event but seven months worth of trial.

I arrived in Jacksonville yesterday. Checked into my hotel and settled in for the night. Wayne is here, and so are Don and Carol and their daughter Kathy and her husband Fran, and others arrive bit by bit. The stories are building, still, but now there's only one thing that I can concentrate on.

Tomorrow I finish the walk. Find out if the ocean is really where it's supposed to be and stick my feet in the water. Mileage wise I'm essentially done already; catharsis wise I'm a thousand miles away.

A while ago I got a comment on one of my blogs that I didn't know what to think of, or how to respond to. The comment, if you want to look it up and read it entirely, came in October's 'Kennett Again' post, and I take a small quote from it here:

"I do not support any particular group but I would say that if when your done your trek, you might turn around and support, say, UNICEF or even the Salvation Army. These people are taking down the tree at the roots and not just one branch at a time."

If there's one thing that I've learned from the walk, it's that pessimism ain't good for nothing. It's true, yes, that for every child we give shoes to, there's another who needs a coat. And another who needs a meal. But that's no way to look at the world. Look at the world through that perspective and you'll drown.
We do what we can. Take up our plastic shovels and help move the mountain. We can't change the world all at once. Can't take on the whole tree. We do, indeed, have to change the world one branch at a time. One step at a time. And as they say at Soles4Souls, one pair at a time.

Hazlehurst

2008-12-01T05:50:00.000-08:00

Tuesday was the last night I spent in the Hamelin's motor home. I walked, on the day, from just above Barnesville to Smarr, five or six miles below Forsyth, and then Don and Carol picked me up for the night and drove me back to the Forsyth KOA. We said goodbyes Wednesday morning, and they dropped me off where I'd stopped the previous night. I walked into and through Macon, on the day, and put up my tent in a little field on the east side of town.
Thanksgiving I treated myself to a good breakfast after packing my things, and then called my parents. I didn't start walking until after noon, and had a long way to go.
Throughout the day as I walked I passed families playing football in the yard, young kids bouncing on trampolines with cousins. They waved at me as I passed and I waved back, lonely. I walked twenty eight miles on the day, and rolled out my sleeping bag in front of a Baptist church. Ate some pop-tarts and thought about things.
Fifteen hundred miles from home. Fifteen hundred miles from my friends and family. No turkey. No cranberry sauce. No pecan pie.
I opened my journal - the first of several, where I keep track of all the places I've slept - and looked back over the trip.
A month ago I came down sick and hid in a Civic Center in Huntingdon, TN. Two months ago I was in Lee's Summit, at my uncle's. Three months ago I spent my last night in Colorado, and four months ago I was at home, taking my reprieve. Five months ago I slept in a ditch in Wyoming. Six months ago I stayed in a Presbyterian church in Dayville, Oregon. And seven months ago, on the twenty-seventh of April, I climbed on a train.
They say that no man is an island. That nobody exists as a single being, that we're all connected. And I don't think that there's a truer thought.
I think back to something we did once in a Biology class of mine, several years ago, when I was still in Cotopaxi. We all had a cup of water and one of the cups started out with some sort of solution and the others were all just water, and several times we'd pour water into someone else's cup, and they into ours, and at the end another chemical was added to every body's cup, and all the cups who had a little bit of the original solution glowed green. The project was about the spread of AIDs, so it's probably a terrible example, but it stuck with me, and I think of it now.
I think that every time we open ourselves up to a stranger, that we take a chance beyond stereotypes, beyond pessimisms and paranoias, we pour a little bit of our cup into that stranger's. And that if that stranger opens back up, and we listen, then we get a little bit of their cup, in ours.
What I'm trying to say is that I've met a lot of people. Every day I meet people and I tell my story. Every day I hear the stories of others. And every day I feel like my cup gets a little extra color.
I climbed on the train, seven months ago, with three hundred dollars in the bank. With the first forty miles mapped out and the rest up in the air. I had no idea what I was doing. And yet now I'm only a hundred and thirty miles from the other ocean.
I think back to something Wayne told me, in Nashville. He said - and I wish I could remember the exact words - something about how people are too apt to sit beyond their walls and point fingers, and judge others from their places of sanctitude, without taking time to find out the true story. And I know that in large part, it's true. We find niches in our lives. Find a job that pays the bills and a circle of friends to drink beer with. Maybe a church that shares our views. And it's easy, sometimes far too easy, to sit in our corners and watch the world swirl without us. To watch the news every evening for stories of war and murder and sex scandals. To build up our paranoias like Lincoln Log justifications.
But if there weren't exceptions, I wouldn't be where I am. If nobody had ever turned the car around to hand a five dollar bill out the window and if no one had ever let me sleep on their couch and if no one had ever honked and waved and given a thumbs up I wouldn't have made it this far. I wouldn't have made it to Oregon.
I don't know if a single pebble can change the course of a river. Haven't figured that one out, yet. But I'm not a single pebble. Nobody is. Because we are the people we meet. We are the sunsets that we see. We are the stories that we hear.
And sitting in the cold, 1500 miles from home on Thanksgiving, that was the thought that kept me warm.
Here's a toast to sharing cups. A toast to pouring some of ourselves into the world.

Barnesville (Forsyth)

2008-11-24T16:01:00.000-08:00

After posting from the library in Calhoun I started walking again, and made it into Adairsville by early evening. The forecast was for cold, for lots of cold, and I was weighing my options for the night over dinner in McDonald's when I met Gunnar. He sat at a table, with Annika, his daughter, and noticed my pack.
"You're traveling?"
"Yep." We talk about the trip for a few minutes.
"You seem like an honest guy, am I right? Well, I've got a house here in town that nobody's staying in for the time being. If you'd like you can stay there tonight. Supposed to be getting cold, you know."
He and his daughter leave for a few minutes to switch cars, and when they come back I meet Ruby, the wife and mom. When I finish eating I climb in their car and they take me along to visit the group home where another daughter lives, and then on to their house a few miles outside of town. I shower and clean up, and then go with Gunnar, Annika, and Cassia, a third daughter, to the local Kingdom Hall for their Tuesday evening service.
Afterwards Gunnar drops me off at the house in town. He's recently been fixing it up and now it's on the market, so I have the place to myself for the night. The world provides, as they say.
In the morning I pack up and get some breakfast in town before starting to walk. The sun comes out early and the day warms quickly out of the teens that set in overnight.
Around noon, as I'm sitting down by the side of the road, a post office vehicle pulls over and a lady offers a sandwich and some candy. I've got plenty of food but I take the chocolate and she wishes me well.
By late afternoon I make it into Cartersville, and don't go more than a mile or two beyond town before setting up for the night. It gets dark incredibly early, anymore, and the cold sets in quickly once the sun is gone, so I lie in my tent and read by headlamp until I fall asleep.
Thursday I walked from the edge of Cartersville down through the towns of Emerson and Acworth and Kennesaw into Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta, where Soles 4 Souls had made a reservation for me at a hotel for the next two nights.
In the morning David Graben, from S4S, picked me up at the hotel. His daughter Megan had the day off and had come down with him, and the three of us drove to OKAb shoes. OKAb just made a donation of over 40,000 shoes, and then another 10,000 in my name, and so we stopped in for a thank you. We were given a tour of the company, and a Fox News van came to get the story.
After OKAb, David, Megan and I drove to a foster children warehouse, where we unloaded a truckful of shoes. It continues to amaze me to discover all of the people and places who help put shoes on peoples' feet. The need is enormous, though I had no real idea when I first found S4S online.

The idea for the walk began to take serious form last fall. Sometime, probably October or November, I was messing around in my Desktop Publishing class and ran across the S4S logo. It quickly became obvious that their mission and mine could intertwine, and so I sent an email to the info line on the S4S website.
David was the one who the email was referred to, and he and Chris Carmichael had a little bit of dialogue with me through further emails. It's interesting to hear the story from David's perspective, now.
"We weren't sure what to make of you," he tells me. "One day I got an email from a kid who said he was planning a walk across the country, barefoot. We kind of probed the idea, and didn't think much of it, and then suddenly you were walking."
David and Megan and Sparky (nickname) - the man who drove the truck of shoes down from Nashville - and I went out to lunch, and afterwards they dropped me off back at my hotel.
At which point Carol and Don called.
I met the Hamelines back in Nashville. The have S4S ties, and went along for the walk through town and the shoe distribution at the mission, and then lunch afterwards, and then went with Wayne and I to hear Tiffany sing that Saturday.
They've been in contact since, and came up to meet me in Atlanta. Saturday they picked me up as I checked out of the hotel and took me to the Georgia Aquarium. Afterwards we headed east, and they put me up for the night in the motor home, which they had parked at Stone Mountain, a campground/huge tourist attraction thing outside Atlanta.
Yesterday Don drove me down and got me back on highway 41, and I walked all day, then they picked me up again when it got dark and I stayed the night in the motor home again. Today was the same schedule, and it's safe to say that I've acquired a temporary support crew.
I've essentially been taken hostage by a couple of New Englanders with funny accents. They let me walk, but don't let me cook, sleep in the cold, lose at cards, or in any other way fend for myself. It's terrible. But you have to understand, it's hard to flee when I'm on foot and they have wheels. Anyway, if somebody asks for ransom money, you know who to blame.
Tonight it's raining heavily, and I'm warm and dry, and am more than thankful.

Calhoun

2008-11-18T09:26:00.000-08:00

I didn't leave Manchester until afternoon, and walked through the evening to make it up MontEagle mountain into the town of MontEagle. Several people had warned me that it was a big climb, and that I was in for a rough time, but really it just seemed like a big hill.
As soon as I got into town it started raining, and I sat in the Waffle House for a while before grudgingly looking for a place to sleep. I camped behind the Regency Inn, and stayed fairly dry.
In the morning I woke up to thick fog, and all through the day it hung on the hills. Somewhere around noon a stray dog ran across the street just in front of a passing car to greet me. Some kind of Heeler mix. No collar. No tags. And anxious to follow me. We walked for close to a mile together, me scared to death because he kept running out in the road. 'Go home!' I'd yell, knowing that home probably didn't exist.
As we came over a little hill, from the corner of my eye I saw him run all the way to the other side of the road to investigate something. A few seconds later I met a car, coming over the hill, and heard a sickening crunch as it passed, behind me. I forced myself not to look, but to keep walking. I felt sick, and tried to tell myself that it was inevitable. That it wasn't my fault, and that the poor dog was never going to make it long.
By the time I finally couldn't help it anymore and looked back, the hill, and the sad scene, had been claimed by the fog, and I couldn't see anything.
That's how it works, out on the road. There is an overpowering sense that I have to keep moving, that I can't let myself get attached - not to a place, or a person, or anything else. Florida is the pendulum that swings back and forth in my eyes, and keeps me in an almost zombielike march.
As the sun went down the fog came in thicker. The headlights of passing cars crept slowly out of the dark, and mailboxes materialized like ghosts. I made it to Jasper, for the night, and slept in front of a Baptist church.
The fog had lifted in the morning, and I walked in good spirits out of town. I backed up traffic crossing the Tennessee River on a narrow bridge, and ate lunch at a little store in Guild. I walked until nine, and rolled out my bag at an old medical lab, just before Chattanooga.
Saturday I woke up to rain, and I made it into town wet and cold. I walked toward downtown, and spent a couple of hours at the library, then traversed the downtown shops for a while. When it started getting dark and cold I called Beata and Bill Mueller.
The Muellers are friends of Susan and Mark Lassman - Coaldalians, like myself - and put me up for the night in Chattanooga. I got a warm shower in, and a good meal, then slept out of the weather for a night.
In the morning Beata and Bill got me back on highway 41, into Georgia, and I made it to Dalton by late afternoon. A little car stopped alongside me as I approached town, and two ladies and a young man from a local church talked to me for a few minutes. They were out giving goody bags to 'Anybody that looks like they could use some sandwiches' and gave me two bags full of snacks.
I spent the night near downtown, behind a hotel.
Yesterday I didn't make it very far. I started early enough, but took a wrong turn, somehow, and wound up putting in eight or nine extra miles. I wound up where I wanted to be, but definitely took the scenic route, and I'm still not sure what I did wrong. I made it to Rescala, for the night, and slept on the porch of a local church.
This morning a man woke me at daybreak and invited me inside the church for coffee, and I was on my way in good time.
I'm in Calhoun, now. Still on Highway 41, and should be into Atlanta within a few days.

Manchester

2008-11-12T09:15:00.000-08:00

Leaving Nashville everything felt a little different. As if all of my ideas about the trip, all of my motivations, all my joys and my worries, had been put in a different pot and shaken around, so that while they all still exist, they're now seen in a different line, and a different light.
I look back now onto certain places that I've been and certain focal points along the trip's timeline, and it seems like a different trip. Like something that happened years ago. I'm in a completely different place mentally than I was a couple of months ago.
In Nashville I was treated like a king. But I feel, more than ever, alone. Not necessarily in a bad way, but in a kind of warm, solid way. As if my solitude, my time away from everyone that I know, has become a friend in itself. I don't know. It's odd, trying to describe how I'm feeling.

The first day out of Nashville I walked through the towns of La Verne and Smyrna, and everyone seemed to recognize me. One man pulled over and got a picture of his four or five year old with me, and told me how exited they were to see me. 'You don't know how cool he thinks you are,' the man said, pointing at the kid.
Walking through Murfreesboro, the next day, I ran into a couple of homeless people, who quickly tried to adopt me. They wanted me to follow them around to some shelters in the area where they said I could get a bed. 'Lady at the Room 'n Inn will put you up for a night,' a lady with no teeth was quick to offer. 'And if you promise to try and get a job they'll let you stay for a couple of weeks. But-' and here she gives me a wide grin '-she doesn't like it if you're keeping a bottle under the bed.' In truth, it felt good to know that I can still be mistaken for a hobo.
A few miles past Murfreesboro, a car pulled over a hundred yards up the road from me, and an old lady stepped out and set a McDonald's bag in the gravel. She glanced up nervously, then reached back inside the car and pulled out a fountain drink and set it down, too, before hopping back in the car. As the car passed, the driver, another old lady, waved. 'A little something to eat,' she called, and the car drove off. I sat down to have an unexpected lunch break, and a man on a bike rode up. 'You the guy who's walking across the country?' he asks. 'Saw you in the newspaper. Brought you some snacks, if you're interested.' He unstraps a backpack and pulls out some granola bars and fruit, along with a book. 'Thought you might want something to read, too.' He's actually from Colorado, he says, and we talk for a while. He offers me a place to stay for the night, but it's only noon, and I opt to keep walking.
The next morning, in the little town of Beech Grove, I wake up behind a Church of Christ and get some breakfast in a general store next door. Several locals sit at a table next to mine, and somebody recognizes me as I'm getting ready to go. A couple of the others remember seeing me on TV once they think about it.
A mile or two down the road a car pulls over with two of the people from the store inside. 'Can you take donations?' they ask, and a lady holds out a handful of bills.
Later in the day, as I'm nearing Manchester, another car pulls over, driven by Lynn Taylor, who works for the local newspaper. 'Somebody up at the Beech Grove store said you were headed this way,' she says.
In town, she takes pictures of me at the Veterans' Day gathering, and then treats me to lunch at the Greenleafe Inn. 'I know the owner, here,' Lynn says. 'Let me see if I can get you a room for the night.' She takes Rodney, her friend, in the kitchen and comes back smiling. 'You're staying out of the weather tonight.' She's gotten me dinner and breakfast, too.
As we're eating, a man from the local TV station is shooting film for an advertisement, and when he hears about me he wants to get the story. So I agree to another interview.
Yesterday afternoon the rain came in, and I sat in my hotel room, warm and dry. Today it's still raining, but I'll be heading out, shortly.

