Day Two-Hundred-Twenty-Five, Nostalgia

Blisters defined the early days of this trip.  I walked my first thousand miles with a limp.  Or in some brand of pain.  You get used to it but it had some effect on my mood.

Walking is a sort of meditation.  You try to step out of yourself.  And let your mind wander to higher things.  You don't want to think about feet.  Or your odd aches or how hungry you are.  Or old loves forever gone.  Or those that keep threatening to come back again.  The first time hurt just enough.

I got a brand new blister today, a good one, one for the books.  On the seaward side of my left foot.  I don't know where it came from.  It just turned up, about three miles in.  My shoes are by now a bit worn.  I should have replaced them but I did not have the heart.  Or the cash.  I'd been too long indoors.

They've lasted longer than any pair I've had yet, though I've had this same pair once before.  They were made by the Merrell company.  They got them right this time.  But I cannot give them my full endorsement until some cash changes hands. 

Seriously.  If I could do this again I would arrange for some sponsorship.  I'm doing great things here.  There is no way I should have to buy my own shoes.  I don't know how one goes about lining that up.  I'm not sure I have the cheek.  I could have written and asked but they might have said no.  That would have done me in.  The only thing worse than being a corporate whore is being an unwanted corporate whore.

So I'm free to say their shoes gave me a blister.  A great big juicy one.  I've skewered it with my nose hair scissors.  I still managed twenty-one miles.  But I was limping a bit.  It coloured my mood.  Merrell should be ashamed of itself.

It was a nice walk in spite of things.  The weather was humid and hot.  There is not much to see on this stretch of road, just a great many trees.  Live oaks, I believe they are called.  Rather handsome, at that.  They keep their leaves all winter long.  Their acorns are comparatively puny.  And litter the roads like ball bearings.  They may yet break my neck.

I did as I'd hoped find a gas station.  There's been one every five miles.  But I couldn't be sure.  I loaded up on food when I got to the first.  Hostess Fruit Pies and sandwiches.  I've just finished one now.  Just in time to realise I should not be eating in my tent.

There may or may not be bears around here.  I am pretty close to the road.  But bears, like most right-thinking Americans, do enjoy a good sandwich.  The hobo I met a few days back had one come into his tent.  But he got away, uninjured.  "That's why I sleep in my boots."

I am camped near a narrow canal.  It may too be full of gators.  I'm like Marlin Perkins out here, surrounded on all sides.  There is in fact something out there now.  I don't know what it is.  I'm telling myself that it's a chipmunk so I can get some sleep.

Goodnight.

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Day Two-Hundred-Seventeen, Princesses and Peas

Gosh, but I miss my REI-brand self-inflating foam core air mattress.  If I misspell the odd word, if there are gaps in my logic, if my poetry sometimes falls flat, understand that I am typing all of this in my tent.  With my thumbs, no less, after having spent most of my day on the road.  That thin inch of cushion made all the difference.  It made me feel loved.

Not well loved, certainly, but every little bit helps.  I am still carting around its shrivelled corpse.  It is hard to say goodbye.  I am still sleeping on it, as a matter of fact.  I am not wholly sure why.  It does nothing to ease my weary bones.  It does not make typing any easier.

I was uncomfortable last night, at least I think I was.  I was asleep through most of it.  It was hard to get up in the morning.  I rely on that spring of foam rubber to sit me upright in bed.  Now I am forced to do a sit-up.  That is no way to start the day.

I did have some trouble falling asleep, and not because the ground was hard.  I was besieged by chirruping critters, some sort of chipmunk, I guess.  But I have my suspicions.  It could have been gators trying to lure me outside.

The truth is I don't know much about gators.  I may know more than you.  They like marshmallows and tuba music.  Look it up if you don't believe me.  And I know they are soulless killing machines, bent on my violent destruction.

I suppose that's all I need to know.  That and that they are good hiders.  Crafty masters of disguise.  They could be anywhere.  Even now.  Watching.  Waiting their chance.  Hook was misunderstood.

I was reflecting today.  The bears didn't get me when I walked through Montana.  I haven't been eaten by rattlesnakes.  Maybe my fears are all wrong.  But Florida has bears and snakes as well.  And man-eating poisonous toads.  And gators, of course.  The people are nice, but they're living right on the edge.

I woke up early.  I could have done with a Fruit Pie but it was a beautiful morning.  Warm with friendly clouds in the sky.  My pack felt a little heavy.  I did my best to ignore it but I was really hungry.  Starved when I got to Cottondale.  There was there nothing to eat.  But I had two biscuits at a gas station, with something called "chicken fried steak."

It is neither steak nor chicken.  It is thoroughly fried.  It made a fairly good breakfast.  Heavy, at any rate.  That's what I'm looking for.  I don't want the weight of the world on my back.  I want some of it in my belly.  It takes my mind off other things, like how blasted hungry I am. 

There was nowhere to sit down.  I sat outside, on my pack beside the front door.  And watched the people come and go, looking like some kind of hobo.  Everyone was kind.  They all said hello.  In lieu of giving me change.

I had to linger there for a while.  I collected Bible tracts.  It is heartening to see how interested folks are in my Personal Salvation.  I was just trying to charge my computer.  The battery is awful low.  I cannot in this instance blame Samsung.  I've been spending too much time walking.

And not enough plugged in.  I'm running on fumes.  I could do with an overnight charge.  But it was too nice a day not to be walking.  I headed for Marianna.

My new friend Shelley said there was a Waffle House there.  That'll put a spring in your step.  I covered eight miles in two hours.  That is a blistering pace.  The exercise, though, killed my appetite.  When I got there I wasn't hungry.  So I had only one biscuit to go with my hash browns and eggs and sausage and toast.  And pie. 

I tried to stay there as long as I could.  I needed some more time plugged in.  And I had already put in sixteen miles.  Four more make an honest day.  I wound up walking six more miles.  It took four just to get out of town.

Big place, Marianna, Florida.  Population six-thousand or so.  You can tell it has been there a while, almost two-hundred years.  There are some beautiful houses on main street.  It's a five-lane highway now.  But they're still pretty and well maintained, despite the traffic noise.

There was a Civil War battle fought there.  It was late in the war.  The Union went down to free some slaves and make them join their army.  They were met by a gaggle of boys and old men and one or two wounded veterans.  Who got their shots in but they still lost.  It is probably for the best.  Well into the Twentieth Century they maintained the ugly habit of lynching people, but they don't do that any more.  That is also for the best.

I got out of town over a river and past a good-sized lake.  Clean, too.  You could see down to the bottom.  I did not see any gators.  I did see an enormous fish.  I don't know what kind it was.  It was not silvery; it had big scales.  It had your standard fishy shape and had to be four feet long.

Gosta keep them gators fed, I guess.

Find me now in a housing development some miles east of town.  They surveyed the place and bulldozed some roads and gave it up as a bad job.  It's all overgrown and somewhat spooky.  It would be a good place to race dirt bikes.  Or shoot off guns or drink underage beer.  I tucked myself deep in a thicket.  And spent half an hour pulling up weeds and clearing a spot for my tent.  It is still awfully lumpy and very hard.  Gosh, I miss my air mattress.

MARIANNA'S famous Motel Sandusky did not have one single guest.  Go figure.  Had I been so inclined I could have got a great deal there.

A LOT of people around here keep goats.  It is disturbing, given the rumours.

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