Tuesday, September 19, 2006

An Odyssey of Bumbling (Originally Printed in the Charleston Mercury)


I wanted to walk the United States.  I’d had the idea for nearly seven years.  Put one foot in the Atlantic and go until I dipped one in the Pacific.  Oh, the people I’d meet!  Oh, the adventures I’d have along the way!  Oh, what I’d learn about myself!

With a fifty pound rucksack on my back and a seven-foot Macedonian spear in my hand, I set out, last September, from Folly Beach for my Great American Adventure.

Four days and sixty miles later, I quit.

 

That blatant failure aside, I kept up with grandiose planning.  I came up with a reasonable substitute for the walk: canoeing the Mississippi.

The difference between “The Walk” and “The Paddle” was that I reduced my expectations to merely enjoying beauty and enjoying myself.  I didn’t make any requirements on time or distance.  If I went for three days and had enough, great; if I went for three months and made it to the Gulf, even better.

Having gone two months and 2180 miles on the Father of Waters, I can say that I not only more than met the expectations I had for “The Paddle”, but I ended up accomplishing those I had for “The Walk” as well.

It’s quite difficult to sum up a two month trip across the country, but the point that I always try to impart those who ask me about it is that we truly live in a remarkable country.  I can’t think of anywhere else on the globe where you can go the distance I did and not have a single bad run-in with someone.   Not only did I not have a single bad experience, but I was uniformly and graciously welcomed with open arms despite looking bizarrely haggard.

I spent most of the trip in sandals, blue basketball shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, a grossly oversized Bermuda hat with a hawk feather sticking in the brim, and broken sunglasses that I’d duct-taped back together.  As I did not shave during the trip, I discovered that my facial hair grows in a manner that I can only describe as puberty gone horribly wrong.

I have to admit, my machismo took a bit of a beating by people being so nice and friendly to me.  Somewhere deep down, I wanted people to be intimidated or scared of me, this wild man of the river, but in hindsight, the fact that I didn’t look wild so much as clownish probably had much to do with that.  People not only helped me whenever I asked for it, but came up to me just to find out what in the world, exactly, I was doing on the river in a canoe.  The following is a relevant passage from the journal I kept of the trip.


Day 29, June 14th

            My spirits were given quite a boost when I was visited by river "angels", if I might usurp the handle given to those that buoy Appalachian Trail hikers.  A couple came puttering up to me in a small yellow motorboat and offered me ice water, which I gratefully accepted.  We chatted for awhile and they kept saying how "great" it was that I'm doing this.  The woman remarked that that all the time for reflection must be fabulous for getting to know myself.

            I joked, "Yes, and for going crazy." 

            I continued, "What I've been a bit disturbed to discover, as I come from a long line of illustrious alcoholics, is that alcohol really helps out here."

            They raised their eyebrows.

            "Not continuously drinking, but, at the end of the day, a beer or two (I didn't mention '...or three or four or five...') loosens your body and raises flagging spirits."

            I could tell this mightily upset the woman, who I believe was waiting for some yogiistic, transcendental truth, not merely "beer's a helluva thing."

            Her husband, in an effort to steer the conversation, replied, "Well, it's been said that two drinks a day is good for you."

            "Oh yes.  My step-brother is a brain doctor and he called up my dad and gave him orders to have two glasses of wine a day... of course, he didn't specify the size of the glass so dad got around it by drinking out of vases."

            The man squirmed in his seat and his wife was simply and purely aghast.  As any struggling comedian should do, I gamely barreled on.

            "Of course, I'm kidding.  But, back in the 80's when soldiers in the Army were allowed to have two beers at lunch, they'd drink two pitchers, directly from the pitchers, so that they weren't in violation of the rule."

            Now he was aghast and she was pale and turning slightly blue from not breathing, which was quite an accomplishment because her mouth was so wide open she could have chewed on a few hours worth of air simply by closing it.

            Suffice it to say, we parted ways shortly thereafter, though only after they inquired as to my name and promised to pray for me; they did not specify as to whether they'd be praying for my safety on the trip or my dissolute soul.

