Four Days Out

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.