It's odd how things have worked out lately. Everything is so much easier in the east than it was in the west. It's hard to believe, now, that there was a time when I had to ration peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and when water seemed precious. Everyone tells me that I'm doing something special, but anymore I just feel like I'm on some kind of weird vacation.

A Quick Note

2008-11-07T07:51:00.000-08:00

I'm spending the morning at the Soles4Souls office, here in Nashville. Yesterday Wayne Elsey (S4S founder) and I walked with a group of local students to a mission and handed out shoes, and the story got picked up by a bunch of news organations. Anyway - long story short - mom and dad, get a copy of U.S.A. Today.

Nashville

2008-11-05T17:49:00.000-08:00

I woke up Friday morning, Halloween, behind the Camden library. Found some breakfast and started walking in great weather. I walked slowly for a while, not making more than ten miles or so before stopping for a late lunch in New Johnsonville, just across the Tennessee River. By the time I reached the next little town of Denver, the oaks were already soaking up evening and, at a little church near the road, some small witches and zombies and iron men took a tractor ride while their mothers chatted and sorted out candy.
I made it into Waverly, as the night came down, and put up my tent in a little field next to the local Wal-Mart.
In the morning, as the thick dew dried in the sunlight, the store manager waved me over from the lawn and garden section.
"There's no way you slept in my field," he says, brightly. I don't say anything - just smile. "You can't have been very comfortable. They send trains by here all the time."
"Didn't hear a thing," I say.
"Well, I can't let you sleep there every night," he says. "You're not putting up residence, are you?"

I hike out of Waverly, and through the town of McEwan around noon, and walk well through the hills, the changing leaves, the pastures, into Dickson by evening. I see a Presbyterian church off the highway and decide to pull over. Normally I don't try doors, but I decide to give this one a shot and sure enough it's open, but just the outside one, letting me into a small entryway. I sleep in warmth, anyway.
Sunday I wake up to coffee, and Sunday School. I'm invited to stick around for the day, and a man from the church drives me to the library and his kids and I throw a football around until the doors open. Later on he takes me to his mother in law's house (she's out of town) so that I can shower and clean up for evening service.
I spend Sunday night on the youth group's couches, alone in the church, and Monday morning I'm fed breakfast before taking off.
I walk straight to White Bluff, and then buy a few groceries before taking a nap near the road. When I wake up it's already getting dark, which seems weird. But I've lost an hour, now, and the loss of Saving's Time cuts into my walking hours. I turn on the headlamp after a while and make it to Pegram, for the night, sleeping in front of the First Baptist Church.
Election day I sat in a gas station for an hour, watching all the candidates vote, and made it into the outer fringes of Nashville before finding myself a cheap hotel. It's the first time I've done so on the trip, and it feels odd - feels guilty - but it's wonderful to be able to watch my first election in a warm place, without worrying about where I'm going to sleep.
I stay up to see Mr. Obama's speech, then drift off, but leave the t.v. running all night, catching a few blurry details on and off.
Today I made it across the city to the hotel where I'm being put up by Soles4Souls while I'm here. Julie, from the organization, brought me a gift basket they've put together, and tonight I'm living it up.
In the morning I'll be going back into the main of town to walk with the founder of the organization, Wayne Elsey, to a mission in downtown, where I'm told we're going to be handing out shoes.

Camden

2008-10-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

I left my grandparents' house Saturday morning. Their pastor from the First Assembly of God, Jim Davis, drove me in their car across the interstate bridge and into Tennessee, and let me off where I could get on a smaller road.
I walked through Finley and into Dyersburg, where I stayed the night next to an animal hospital.
Sunday I made good time, and made it through the swamp bottoms to the town of Trenton, and rolled in the First Baptist Church courtyard.
I woke up Monday with a sore throat, but didn't feel bad otherwise. I walked through Milan around one, stopped in for a while at the library, and then made it up the road to a school beyond Atwood to put up my tent for the night.
In the morning somebody outside my tent woke me up.
"Guy? You in there? You're on school property, guy. You know that, don't you?" Of course I know that, I think to myself. Pretty obvious.
"Oh, really?" I say. "I wasn't sure, exactly. I just saw a place to put up my tent."
"Well...school's about to start."
"Oh. Sorry. I'll try and get out of here as quick as I can."
He walks off, and I get up, and I'm feeling pretty sick. My sore throat has turned into a swollen throat, and my head hurts, and I'm a bit woozy. It doesn't help that the sun isn't up yet and there's frost all over my stuff, and it's freezing cold as I pack up.
I make a few miles to the town of McLemoresville and stumble inside a gas station and sit for a few hours watching the morning news and 'The View,' then start to feel a little better and start walking again. I move slow, for the next eight miles or so. Don't do more than a mile or two before having to sit down and take a rest, but I get to Huntingdon, eventually.
Curled up, trying to get warm in the sun next to the Wal-Mart, a cop shows up and says lots of people think I'm drunk or 'having a spell' and he makes me get up and leave.
I walk to the police station to see if there's a park or something where I can set up my tent for the night. The two ladies there aren't sure what to do with me, and finally decide to drive me out to a park that's three or four miles out of town, where they seem to think I'll be out of the way. It's only five oclock, and I'd much rather sit in a warm McDonalds for a few hours than go straight to the park, but I don't have much choice.
One of the ladies puts me in a cop car and takes me out beyond town. The park sits right across from the Civic Center, but I don't know why either one is so far away from the rest of town.
She lets me out and I sit down, feeling sorry for myself, under a picnic shelter. Before long I come under assault from a squirrel, high in the pecan tree that leans over the pavillion. He takes a bite out of a pecan, then drops it and it falls for thirty feet before crashing on the metal roof above my head, and it drives me crazy.
I go out and look up and curse at the squirrel but he doesn't seem to be afraid of the vile death I plan for him, because he keeps going at it, high in the tree.
About this time I see that across the street people are parking outside the Civic Center and a lot of them are going inside. I figure that maybe there's a play going on, or something, and I decide to investigate because it sounds warm.
Turns out they're just training election officials, and I sit on a balcony overlooking the meeting, and try to sleep, but my head is really hurting.
After a couple of hours, as they're all getting ready to go, I've decided that I'm not going back out into the cold, tonight, if I can help it. I form a little plan in my aching head.
When the meeting officially comes to a close, I pick up my things and head for the bathroom, then sit in a stall, with my pack on, and hold my feet up. After maybe twenty minutes, everybody seems to have left but the janitor, who whistles, as janitors like to, as he sweeps the floors. Eventually he makes his way to the bathroom.
I hold my breath for a good minute while he runs water in the sink and walks back and forth in front of my stall. I'm sure that he's going to try and open the door, at some point, and find me. But he doesn't. Eventually he just turns out the lights and fairly quickly I can't hear his whistling anymore.
I sit in pitch black for another half an hour, to make sure, and then slowly stand up, stiff, and stumble in the dark out of the stall. I carefully take off my pack, still in the bathroom, search with my fingers for my headlamp, then turn it on so that I can see. Feeling like a bank robber, I open the door to the bathroom cautiously, then creep out and look around the building. There's a light on at the far end of the main room, and I freeze and put a hand on my headlamp, but nothing moves. After a while I decide it's permanently on, so I walk over to a spot near the kitchen, and unstrap my pad, and unroll my sleeping bag on the floor.
I sleep well.
In the morning, around seven forty five, somebody opens the back door, while I'm still sleeping twenty feet away, in plain sight.
An older man starts scooping out ice from the freezer, and only turns on one light, that doesn't quite reach me, and I cross my fingers. He gets a bag of ice, then walks back out the door and I practically sing.
But he comes back. And this time he quickly turns on a bunch of lights. He starts to walk toward the other end of the main room and looks right at me. And keeps walking. He doesn't say anything.
I'm really confused. He had to have seen me and yet he didn't so much as blink. Maybe he's blind, I tell myself, holding my breath, but it's a long shot.
After five minutes of walking around, the man comes back and starts messing with the ice again. By this point I'm up, stuffing my sleeping bag and packing my things. He finally acknowledges me by nodding my way, as if we're friends and I sleep here all the time. Then, a few moments later, almost as an afterthought, he says "Hey. What are you doing here, anyway?" He says it without the slightest touch of concern. I gulp. "Long story."
I quickly get to my feet, walk slowly toward him and give my explanation. A long tirade about not being homeless, no, and not being destitute, no, and being sick, yes, and not wanting to sleep in the cold, and such.
He shrugs it all off. "Mike know you're here?" I shake my head. "How'd you get in?"
"There were people here when I came in."
"The flea market?"
"Not sure what it was."
"Huh." He strokes his chin, thinking. "You need a ride somewhere?"
I say that McDonalds would be nice.
He puts me in his truck, with another couple bags of ice, and takes me back into town.

Turns out the guy is a friend of the manager, but has no role with the Civic Center, himself, except that when he's going fishing he stops by to get ice. He tells me that he probably won't even mention me sleeping in the Center to Mike - his friend the manager - and explains.
"Doesn't seem like a big deal. You were cold. Came inside. No harm done. The world would be a lot better if people were just nice to each other. So just remember that I helped you out a little, and the next time somebody's down, why you just give them a hand, yourself.'
I sit in McDonalds, with a cup of coffee, and ponder the ways of the world.

I'm feeling a lot better now. I spent the rest of yesterday primarily at the Huntingdon library, and then walked a few miles before putting up my tent in a field.
Today I woke up feeling almost normal, so I'm hoping that I just caught a touch of something, and that I'm already on the back end of it. Today I've walked from Rosser to Camden, and might make a few more miles by evening, but I'm not sure.

Kennett Again

2008-10-24T14:37:00.000-07:00

I've been here a full week, now, though not quite all the way straight through. My grandparents have been doing everything short of stuffing food down my throat, and I've heard enough stories, sitting on the couch, to last me for a long time. Saturday my grandpa took me to a cotton gin, and both Sunday and Wednesday I accompanied them to church. Though I'm staying fairly occupied, I'm ready to head out fully.
Also have read several books since I've been here, including 'The Long Walk' and 'Endurance.' They're both incredible stories of people surviving against horrific odds, and continue to remind me that nothing I'm facing on the road is much to bear, in the long run.
Yesterday I got up early and ate a little breakfast, before packing up a small bag and heading out toward Hayti. It wasn't raining hard when I left - a little before eight - but picked up fairly quickly, and I spent the next five hours without much of a break in the rain, nor in my stride. In the roughly eighteen miles from the house to a gas station in Hayti I didn't so much stop to take a drink, and jogged quite a bit. This can be attributed in part to the fact that I left the main pack in Kennett.
I'm getting close to the Mississippi, now, and the only places to cross around here are interstate bridges, which are illegal to walk on, so my grandpa planned to take me across, today. My grandparents didn't want me staying in either Hayti or Caruthersville, as they're in a rough state after a big tornado not too long ago, and so I had planned to walk into Caruthersville yesterday, and then my grandpa would pick me up and take me back to Kennett for the night, and then take me across the river, today. But after my eighteen mile stretch jogging in the cold rain, when I got up to go after sitting in a gas station for an hour, my hip flexer was paining me badly, and I didn't limp more than two blocks before having to pull over and call grandpa, early.
When I got home I took the best shower of my life, having been soaked and frozen.
I'm feeling pretty good, today, but definitely don't want to push it, and my grandpa has come down sick, now, as well, so I'm staying at least an extra day in Kennett. I'm planning to leave tomorrow, but I don't know, for sure.

These native serfs all stuck down
in the Kansas clay.
Their rusted heads turned to the
sky to hear my quandry, there.

And behind, coming of the fog,
the iron soldiers marching in their
somber rows.

And the wind - the misting wind -
the unjust
tax collector of the air.

Who can think to claim it -
this battle under birthing fog?
Who seeks to call, from servitude, my prose?

Kennett

2008-10-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

I didn't leave Mountain Grove until 6 in the evening. I treated myself to a Chinese buffet and sat for several hours making the most of it. And reading another Grisham book, too, which is now covered in Chinese doughnut sticky fingerprints. After my initial qualms about leaving books behind after finishing them, lately I've actually taken some pride in finding interesting spots to sneak them out of my backpack. If someone were following me they could find an interesting trail of used paperbacks, smugly tucked in with laundromat romance novels and hidden away with old bibles in Baptist churches. Ah, the spread of literature.
I made it most of the way to Cabool before it started getting too dark and cold, and then staked up my tent under some limestone shelves and crawled in for the night.
In the morning I made it into Cabool and did a little load of laundry before getting back on the highway. The weather stayed cool and dry through the day, and I made time through Willow Springs and put in some long hours to get to Mountain View for the night.
Sunday I woke up behind a Baptist church and spent half an hour cleaning up and shaving before early service at 8:30. Afterwards I met Larry Price, a young adult bible study teacher, and he led me upstairs to his classroom.
When the session ended, I found an old piano to play during late service, and then met up with Larry again afterward. The youth group put on a potato bar after the service let out, and I got a good meal in before Larry waved me off.
Not leaving until around 1, I didn't get a long way on the day, and stopped for the night at the little town of Birch Tree. It rained through the night but I stayed dry under an awning in front of the life insurance office.
Monday I started out early and made it through Winona before it started to rain, again. Through most of the afternoon the showers persisted, and I ate a cold supper under my poncho. I got close to Van Buren before turning in for the night at a little roadside park just west of town. I stayed dry, if not entirely warm, through the night.
Tuesday the rain came early. I stocked up in Van Buren, and wanted to sit around for a while but didn't let myself. The oak forests were cold and dark through the morning, the hills wet and dreary, but by early afternoon the clouds blew away.
Missouri, as far as I've seen, doesn't have milemarkers like the rest of the states I've come through, so it's harder to judge the distances I'm making. My official highway maps haven't been very accurate in the past, so I'm reluctant to go by them, and though I have a pedometer, my stride length doesn't want to stay the same for very long, so it, too, isn't perfect. But I've definitely been putting in some long days.
I ended up in Elsinore, for the night, and saw plenty of stars with the clouds blown away.
Wednesday I worked my way through good weather, and made it into Poplar Bluff by 5. I ate spaghetti at the smoker's retreat outside the Kroger store, and then tried to find a movie theater. Before I did, though, a man in a pickup truck pulled over to see if I wanted a ride, and said he knew where the theater was, and that it was a long ways out of town. I hopped in the back of his truck and he drove me a couple of miles down the road before letting me out at the theater.
"Young man," he called as I got out, "I don't know what your standing with the Master is, but you're going to be in my prayers. Have you had supper?" I say that I have. "Want some cookies, at least?" He fills me up with some, before I head inside and catch the last showing.
Even when I was back home I used to go to the movies by myself. Not always, sometimes with a date or a couple of friends, but more often than not. It's peaceful. And it's a good way to clear my thoughts. I get bogged down by the idea of the walk, at times. I get down when I think about all the miles I still have to make before Florida, before the ocean, and two hours with a different plot can make all the difference.
After the movie I walked back up the highway for a ways, before stumbling on another Baptist church, and I rolled out my sleeping bag in a picnic shelter, out back. I played some wispy harmonica before my eyes got too heavy.
The rain came back during the night. Came back hard and thick, and pounded the thin, metal roof of the shelter. The wind picked up, after a while, and started blowing sheets of rain into the shelter and rivulets started creeping toward me, so I picked up and ended up sleeping on top of a picnic table, with my things, while the water filled up the concrete blocks below.
In the morning the clouds hung around for a while but the wind and rain were all but gone. I got a cup of coffee in a McDonald's, then started on my way, on highway 53, out of town.
What the map said was 26 miles later, I found the town of Campbell, and made my way to the City park for the night. No wind or rain, but it was getting pretty cold by the time I turned in.
Yesterday I walked from Campbell down through Holcomb, and then into Kennett around 5. My grandpa found me at a stoplight, and gave me a ride the rest of the way into town, to my grandparents' house.
I got a shower in, just after arriving, and then ate supper before making a few calls to let people know that I'd made it this far.
Today, after dinner (southern dinner, noon) grandpa took me out to a field on the edge of town and showed me how to pick cotton. The sides of the road are lined with white, blowing fields, here.
I'm looking forward to the next few days. I've made another little notch in my belt, and I'm happy to be with family, again. From the looks of things, I'm definitely not going to go hungry this week.

