Fayetteville, TN

The cry of a cat came in the night. It wasn't a house cat. This is not my land. I step into water that is filled with unknowns. Large snappers fall purposely from logs. I stay in the shallows of the swamps when the water is dark tea. Where there are fish, there are creatures that feed on fish. Wish I researched how far north the big gators travel. Already I have seen foot long lizards running up the trees like black squirrels in the evening.

The sun is a hot fly that wants nothing more than to zip under the brim of my large hat and eat more of my lips. The tar of the flat roads is a mirror. I see the white line in my sleep. Blisters on my cheeks from days ago begin to turn away, leaving new skin. I may have to look like a bandit to save any face as westerly I walk.

Bears have made attacks in TN somewhere back in the direction I came from. I see clips from papers, but details are still being sorted. Some days, and in some ways it is 1880 all over again. Roads of tar become gravel through towns that broke their clocks years ago. Half a mile up a turn in the river away from the sound of cars and the big rigs, and I remember to pray at night. To walk America is to be forever a child just learning. I have no knowledge beyond the now, this piece of road is my whole world. The people down the road in front of me don't exist yet. I know yesterday, yet not the existance of the market around the bend that will heal a tongue that is glued to the bottom of my mouth. If I will get to eat tonight from something not made from powder, I do not know. My imagination is based on things I have seen, and what strangers tell me is all that I aim my feet toward in hope and faith. I was told recently how lucky I was to have so few worries. Yes, I am blessed. Still, the few worries I do have are life points boiled down. If I get an "F" in Life Sciences 101, I don't get to go home--ever.

Two days ago I was half surrounded by four large dogs extremely intent on taking me down. They did not want to just bite me. I was the fawn in the grass. They did not care if I yelled or flailed my sticks, (which I did to a very large degree). If I was a child I would have been killed. If I was without my sticks I would have been a simple exercise of destroying the intruder--me. Yet, I was not an intruder. I was walking down Rt. 64 and the four dogs came out of a yard that had a broken fence that never held them in. One dog was already head covered in blood. All of their eyes were dead and emotionless. Walking into traffic, I survived although I was a fright for hours, scared of what could have been, mad. Today, a police officer stopped me and inquired about my having trouble with dogs. We talked for ten minutes by the side of the road. He rubbed his arm where a dog attacked him.
In the backwoods man's best friend might not be your friend--or mine.