Day Thirty-Seven, Reserved

Find me now, not shivering in my tent but seated comfortably on my backpack, by the river in the afternoon sun. I thought I'd celebrate my first ten miles by soaking my feet and enjoying two-and-a-quarter pounds of water. But I like it here. I'm staying.

The water seems slower and deeper here. The river looks like a lake. It is still running wide, a convenience for me. Ordinarily I would have to fight my way through fifty yards of brush get to the water. Now it's only twenty feet of mud.

I wonder who else knows about this place. I see a beer can or two. You'd have to live around here. There's just a gap in the guardrail around a sharp bend and a road leading down to the water's edge. When I arrived there was a deer here. I had rather hoped she'd stay. But she jumped in the water and swam away. Deer are shy around me.

I am often impressed by the way deer move. They take three or four steps then spring into the air. I've seen them leap ditches and fences. And they can swim. And it all seems so effortless. I wish I were a deer.

Hunters kill 90,000 deer a year in Montana. I got that from a placemat. I figure another ten or twenty thousand go to poachers and maybe two or three hundred thousand more are hit by cars. But there seems to be plenty of them. A few too many, perhaps.

"Why would the goddamn fed'ral government," an old man asked me, "spend money to reintroduce a species it took the settlers 150 years to wipe out?"

He was unhappy about wolves. They were spoiling his elk hunting. I've got to say, I haven't seen any elk. Or any wolves, for that matter. But I remember seeing this documentary about the return of wolves to Yellowstone. It was a beautiful success. It was this whole Circle of Life thing. Nature regained her balance. There were fewer deer so there were more plants so there were more bugs so there were more birds so there were more foxes and so on. They showed the before and after pictures. A whole section of river went from wasteland to Eden.

Now it could just be more PBS propaganda. It could be there's more to the story. But it got me thinking we ought to reintroduce wolves everywhere. From Manhattan to Hollywood, California. Everywhere. It would put a new bloom on things.

And they seem to have been having better luck with their herd of bighorn sheep, though the ones I saw looked very much like goats. I kind of like seeing animals brought back from the brink of extinction. I'd love to see buffalo thundering o'er the praire in herds ten-thousand strong.

You know what I really miss? The megafauna. Not so very many years ago you could see moles the size of school buses and pigs the size of barns. And big hairy elephants with huge curling tusks. I'd like to see them brought back.

Now there's a reason Walk Across America. I'm doing it to create a public demand for the restoration of the megafauna.

And for World Peace. And for Cannabis Reform. And for anyone unhappy anywhere.

I have to walk three hours straight now if I am going to make this into a reasonable day. I'm tempted to tent right here. Across the water is a mountain of the local variety, dotted with tough little pines. All the hills I've passed since Wenatchee are skirted with crumbled rock, as they slowly cave in on themselves.

I am well fed. The nice lady at the hotel bought me dinner and another nice lady bought me lunch. I wish I could gather up all the nice ladies and give them a great big hug. It is nice when people believe in you. I wish I were better worth it.

But with all due respect to to the good citizens of Wild Horse Plains and Paradise, Montana, I can't help feeling I am in the middle of nowhere. I made the mistake of looking at my map of Montana this morning. It was like a punch in the gut. This place is huge and it just keeps getting hotter and dryer and the towns keep getting further apart.

And it is hilly. In fact, the very name "Montana" comes from the Latin word for "shin splints."

It is an awfully pretty road I've been walking on. There are lots of trains going by. And by my motel, but I didn't mind. I took three showers and a bath. They put those sand papery no-slip stickers on motel tubs these days. They abraded my tender bottom.

And on that bright note it's back on the road. I am trying to wean myself off sunscreen. It's expensive and it's goopy and it whitens my beard. I am working on a farmer tan.

*********

Find me now in my tent. It's ten p.m. I did walk for three straight hours. So I got in my twenty, or a little bit more. I've got no reason to be ashamed. I've still got red spots all over my legs but I feel clean all over. I think everyone should have a bath every now and then. You gain a certain confidence when you have soft and manageable hair.

