Blackfoot

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.