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I left Dave and Deb's showered and fed and in fairly high spirits. I had woken up early with their Jack Russell terrier's nose jammed in my eye. There are worse ways to start a day, I am certain. He was an ugly little thing. But he has a good heart and that's all that matters. I hope I can make the same claim. The llamas did not have much use for me but they are a nice beast to watch. They are at once dignified and ridiculous. I hope I can make the same claim.
I hiked up their gravel road a small piece and then it was over the fence and out onto the interstate. I was worried I would be trapped on the righthand side of the road until the next overpass but it was a weekend and traffic was light. I made the banzai crossing. This is both dangerous and highly illegal and if anyone asks me about it, I intend to lie.
This is not precisely a desert I was crossing, but it may just as well have been. Miles and miles of rolling hills, covered in yellow grass. Not a house, not a tree, not a friendly saloon for miles and miles and miles. I was ready for the dry and the ninety-degree heat. I was braced to haul all that water. What I did not expect was that the next twenty miles would take me almost straight uphill. And it weren't one of them sissy hills, either. The trucks weren't moving awfully much faster than I was.
At every bridge and overpass I would climb over the railing and make my way down the cliff to the cool underneath. There is usually a little shelf under there. But is is so dry in this country that the dirt has not compacted and is very hard to walk on. And where I usually find a few old beercans and some inspired graffiti, here I found rattlesnake skins a good meter long and the complete skeletons of a deer and a cat and what I guess must have been a coyote. It could just as well be me, I knew. If I disappear, look under the bridges.
Leave flowers.
It was all but dark when I arrived at the highway rest area where a well-meaning but thoroughly stupid man refused me permission to camp.
"The sprinklers come on at night," he said.
"I don't mind," said I.
"There are all kinds of snakes," he said.
"Bring 'em on," said I.
"It's against the rules."
"Bend 'em," I said.
"Now if you get you a Winnebago you can park here overnight."
"Brilliant. Please direct me to the nearest dealership. Gosh, I hope they're still open."
I should say that, in order to endure the hills and the heat, I find it useful to work myself into a bitter rage. It is not wholly in keeping with the spirit of this adventure, but getting angry helps. NFL lineman and some boxers do it. You take all your pain and you use it to make yourself stronger. But it leaves a karmic void. And it put that poor idiot with his squeaky voice in real physical danger.
I filled my waterbottles--Christ, they are heavy--and walked another mile up the highway. Then it was across a snaky section of ground, over the razor wire and onto a criminally lumpy patch of earth, directly beside a gravel farm road. I did not pester you with a long report of the day. I went directly to sleep.
Nine hours later it was back on the road, now with some awful blisters. I stopped at every available overpass and took ridiculously long breaks. I was low on food but I had enough water. At one point I took a nap. I had to spread out my tent to sleep on or I would have sunk into the dust.
It had been my plan to get very close to Hardin and put up my tent, but I had to quit earlier than that. It was another of those blasted thunderstorms. They scare the hell out of me. Have you ever seen lightning hit the gound? I mean the actual point of contact. Puts you in a reflective mood, I tell you. Good holy Jimminy.
I could have moved on when the storm passed. I should have; I was set up in a ditch. I was by this point on a smaller road but fairly exposed out there. But as it turned out I had to stay. One of my toes exploded.
"Surely toes don't explode," you say.
"They do. And stop calling me...."
"You mean you had a blister," you interrupt.
"There may have been a blister involved, but in the end, the fourth toe on my left foot exploded. Blammo. Guts everywhere."
"Gosh, that must have stung."
"It did, rather. Yes. Thank-you."
And still does. Like the very Dickens. Find me now at the very comfortable county library in Hardin, Montana. It still ain't quite noon. I was up at, get this, six o'clock, and it ain't just because I went to sleep early. Some woman at a farm a good half mile away was calling her dogs or her cows or her children to breakfast at 205 decibels. Their names are Megan and Emma, should you need that for your files.
Overnight my tent had covered itself with a thick layer of grasshoppers. They aren't cute anymore. Montana has incurred the Wrath of God, and yet I am the one who suffers. I wade through the buggers. They crunch underfoot. They plant their claws in my neck. They get between my backpack and spine and crawl up under my socks. Repent, all ye Montanans, for Judgement Day is nigh.
From here I ship out to Crow Agency, capital of the Crow Nations. Where everyone is glad to tell me I will be robbed and left for dead in a ditch. I am rather hoping they are wrong about that, but I post this now on the off chance they are right.
Remember me in legend and song.
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