Mountain Grove

2008-10-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

I made it the rest of the way down to Bolivar for the night, after posting in Humansville. I heated soup, finished another John Grisham novel, and slept in a sheltered area behind the Southern Hills Baptist Church. In the morning, after packing up, I tried to sneak out as the parking lot filled up, but was spotted and motioned over to the church.
"You want some coffee?" they asked, and I didn't refuse. They brought me inside and halfway through my cup of coffee asked me to stay for service, and I agreed again. After taking a quick shave in the bathroom, I was walked upstairs to a bible study group and sat for an hour with them before heading back down for the actual service.
Pastor Gary Urich met me in the hall.
"Are you the traveler?" I nodded.
"Glad to have you here, this morning. Tell me about the group you're walking with." I do, and he offers that I can stand up and say something if I want to, and I accept.
I sit in the second row and he calls me up to the pulpit at the start of the service to say a little bit about Soles 4 Souls and about the walk.
When the service is over Pastor Urich finds me again.
"I think I'd like to take you out to dinner," he says. After seeing everybody off, he and his wife, Connie, take me out to eat at a Mexican restaurant down the street. As we eat, they invite me to stay the day in town, and tell me they'd be glad to put me up for the night at their house. I agree to take the day off, and after lunch Connie drives me to the library at the local university, and after a couple of hours I walk back to the church, and play the piano for a few hours before the evening service.
We watch a movie for most of the evening, 'Rediscovering God in America.' Once everyone shuffles out and they lock up, Gary and Connie drive over to the Dairy Queen and treat me to ice cream before taking me back to their house.
In the morning, a shower and a night in a bed in me, I'm fed again, and Gary drives me back down to the edge of town, on the highway, where I start walking.
I decided to head around Springfield, and so veered off on highway 32 for the day, and walked to the town of Buffalo. The weather turned rainy, again, and I rolled out the sleeping bag in a baseball dugout, and stayed dry.
In the morning I headed south on highway 65. The clouds came and went, and it drizzled most of the day, but didn't pour until the evening, just after I reached the town of Strafford. I sat for several hours in a gas station and listened to a fuzzy presidential debate on my mp3 player's timid radio.
I set up camp for the night under an old gas station's roof, and listened to it rain as I drifted off.
Wednesday I continued south on highway 125, met highway 60 running east and followed it all the way into the town of Seymour. I slept in the porch way of a thrift store that isn't open on Thursdays.
Yesterday I walked through the towns of Mansfield, Macomb, and Norwood, and didn't stop until just short of Mountain Grove, where I put up my tent in a little field. The weather has been nicer for the last two days, and it's sunny now.

Humansville

2008-10-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

I left Lee's Summit Tuesday morning, with cool, clear skies, lots of rest, and a backpack weighed down with Barbara's cookies.
By late evening I made it to Harrisonville, following Highway 291, and spent an hour losing at solitaire in the local Wendy's before finding a church to sleep behind. In the morning I started early, having been politely woken up by one of the church's pastors who had some ladies coming in to pray, and I headed back to the Wendy's to get a little breakfast, then started south out of town and shortly met up with Highway 7, heading east.
Through the day I made a lot of stops, but still managed to make decent time. I ate lunch in Garden City, dinner in Creighton, and stopped for the night just before ten oclock in the little town of Urich. The nights are definitely cooling off, now, and for the first time in months I put on under armor before crawling into my tent, set up in a little park.
Thursday I woke up early, again, and shook dew off of the tent before packing up. I walked twelve miles without taking a break, and made it into Clinton around two in the afternoon. After sitting around at the library for a few hours and heating up soup outside, I started out of town around five in the evening.
The eight miles to Deepwater had me sad. I crossed the two upper arms of Truman Lake with the tired sun glinting off the water and herons sitting quietly on the shores. There are hundreds of dead trees, standing cold and naked in the water, and I watched them almost pityingly. How must it feel to watch the water rise up and circle around you, and not be able to flee, but be tied to the earth? To lose your leaves and your limbs and die slowly, in the water? Sad and probably useless thoughts.
I reached the town called Deepwater just as the last light was sucked away. Spotted a picnic shelter from the road and rolled out on the concrete. Listened to some African drummers on NPR and slowly drifted off to sleep.
Friday I woke up late. The sun had already burned off the early chill and I walked quickly through the low hills and the chickering woods. In Lowry City I ate donuts and drank apple juice, and then walked to Osceola before four oclock. After another pot of soup I started out again and made it all the way to Collins by nine. Called my parents before finding a place to sleep.
It rained, off and on through the night and morning. I woke up wet and cold and was glad when the sun burned through the clouds and a low fog came up in the woods. I'm in Humansville, now, and it's sunny, and I'm hoping to be in Bolivar by evening.
My feet are doing well, for the most part. My arches pretty much constantly ache and I feel stone bruised off and on, but I'm managing to stay barefoot somewhere around seventy percent of the time.

Lee's Summit

2008-09-29T16:42:00.000-07:00

It didn't take long to get from Baldwin City to Lee's Summit. I didn't leave very early Monday, not until around one, but once I started walking I made good time. Just a few minutes after it got dark enough to turn on my headlamp I was accosted by two men as I walked by their driveway.

"Whatcha doing?" says one, who wears torn jeans and a construction worker's orange vest that glints in the blue beam from my forehead.

"Just walking."

"Never seen anybody through here, before. You lost?"

"Don't think so. I'm headed toward Olathe, right?"

"Yup." The two men look at each other. Each has a beer in his hand. They shrug and chuckle giddily. "Well, pleasant walking to you." I nod and start off, but before I'm fifty feet up the road they call me back.

"Want a beer?"

"Sure."

I don't actually want a beer, no. I've never seen any appeal. (Nor am I of legal age, of course) But I do get lonely quite a bit, on the road, and I've pretty much decided to take whatever chances at conversation seemingly friendly people want to offer. So I head back.

They lead me out back of the house, where their wives are sitting at a picnic table, chatting loudly. Introductions are made and they fish out a Dr. Pepper from somewhere, and for an hour we sit and talk.

When I leave the house it's going on ten, and I only make it another couple of miles before pulling over, Olathe's bright lights just up the road, across the ditch and under a couple of big trees.

In the morning I start fairly early, get into Olathe and find some donuts and apple juice at a 7-11, and weave my way through the various, southern suburbs of Kansas City, toward Lee's Summit. Somewhere along the way I cross into Missouri, and after 26 days leave Kansas behind.

I was pleasantly surprised by the Sunflower State. The endless flatlands did, indeed, end. The feed lots came and went and I stayed a lot more comfortable than the cows. Eastern Colorado had more mosquitos, and more heat - by the time I got to Kansas it had cooled off. And I did, sure enough, see quite a few fields full of sunflowers. All in all, not as bad a state to walk across as I once thought it could be.

My uncle Lynn (father's side) and his wife Barbara live in the far south-east suburb called Lee's Summit. I don't remember the last time I was at their house - probably at a Thanksgiving, sometime. I find the house, now, with the help of a local. Just a few blocks away something goes wrong with my backpack and everything swings off to one side. I unstrap and as I'm trying to figure out what's wrong a little, red pickup pulls over and a window rolls down.

"Where you headed?"

Just up the street, I tell him, and he offers a ride. I figure that it's a good idea, and throw the backpack in his truck. Three or four streets later we turn onto fourteenth, and I recognize the house at the end of the row. Jefff with three f's is his name, and he drops me off and waits to make sure it's the right house. I ring the doorbell and when Barbara appears and welcomes me inside, Jefff hops out of his truck and wants to know my name, before driving away.

I've been here almost a week, now, and it's wonderful. I've taken more showers and eaten more home-cooked meals in the last several days than I have in a month. It's been good, too, to catch up with relatives I haven't seen in a long time. I've read four books, since I've been here - all Grisham novels - and each morning I get to read the newspaper and drink coffee. It's amazing, to me, how satisfying such little things have become.

But I'm leaving in the morning, heading back out on the road. If I didn't have any experience in leaving things behind I'd be scared to death.

Baldwin City

2008-09-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

I left Marion around noon, and walked through a hot day. Made it twenty five miles into Strong City, for the night.
The scenery is really changing, now. Out of the flat plains, the feed lots and cornfields, have risen rolling hills and copses of trees. There is an abundance of little streams and stillwater pools along the road, and the hills are green.
From Strong City I walked north, up through the Tallgrass Prarie National Preserve. Another hot day, but plenty of places to sit and rest in the shade. Eighteen miles brought me into Council Grove, where I quickly found the library, and then, after leaving, met Steve Hanson.
A man pulled up to the sidewalk and hollered at me from his truck, wanting to know where I was headed and what I was doing, and we talked for a while on the sidewalk, outside the barber shop. After a few minutes he introduced me to the barber, a younger man named Derrick, and shortly took us across the street to a little Mexican restaurant.
After eating we went back across to the barber shop, and I played a song on Derrick's piano, there, before some students arrived to take lessons.
Steve invited me to stay the night at his house, as we left the barber shop.
'You'd be more than welcome. I just need to run home and let my wife know that you're coming. I'll meet you back here in an hour or so.'
I sat outside the barber shop and listened to Derrick give a mandolin, and then a fiddle lesson, the music coming out the open door and into the street.
When the lessons were nearly finished, Steve came back up the street, and when Derrick closed the shop the three of us walked to Steve's house. His wife, Leah, a fifth grade teacher, welcomed me and the four of us watched 'America's Got Talent' before switching to CNN.
I stayed the night on the couch, and woke up early in the morning, but didn't leave town for a long time. After saying goodbye to Steve and Leah I ate breakfast in a little bakery downtown, then walked back up the street to the library and spent a few hours looking at an American Sign Language dictionary and reading Hilary Clinton's 'It Takes a Village.'
I didn't leave Council Grove until five o'clock, and only made it seven or eight miles before putting up my tent in the ditch.
The next day I started early. Walked through the little towns of Allen and Admire and ate a spaghetti soup lunch by a little creek. It took me until nine thirty in the evening to reach the town of Osage, and I slept beneath a timber town in the city park, a thirty mile day behind me.
Saturday I walked through Burlingame, and Scranton, and stayed near the road a little before Overbrook, and then yesterday I walked all the way into Baldwin City.

My spirits are good, on the whole. I feel motivated, feel like I'm making ground, and my feet aren't bothering me too much. But I've been getting a little bogged down, lately, by something that I can't quite place. It's kind of a spinning feeling, like a hamster on his hamster wheel, or something close. I feel like every day is becoming too similar to the last, like every town is too similar to the one before. The grocery stores and the 7-11s have somehow lost their glamour.
I think that this is in part because there are more towns, now, than there were before, and it's almost too easy to get from one to the other. The fifty mile stretches of nothingness are over, the careful rationing of water and jelly sandwiches is over, and the incredible, sometimes painful, sense of distance, seems over. It's not a constant feeling, by any means, nothing that's got me down, on the whole. Just something that's starting to creep in around the edges.

Marion

2008-09-16T08:40:00.001-07:00

The first night out from Great Bend I only walked ten miles, into the little town of Ellinwood, and slept next to a Methodist church. In the morning I woke up to an odd scraping sound, and pulled my head out from the sleeping bag in time to see a lady walking to a car, nearby. 'Nothing scary, it's just breakfast,' she called, and drove away. A tinfoiled plate sat nearby, with magic marker writing on the top. 'Enjoy breakfast. Have a great day. God bless. -Ellinwood Lady'. Inside I found half a loaf of zucchini bread - a favorite.
I walked in sun throughout the day, past cornfields and wind farms. By five in the evening I reached the town of Lyons, and stocked up on Ramen at the Dollar General before finding a library.
Around nine, the sky started misting, and I set up for the night in an alcove outside the local museum. Just having crawled in, the police stopped in front and found me with their flashlights. 'Uh-oh. Can't sleep here, man. This place has a really funky alarm system, and somebody across the street already called us, saying you were up here. Gonna have to move down to the park.' They're actually really nice guys, and seem to regret making me leave, but insist that the park has a good spot to stay dry, if it rains.
So I pack up, head down the street in the drizzle, and set up again under a picnic shelter.
It starts raining heavily soon after I crawl inside the sleeping bag, and continues throughout the night. The concrete floor of the shelter started to fill up pretty early on, and I moved my things up onto the tables, and moved my pad to a different spot, but the water crept there, too, while I was asleep, and I woke up fairly wet. I moved a third time, essentially back to where I started, and managed to get some sleep.
Still raining heavily, in the morning, I found a laundromat and stuck the sleeping bag in a dryer for half an hour, then sat and watched the weather channel on the twelve inch t.v. above the pop machine. A spot that I didn't vacate for a good majority of the day. When I did leave, I threw the poncho over my pack, and made it back to the library, where I read a book on card tricks and another about Harry Houdini.
By evening the rain had let up, but I wasn't going anywhere, with the weather channel's forecast in my head. I slept under the picnic shelter, again.
In the morning the skies were practically clear, though the forecast had called for solid rain. Having eaten breakfast, I headed out.
I didn't see so much as a cloud for the majority of the day. The twenty nine mile stretch between Lyons and McPherson was warm and dry, and I made good time. In town I found a Wendy's, and played solitaire and practiced my newly acquired card tricks until it got dark, and then tried to find a place to sleep. The police (sounding familiar) found me fairly quickly, walking down the sidewalk.
'Where you headed, guy?'
'Looking for a place to stay the night. Where would you suggest?'
'What did you have in mind?'
'Just someplace to put up a little tent, or something.'
'We could write you a park permit, if you want.'
So they give me permission, in written form, no less, to camp in a nearby park. I set up my tent, play a few rounds of frisbee golf, and then turn in for the night.
I didn't leave McPherson very early in the morning. I wanted to use a library, but being Sunday the hours were bad (2:00 - 5:00) so I waited around all morning. The weather had also turned a little sour, with a strong, cold wind blowing down from the north, and I didn't know if rain was headed my way. But by the time I'd used the library, the sun was back out and the wind had died down, and I made my way out of town.
I stopped for the night just before the town of Hillsboro and camped by the road, then walked a shorter day into Marion, yesterday.
Last night, in another picnic shelter, the sprinklers found me again. Around midnight I woke up to the terrible sound, and quickly found myself drenched. The sprinklers aren't positioned perfectly, so even in the middle of the shelter the spray hit me, and my things, fully. I dragged everything to a far corner that was staying dry, and tried to get back to sleep, but failed. Roughly an hour later, the first section turned off, another turned on, and I got the reverse spray. Moved again. Cursed again.
But as Michael and I joked on the phone, I might be able to make good of my experiences. I could - say - go into the sprinkler business, with my adept ears. For instance: 'That sprinkler sounds a little weak off of the 180 turn, there, ma'am. Best let me take a look at it.' Or: 'Sounds like your intake valve is a little clogged, ma'am. Best let me clean it out for you.'
You never know.

