Date: 2004-07-22
From: Georgia

To: Maine
Miles today: 22.0
Weather: few clouds

Now it's tomorrow. July 22nd, to be exact. I awoke this morninggroggy from pain killers and beer, the former a necessity just to getme off the mountain yesterday, so bad was the pain with every step. The latter serving a necessary medicinal function, that of calming myfrantic wound-up speed freak Greyhound dog-on-the-run mind, whichcouldn¢t quite grasp WHY we were stopping. Hell, we'd done 180 miles inless than ten days, two of them measly 10-milers due to a sprainedankle. Which boils down to 160 miles in 7 days, 88 of them in just thelast four. Insane, by any standard. When I hooked up with Rooster and Ski Bum the other day, I expressed mygratitude and appreciation for being able to simply walk between them,to follow their pace. "Me, when I walk alone I just go and go. I haveno governor, no shut-off valve, no throttle and no basis forcomparison. So I hike fast and hard and kill myself in the doing." They nodded understandingly. Rooster moves at the ultimate cool pace. His whole demeanor is cool, unhurried. Here's a guy whose featherswould be very hard to ruffle. "I think subconsciously I'm trying tocatch up to Elly, the girl I started this hike with four months ago whois now already far into Maine." Sadly, this is true. I have no delusions about "catching" Elly, norwould I want to. But her electric pace shamed me horribly when Iarrived in Harper's Ferry, NJ to find that she'd been through there overa month ago, that she was #100 on the march. I was #410. I lie herein this bed in some funky motel where the satellite cable doesn't workand the shower doesn't drain and floods the room and there's no phonein the room, but I'm happy as a pig in shit to be here. I lie herebecause I tried hard to catch Elly, conceptually anyway, although mybruised feet might argue that point. It is an impossible task. I treat myself to a some HBO while I rest my feet. It's the onlychannel that's working. It's a film called "Lone Star" with atolerable cameo-like sprinkling of Mathew McConaughey and awhole lot of Chris Cooper, one of my favorite actors since he popped upin American Beauty. I like the film's setting, like Tucson or El Pasolikely or some border town out west. I recognize the palm treespainted white up to shoulder height and that dry light of the RioGrande, the bottles of Lone Star and the Negro Modelo. These thingsfeel like home to me. And then those shots of crossing over the bridgeinto Juarez like Dave and I that Christmas years ago driven down in byfriend Miguel "Gallo" Silva to the bus station for our long ride toMazatlan.A Mexican character says, "In Mexico we invented recycling," and Ilaugh. It's so very true. There's something I love about Texas, too. She's always been good tome, Davey Crockett's birthplace Ozona, for instance. Such good people.But there's that whole shiftiness to the border world, an atavistic yetnot unbrotherly realm, a queer, gun-toting Mafioso "family" of coyotes,corrupt small town politicians, Texas rangers and white hat-wearingdrug lords with helicopters and gold teeth."It's the old west down here boy," someone once told me when I was areporter in Bisbee, and then that warden of the DWI prison tossing me awarning in that veiled threat way, that if I probed anymore into thestory of one of his prisoner's accosting a high school girl, well, Imight just wind up in his prison some time, drunk or no, maybe a bottleplanted in my car, a bartender paid to slip me a mickey?Later, after a few phone calls to the West, I cry myself into anafternoon nap, lonesome for the desert dust of Arizona, Mexico,California, the dust and ocean sunsets that long ago crept into themarrow of my Boston-born bones and stuck there. I cry for Colby &Brina, for Jacob & Matthew, for Mom and Sis and Bruce, for Mary inTexas and Kathleen in Bisbee, for Harrod, sweet whale-hearted Harrod,and many more who will make if very hard to leave Hotel California, ifI ever do, to give it up for a return to my eastern roots. Exhausted,I cry out this journey, yearnful of family, and most of all desperateto feel love again. I am the luckiest man alive. I am the loneliestman. "What's the best thing you've ever done?" asked Rooster yesterday. "Iwrote a novel," I said. But I quickly followed with this: "For me,that was the best thing I did for me, but as for doing things forothers?" Whatchoo do, they asked, "Cared for the mentally retarded,was a friend to old people, lived and worked as a guide to a blindman." This after me saying how I've had a grand life, (Rooster, SkiBum and me seated atop Jacob's Ladder high above the Delaware River inNJ, all of us soaked to the bone from a half hour of torrential rainthat made a river of the trail). "If I dropped dead tomorrow I woulddie a happy man, a full man. And my belief in Heaven and God wouldcarry me through to the where Luci's gone, and Chris and Grandma, too."-RSMFor the full story of Rick's journey, visit Jigglebox.com