Thermopolis,WY, A Church and a Prayer

No matter how beautiful the world is that is spinning around me, the rain does fall too hard when it comes or for too long, and the wind moves through me until true warmth is reduced to memory, and the small Zip-stove fire warming water for tea dallies toward a boil. I have slept a night here under this road in a concreate pipe that I can barely sit up in, and I been more than thankful for it.. Water dribbles in with the droan of the wind that roams about with the lions in the sage, around boulders, forever hungry. Behind my head I put my water jugs and tie three silks around my neck to slow a possible bite, while at my feet are my staples and tack. There are no trees to taunt a bear with my food bundle swinging above like a pendulum, so the food bag is a cork in the pipe near my feet till morning. Pepper spray for bears(for any threat) rests by my head. Pulling my face into a shard of fleece blanket I found in New Mexico before the bullets, before the spring, I think of dry feet to come, and the loves of this life that I have wandered out of...too perfectly. It is the season of prayer; the season of need(...the season of perpetual need). My heart has been too tight for weeks. I pray for the fist in my chest to open,to relax and my intentions decend like a cold balloon. I pray and then I can sleep easily. Some camps ease the wear of the day. Some camps are just snakes, stone and sand that make the heart hurt waiting for morning to come. Always I am thrilled when morning wanders into camp with new promise...and it is always the same promise. Another road has secrets to tell me, strangers to meet perhaps, a bit of red fabric blow into the bunchgrass that I can knot on my pack as if if it is worth a trade in gold, a shard of bone to shape with my knife to ease my need to create, and just maybe a voice will visit me along this next road that understands this walking, and we will talk until the key is turned off and I can not feel this pack on my shoulder or this cart cutting over a hundred pounds into my abs over countless mountains.

When I get to Thermopolis I am again a filter that can hold no more road in my shirt, in my pants. I pray for little things. A store to come with cart tires to replace the two worn through wheels on my cart. Kindness of a stranger. Hope for a flat to set my tent on rare green grass, and maybe some good words will come to my heart that will feed the spiritual part of me that is now as hungry as the flesh. The twin cart tires are torn open, and heels have left my shoes.
I have checked every shop coming into town to no avail. Evening falls as I pass the Open Bible Church. The lawn is being mowed by Ron Higgins. I ask if I could safely sleep in the park. "Yeah, you could sleep in the park for a free night in jail," says Charlie, a kind face leaning against an old pick-up outside the church.
Ron no sooner meets me than he offers to let me set camp outside the single story building he is mowing around. In ten minutes the offer has become a hotel room. "Really Ron, I just need a place to pop up my house. I happy having grass under me."
"You wouldn't take away my chance to give a blessing to you and your journey would you? Let me give this to you. That ground must get hard after a while?" Ron is smiling as we load his truck with my gear, and I am still amazed at the power of faith.
Every prayer I have planted has sprouted a harvest bigger that the piece of fruit I asked for. As we drive to the motel I mouth the words thank you to the ceiling of the truck.

All my clothes are washed in the sink and hung about like twenty camp ghost wearing socks and fleece, pants and shirts worn through past being soft. Too happy to sleep, I flop about on the bed and make four pots of tea without the need of a fire. When the sun comes up I am just coming down.

Cody is not far up the road I travel. 80 miles or so. Charlie told me about the four or five separate griz he has seen twenty miles up the road from here. I have worn the fear of bears down just as I did being afraid of jumping as a paratrooper in my army training. At first, as a young soldier, I thought today I am really going to die. And then I jumped and I began to see and live in color, no longer limited by my fear. Rubbed with my fingers long enough, this fear of the great grizzly has become much the same, And so I walk with eyes open in a new prayers in my mouth that taste like falling.