            I was pretty down on Iowans and pretty up on Illini, since that's where the couple was from, but within five miles a muscular Iowan, who in his ball cap and sunglasses looked to be the spitting image of the Pittsburgh Steelers head coach, Bill Cowher, rode up on a waverunner and offered me a beer.  It was with great reluctance, as I was falling behind schedule, that I joyously accepted and we drifted and shot the bull for an hour.

            Dan, a fifty- year- old, puts my adventuring into the proper perspective.  First of all, he's a captain in the Fire Department, which is adventurous enough, but then he went on to tell me about boating the Missouri River, boating from Tampa to Key West in a gale, buying an airplane and flying to all 48 contiguous states (he's not finished yet), and nearly being arrested when he accidentally landed on a Special Forces helicopter runway (The "airport" on the map had the same last name as him so he thought he'd land and get a t-shirt.  He didn't notice the military designation on the map.).  He'd river angeled for a few people before, including a pair of 20 year old girls, one of whom said she was doing the trip "because my dad needed a good (ticking) off."  He gave me a couple more beers and two sodas and then headed home.  Iowa has thoroughly trounced Illinois.

 

            Of course, the humorous aspect of that day was a tad aberrant, but I had many wonderful experiences of the more mundane variety.  My favorite day on the entire trip involved one of these. 

            I’d passed through Little Falls, Minnesota, the home of Charles Lindbergh, and was making my way towards St. Cloud.  As the sun began to set, a storm came in from the west.  As it was still May and I was so far north, it was a bit chilly, so I had on my heavy duty Army gortex rain jacket and gortex pants.  Both were camouflaged.  As the stinging rain pelted me, I got to a dam.  There was no way for me to portage (carry the canoe and gear around the obstruction) in that weather, so I paddled to the shore and chained the canoe to an overhanging tree.

            There, next to the dam, was a farm, which consisted of a barn, farm house, and several sheds, all painted white.  Keeping my Stetson down low and looking at the ground to keep the wind-driven rain out of my eyes, I made my way to the front door and knocked.  An elderly woman came to the door, took a gander at me and her eyes got as big as saucers.  I took off my hat to let her get a good look at me and I hollered over the gale that I was just trying to get permission to set up camp.  She motioned me to the kitchen door.           

            As I got around to the kitchen door, her husband barked through the door, trying to figure out what exactly I wanted with them.  Yelling at the top of my lungs, I explained who I was and what I was doing, and, cautiously, he opened the door to me.  Though it was raining still, he came out and walked me over to where he thought it would be best for me to set up for the night, where I would be protected from the majority of the wind and rain.

            I thanked him and went back to the canoe to get my gear and as I lugged it ashore the old farmer returned.  He introduced himself as Alfred Kusterman and then, after asking if I’d eaten, offered to have his wife cook sausages for me.  I gratefully accepted, having burned up quite a few calories over the fifty miles I’d paddled that day, and we chatted as I set up the gear, the storm having blown past. 

            At a picnic table next to the house, as we watched the sun break through the clouds in time for a magnificent crimson sunset, Mr. and Mrs. Kusterman and I sat and talked, as I wolfed down the food she’d brought out for me, and, though we were nearly alien to each other, they being lifelong Minnesotans (and thus practically Canadians in my book) and me being a fourteenth generation South Carolinian, we were able to connect in an elemental way. 

           

            As the Roman tactician Vegetius said, “He who desires peace should prepare for war (‘Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum’).”  I was no fool.  I didn’t set out on the trip thinking everything would be hunky-dory.  I slept with my pistol by my side every night.  Considering how Terror and Amber Alerts, “if it bleeds it leads” journalism, and pop culture (Deliverance, Hostel) bombard us, it is no wonder that we tend to live our lives thoroughly convinced that every stranger is a possible psychopath. 

            I may not have sampled the entirety of this Great Land of ours, but what I take from my trip is that there is a severe disconnect between what we think others are like and how they really are.  We need not be afraid of our fellow Americans; wary certainly, but not afraid. 

            In ancient Greece, kindnesses shown to strangers were seen as prayers to the gods.  Having spent four years in the Army, of which for three and a half I was stationed overseas in Germany with deployments to Macedonia (FYROM) and Iraq, I can resolutely state that by that standard, these United States are holy country.

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