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.