Great Bend

2008-09-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

I left Garden City Tuesday morning. Bill drove me out to the edge of town and I started walking. I made good time, though I didn't start early, and walked through the evening and into the early morning before getting to the town of Cimarron and camping in a park by the river.
Wednesday I stayed around town for the first half of the day, and then made it to the outskirts of Dodge and slept behind a hotel.
The weather had started turning as early as Monday, but not until Thursday did it produce anything. I stayed all day in Dodge - mostly at the library and wandering through the mall - and slept behind a church, where the rain found me. I had a wet night, but dried off in the laundromat the next day, and waited around some more for the weather to clear up. It didn't, and I stayed in Dodge all day, then finally decided to walk around nine in the evening. I made five miles before putting up my tent near the ditch, and stayed drier than the previous night, when the rain came, again.
Saturday I started walking early in the day. Made it to the little town of Spearville in good time and got some groceries, then walked another twelve miles on the day to get into Offerle, and slept in a picnic shelter. Another night of rain, and some hail thrown in, but I stayed dry.
Sunday I walked to Kinsley in the morning, and stayed practically all day. I visited the local museum and played solitaire for three hours at the gas station. In the late evening I started walking, again, northwest on Highway 56 - the first time I've left 50 since home.
I pushed on through wind and rain until two in the morning, and took shelter in the town of Garfield, outside the co-op building, a mile short of 2000, on the whole.
Yesterday I crossed the 2000 line, and walked to Larned, in the morning, and then holed up through the day. I found a piano at the community building and played for a couple of hours, then shot a basketball in the gym. In the evening I found a laundromat, and washed a load of clothes before making dinner. As I finished eating, still in the laundromat, a policeman came inside and said that some lady had driven up outside and seen me and freaked out, and that he was seeing what I was doing.
"Are you doing laundry, sir?" I said that I did some earlier, but that I was done.
"Well, sir, technically, when you've done your business here and then stay around, it's considered loitering." He continues to tell me that I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing, and then decides it's best for me to get a ride to Great Bend for the night.
"I can't really picture any place you could stay, here in town," he says. "I'll call the county and they'll get you a ride up into Great Bend." He seems pretty set on the idea. I don't know what to say, because he doesn't seem to understand when I tell him that I can find a place to stay in town, and he still seems to be thinking about charging me with loitering. Eventually he puts me in the cop car and drives me out to the edge of town and drops me by the road and promises that the 'S.O.' will be coming in ten or fifteen minutes.
I sit for an hour, in the cold, and no one shows up, and so I start walking. In the three hours it takes me to get to the next town I see three sherrif's vehicles (or the same one three times) but none of them stop, and so I keep going until Pawnee Rock, where I find a picnic shelter to spread out under for the night.
This morning I made it the last thirteen miles from Pawnee into Great Bend. The weather is finally clearing up, and I walked in sunshine.

Garden City

2008-09-01T09:40:00.000-07:00

I'm staying, now, in Garden City. My parents emailed me, a few days ago, with a possible contact here - Danna and Bill Jones - and gave me their number to call, and I did. When I got to the edge of town, yesterday, Danna came and picked me up and took me back to their house. I showered and cleaned up, and after a while we went out to eat at a local Mexican place. Danna works at the animal shelter, here in Garden City, and one of her fellow workers, Tony, and his girlfriend Heather met us for dinner.
Afterwards, we all came back to the house and Bill showed us his classic cars and we ate peach pie, and put Build a Bear sweaters on their chihuahuas.

There seems to be a balance, out here on the road. As if someone has perched me up on a weighted scale, and watches to see that I don't spend too long swinging one way or the other. Not that they keep me steady, but that when the balance takes a shift they swing me about. A mediocre day is mediocre all the way through, whereas a good morning might have a bad night, or a great night might be the result of a terrible morning. Whatever the weight, its opposite is applied to bring me back to level.
I crossed into Kansas on Thursday. Ate dinner in the little town of Coolidge and walked until ten, then pulled over in the ditch. In the morning I made it to Syracuse. Found a gas station and had breakfast, then watched a movie at the Hamilton County Library. I didn't leave town until five thirty in the afternoon, when the heat seemed to be dropping away. Within an hour, just a few miles out, clouds started rolling in behind me, and lightning started to flare in the west. Another hour and the rain was blowing in, and the thunder was all around. I pulled off in the ditch, when the lightning seemed too close, and pulled my poncho over everything, and spent the next few hours with rain pounding through and lightning touching my ears. And I got lonely. Got really lonely. Sitting in a ditch, wet and cold in a thunderstorm, two hundred and some odd miles from home. Lonely lonely lonely.
When the storm finally let up I shivered away the cold and started walking. Made another ten or twelve miles in the dark, with the headlights of passing cars gleaming, and the white line running away, forever to the east.
In the morning I walked to Lakin. The sun came out and turned all of the puddles into heat, and it seemed absurd to think of the cold, just the night before. When I got to town I found a gas station and drank through 44 ounces of Lemonade/Dr. Pepper mix and ate two blueberry muffins and a man came over to talk, as I sat. Latino, fairly thin, a short goatee and a blue baseball cap.
"Where you headed?" he says, with such a strong accent that I barely made out the words.
"Florida."
"Florida?" He squints. "Why you wanna go down there, man?"
"Just a destination," I say. "Just want to get to the ocean."
He nods. "You need a place to stay, man?"
I don't, exactly, being that it's midday, but I say 'sure' and pack up my things.
We climb into a little, green pickup truck and he pulls out slowly.
"Es not mine," he says, of the vehicle. "Mine is broken, now." He forgets to push in the clutch when he stops to shift out of reverse and the engine dies. He grins and turns it back on. "I don't drive a stick," he says, "but I try to learn."
We go shakily down the street and pull up in front of his house. I unload my pack, inside, and then we get back in the truck to take it back to his brother. "What is your name, man?" he asks, and I tell him. "I am Carlos," he says. "Do you drink the beer?" he asks, and I shake my head. "No? That's too bad, amigo. Where we are going there will be lots of beer." He says it dreamily.
We pull into a trailer park and he stops the truck. A man and a woman are sitting in lawn chairs, nearby, with a twenty four pack open. Carlos grabs one as we walk up and introduces me.
"I find this guy at the gas station," he says. "He is a good guy but he does not drink the beer." He turns to me. "This is Rury," he says, pointing at the man, "and this is my sister in law, Sonia."
After a while we go inside the trailer. There's a seventy two inch t.v. along one wall, and a speaker system that looks like it's from the Pepsi Center. Sonia puts in a cd and some kind of Spanish music blasts out. We start dancing around the coffee table. The first few songs don't really seem to have any steps, and I just try to mimic what they do. We spin in circles and they pretend to grope each other. Carlos and Rury somehow start wrestling on the floor. But as another song comes on, Sonia says "Oooh. Salsa," and motions to me to follow her steps. "One two three," she says. "One two three. One two three. And step. And step. One two three, step. One two three, step." She shakes her head at my attempt, grabs my hips, and tries to correct me. I get it down at a slow pace, but lose it again when she says "Faster, go faster" and I end up kicking Carlos in the shin and falling on the floor. It's a great time.
After a while we switch trailers. I get confused about whose is whose, but I think we go to his brother's. It's empty, compared to the first one. Just a couch and a t.v. and a goldfish bowl and a refrigerator.
"So you are walking," Rury says to me, as we sit on the couch. I nod. "What is your point?"
I tell him that I just wanted to get out and do something, that I just want to see the country, and he doesn't seem to understand. "But what is your point?" he says, again. "Do you have a job? Do you work? What is your point?" We go around the issue for a while, without making any head way. After a while he tells about himself.
"I grew up in Chihuahua," he says. "I took a train into the U.S.A. Risked my life to get here. For a while I tried to get up in the world," he says. "Cocaine and dope. I sold them all over. But I was always looking over my shoulders. Now," he says "I don't try to get up. I just try to stay the same. Just try to put a meal on the table. Not go up or down but stay the same. Just working to stay the same. That is the American dream, no? Just working and working to stay the same? The American dream. Our dream. Nuestro sueno. Trabajando y trabajando. Working and working. And I am living the American dream," he says. "Because I can put food on the table for my family."
We sit and he talks and I listen. Sometimes he goes off on tangents entirely in Spanish and I have no idea what he's saying. But I listen, anyway.
"We are all brothers," he says. "You and I and all of us. We are all the same. I don't care if you are black or white or brown or anything. We are all the same. Eat and drink and living. All of us just working to stay the same."
After a long time Rury gets up to leave, and Sonia goes, too, and Carlos and I walk back to his house.
"I don't know your thing, man. I don't know what you did, but you can always say sorry. Just say, 'Mom and Dad, I am sorry' and they will forgive you. My mother," he says, "my mother never told me she loved me, in her whole life, until she was dying. She say, 'Carlos, I love you,' and then she died in my arms. Your parents love you, amigo."
I try to tell him that I'm not out here because I ran away, or because I did anything wrong. But I can't get through. We come from very different places.
"I can get you a job," he says. "Sixteen dollars an hour. That is where I am working," he says, "and they will hire you. You have i.d. and social security? They will hire you and pay you sixteen dollars an hour. You can stay here with me until you get some money for an apartment. You can stay on the couch and we will go to work together. You can start making some money and then if you want, you can rent a room from me. You are wasting your life with your pack," he says, motioning at it, leaning up against the couch. "Do not live on the streets, anymore, amigo. Stay here with me and make some money. And then you can get a wife and make a family and you can take care of them."
When I leave Lakin it's late in the afternoon. 'I have to go,' I told Carlos, and he said 'yes' but he had sad eyes as I pulled on my pack.
'We are all the same,' Rury told me. But we are so different.
A long while ago - I don't remember where, exactly - someone asked me if I was walking for career or walking for vacation, and I didn't know what to say. But now I feel that this is, on the whole, just a trip. Just a vacation. Because no matter how long I'm away, or how many storms I sit out in ditches, or how lonely I feel, I'm out here by my own choice.
So many people that I meet have worked their entire lives, have risked their lives, even, to get to where they are. To get to the point where they can sit in their trailers and drink 'the beer' and say that they are living the American dream. Working and working. Trabajando y trabajando.
Me? I'm just walking.

Lamar

2008-08-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

The first night beyond Pueblo I only made a few miles. Rolled out in front of an elementary school, in the little town of Gates. I stayed on pavement, right next to the building, so as to avoid sprinklers, but was still woken up by the sound of them. I think I've kind of developed an instinctive phobia to the sound of a sprinkler now. I found that I couldn't sleep, couldn't even get close to sleeping, with the 'che che che che, brrrr e che che che' in the background. My eyes wouldn't stay shut.
It stayed cloudy for a few hours, as I walked, but when the sun finally burned through the temperature climbed quickly. I've enjoyed a good break from the most extreme heat, for a while, but it's coming back.
I walked slightly over twenty miles, on the day, and pulled over just short of Fowler. In the morning I made it into town, and spent a few hours at the local museum and at the library. Later in the afternoon, when the heat wasn't as bad, I walked to Manzanola, and found another elementary school to lay out my sleeping bag.
The next day I walked through Rocky Ford, stopped at a local fruit stand and ate through two entire cantaloupes before walking again.
In the evening I set up nine holes of frisbee golf at Swink High School, and stayed the night under the football stadium bleachers.
I didn't walk much, the next day. Made it down into La Junta and spent quite a while reading in the cool of the library. That night I walked eight miles, and pulled over around midnight by the side of the road.
I've been running into mosquitoes for a while, now. They started coming out as far ago as Idaho, but it seemed that no matter how thick they were, they went away once the stars came out and it got cooler. Now, unfortunately, it's too warm for them to come out until later at night, and they stick around forever. The night beyond La Junta proved to be the worst so far. I made it to sleep fine, but woke up some time later scratching furiously at my face. By the time I realized what was happening, my cheeks and eyebrows were already covered in lumps. I sprayed buy repellant on my hands and rubbed it over my face, and tried to sleep. But the mosquitoes didn't seem to care about the repellant. They came thickly, and I stayed awake most of the night, trying to keep them at bay. Swatting three or four at a time on an arm or a couple on my forehead. I'll have to find some netting.
The next day I walked through Las Animas. Sat out some of the heat at the Loaf and Jug, and found the library closed. In the evening I made ten miles beyond town, with a storm on my heels. Twenty minutes after setting up my tent off to the side of the road and climbing inside, the rain started. And for two hours it kept coming, harder and harder. The wind shoved the sides of the tent over and the rain ran underneath and started soaking up from below. I spent the second night in a row mostly awake.
In the morning the sun was shining. Things dried off quickly, and I found good spirits to walk with. Another twenty miles on the day, and I stopped a little before Lamar, for the night. Slept like a baby, as they say. I was probably too tired to notice bugs or lightning, had they come.
Now I'm in Lamar, and I'll probably stay here most of the day, and make some miles in the evening, when it cools down.

On the Road Again

2008-08-18T14:57:00.001-07:00

Tuesday I left Coaldale around noon. Up the driveway and turned left.
I took my time, walking through the canyon. Took a nap at the Cotopaxi store and dipped my feet in the river just beyond the KOA. I made seventeen miles on the day, by ten oclock, and stopped for the night at a pulloff by the road.
In the morning I woke up sore. Sore, blistered feet and sore shoulders. The first ten miles I stopped six times for short rests, putting my feet in the water whenever I could. The sun fell down into the canyon and cooked the road and the sweat stuck to my shirt.
Beyond Parkdale I started feeling better. Climbing the long hill after crossing the river, clouds blew in and it started raining and I felt refreshed. Made another six miles before pulling over to eat through a box of granola bars. I decided, nearing Canon City, to walk over Skyline Drive. The last time I walked the Drive was in January, at one oclock in the morning, during a blizzard, and it felt cathartic, in a sense, to do it now, on my return.
After climbing up and over the ridge and dropping down into town I made my way to my uncle's house. Crossed the highway and the river and walked through the duck park. Last school year this is where I stayed, for six months. Now my Grandmother has moved in, though just briefly. She's recently sold her house and is waiting for the apartment complex where she's going to be moving to open a spot. It felt odd coming back, after three months away. But it felt good, I guess, too.
The next day my uncle and I walked from his house out through town. He's become a big walker, himself, in the last couple of years and he wanted to see me off. We walked for eleven and a half miles, out to a local hot springs called the Well, where he left his truck.
I stayed the night with Timothy Fleming, at his house in Florence, and planned to leave the next morning, but the weather turned overnight, and we woke up to rainy skies. So I took a needed day off, and spent some extra time with friends. Watched a movie and played Pictionary with EasyCheese.
The next morning was equally gray, and I was still a little sore and still a little unready to leave, so I didn't. Took one last day in town.
Sunday I left Tim's. The rain wasn't gone but I needed to take off. And really, as I walked, the weather proved to be wonderful. Cloudy and cool but only a little bit of moisture. I walked twenty three miles on the day, into Pueblo, and spent the night behind a Walgreen's.

At the beginning of my trip - the first couple of weeks, in Washington - the amount of time I spent barefoot was fairly small. I estimate that I averaged 40 - 50 percent. By the time I got to Oregon I was toughening up, at least in terms of my callouses, and the rate increased. I had worried that the rain would be terrible for my feet, but though it wasn't helpful, it didn't seem to slow me down a whole lot. In the mornings I would wake up with puckered, raw soles, but a large coating of Vaseline and a few miles on the road loosened them back up. Through most of Oregon, and into Idaho, I estimate averaging 60 - 70 percent barefoot.
In central Idaho the weather started warming up. Through Fairfield and Carey and Arko and Blackfoot, and so forth, the average dropped again, on the hot pavement, though that, too, seemed to get better with time. By Utah and Wyoming, and Utah again, I started to get into a rhythm, and figured out how to work with the heat, and brought the average back up.
Around the time I entered Colorado my feet started to really bother me in other ways. For a while I thought that I was getting stone bruised, but later decided that my arches were starting to go downhill. I'm still not positive if that was the case, but regardless, I started putting on my sandals more, sometimes stuffing extra padding underneath the arches to give them more support.
At home, in the three week stretch off the road, all of the aches and pains in my feet seemed to heal. Starting out again, the arches felt as strong as ever. Unfortunately, my callouses seemed to have all but smoothed away. In the first five miles from home I re-received a good helping of blisters, and what tolerance I had to the hot pavement was gone. So now I'm rebuilding my soles, and not averaging more than 30 - 40 percent without my sandals.
When I left home I had no real idea of what to expect from the road. I had trained myself up for several months but really had done little, in terms of how much needed to be done. I hoped that I could walk almost entirely barefoot, but I didn't know. And even with a thousand miles under my belt I still hoped that there would come a point when I could put down the sandals for good. At this point I'm not sure that that's possible. There are a lot of factors that determine how much I do barefoot - the heat, the rain, chipseal, the time of day, the amount of traffic - and there's no way I can work around all of them, all of the time. In a week or two I should be able to pull my average up fairly high, again. But I think, now, that I'm probably not going to be able to make it to a hundred percent, at any point.
I hope that I haven't made it seem that I'm doing more than I have been. I've been doing, simply, as much as I can, and that's what I'll continue to do.

