Kosciusko, Mississippi Natchez Trace

It is already touching 100 degrees as a norm before noon. I am the sour smell that is implied in the music of old African adventure films. As I walk my shirt billows vapors that bring me back to being a child shovel operator for my uncle's circus. Even then, I never smelled so foul so fast. Often I find I try to breath without using my nose. My white shirt is an used tea bag that never is dry. I am the horse that is ridden hard an never put away. Somehow this is agreeable to me. I am healthy and strong - but I need a warning label for those that approach me, or a week in a bath. I eat alot of garlic to help ward off the ticks. I am warding off the state.
The creeks have just recently become putrid brown bog holes that wander nowhere. There has been no rain to speak of. Creeks have become water that I can not filter without the intense labor of pouring it through sand in my sock first just to begin the cleaning process for my filter. It is water that makes me no cleaner when I splash it under my arms. When I walk through briar and the never ending shore of posion ivy to contemplate the rotten water, the brown water moves from underneath. Gators? Turtles? Snakes? I watch my limbs like a nervous deer. I have been warned that the now breeding gators have been know to attack many. I suck on a smooth stone, while I count down the miles to another town off the Trace. Today I mailed out five pounds of sweater and a sleeping bag. Five pounds of water will take its place.
I have been on the Natchez Trace for weeks, maybe even a month. Days and weeks become a long days broken only by camps I forget easily unless an armadillo tries to climb in my pack, or some other form of nature braves my small tent in the woods. I have seen alot of creatures I have never seen before. I sleep with them. I swim with them. It seems they all bite but they are self assure, and save that response until last resort. Everything is bigger than normal; bigger than photographs I have seen in books. Spiders the size of apples climb around on my tent looking for prey. They are so large that I hear them when they jump down onto the leaves. They never run from me, rather they turn and consider. I have learned to empty my boots in the morning. It is Honduras all over again except now I am alone. No other paratroopers will throw me a knife or rifle if the living water pulls me in. I bath with a long knife unsheathed in water that I can see through. Still, I comb every blade of grass. Each rock is questioned, reconsidered.
The Trace is a five hundred mile national park more than a parkway. What began as a native hunter's path hundreds of years ago has become a healing, and peaceful forested roadway from Nashville TN to Natchez, Mississippi. I have walked it for over two hundred miles since I picked it up by Summertown, TN. When my food gets low, or I just miss the company of the locals I break from the Trace and step into towns I've never seen. The people in Mississippi have been in a race to see who can give or do the most for this stranger. I have yet to pass a picnic without being invited. Trucks stop to give me bottles of water. It is refreshing to see so many faces eager to smile, laugh, and hear about the nation I am coming to know. The last town that I came through before Kosciousko, the birthplace of Oprah Winfrey, was French Camp. I stayed in the historic village of collected log cabins, military history, and great people for two nights. It was another town that was hard to leave. Keith Collier who lives at French Camp quickly became a good friend. I was given a old log cabin to sleep in that was as cozy as a tent..not much bigger. It was a great gift. During the hot evenings Keith and I sat under the porch fans talking about the Creator, love, walking, and just enjoying the moment as we rocked back in time to the sound of fan blades cutting air. Keith shared his family as he shared his food. It takes time to learn to listen. Slowly I am educated. Keith became another thread that sewed new memories into my journal. Already there are so many towns I want to reopen to. Already there are a hundred faces that rework their words as I walk. Every one of them make my pack a little a tad lighter. When I am tired I sit and listen. That is why I am under the gum tree in 102 degrees of vibrating heat smiling. A long time ago I stopped walking alone.