Day Seventeen, An Ill Wind

I woke up at five-thirty to a dog barking from the cliff right above my tent. I couldn't imagine what he was doing up there, so many miles from anywhere. Most dogs like their comforts, I thought. Most dogs have more sense. But he was mad as hell at something, either at me or the world in general. The sound of his own voice echoing off the rocks made him madder still.

Funny thing is, though I recognised the voice of a smallish dog, he was speaking a language I had never heard before. He was speaking coyote. I decided to go back to sleep. If he came down and started chewing on my tent, I would worry about that then. I wasn't going to confront him. After an hour he began to get hoarse. I woke up again at eight-thirty.

Which as you know means I wasn't back on the road until ten, barely better than motel time. I hiked half a mile to the dry falls interptetive center, a beautiful modern building, perched on the edge of a cliff. What an interesting place. They have a number of displays and video presentations explaining how, at some point in the late ice age, a big old ice dam formed in Montana and created a huge lake. After a few years, the water got tired of being all dammed up and let loose with the Missoula Flood. It sent hundreds of millions of gallons blasting across the land at sixty miles per and pretty much annihilated the western half of what is now Washington State. It carved all the rock cliffs I am so fond of and is responsible for all our good farm land.

This happened almost instantly and not so many years ago. I think there were people here then. And really big sloths. The guy that figured all this out was a geologist called Bretz. All the other geologists spent forty years laughing at him and calling him names and otherwise endeavoring to make him feel poorly about himself. Then when he was ninety they sent him a telegram admitting he was right. I hope he told them to go F themselves.

A ranger there told me that yes, coyotes do bark, usually when they misplace their pups. The nice lady at the shop gave me a free root beer because I am Walking Across America. I think she was a Republican. I have to learn to stop talking politics until I get to Manhattan.

From their I hiked a few miles to Coulee City which was smaller than I imagined it. I arrived at noon, just in time to hear What a Friend We Have in Jesus played several times through on electronic church bells. I had lunch and met a nice man named Jerry, a retired electrical engineer. Years ago he rode his bicycle from Portland to San Francisco. "When you get old," he told me, "don't brag about this trip too much. People will get sick of listening to your stories."

I heard him, I did, and I understood, but I think people are going to have to get used to it. Of course, there are other things I hope to accomplish after this. I will brag about them, too. Sort of mix it up a little. Keep things fresh.

Jerry jumped in his car and scouted the next twenty miles of road for me. I am a back on highway two in a fairly unpopulated part of the state and am a little concerned about food and water sources. "Nothing until Wilbur," he told me. I should reach there tomorrow afternoon.

My feet are hurting in new and exotic ways, and the road moved steadily uphill. It was still a nice walk. It isn't too hot and every now and then one brave cloud would block out the sun over a thousand acres. A wind came up and blew from behind me. It didn't help but I thought it was nice.

But as I walked the wind got stronger and stronger until it blew at upwards of twenty miles an hour, mostly from the west but now and again a rogue draft would catch me sideways and knock me half off my feet. I finally stopped, some five miles west of Almira, thinking a low spot in a fallow field would offer me some protection. It didn't. This is the first time I have used my tent pegs. I have often thought of discarding them. But they are now all that prevents me from being blown forever away.

MET: Two deer, as I was leaving my campsite in the morning. They came out of the scrub fifteen paces away and lookex at me, ears up, as if to say, "Don't you know you're not supposed to camp here?"

And a white-bearded vagrant on a bicycle, riding from Missouri to Seattle to visit his son. He called to me when I was in my tent. I thought he was the farmer come to yell at me. He told me we are in the age of the mark of the beast and not to be shy about dumpster diving. Safeway, he says, is best.

HEARD: Just now, coyotes howling.

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