Prineville, OR (pop. 9,990)

Awaking to snow and the smell of cedar coming up from my layering of four shirts, I pull out from down comfort of my sleeping bag to the sounds of geese on the lake below. Pancakes are in my minds eye. I grin and squint at the first rays of sun in days. The campground is closed. It is no matter for I have no car to stall at the gate. My brake light that come in the evening is only a thought that says 'enough', 'rest'. It is too cold for the old ladies to walk their miniature dogs through the park and pucker their faces at me. Winter camp is free camp. This is the good fruit of winter coming down.
My legs moved fast to get here, away from Mitchell. They always move fast on their own accord when they have been slighted or worry; when they are running miles of rusted barb wire that is still as sharp as the signs, the never ending signs that have the words 'absolutely' and 'keep off' shoved together. One sign printed it out clearly on an old tree,"If you step on my land for anything in the next eleven miles I will have you arrested and fine you the max. by law $7,ooo. AND, I own the next eleven miles...both sides of the road. It was afternoon when I came to this sign. Picture Gorge just was completed in winding turns of sleet that bit the face and now the rain and wind were just reeving up to a hammer to make Oregon and Washington Coasts national disaster zones. I slept in a water ditch 4" deep on miniture islands of bunch grass and my foam pads, if I can call it sleeping. The compressed folded and released my tent over and over with me in it wearing earplugs. Big rigs blasting by on a road 2' away hitting me with a drumroll of slush. The food I bought in Mitchell in a store that has been a store since 1875 sold me hotdogs that expired 3 weeks ago, and bread that was a week past death and tinder dry. I tossed the other cartons I bought to save weight so I consumed some of the rotten food before I felt the knots enter me, spoil in me, and then I ran to every bit of sage brush with a white flag of toilet paper waving desperately behind me.
In Mitchell the postal service didn't like the name WhiteCrow, or the idea of a man walking across America, so the postal inspectors opened the box from Basecamp and sliced open all the zip-lock baggies of homemade peanut butter and oat cookies with a razor blade...then without taping their inflicted wounds, they re-taped the box. The large envelope from Lisa in Thermopolis, WY recieved a whole new large postal envelope after the labels were cut off the old, reapplied to the a new postal envelope before putting my now sliced open zip lock baggies of walnuts her mother included in the parcel for me...because we all know how much walnuts look like pot. Of course again nothing was taped up or any explaination offered. Some towns just don't pan out.