The Normalcy

2008-08-11T22:44:00.000-07:00

There feels like an unexplained gap in the timing of things. I've been home three weeks and it feels like I haven't walked for a year. And I have no idea how it will feel to start up again.
I've been kept busy, being home. Going back and forth from Canon City to Salida to spend time with friends, working to make some money, and such. The first time I got in my car I felt claustrophobic, and drove thirty five miles an hour all the way up the highway to Salida.
When I'm with my friends I seem not to have changed at all. We laugh and play video games and swim in the river and nothing feels different than when I left.
Last Tuesday I spent the night in Canon, having spent the day with friends, and woke up Wednesday morning at my uncle's house. I drove home, took a shower, and then headed for the bachelor party in Salida that afternoon.
It would have been easy to guess, had I ever given it any thought, that Michael would be the first of us to get married. Senior year (his senior year, when I was taking time off) he went through more girlfriends that I had any hope of keeping track of. He's always been an extrovert, I guess. But the truth is that I never did give it any thought. It's not something that ever crossed my mind, considering which of us would get married first. Marriage seemed like something still a long way down the road. When he emailed me saying that he was engaged it threw me off balance.
Wednesday I stayed in Salida, and all through Thursday, working on wedding arrangements. We rehearsed at four, and then ate, before most of the groom party and ushers drove down in Mike's van to Coaldale to stay at Drew's house for the night. Mike and I stayed around, while he worked on some last minute details. By the time we headed for Coaldale, ourselves, it was pouring rain and eleven oclock at night.
In the morning I woke up early. Showered and drove back into Salida for an eight oclock meeting with a local radio station, then rushed back to Cotopaxi.
A week before, we had learned that a former classmate, Zach Price, had taken his life. Zach had been a good friend of mine for a long time in elementary school, though I hadn't seen him in a couple of years. Friday morning a service was held at the Cotopaxi church, and all seven of us in the wedding who had stayed the night in Coaldale, attended.
It's odd how we remember each other. A lot of different people stood up during the service to tell about how they remembered Zach. For me, the clearest memory is of a play in second grade. We were all different kinds of dinosaurs and we would all jump on the bed and break certain bones, or however it went, and Zach was the paleontologist and he would come out and say 'No more dinosaurs jumping on the bed!' and wave his fingers at us.
After the service we piled back into Mike's van and drove back to Coaldale, for half an hour, to finish getting things together, then drove the rest of the way into Salida. The wedding started at one. I walked Mike's mother, Stephanie, up the aisle behind the grandparents, and sat in the front row while everyone else filtered in wearing Converse sneakers.
Mike, as well as Jasmine, wore white. A fully white tuxedo and white and blue Converses. I wonder how many truly white weddings there are, anymore.
I don't know how I used to think of sex, exactly. I never felt any strong urge toward abstinence, but, instead, simply didn't feel that the timing was ever right. But my thoughts have changed some, now. I think that Michael and Jasmine, choosing to wait, have gained something, and I applaud them.
At the reception I felt awkward. I danced quite a bit. Talked with some old teachers and friends. But still felt strange. I saw one of my friends leaping through a door and I had no idea where it was going to lead. Still don't. How can I, possibly?

In the morning I'm leaving again. Walking up the driveway and turning left. And I'm scared to death. Because now, more than ever before in my life, I feel like I need to be around friends. I've always been an introvert, always easily kept myself happy. But now I'm not so sure. This last three weeks I've been soaked in friendship, and I'm afraid I might pucker up and wither away when the friendship has to get left behind. Hopefully I'll get through the loneliness, and get back into the rhythm of the road without too much trouble. But I'm not so sure.

Home

2008-07-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

As I climbed up into the mountains east of Montrose the weather cooled. I walked through a few quick showers in the late afternoon and evening, and felt good to keep walking as the stars came back out from behind the clouds. Around midnight I stopped to heat up some soup by the road and eat some poptarts. I put on long pants for the first time in a month (not including laundromats, when my shorts are in the wash) and drank the warm broth, and packed up, and started walking again.
I didn't stop for another four hours. Walked steadily through the dark hills, down the little canyons, and back up. Made it to the base end of Blue Mesa and slept on the bluff, just a little off the road.
In the morning I got up fairly early and made it to the visitor center by noon. Filled up my water bottles and walked on. In Gunnison I ate dinner and found a place to sleep behind the courthouse, then laid out a little frisbee golf course.
Hole 1: to a bench on the far end of the courthouse lawn, par 4
Hole 2: to a handicapped parking sign across the street, par 2
Hole 3: back across the street to a tree by a building opposite of the courthouse, par 3
Hole 4: all the way down the courthouse to the flagpole, par 3
Hole 5: back to the bench where my pack was laid out, par 2
I probably played twenty rounds. Had to get to three under par before I could stop. And then slept.
The next day I stayed in Gunnison for a while. Hung out at the library, and then walked down the street to the community center, where I watched a movie. No Direction Home, the Bob Dylan documentary, and it was four hours long, so I didn't get out of Gunnison until fairly late. As I was leaving I called a friend of mine, Tim Fleming from Canon City. He had planned, for a while, to try and walk with me at some point, and so we arranged a spot to meet in the morning.
I made it twelve miles out of Gunnison, to Parlin, before stopping outside the post office to sleep, and then walked another five before Tim pulled over and hopped out. One of his friends had driven him up, so he wouldn't have to leave his car somewhere.
By six or seven we had walked to Sargents, and had some dinner at the little cafe, and played a few games of pool before heading back out.
As we started to climb Monarch pass the clouds blew in around us and it started raining. We threw on ponchos, and made it six miles out of Sargents before stopping for the night. The rain let up and we camped in a pull-out four miles from the top of the pass.
In the morning we didn't start until ten, when the sun finally hit my sleeping bag and brought me out of my slumber. By the time we made the summit we were covered in sweat, though the clouds blew over as we ate ice cream, and it rained a little before we headed out again.
At five, three miles down from the town of Monarch, Tim's dad pulled over and picked him up to take him back to Canon. He's in a summer long melodrama at the Annex, and had to be back by evening. So we said our goodbyes, and I started off on my own again.
By eight, in Poncha Springs, the sun was falling away, and I stopped to rest briefly before making the last stretch into Salida.
At ten I stumbled into the apartment complex where both my aunt and great aunt live, and both were waiting to greet me.
In the morning my dad got a ride into town with a neighbor, and he and I started walking downriver. In Howard we met my mom at her vet clinic, and the three of us walked, in the heat of the afternoon, the last four miles to Home.
At the newspaper box I broke down. Stared down the driveway at the house, wrung with summer green. The elm trees blowing. For a long time, now, I've been walking with this sight in mind. Walking with the notion of being back to Coaldale.
I'm taking some time off. One of my best friends is getting married August eighth, and so I'll be here at least until then, resting up.
1600 miles. Eleven weeks. I'm not even half way. But I feel like I've already completed something.

Montrose

2008-07-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

I didn't leave Rangely until fairly late, and only walked a few miles in the dark before pulling over and rolling out the sleeping bag. In the morning I got started fairly early, trying to beat the heat. The day was spent almost entirely in sagebrush hills. Dry and hot, winding through the canyon. I filled up with water at a rest stop twenty miles in, then did another ten before stopping for the night. The next day started off fairly well, as the green came back into the hills and I climbed up Douglas pass. Going down the far side ripped me up fairly well - the constant slap of pavement, as gravity pulled me down, was hard on the shins and the soles. I filled another bottle close to the top of the pass, where some springs come out of the mountains and run down alongside the road. Quickly, though, the trees and green grass died away, and the last fifteen or twenty miles down into Loma were desolate, again. Flat and dry.
I slept off to the side of some kind of business - not sure what, exactly - and woke up to sprinklers. Fortunately it was already warm enough that I didn't freeze, but by the time I hauled all of my things to safety in the parking lot, everything was soaked. I stood on the pavement in my shorts, dripping, and a man from the business came outside.
"Hey man. What's going on?"
"Oh. I just slept over by the building. I mean, I'm not destitute, I just needed a place to pull over for the night, you know."
He nodded. "That's understandable." And then frowned. "But I'm going to have to ask you to go ahead and get your things off of our property."
I packed up in an adjacent parking lot, and then walked toward Fruita, and Grand Junction. From the Grand Junction library I called another of my mom's classmates from vet school, Pete Jouflas, who picked me up and took me back to his house, outside town. He and his family took me out to eat and put me up for the night, and then made a few phone calls, in the morning, to line up a meeting with the local, NBC 11 news. Kristy, Pete's wife, drove me to a City Market, where a reporter and his cameraman interviewed me.
And then I headed out, on highway 50, for Delta, and made twenty three miles before stopping, at eleven thirty, to sleep.
My parents, this week, took some time off and had been camping in the area, and we arranged to meet, Saturday, in Delta. Seven miles before town, in the morning, they found me walking, and pulled over, and drove me down into town. We spent the night at a motel - cooled off in the pool and played cards and watched softball on the television. After ten weeks, it was a welcome reunion.
Sunday we said our goodbyes, and I headed out, again. Ten miles down the road, in Olathe, I stopped to sleep out the heat of afternoon, and made another ten, into Montrose, for the night. I had planned to go on, but decided that I needed to find a library in the morning, and did so.
I'm only five or six days out from home, and I'm more than ready to be back.

Rangely

2008-07-07T15:28:00.000-07:00

This was a long stretch. From Lyman I headed south, down past the blip of Lonetree the first night, and then on into Manila the next afternoon. Stopped and made a batch of sandwiches and checked the local ranger station to ask about where I'd be able to find water between Manila and Vernal. In the evening I pushed past town, and climbed out into the bluffs toward the Flaming Gorge. For eleven miles I climbed up and down (mostly up) through red rock and sunbeam. At sunset I made it to the top of a set of switchbacks four miles long and cut at an 8% grade. My thighs burned and my shirt dripped, and right as I came up onto the top, an old lady grinned real big and gave me a giant thumbs up as she passed me. I started bawling. My emotions are so easily set on fire, now. My heart strains to be in love with the world, and it succeeds.
I camped the night twelve miles out of Manila, then made another thirty miles through the Flaming Gorge Recreation Area the next day. Pushed on to Vernal by late afternoon on Thursday, but by the time I stumbled onto the library, it was already closed for the entire holiday weekend. I stayed Friday in Vernal. Watched the parade come down through the streets. Did some laundry. Slept. And then left town when the heat had died away, around ten that night. I made it halfway to Jensen before turning in behind a church.
Saturday I pushed through Jensen, and out into the final stretch toward Colorado. Half a mile from the border I pulled over in the ditch and slept.
Sunday I crossed the border and made it up to Dinosaur, then headed south-east toward Rangely. Three miles out of town a pickup stopped and a middle-aged couple offered me some work and a place to sleep, and I couldn't refuse. They put me up at the R.V. park where they're staying, fed me, and this morning I went to work hauling brush on a stretch of property they just acquired, back in Utah.
And now I'm back in Rangely, at the library. I'm going to head toward Loma and Grand Junction tonight, to get a jump on the next stretch. The map says that I have 73 miles between here and the interstate, so I might need to try and cache some water, though I've heard that there are some springs down toward the pass. I'll see.

An entry from my journal:
7-3-08

Things I hated about today: The heat. The insufferable heat. The sun itself. That burning glob in the burning sky sending out little beams of burning light. And the heat from the motor homes as they climbed the hill and passed me by, their engines struggling. I hated that they were sitting in air conditioning at my expense. Hated that they were getting four miles to the gallon to entertain themselves for a week's vacation. And I hated how everyone had to pull a boat. Had to pull a boat or haul an ATV or lash a whole fleet of ATVs inside their boat.
I hated the heat some more. Hated the way it made me sweat, and hated the way the sweat rubbed on my skin. My armpits and the inside of my thighs rubbed and rubbed and sweated and sweated, until I was raw and stinging with every step.
I hated the notion of town. The notion of fountain drinks and ice cream, out of reach. And I hated getting to town. Hated passing dog kennels and law firms and nurseries and hair salons and not seeing so much as a coke machine for miles, or a gas station. And then I hated the gas station. Hated having to stand in line, dripping, panting, to fill my 44 ounce fountain drink cup. Hated having to stand in line to pay for it, even though I started to gulp it down. I hated the first gulp. So incredibly cold and delicious, having waited for it so long, having struggled for hours with its idea in my head, and the gulp itself seemed out of place. Seemed too cold. I gulped and my head went funny and the cold wrapped fingers around my brain.
And then I hated sitting outside. Drinking my drink out front while the pickup trucks pulled up and blew their heat on me. Hated how the drivers left their engines idling as they went inside so that the wife and kids could remain in their fake states of air conditioned bliss for an extra five minutes.
And I hated the heat. Hated it.

Things I loved about today: I loved waking up. First to the yip-yelp of the coyotes in the hills around me, high in the mountains. Their seemingly congratulatory remarks to each other in the cold. I loved the way my face, as I looked up at the stars, was bitterly frozen, and loved tucking it back under, nose first, into the warm depths of the sleeping bag.
I loved waking up again. With the sun on the sleeping bag, heating me up so quickly and telling me to climb up from the bag and pack up my things and be on my way. Telling me to walk.
And I loved walking. Loved the first five minutes. The first five miles. Loved coming over the pass, green with alpine grass and covered in little white flowers, and scattered with aspens, their leaves blowing in the breeze. Loved the shade that sloped down across the road from the trees, where I walked. Loved the sound of the water bottle sloshing in my pack. Loved the peanut butter and orange marmalade sandwich for breakfast, sticking in my teeth.
In town: I was in the midst of hate, and then suddenly the ice truck pulled up, and I loved it. Loved how the two Latino guys jumped out and threw up the rolling back door of the truck. Loved the way one of them jumped inside and starting tossing down bags to the other, who stacked them on a waiting dolly. Loved as his gloved hands nimbly flexed and grabbed and patted. I loved the rhythm: Catch, Smack, Stack...Catch, Smack, Stack... I loved watching as the stack grew. Eleven bags to a layer. Two layers. Three. Six. Eight. The stack grew as high as the man stacking and he had to reach up over his head to put them in place. Thirteen layers. Eleven bags per layer. Seven pounds per bag. 1001 pounds of ice, sitting in front of me. 94 degrees, on the pavement.
And I loved the way the men rolled the dolly inside and re-stacked the ice inside the freezer. 23 degrees, inside the freezer.
I loved the quickness of it all. The rush to get it all from the truck into the store, under the sun. 'How much ice do you go through,' I asked the lady in the store. 'A lot,' she said. 'They have to bring it two or three times a day.' 'And how much does it cost?' I asked. 'A dollar fifty three a bag,' she said, 'including tax. Three - 0 - seven for two bags.' (As if that were a steal.) 'And we hardly ever sell just a bag. Five or ten at a time, mostly.'
I loved, today, the idea of the ice. The idea of the time it buys, that must be bought. The idea that all that ice will just buy a little time - maybe to keep your beer cold, or your milk, or your thinly sliced ham from the grocery store deli - and is then doomed to melt back away. Doomed to go back into water. Doomed to be poured out on the side of the road, or in a campground, somewhere...
I loved evening. As the sun fell and the heat faded a little. Loved walking on the sidewalks. Loved it when a kid in a car yelled at me from a stoplight. 'Cut your hair!' And I smiled and said 'Sure,' and he said 'I'll give you a hundred dollars to cut your hair.' I was interested. 'Okay,' I said. I loved how instead of pulling out scissors he pulled out a middle finger and waved it at me as the light turned green.
I loved the grocery store. Loved the familiar aisles, and sections. Deli. Produce. Bakery. Bread. Soup. Dairy. Cosmetics. Customer Service. Loved being surrounded by food. And loved how everyone seemed eager to talk to me, to hear my story. The older couple. The younger couple. The mother and daughter. The checkout clerk. And I loved talking about myself, about my trip. Loved feeling social.
I loved eating my macaroni outside the store, on the sidewalk.
I loved putting new film in my camera.
And I loved, today, the way that everything seemed to be a love or a hate, and the way that nothing seemed bland, or mundane.
It's interesting to think that when my life seemed too pedestrian, I became a pedestrian. The pedestrian seems to be going away.

