Day Forty-Eight, Stalled

I am still holed up in Drummond, Montana. Don't be ashamed of me. I just didn't have the strength to go on. It could happen to anyone.

Physically I ain't too bad off. I ain't had a blister for days. My thighs are a bit knotted from that last uphill run, but I've grown accustomed to that. I am a deep golden brown and do not get sunburned. My stomach is just a bit achy. I am somewhat poopy but I'll overcome. It is the poopiness which defines me.

I would like to take a moment to call out the manufacturers of something called "granola". Good God, what were they thinking? It makes you poopy, that's what it does, and they market this poison to backpackers? Has American business grown so cynical that it can just make people poopy and laugh all the way to the bank?

Spiritually, I'm something of a mess. I have been not a little afraid. Of what, precisely I cannot be sure. Life in a tent, I guess. I am not afraid of starving to death or falling down dead in a ditch. I am more afraid people will laugh at me after I do.

I had too the excuse of severe thunderstorms. It seems there are always severe thunderstorms. I find myself rather inconvenienced by severe thunderstorms. I do not object to being hit by lightning. I think it would be a cool way to die. And it is unambiguous. God himself wants you dead. Same goes for being eaten by a bear. I think it would be neat.

But I do get so uncomfortable in wet underpants. The rest of me dries out fairly quickly but they stay damp all day. I have always appreciated a toasty pair of underpants, right out of the drier. They make you feel loved. This is the opposite of that. Cold underpants make you feel despised.

So I thought a rest might do me some good. I could have planned it better, I know. I should have stuck at Orange Acres and asked them to let me sleep. Or at a motel with a swimming pool. Or a view.

I can look across the gravel parking lot and see the trains roll by. There is that great Big Sky. And mountains in the distance with snow on them. I don't think they are for me.

Though I came in the back way, Drummond is on the interstate. It is odd what that does to a town. It brings commerce; there are five restaurants and three hotels. I've stayed in two of them. But there is no big shiny truckstop or McDonald's franchise. Not many people stop by. Years ago everyone would have driven right through town. Now it is sort of desolate. Some folks stop for gas but there's the real sense of the world passing you by.

I did spend some quality time studying my map of Montana. I think I know a way out. Or at the very least to the Continental Divide, from which point it is all downhill.

Love James.

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