The road I'm on just kept getting prettier. It is my favoritest stretch of road yet. A gentle upgrade with long downhill runs. There was no shoulder to speak of. But it was easy to step off the road when I had to and traffic was not too too bad. And around every corner was a new kind of view. Sometimes one view can get boring.

And near the end of the day I met Harold Shaw. I confess he was not a surprise. Since Idaho people have been telling me, "You've got to meet this guy." No one told me why. I just took it on faith they had my best interests at heart.

Mr. Shaw runs the Perma Store in Perma, Montana. The Perma Store is Perma, Montana. Harold Shaw's cabin is next door. When I got there the Perma Store was closed. I loitered outside his cabin for a while, hoping to upset his dog. When that didn't work I shouted hello. I tried to sound like a nice man.

An old man came out and he looked mean as hell. He was rumpled and looked a bit sleepy. His front teeth were missing and he glared at me. I asked him to reopen his store.

"I walked across America once," he tells me matter-of-factly. "A long time ago when I got out of the Army." The Army didn't have exit counselling back then. "You spent three years learning how to kill people and then they just sent you home."

He took off walking from Greensboro, South Carolina and walked clean across America, accepting no rides. When he was jailed for vagrancy he would have to hitch hike back to where they had picked him up so he could start again. I told him I had stayed in a motel last night. He told me that was cheating. He was laughing though and understood when I told him about my two-hour bath.

"I had about three dollars on me. I ate nothing but Dinty Moore beef stew. God, I was sick of that stuff."

I told him I had lived many years in Japan. "You ought to have stayed there," he said. "Japan is a great country. America is going to hell. There are just so goddamned many idiots. The cities are full of them."

"People don't know how to do things anymore. All they can do is talk." I told him he was describing me to perfection. "But you are learning," he said.

I told him I have loved two women named Shaw. The first one broke my heart in two, and the other quartered it. At least one of those was my fault. I wondered at the resounding hurt you can cause when you're over your head. It makes you doubt the very goodness of your nature.

"Hm," said Harold. He was not impressed. He seemed to be laughing at me. I told him I wished I could spend more time with him. I felt he could teach me things.

"It's all bullshit." He spoke of his wisdom. He taught me the Meaning of Life. And he turmed me on to a great place to camp, "a mile and a half up the road."

And it was a mile and a half. Precisely. Harold Shaw is a walker and he understands. People in cars will say a mile and a half when they really mean fifteen.

And it is the best campsite I have ever had. More than that it is my dream home. Seriously. I have seen this place in dreams. Many dreams. Dreams I have had for years. It is a broad stretch of grass stretching from the highway down to the river. There is a railroad running below and there are high rock cliffs all around. The shadows shift with the angle of the sun. The view is constantly changing. And it's not quite desert or mountains or forest. It's some special mix of all three.

And it's for sale. I don't know how many spectacular river-front acres and a genuine log cabin. Lot's of folks live in log cabins in Montana. It's not a pose lime at home, But this one is rougher. It uses bigger logs. It has got to have been here for years. There are even slit windows which would be very practical for shooting a rifle out of.

There too is a root cellar, cut into a bank and of the same sturdy construction. I wouldn't live in either one. I would restore the cabin for the free use of all passing walkers, and cyclists on a case-by-case basis.

I would build a small house with a lot of windows and a good porch and I would spend the rest of my life playing my banjo and looking at the view. I was born to live on this piece of land. I absolutely love it here.

I don't know what they are asking but I can' t afford it. And I ain't sure I am allowed to buy. This is reservation land. I think you have to be an Indian.

I wish I were an Indian.


IN MONTANA you can choose from dozens of different number plates for your car. You can celebrate bow hunting or bass fishing or MSU, all for a small extra fee. A clear favorite on the reservation commemorates the Little Big Horn.

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