Lyman

2008-06-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

I made another ten miles from Montpelier before pulling over for the night in Paris, in the grasslands north-west of Bear Lake. I celebrated the thousand mile mark with dinner in a little cafe, and then called my parents from inside the local gas station. As I was talking, a lady came up and wrote a note on a napkin, then held it out to me. 'We heard you were a traveler. Come by for a beer at the first trailer south of here. We'd love to hear your story.' So after hanging up the phone I walked down the street and knocked on the door.
The lady who'd written the note - mid thirties with long black hair - welcomed me in and introduced me to two men sitting on the couch. Jerry - close to fifty, a brown ponytail, high cheekbones and dark eyes - and Steve - younger, maybe thirty, with a thick beard, his flip flops perched on the coffee table.
They call Jerry 'Trapper' and it's easy to see why. It's his trailer and spread out through the room are hundreds of pictures of hunts he's been on, of coyote and bobcat and raccoon that he's caught and of the mountains and forests nearby. There are all kinds of odd rocks around the place, too. One that looks exactly like Idaho - "Took a blue ribbon at the fair for that," - one that looks like a mushroom - "Saw it from a mile away," - and so forth. He shows me a handful of rings that he's carved from antlers, elaborately decorated, and hands me arrowhead after arrowhead. He holds up a little one - no more than an inch long, knapped out of a glassy green stone - and says "I could get a hundred thousand for this one. Made out of jasper. Worth more than diamond. You just have to find the right buyer."
Steve sits quietly on the couch. I think he's already put back some beers. Every once in a while he'll take a look at a picture or an arrowhead that Jerry shows him and say "Oh....oh yeah. That's really... something. Huh."
As the night winds down Jerry offers to let me crash on his floor. He spreads out a thick pad in front of the t.v. and I lay down and watch Family Guy. Steve keeps saying something about a guy named Bill, and having to go get something from him, but Jerry is intent on keeping him in the trailer. "You take my bed, man. Wait to go see Bill until morning."
"No, man. I don't need your bed."
"Come on. I don't care. Honest. You need a good sleep." Steve spreads out on the couch and starts snoring, and Jerry leaves for a little while. When he comes back he rouses Steve and tries to get him into the bedroom. Steve seems confused.
"Shouldn't I go see Bill?" he says.
"No, you just need to sleep."
"Oh...ok. I'll just take this couch if nobody's using it." He plops back down, happily, but Jerry stands him back up and manages to walk him into the bedroom. I fall asleep.
In the morning Steve is up before me.
"How's it going, drifter?" he says, as I stir.
"Pretty good."
"How far you headed?"
"Florida."
"Shit. You going down along the lake, huh? That's a long walk. It's a long lake. I work down in Laketown. Long drive. Really long drive, just to get to work. It kills me. Thank God I'm a substance abuser. I'd never make it, otherwise."
Jerry comes in from outside. "You sleep well, man?" he asks Steve.
"Oh man. That bed of yours did the trick. I feel so good right now. Walked all the way out to my car and back without a twinge." He turns to me and explains. "I cracked a vertebra a week ago, jumping on the trampoline. I'm moving all kinds of slow, now. It kills me. I have a new rule: No jumping on the trampoline drunk."
"You have any plans for the day?" Jerry says, and I shake my head. "You really should go up and see Minnetonka. It's a good ways off the road, though."
"I could drive him up," Steve says, from the couch.
"That'd be cool. Really, man, you should see it," Jerry encourages.
So Steve and I shuffle out to his car. He throws a bunch of stuff in the back to clear off my seat and we head south, then turn up toward the mountains. When we get to the parking lot for Minnetonka caves Steve waves me on. "A lot of stairs, in there," he says. "Don't think my back could take it. Besides, I've already seen it all."
There's a tour group just heading out, and I catch up with them. Minnetonka's a really cool place. 444 steps, up and down, through the cave, and it's forty degrees inside, so my t-shirt and shorts weren't a great idea, but other than that it was pretty cool.
Steve meets me after the tour is done and we head back down the road. We talk about things.
"My life's all jacked up right now," he says. "My wife left me and took the kids. After ten years of marriage she decided she was gay. I mean, what am I supposed to do? I mean, if a guy has a handlebar mustache, or something, and she likes that, I can grow a handlebar mustache. I can do that. But I can't be a woman."
We eat lunch when we get back to the highway, at a drive-in by the road.
"I was studying Anthropology. Minoring in Philosophy. Till I figured out I could do it all for free. Just sit in on any class I wanted to. I paid for fifteen. Took another sixty for free. It was all over. I mean, I'm not an anarchist, or anything. It's just that - well - learn what you can, I say. You never know where life's going to take you. You never know what you're going to be doing to make money. I mean, I'm a carpenter, now."

I made it down to Garden City, Utah, that night. Rolled out under a tree in a little park, off the road. The next day I walked thirty five miles, out into Wyoming, and slept in the ditch, then did another thirty the next day, through Kemmerer. Another thirty miles got me down into Lyman, below the interstate. I took Sunday off. Went to church and met some people. Did a load of laundry. Rested up. The next stretch, down to Vernal, is going to be rough.

Montpelier

2008-06-23T09:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I've made a thousand miles. Plus an extra thirteen, now.

Friday morning I crawled out from behind the juniper hedge where I spent the night and brushed off the dead thorns. I walked down the street to do some laundry, and ate breakfast - chocolate milk and maple bars - while the dryer spun. By the time I left town it was ten thirty, and the sun was already cooking the sidewalks.
I headed south, down highway 91, toward Pocatello. Ten miles got me to Fort Hall, where I pulled over at a cafe and got a strawberry milkshake. Dozed off for an hour in the cool of the air conditioning. In Pocatello it was still 94 degrees at seven o'clock. The heat isn't bothering me as much as it was at first. I drink lots of water and rub lots of Vaseline on the feet. As long as I keep moving the asphalt doesn't burn, and when I can I walk straight down the white line, which is a lot cooler and smoother, though when the traffic is bad I have to stay farther off on the shoulder.
I ate dinner - macaroni - in front of the movie theater, and then spent two bucks to see Stop Loss. I'm not sure why this particular theater is so cheap, but it might have to do with the fact that nachos are $6.15. (I didn't have any.) After the movie I rolled out my sleeping bag under a restaurant awning and slept.

I've developed a lot of tricks for keeping my mind occupied while I'm walking. And when I'm a little down I can normally trick myself out of feeling bad. Force the face into a big grin and curse loudly. Amazing how much that does. And yelling at cattle is fun, too. 'Are you crazy, or just plain stupid, cow!' They look up from their grazing, munching nonchalantly, pondering the question. 'Stupid is as stupid does, sir,' they answer. And then go back to munching.
I come up with a lot of songs, too:

I met-a-phor in the road
smiling carelessly
He said 'No no, you've got me wrong
I'm just a simile!'

And I ponder other people's words: 'Go west, young man!' West? No thanks. (Another song)

East I say! Its' the only way
for me
Feast on today! It's the only day
you'll ever see
And I don't know why the world turns
And I don't know why the fire burns
And I don't know how the universe came to be
But that's all right with me
All that matters is the next step toward the sea

Out of Pocatello I walked slowly. Above ninety, again, and I didn't get far before pulling over for a couple of hours. Decided to wait it out, instead of keep going. Ate some peanut butter sandwiches in the shade of a fire station. Plodded a little more, into Inkom, where I waited some more, then left at nine-thirty in the evening. Following old highway 91, now, which isn't on my map. I was planning to have to follow the river for a stretch, to stay off the interstate, but I'm glad that I didn't have to. It took me four hours to get to McCammon, and I stopped just short of town and rolled out in the ditch.
Sunday I started early. Up by six to try and stay ahead of the heat. Now on highway 30, heading east into the hills. In Lava Springs I stopped and filled up the water bottles, and watched the clouds build, in the west. By five it was drizzling, which was pleasant. By six it was raining steadily. By seven I reached Soda Springs, and a man outside of the Subway offered to let me pitch my tent in his yard. I sat on his couch watching Extreme Makeover until the rain let up, and then rolled out my tent in his yard. The rain came back, in the evening, and poured and blew and thundered, but I stayed dry, in the tent, and in the morning the sun was back.
I decided to take the day mostly off, yesterday. The feet were feeling pretty sore. So I found the library, and spent six hours reading (The Pearl, Steinbeck). In the evening, feeling rested, I headed out, and made fifteen miles last night, before sleeping in the ditch, a thousand miles from Ocean Shores.

Blackfoot

2008-06-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

North-east of Mountain Home the landscape stays pretty dry for fifteen or twenty miles, climbing up into the forest, where the sagebrush thins away and the green starts to come back. The first night I camped in the woods, not too far off the road.
The towns, in this stretch, are spread thin. Fifty eight miles to a gas station out of Mountain Home, to Fairfield. Then another forty five into Carey, forty four into Arco, and a final fifty six all the way down to Blackfoot. And the weather, after such a cool and rainy spell, is finally getting warm. So I'm carrying a lot more water, now, and packing a lot more food, and I've been walking close to thirty miles a day, to get beyond this stretch and into a more populated region.
In Fairfield I slept at the city park, sleeping bag rolled out on the grass. A group of cyclists from Fort Collins joined me, on their way to Portland. The next night I put up my tent in the ditch, fifteen miles out of Carey, and then made it another thirty miles the next day into the outskirts of Craters of the Moon. The pastures that spring up in the shadow of the Sawtooths fade away. The iron red rock creeps up over the valley like rusting scars over old wounds. I stopped at the park visitor center, but didn't do a lot more than fill up my water bottle. The more interesting features of Craters of the Moon are a good ways off the road, and I wanted to keep moving.
Arco is an interesting little town. The first in the world to be lit by atomic power, and the government testing facilities down the road are still open. Here they celebrate an annual 'Atomic Days.' I made it a little ways out of town in the cool of the evening, sleeping in a little park in Butte City, which doesn't have so much as a post office.
The first day of the two down to Blackfoot from Arco and Butte City was nearly unbearable. Twenty nine miles of sagebrush, of hot pavement and of sun. The roadside buzzed with a constant warning from rattlesnakes - three or four at a time, leap-frogging for hours. No shade to eat my peanut butter sandwiches in. Not a farm. Not a house.
Atomic City has a race track and a liquor store; I slept and moved on.
As I neared Blackfoot, the hills became dotted with life, again. Wheat fields and Zimmatic sprinklers. Trees.
A bank sign read eighty-seven degrees as I made my way into town. I stopped at the nearest grocery store and sat in the air conditioning for a while, then made my way downtown, to the library.
Eating lunch outside, my little cook stove boiling soup, I played a little harmonica in the shade. The locals gave me wary eyes as they passed, and after a little while a police car pulled up.
"How's it going?" the deputy says.
"Fine."
"You don't have a pony tail, do you?" he inquires, and I pull it out from behind my back to show him. "Uh-oh. A couple people mentioned there was a homeless guy down here. If you ask me," he says, smiling, "you don't fit the profile. But there's a lot of traffic coming through here. Little kids and such. I guess you unnerved somebody."
"I was going to use the library," I explain. "Just wanted to have a little lunch, first."
"It's not a problem with me," he says. "You're in the right. But there is an actual park just down the way," - he motions down the road - "and you certainly wouldn't bother anybody there, just to let you know." He goes on his way, and I pack up my things and head inside to get on the computer.
It doesn't bother me, that people mistake me for being homeless, or a hippie, or destitute, or whatever it is. I honestly don't care. But it's kind of curious that anybody would feel so inclined as to report me. So what if I'm homeless? So what if I'm destitute? 'Just eating lunch, folks. Not doing drugs. Not drunk. Not spray painting your library. Move along, now.'
Do we really have to shelter our children from such things? A guy eating lunch outside a library. Is that so harsh for young eyes? Do we really feel the need to pretend to them that homeless people don't exist? I don't know. I'm not a parent. But somehow I think that if I was, I'd find no reason to report myself to the police.

Mountain Home

2008-06-12T16:04:00.000-07:00

From Caldwell I headed down through Nampa, and then south on highway 45. Walking that evening I hit more rain, but nothing severe, and camped in the ditch for the night, my poncho strung from the fence underneath an old crab-apple tree.
In the morning I left the farm country, and dropped down to the Snake river from the bluffs above, then followed it for a ways before winding off toward Murphy. Owyhee is the second largest county in Idaho - bigger than Connecticut and Vermont combined - and yet the county seat, Murphy, has only a hundred and fifty people. The courthouse was five minutes past closing when I walked up from the highway, but the door was still open and I found the janitor inside. He let me fill my water bottles and offered to let me stay out in back of the building, for the night.
I rolled out the sleeping bag in the alcove near the back door, ate some spaghetti soup, and read for a while. I've gone through five books since leaving home, so far. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, I brought from home, and read on the train. At the library in St. Helens I bought The Piano Shop on the West Bank, and finished it in Portland, before reading The Devil and Ms. Prym. And then in Maupin I bought an old copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
It's interesting to me how hard it is to leave a book behind. The first two I left at my cousin's, in Tacoma, and the third in Portland. The fourth was a library book and I simply put it back on the shelf, and the fifth I handed over to the librarian in John Day. Each time (excluding the fourth) it's felt rather awkward, as if I was doing something that I was going to regret. I think that my notions of possession are off kilter, and blown out of proportion, and it's something I need to work on.
Shortly after turning in for the night, behind the courthouse, one of the Sheriff's deputies found me. He took the information from my driver's license, and it started raining.
"You can sleep inside, in the lobby, if you want," he told me. "There's a couch." But I was already set up, and out of the rain for the most part, so I declined.
In the morning, the courthouse employees passed me one by one on their way inside, and as I packed up my things, one of them came back outside.
"If you follow this street," she said, motioning, "and then take a left at the bottom, you'll see Delamar. Go right on Delamar, and you'll see a yellow house with a Sheriff's truck parked outside. My husband - his name is Daryl - will make you breakfast. I'll tell him you're coming." She went back inside and left me to finish packing up my things. It's amazing how quickly a meal can fall into my lap.
As I approached the yellow house, the door swung open, and Daryl greeted me. He showed me inside, and I washed up in the bathroom before sitting down to eat a huge plateful of biscuits and gravy. Daryl is a big, muscular, guy, with a bushy mustache and a blonde buzz cut. He sits down across from me at the kitchen table.
"How many miles do you make in a day?" he says.
"A little over twenty, normally."
"Well," he says, "you've got a pretty long stretch between here and the next town. Nothing but sagebrush and ranches for thirty miles." He strokes a corner of his mustache, thoughtfully. "A little under twenty miles from here you'll see a sign for Wees road." He spells it for me, and then makes a map with his hands. "There's a guy who lives over here," (pointing a spot on the table) "who'll put you up for the night, if you need a place. Just tell him I sent you. If you get all the way to Grand View, tonight, you'll see a little hotel just off the road. Lady that owns it, Kelly, can hook you up with a room, if you want. Tell her I sent you."
I try to remember the names and the locations, and continue eating my biscuits.
"Now, all the way down in Bruneau," he looks up, "are you going through Bruneau?" I shake my head. "Well, if you decide to, there's a guy down there I know who'll let you sleep at his place for the night.....Just tell him I sent you." I'm fairly sure that Daryl knows everyone in Owyhee County.
When I finished eating, several more possible contacts spread out down the road, I filled my water bottles and headed off.
The thirty miles between Murphy and Grand View are pretty bleak. Lots of sagebrush. A few wheat fields. Not a lot else. But the weather held. No rain and no blistering sun; just a breeze at my back. I made it before the sun was down, and put up my tent just off the road, in some scattered grass near the convenience store.
Today I left early. Turned north and crossed back over the river, then crawled back up onto the bluffs, heading for Mountain Home. Twenty five miles through more sagebrush and sand, past the airforce base and down into town. It's a nice little place, around ten thousand people. I haven't found a place to stay, yet, but I'm not worried. It's getting easier and easier, it seems, as the days go by.

