Day Eighteen, Devil Podiatry

There comes a time, really, when enough is absolutely enough. I mean, I am trying to stay positive about the whole experience. I have been willing to suffer for my art. But I have been working on the assumption that sooner or later my feet would get over their whining and their complaining and their out-and-out sabotage and toughen up and join the team. Haven't I been good to them? I've spent hundreds on shoes and outfitted them in the very best of sock. Hours a day I am babying them, cutting away the odd bit of dead flesh and soothing them with all manner of ointments and powders. I bandage them and tape them and swath them in moleskin and yet, what thanks do I get?

Treachery, cruel treachery, blisters upon blisters, knife wounds and heartache and pain. Puss and seepage and raw bloody stumps. Cracked heels and misaligned toes. Agonies adding up over miles and robbing me of a night's sleep. Gritted teeth and sweating temples and chills up and down my spine. And for what?

My feet aren't even my favorite body part. My hair is smooth and flowing and always looks good. My eyes are a piercing blue. My navel is deep; my shoulders are broad; my ears convey chimp-like wisdom. There are other bits I can spend hours with, that have brought me nothing but joy. Some bad advice here and there, sure, but I could always tell they had my best interests at heart.

It is not as if I am new to walking. I have been putting in an extra ten miles a day, six days a week for years. I've Walked Across America a dozen times in cities all around the world. I have always looked forward to a long healthy walk. It brings justification to my being alone.

So why now should my feet choose to betray me? Is it because I have an odd goal in mind? Is it because I am walking in more or less a straight line rather than in broad sweeping circles around my empty home? Is it because they are taking me away from something or to a place I dare not imagine? Or are they just being ornery?

No doubt many of you have good advice for me, hard-won knowledge from many a Sunday stroll. Frankly, I don't want to hear it. You'd be better off going into marriage counselling or putting your hand in a dogfight. This is between my feet and me and it won't be over until one of us is all but dead. Next time I meet a podiatrist I'm going to kick his ass on principle.

Twice.

In spite of it all I did put in some miles today, how many I cannot be certain. I guess I am in that three percent of America that Verizon, even on its most boastful days, does not claim to cover. Fear not, I haven't been mooshed or eaten. I am just somehow out of touch. It isn't the first time. It won't be the last. Bear with me in my obscurity.

I am guessing I am five miles outside of Creston, camped somewhat askew on the grassy slope of an irrigation ditch. I am visible to cars passing over the bridge, but they would have to know what to look for. It ain't a bad spot; I feel safe here. I can hear the howling of coyotes. The winds they promised did not come today. I am much better off without them.

I woke up early in the farmer's field and was on the road just after seven. It wasn't only my fear of being mutilated by a tractor or its rotating disk attachments that jarred me awake. It was in fact blasted hot. In my rush to pack up I took away a measure of his good topsoil, but not as much as I kept from blowing away the night before.

I had visions of an easy five or six mile walk to Almira, a hearty breakfast and a chance to rub shoulders with the locals. Alas, it wasn't to be. The road lead uphill, my feet were rebelling, and Almira, even after it appeared on the horizon, kept getting further away. When I finally did arrive there was no cafe and the local farmers were all too busy to entertain me. I wound up buying a root beer and a Snickers bar at a sort of tractor parts warehouse and eating alone under a tree.

But the tree was a blessing and a rare one, too. There aren't a whole lot of them out here. You can go miles, hours even, without seeing so much as one. Now and then you will see one somewhere out ahead. It is as often as not a mirage.

But this isn't a desert; there a miles of farms growing wheat and possibly potatoes. East of Wenatchee as the farms have blue signs, I guess put up by the state, telling you exactly what is in each field. Every one is different. One will say blueberries, then bosc pears, then asparagus, then potatoes, then wheat. All of it thriving and beautiful. It is the sort of place they liked to drag the Soviet premier to when he came visiting as if to say, "If you weren't such a godless commie, you could have all this too."

But here it's just wheat, for the most part, miles and miles of wheat. It's pretty in its way. The skies are huge and viewed from the right angle, the fields look like the softest green lawn. In the morning the
mountains I crossed to get here were still just visible on the horizon. In the afternoon I spent a diverting half hour watching a crop duster at work. He banks sharply and skims just over the ground in a sporty little yellow plane. I am sure it means working with dangerous chemicals. It is still a pretty cool way to make a living.

I didn't enjoy any of it as much as I should because of my blasted feet. When I got to Wilbur, a good-sized town, after a ten or twelve mile run I could barely walk at all. I had a hearty lunch, stripped off my frankly gruesome socks and lounged in a park for five hours. The idea was to put in another eight before turning in. I made it all of two and a half.

It was oppressively warm when I put up my tent. Now it is all but freezing. But tomorrow, they say, is another day. Sometimes I wish they'd shut the hell up.

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