Lyman

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.