Three Legs Left To Stand On

The first leg of the walk is now contained in journals, memories, photographs, new friends that send still notes, and the skeletons of four pairs of slaughtered boots. Basecamp Betty is headed north toward her new home in Minn. after dropping off another one of my tents to see me through the nocturnal heat, and taking some gear away that I will now try to live without. My pack looks fatter somehow. I tell myself that warm air expands. Next month it will be one year of walking(counting the first two months of New England). After a year of living in the woods, under overpasses, behind old barns, wedged up by the hedge in and out of New York, I have learned that my pack just doesn't do skinny well. Still, I have hope for my big hipped friend in eventually lose an inch or two.

The eastern leg of the walk was the longest portion of the walk I sketched, and then brought to life. As it looks now,I will head into Texas and then break north into Oklahoma. As the weather permits, I will continue northwest toward the Dakota Territory. Before snow falls I will not make it. Even if I do, there is no way I will get south again without having a one man Donner party as I head into the Rockies. In my head I had the idea of contributing my services where needed to one of the northweatern Indian reservations in trade for two hots and a cot through the winter. I could work on the book, teach, cut wood or patch roofs, study the language of the people I live with, and expand my perception of what this life really is all about. Everything on the walk has come along at the perfect time. Relaxing my hand on the reins, I know that my feet will bring me to where I am supposed to be. When the weather gets the hard chill with white promise I will bend my road toward the southwest (unless a more favorable road comes to the horizon of the north).
Last year I pushed my flesh through winter. In the midwest I will be surrounded by a world I do not know, winter's I have only read about--and more land in the mile to man ratio than I can safely traverse in feet of snow. Without a sled loaded with serious support equipment I would be burning journal pages to stay warm. I would be burning the walk. I will travel across the southwestern sand until the spring allows me to return to walking north. The walk is a 'W' across America ending on the Washington coast. I don't have to die though to insure a perfect letter. Already, as the soles of my new shoes stick to the searing tarmac, I know that winter is coming. The hands of the days do not reach up as far into the evening hours. Young birds are practicing flight as if it matters. Bull gators croak less into the night. Stores are beginning to package up pencils and rainbow pens like they are again selling them for the first time.