Day Forty-Seven, Bedraggled

I climbed out of my tent and into a rain. I was soggy to the shorts. A few cyclists rode by up above. None of them made any greeting. I at my dried fruit and it did not make me poopy. It did make me hungry, though. It was to be the last food I had for another twenty miles.

Or further. I don't really know. I walk and don't ask questions. Four or five miles up the road I managed to latch onto the old highway, now a sort of frontage road. As promised, it took me all the way to Drummond, Montana. I paid a price though. It was an uphill run. More so than the expressway. It runs further along up the hillside and is on the other side of the river. It carries you from valley to valley over high hills, where you can look straight down at the river. In the lowlands there were skeeterbugs. In their hundred-thousands.

And it was raining, then hot, then raining again. My shorts had started chafe. Lightning bounced off the hills all around me and I was starting to get all shivery. And I was hungry, dammit. Half starved to death. Gaunt, a shadow of a man. It is a strange feeling being hungry in an unfamiliar land. It rather saps your will. It weakens your thighs and sends painful cramps across the back of your hands. It makes you wonder just what in life brought you to this. It makes you a little lonesome.

I must say I staggered into Drummond. It was some distance off my road. Another mile or two and you would have found me collapsed in a skeetery ditch. Or in my tent with just enough water and nothing at all to eat. I was worried that if I stopped I would never get going again.

I slid into a tavern and ordered a Coke. The shivers had settled in. I got a burger but I was too hungry to eat. I talked to the bartender Jim. He looked a bit like Larry the Cable Guy and did not object when I told him so. He is something of a wanderer too, but he always winds up back in Montana. I know how he feels. It feels like I have been in this state forever, and I entertain but slim hopes of ever getting out alive.

Don't pity me, for Heaven's sake. I brought this on myself. And I know I overdramatise. I still tend to think I might die. No great loss to anyone but me, but I am sure I would take it personally.

I wound up spending the night in a motel. I may wind up spending two. I cannot afford it but I am beat to shit. Do please forgive that expression. I don't have the gifts to better describe exactly how I am feeling.

I have too some decisions to make about which road to take from here. There's a scenic route through the mountains and a few old ghost towns. It would take me all the way to Butte. But it means going up and over some mountains I would otherwise avoid. The option is to climb back on the interstate. I am told that's a downhill run.

Though I can't see how it possibly could be. I have been seeing Rocky Moutains since I was two days outside of Spokane, but I don't think I have seen them yet. But I think Butte is at or about the continental divide, which means eighty miles straight uphill. What happens then I couldn't tell you. Maybe I'll be tougher by then.

The hills around here are great, by the way. They are shaped like mountains but there is no snow on them. That could just be because it is so blasted hot. They are here made of limestone, not that crumbly old basalt, so the cliffs are sharper and more dramatic. There is more grass than sagebrush between the pines, so it looks just a little bit golf coursey. I have been walking uphill. Arlee, Montana, where I was kidnapped by cultists, sits at about 3200 feet. Stevens pass was only about 4000 feet. Butte sits at about 5500 and I think the pass is another thousand feet higher than that.

Walking uphill really tires me out, but not in any obvious way. I only notice the really steep grades. Anything less than four percent or so just makes me tired, without my ever being sure why. I should mention that it is now one in the afternoon the next day, and I am still in Drummond. I believe I must be the slowest walker across America ever.

But I have other gifts. It is only for us to discover them.

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