Calhoun

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.