Caldwell

2008-06-07T08:55:00.000-07:00

After the hundred and fifteen miles between John Day and Vale, it was a welcome relief to be back in a more populated area. From Vale I headed east, still following highway 26, towards Idaho through onion and hay farms. The rain is following me, still, it seems, and by noon on Tuesday I had taken refuge in a hay barn to sit out the weather. I talked with a couple of the local farmers, who waited, too, for the rain to cease, and ate through some bagels while the storm came down.
Back on the road I made another ten miles under lightened sky, and turned south, toward Nyssa. The clouds built again in the late afternoon, gathering from the west, and I wrapped my pack with my poncho, and continued to walk. For seven miles, all the way into Nyssa, it rained. Never a maelstrom, but plenty hard to soak through my clothes. Three times, in the stretch, I was offered rides into town, and each denial on my part strengthened me. Overcoming the urge to accept, overcoming the want of warmth and want for ease, made me smile, and made me shout, and made me sing. Made me bellow at the height of my voice into the rain as it fell.
The thunder-egg capital of the world offered warmth. Nyssa, the town is called, gave me an A&W to sit inside, and change my soaked clothes, and dry off.
"Tell me," I said to the girl behind the register, "what's a thunder-egg?" and she explained. Apparently it's some sort of hollow volcanic rock (maybe that's common knowledge) and this is the place to find them. The town's yearly festival is even called 'Thunder-egg Days,' and supposedly vendors line the streets and sell the things.
I spent the night at the local high school, in a gazebo between buildings. I stayed dry and warm, but in the morning was awakened, for the first time on the trip, by a policeman.
"Tell me you couldn't have found a better spot to sleep," he says, smiling. There is no damage done, but I guess they have summer school classes, and simply wanted me gone before the students showed up. The policeman went on his way, and one of the ladies from the school office even brought out a bag of breakfast bars for me.
"They'll just sit around here," she said, "so you might as well take them."
I spent a few hours at the post office, waiting for the library to open, and then checked my email and read for a while. My parents had told me, the night before, that they had a contact for me in the town of Caldwell, but that the people, there, were out of town for a couple days, so if I wanted to stay with them I'd have to hang out for a while. Caldwell is only another twenty miles from Nyssa, so I was in no hurry to get back on the road. By five in the afternoon I had crossed into Idaho, but had only made three or four miles, when a girl in a little car pulled over.
"I'm going to church," she said, from her window, "want to come?" I accepted the offer and she drove me back into Nyssa, where her youth group meets at a local church. We listened to some music and watched a movie and sang some songs, and by the time we were ready to leave I had all of their blessings, for the trip.
The girl who picked me up - Joyce, is her name - offered to give me a place to sleep, for the night, at her parents' house in Wilder, and I accepted.
I spent the night in their basement, where they laid out a mattress for me, and in the morning they fed me French toast before I headed out.
At the Caldwell library I got an email saying that my parents' contact had gotten back a day early, so I called them and they came down and picked me up.
Dee and Bill are old classmates of my parents, from veterinary school, and they opened their house to me. After making some serious miles in the previous week, I was more than glad for the chance at a day or two in ease. They've been more than kind, and I feel rested and ready to head back out on the road tomorrow.

500 Miles, and beyond

2008-06-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

I made five hundred miles by the little cafe at Austin Junction. It was raining, as it has been almost every day for the past ten, and I had a bowl of split pea soup and, from a table in the corner, watched the drops as they fell.
I've been making good time, now. My shins are healed. My feet are strong. The prairie and the rolling bluffs lifted into national forest above Prairie City, and then the forest fell back away by Unity, into sagebrush plains. I've spent two more nights in post offices, without trouble, and I've been making an average of 28 miles a day, and I've made it past a hundred and fifteen mile stretch of near nothingness, and everything is going well.

The most common question that people throw at me is this one: "What made you decide to do this?" And my answer has varied quite a bit. I've never pinned down to a science why it is, exactly, that I'm doing what I'm doing. But I've started to understand a bit better, I think, now that I've had some time to consider, fully.
The driving force out here on the road seems to be divided into two voices. The first is the voice that seeks beauty. The voice that wants to see sunsets and rivers, that wants to see the people and hear their stories. It wants to see the glory of the land, to feel it, to touch it, to breathe it in. It is the voice that makes me sing to feel the breeze on my face. The voice that makes me step gayly in the sun.
The second voice tells me that there is need for a certain repentance. The load that I carry and the pain that I endure, this voice tells me, are making up for the lost chances of my youth. Making up, as best as is possible, for the hours wasted gazing into the television, the computer, and all of the other pits we surround ourself with; the black holes sucking up creativity like light. The video games and the reality television shows. MTV.
And, this voice says, there is need to make up, as well, for all the chances lost. For all the dances that I didn't dance. For all the girls that passed slowly by, within reach, within grasp, while I did nothing, and let them go.
"This step is for Kendra Squires," the voice tells me. "And this step is for every Saturday night you spent alone. Remember this step. Remember this burden, on your back. And learn from it."
Both voices speak of a numbness. Of a quietly creeping numbness that had begun to take its hold. A numbness towards life, towards beauty, brought by the schedule. Brought by the alarm clock, the deadline, the routine, the bells pounding to tell me how to think, and when, and where, and never being responsible for why. The outer edges of my life - both pain and joy - had become smooth, had begun to grow victim to the inbetween. Victim to the mundane.
It was as if I were the frog, sitting quietly in water being brought to a boil, without my knowledge, until suddenly my instinct understood, and reacted, and sent me into the air before my mind could make sense of why.
It is not up to me, nor is it of any importance, to try and distinguish which voice, if either, is the larger or the more important, in my walk. Both have a claim. All that is of importance is the road. The next step, the next mile, and finally, the sea. And when I drink from that distant shore, I can only hope that whatever thirsts have accumulated, that they might be quenched, and that I might be satisfied to return to the world of the schedule and the bell and the television glaring, but with a keener eye to its trickery, and a greater knowledge of its workings, and a larger defense to the numbness.

Dayville

2008-05-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

The morning after the thirty five mile day I woke up, in the post office, to more rain. Coming seemingly just as strong, though considerably less bleak, now that I was in town. I crossed the street and walked into the nearby cafe, and ordered eggs and pancakes and coffee, and spent the next five hours watching it rain, my brain still swirling thickly with the cathartic images of the day before.
I was told that the little library, just down the street, was open from two to five, and so at one forty five I packed up, paid my bill, and left. The rain had almost given way, but the clouds were still rolling leisurely above. After waiting around outside the library for half an hour, I decided that maybe they weren't going to open, and was disappointed. Looking at the map I figured that I wouldn't get anywhere else with a public computer for another four or five days, at least. But on the way out of town, looking in a shop window, two ladies motioned me inside. As if they knew what I was looking for.
I tell them my story - where I'm from, where I'm going. We talk for a minute or two.
"You don't have a computer, do you?" I ask, and they say that they do. "But not one that I could use?"
"Oh sure," they say, and they take me to the back of the store and let me type up my entry to the blog.
I didn't make my way out of Fossil until close to five, and knew that I wouldn't make it far, but was told that there were some campgrounds up the road, not too far, and so I didn't worry. The first one, after six miles, was full. A big biker rally.
"I can get you in," the man said, "but it'll cost you thirty five dollars." Thanks, but no thanks.
The next campground was four more miles, but not a difficult four. I only had to put in ten on the day, and so my aches, though they complained, weren't severe. I set up my tent for free, and slept well.
The next day I made it to Spray, following the river down through the rocky hillsides, and found the little place bustling. I guess they have an annual rodeo and I hit it just right. The county park down by the river was full, but I walked up toward the showgrounds and saw a fire burning in someones backyard. As I got closer, they spotted me, and motioned me over, and I sat down and we talked.
"There's a place over there for you to roll out your bag," one of them tells me, motioning to the lawn behind the woodshed. "Nobody'd mind." So after watching the flames for a while, and hearing some stories, I camped in the grass.
In the morning, rising around nine, the dew starting to steam in the sun, one of them came out to say good morning.
"We've got a big breakfast inside," he says, "and you're more than welcome to come in and eat." Pancakes and eggs and coffee and fruit and donuts and sausage are laid out on the kitchen table. All of the kids sit here, while the adults have spread themselves out around the rest of the room.
"So the rodeo is a pretty big thing?" I ask.
"About as big of a shin-dig as a little town like this can have," they respond. I eat, and we talk, and I feel great just to know that there are people out here who are so willing to give me a place to sleep and a warm meal. It makes everything easier.
Leaving Spray, my aches seem to have diminished. My shins are strong. My feet are light. I follow the river thirteen miles to Kimberly, eat some lunch and then continue on, turning south. The clouds churn and swirl and froth above me, but they aren't ominous, and the rain doesn't come. Alongside the river cattle graze in pastures, and gardens grow greenly in the shadows of the sagebrush bluffs.
I spend the night in the ditch, just a little ways off the road, with my poncho spread over me, and I watch the stars, shining behind the wasps of clouds that float in front of them.
I get up early in the morning, and make my way down to the main part of the John Day Fossil Beds. At the visitor center I watch the twenty minute movie, and then walk through the museum. It starts to rain, outside, right about the time I'm ready to leave, and so I extend my visit a little. But I want to walk, so although it continues to rain I head out.
From the visitor center it's only eight or nine miles back onto highway 26 and into Dayville. My aches, though, have returned, and in the rain, it feels like a long way. I get to the little town and stumble into the convenience store and pick up some food around five in the afternoon. As I'm leaving, the lady behind the counter mentions that the church, just up the road, offers free lodging for travelers.
"They've got a shower and laundry and a kitchen for the bikers," she says. "Make sure you check it out." She doesn't need to tell me more than once.
When I arrive at the church nobody is around, and I quickly take a shower and spread out my things to let them dry. I make some tea in the microwave, and pull up a bench at the practice piano near the kitchen. I'm in heaven.
I don't see anybody the whole evening, and I roll out my sleeping bag on the floor and crash.
In the morning I feel stiff, and tired, and decide to give myself a day off, to rest up.

The Line Becomes Blurred

2008-05-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

I made thirty miles the first day from Maupin, all the way down to Antelope. It was the longest walking day of the trip, though when I woke up in the morning I was neither stiff nor in any pain.
I left Antelope at nine forty five in the morning. With water and food in plenty, if not in excess, and with a light step. Heading east, the small hills built upon themselves in the morning sun, and the road began to climb up out of the creek valley. The first three miles were only slightly such - the next four, more so - until, two hours into the day, I reached the first summit, above the fertile hills. It no longer feels like the Oregon that I've been walking in. The dense forests, held over from Washington, have given way to sagebrush plains and farming towns among the hills.
The muscles in my legs were strong in the ascent, but there was a pinging in my shins - the comings of a splint, and yet the pace was good, and the sun warm, and the shoulders strong.
The height that was attained in seven miles was lost in the next eight. On the other side of the summit the road fell away, curling down and down until reaching the John Day River, at the seemingly deserted town of Clarno. Four thirty in the afternoon. The pace had been steady, if not quick. Fifteen miles, and another twenty to the next town - Fossil. There was no intention, of course, after a thirty mile day previously, of making it all the way to Fossil. Somewhere among the hills, I knew that I would unroll the sleeping bag and drive in the tent stakes.
After crossing the river the road began to ascend again, but for no more than half a mile, before settling back down to follow Pine Creek.
I passed the Clarno Unit of the John Day Fossil Bed National Monument without stopping long. I read a few signs and drank some water, but the light was still good, and the weather held, under high, drifting clouds, and there were miles to be made.
Along the creek the sagebrush and sparse growth gave way to a canyon full of pine, and the hills on either side became steeper and rockier.
By eight o'clock I had gone twenty three miles on the day - a decent amount. The light was fading. The clouds were growing darker. I spied a place, not far from the road, that was level, was grassy and was protected. And yet the pack was not weighing me down. The pings in my shins had persisted through the day but had grown no worse. My feet were sore, but not painfully chaffed or blistered. Why not another few miles, now, and another few less to be made in the morning? I pushed on.
For the next hour the sun continued to fade, and by nine was all but gone. Another four miles lay behind me. The pace was as strong as it had been when first leaving Antelope, twelve hours previously. Still on, up the road.
A car stopped as it met me, coming the other way, and a window was lowered.
"Are you all right?" a woman called, and I said yes. "Do you have any protection?" she asked. "There are cougars out here."
"I think I'll be fine," I answered, though the thought of mountain lions in the rocky hills above me did give reason for concern.
"You're sure you're all right?" the lady called from her window, and I waved her on, into the night.
By nine thirty moisture began to swirl down in the headlamp glow. The clouds above had thickened and had blocked out the moon and the stars, but it was nothing terrible. Simply a light mist.
The road was climbing, again. Up through the pinion bluffs, up from the creek, and through the pace was still strong my legs were sore and my feet, as they came down on the pavement, had lost their spring. There was no good place to pitch a tent, now, though. No place at all, in fact, good or bad, and the wind blew harder, and my headlight pivoted constantly, searching the hills for glowing eyes.
"You're a fully grown human male,'' I reminded myself, "and you're carrying a full pack. They have no want to pick a fight with you. They are afraid of you."
The moisture thickened, now taking the form of a driving, fine, wet snow. Snow, two thirds of the way through May and an elevation of roughly 2800 feet. But it did not stick, and my clothes were warm, and to keep walking was the best answer. There was no desire to pitch a tent in the storm, and in these hills, even if I had seen a good location. But it was still seven miles into Fossil, and I had already walked twenty eight on the day, and now the pain was emerging, for the road had stopped climbing and began to descend, and the shins became inflamed, and I couldn't do better than to shuffle along at what I estimated to be only two miles an hour. Two miles an hour for another seven miles was unthinkable. I had ceased watching the clock, but I knew that it was late, and knew that I didn't have another three and a half hours in me. Unless, perhaps, there was no alternative.
"The mountain lions," I told myself, "are surely not hunting in this storm. They are surely sleeping, without any regard as to you." But logic is a lesser force than fear - for me, at least, and still I watched over my shoulder, and still my ears strained in the dark.
As the road continued to descend, the headlamp picked up pairs of eyes, in the hills, but they were sets of blue, and far apart on the brow - deer, or cattle, even, in the pasture.
Six miles. Five. Ever so slowly. The snow had become wetter - more like sleet - and I could feel the cold through my jacket and in my arms. I slipped on my sandals because the road was slick and freezing and wet. The idea that I could make it into town - that I would probably have to - took full realization. The pain could be ignored. The cold could be ignored. The fear could be ignored.
Four miles. Three. Another hour passed. The road leveled, and the step quickened, but only slightly, and was still weak. Through the storm, coming still stronger and still wetter, I could now make out a glow in the hills ahead. And farmhouses, though far between, began to appear alongside the road.
Two miles from town, knowing that I could make it, that I would, knowing that I would be able to sleep under city lights, I was taken by emotion. Without any knowledge that they were coming, tears spewed forth, and I cried, as I walked, harder than I remember crying in a very long time. And the tears seemed to bring warmth to my limbs, and the wet swirling air seemed not to touch me.
With a mile and a half to go my headlight pulled to the side and illuminated a pair of eyes - not blue and far between, as before, but a burning orange, some fifty yards above me on a slope. Staring down.
"What are you!" I demanded, from the road. "Are you a cat? Stay away, animal! Stay away!" The eyes watched, unmoving. "Two plus two is four!" I shouted, and repeated it: "Two plus two is four!" As I shouted, I continued to walk, my light fixed on the hill, and the eyes soon disappeared. Either the creature had moved on or the line of sight had become obstructed by the shoulder of the rocks. The fear did not hold sway. In that last mile, so close to my haven, nothing would bother me. After thirty four miles, soaked, pained, exhausted, nothing would bother me.
The lights of town grew close, and I walked slowly, steadily, into the outskirts. There was still the need to find shelter - a place dry and secure - but that would be simple. It was only a few minutes before midnight, and there were no cars, no peering eyes, no one to disturb me, wherever I should choose to lie. And even if they did - even if a cop car found me in its lights, say, I wouldn't have cared. The world had nothing to touch me with, in that hour. Neither nature nor man could hope to douse the fire in my chest. I was invincible. I was the conqueror of the night, the conqueror of the storm, the conqueror of my own pain and my own fear, and of the road. What thing - god or man or beast or tempest - could think to conquer me in that hour?
On main street I passed the post office - its door always open, its lights always glowing - and I entered into warmth, and set down my pack against the wall, and pulled off my wet clothes, and on the linoleum of the floor I collapsed, weak, and the line between joy and pain was blurred with tears, and the two seemed to become one. And I slept.

Maupin

2008-05-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been a while, the towns are thinning out, now.
Portland was great. I healed up, played some songs, explored a little bit of the city on a borrowed bike and played some Scrabble. The actual owner of the property is Debbie DeRose, who I met in the morning following my last post. I'm so glad she opened up the place to me, because it was a good spot to take a few days off.
I left Portland on Saturday morning, and decided not to go up to 14, in Washington, as was planned. I decided that I could cut off some miles by following 26 through Oregon, instead, and I was told by a few people that I really should see Mount Hood.
By noon I saw a digital bank sign that said it was ninety two degrees, and the pavement burned my feet up pretty well. I tried to take cover during the worst of the day, but I still had to put on the sandals for a while.
I stayed the night just before the town of Sandy, and in the morning I looked for a computer, but realized that it was Sunday, and so I had to push on. After Sandy the forests take over again, and by midday I was starting to climb up into the mountains of the Mt. Hood National Forest. I made twenty seven miles, on the day, and camped in the woods between the towns of Rhodendron and Government Camp.
The next day I started climbing, and kept climbing heavily, for the next six miles. Government camp, in the shadow of Mount Hood, was just getting it's thawing in. I guess the residents up here hadn't seen the north facing sides of their houses in a long time, and the roadside was running heavy with the melting snow.
Coming down the east side of the pass I met a man who is riding a bike from Vancouver (OR) to Chicago. "My kid was too busy to make a visit this year," he told me from the roadside, as I sat in the shade. "She said I'd just have to get on my bike and ride out there, so here I am."

This morning I woke up to rain, and on and off throughout the day that's what it's been. Drizzle. Downpour. Mist. Drizzle. Downpour. Etc. I walked another long day, taking 216 east to the town of Maupin. Later on I'm planning to head south and catch 26 again, but this is where I'm at, for now.
Unfortunately the feet aren't doing so well with the changing weather. Three days of radiating concrete, followed by a day of solid rain, haven't exactly been therapeudic. So I'm in the sandals, again, after getting a good ways barefoot. We'll see.
Last Saturday was graduation back in Canon City. The second time a class of mine has moved on without me. But I don't regret my decision. Not before and not now. I've never been headed down a straight road, or a well traveled one. I don't know where I'm going, exactly, but I know that the road I'm on is the right one.

Portland

2008-05-14T19:36:00.000-07:00

From Centralia I had to wind my way south through various smaller roads - no main highways going exactly where I wanted. I ended up staying the night in some playground equipment around the little town of Winl0ck.
The next day I made it down to Castle Rock, camping in the courtyard of their high school. In the morning I called my parents and wished my mom a good Mother's Day. The day before I'd run into quite a bit of rain, and my feet were pretty chapped. I'm not sure why, but for some reason getting soaked and then drying in my sleeping bag was harsh on them. I rubbed in some vaseline and walked for a while, but they weren't feeling good, at all. I only made it twelve miles on the day, down into Longview, and stayed the night behind the baseball field at the local college.
In the morning I walked across the Lewis and Clark bridge over the Columbia, and into Oregon. I wasn't sure, for a while, whether I was going to stay in Washington or head into Oregon, and I'm really not sure why I chose the latter. Mainly, I guess, because that way I could follow a main highway instead of sorting my way through back roads.
In St. Helens I slept behind a thrift store, and woke up to more rain. My feet were starting to flake pretty hard already, and I didn't want to walk in too much more moisture for a few days, so I ended up spending several hours in the St. Helens library, reading and waiting out the rain, and then made it down, in the evening, fifteen miles toward Portland.
I had gotten an offer, the last time I checked in, to stay with some people here in the city, and I didn't want to pass it up, so this morning I picked out a route in a gas station phone book, and made it here around four.
Dan Miller, a guy I met on Amtrak, built a cob house in some lady's backyard, and he's going to be gone for a while, so they arranged that I could stay there. It's pretty cool. Just a little place, but it's got a kitchen and a bathroom (a composting toilet) and a sleeping loft.
I've only met one of the people who live in the actual house - the owner was gone when I got there, but everything seems really neat. They're totally into organics, and planting their own things, and natural building. And there's a piano, which is a big bonus. I've been missing my piano, out on the road.
All in all, things are going well. I'm at around 220 miles so far and I'm definitely still getting broken in, but things are happening smoothly. No hassles from the police, no injuries. I'm sore, but I'm happy.

Centralia

2008-05-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

After staying the night near Olympia on the fifth, I headed north, to Tacoma. Before leaving home I had opened a checking account so that I could use a debit card on the trip, instead of carrying a bunch of cash, but the card didn't arrive until after I had left on Amtrak. So my parents mailed it to my cousin, and I had to go back up to Tacoma to get it in the mail. A little out of the way, but a nice way, in part, to end the first week. A hundred miles to whip my feet into shape and then fill my pack back up with cookies and granola bars.
I got into Tacoma late on the sixth, and then spent the next day there, as well. Yesterday I rode back down to Olympia and started walking south.
My original route would have taken me east from there, but apparently the mountains that way are still really snowy and cold for May, and so I was advised to head farther south before going east. Now the plan is to head south to Vancouver, and then follow the Columbia from there. Hopefully that will get me into some better weather - the last few days have been pretty bleak, after the nice stretch I had going for a while.
Beyond Tumwater (south Olympia) I stopped in for a visit at a wolf rescue, four miles north of Tenino. Most of the wolves in the facility aren't in the species survival plan and won't be assimilated into the wild or bred. I guess they come from more domestic situations - zoos and households, where they've been overly exposed to humans. But it's a great place, from what I saw.
And then on to Tenino, and down highway 507 to Bucoda and finally into Centralia. I did twenty seven miles on the day and was pretty sore, though my blisters have all healed well and I was able to put in a lot of time barefoot, again. The initial rough stretch seems to have taken a break.
I slept, last night, behind the train station, in Centralia. It's a pretty nice area, or seems to be, and nobody bothered me, but the freight trains weren't wonderful, clamoring through all night. In between, though, I slept well. And this morning the aches that had settled into my joints quickly faded away.

Olympia

2008-05-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

The blisters have cought up with me. Just a few miles out of Aberdeen they started to poke through, started to surface like dis-colored dimes and started to sting. By the time I'd made it back to Brady, where the bus picked me up on the first day out of Tacoma, they'd become pretty much intolerable. I waddled around gingerly as I strung up my poncho for the night. So the next day, the fourth of the month, I pulled out the medical supplies. Dabbed some ointment on the feet and wrapped them up tight with bandage. And pulled on my thick socks and my sandals.
I did pretty well, afterwards. Still made eighteen miles on the day, though I had to take a lot of breaks and go slow. By the time I was ready to pull over for the night the blisters were actually feeling pretty good. They'd all drained out and started to firm up, slightly.
I set up my little tent twenty yards from the highway in some thick grass and I slept soundly.
This morning the feet felt good, but not great. Not good enough to try barefoot again, at least. I made it the last fifteen miles into Olympia without a whole lot of trouble, and I think I'll hole up here for the night, or maybe just out of town, and then take off the socks for a little while tomorrow. I probably can't do a whole lot, but we'll see. Hopefully the blisters will start to harden up more within a few days.
The weather's been wonderful. Aside from the first morning, at the ocean, I haven't hit any rain, and the sun's been out enough that I've had to put on sunscreen. It's the spring weather I was hoping to get, but wasn't planning on, up here in the evergreen state. When we checked in, from Colorado, the forecast predicted ten straight days of rain leading up to my departure. So it's been a welcome change now that I'm here.
I can't really place how I'm feeling about the whole thing. Not sure if I'm worried, or content, or convinced that this is crazy, looking down the road. I guess, in part, the feeling changes with the day. Each morning I feel good, feel ready to walk and ready to sing and ready to declare Florida already mine. But as the day wears on, as the sun droops low and the shoulders ache and the shadows fall from the trees, my spirits start to fade. I'm still totally in the dark on how the trip is going to go. I don't know what kind of pace I can set, or what the weather's going to do tomorrow...there are so many variables.
But sleep recharges the spirit tank. The sun bids me luck. And the miles go by.

The Ocean

2008-05-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

My relatives drove me out past Olympia the morning of the first. They dropped me off at a turn-around and I walked for a little while to find a good place to hitch, then stuck up my thumb. An older, ex-hippie kind of guy picked me up and took me west toward Brady, and I sat down in front of a convenience store to hitch again, but was unexpectedly picked up by a transit bus. I guess they run routes all along here. So I tossed the fifty cents in the slot and rode down to Aberdeen, then transferred over to the number eight bus, headed toward Ocean Shores.
It was six thirty by the time I made it to the coast. As I came over the edge of the dunes the sun was thinly hidden, glowing through the clouds and shining on the water. A man was flying his kite a hundred yards down the beach. Some of the local teens threw up wet sand as they drove off along the water to the north. I camped, illegally, in the dunes, and woke up to rain.
Yesterday I started walking. Took off the flip flops and headed north for three miles, then got on the main highway and headed east. The clouds circled all day but the rain didn't come back after the early morning.
My feet did well. I had to put on the sandals briefly, through a really rough stretch a few miles west of Hoquiam, but otherwise there were no breakdowns. I still have to strengthen them up quite a bit, I think, but so far I'm alright. It might be a little bit slower going at first, but I was counting on that.
I made it into Hoquiam around eight oclock. Found a little park and boiled up some Ramon noodles. Drank some apple juice and chewed on some trail mix. As the street lights came on and the wind blew colder, up from the bay, I spotted some playground equipment down at the far end of the park. Unrolled my sleeping bag under a wooden bridge and listened to some music on my MP3 player before falling to sleep.
This morning I found the Hoquiam public library, and that's where I'm writing. But I'm ready to take off again, toward Aberdeen, and then up to Olympia. Hopefully the feet will continue to cooperate.

In Tacoma

2008-04-29T22:07:00.000-07:00

The train was an hour and a half late getting into Glenwood on Sunday. My parents and I sat in the station and worked on a crossword puzzle before walking outside to see it pull up. I pulled my pack up to coach and my parents stood on the hill outside and waved, and I waved back, through tinted glass.
We followed the river for a while, up through the pale red canyons, the water thick with runoff, and as we crossed into Utah the windows filled with sagebrush hills, instead.
West. Into Nevada in the night, my chair leaned back and my foot-rest sprung up. The pack in the seat next to me. And across into California the next day. Up into the Sierra Nevadas, still thick with snow, and through the blasted tunnels of Donner pass, then down and down, still west, until Sacremento. The six hour layover passed quickly in the balm of the evening. I lugged around downtown, checked out the mall and the library, and headed back to the station to read until the next train arrived.
At midnight we boarded and pulled out heading north, the second of my four tickets torn. I slept most of the way through until morning, and Klamath Falls, where we switched to bus for the next stretch, all the way up to Eugene. Through the mountains we hit alternating rain and snow and sleet and the trees were white in the cold. It didn't make me anxious to get going, watching the windshield wipers beat back and forth, furiously, trying to stay up with the fevered pace of the sky.
Back on the train, though, the weather brightened, and the last seven hour stretch, up into Washinton and through to Tacoma, was mostly lit with sun. The thick forests shone damp, and the Columbia swirled brightly. Up through Salem, and Portland, and Olympia, and into the station here in Tacoma.
Judy is....a second cousin? I think that's right, but I'm not sure. She recognized me, though, as I pulled my pack off the train, and tonight I'm at her house. Tomorrow she's going to show me around town, walk me down the bay and such, and then Thursday I'll head out to the actual coast.
To officially begin.

Four Days Out

2008-04-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

Getting close now. The bag is packed. The ticket's been bought.
Tomorrow my parents are driving me up to Glenwood Springs to hit Amtrak, and I'm taking the train all the way out to Sacramento. A big landslide a few weeks ago knocked out part of the track north of there, up into Oregon, so I'll get on a bus until Eugene before getting back on the train. I'll get off in Tacoma, where some relatives of ours live and stay the night with them, and then I'll get a ride down through Olympia and out west to the coast the next day. The place I have my eye on is called Ocean City, but I could end up somewhere else. As long as I get to the ocean I'll be happy. And then I start walking.
The idea for the walk didn't hit me all at once. About a year ago I started out on a walking trip and I had no idea how long I'd be gone. A week, maybe, or two. Or three. I thought I might hitch some, might catch a bus and head east. But I walked twenty five miles the first day with no training under my belt, and I threw up my thumb the next morning and got a ride home. Forget walking, I told myself. Too slow, and painful. Stick to driving, or biking, or roller-blading. But don't walk.
Somewhere, though, the idea crawled, slowly, back into my head. I don't know when, exactly, or how I thought of doing the thing barefoot, but I started walking at night. Out to the high school, around the track, up the sidewalks under the lights. I filled my backpack with rice and National Geographics. And the plans started forming.
So tomorrow I'll be gone, streaking away to the west, and in a few days I'll stick my foot in the water and turn around. I don't know what I'll find. Don't know how my feet will hold up. Don't know how many packs of Top Ramon it'll take to keep me going. But it'll work out.
On my last night in Canon, on my walk through town I ran into a stray, black cat. He ran up and rubbed himself on my leg and I scratched him while he looked up at me with his glowing, green rings of eyes. I've never been superstitious. But I think that the world provides, that the wind will be behind me and that the road will keep running out in front to show the way. And I think that if you can befriend an omen, or if it befriends you, trots up and rubs your leg, let's say, then you don't have anything to worry about.