Friday, October 23, 1998: Arkansas River, one mile east of Pierceville
Every single town that I have walked through in Kansas has an enormous grain elevator next to the railroad tracks. I have become very in tune with determining the distance to a town by looking at its grain elevator. Walking the dirt roads of southwest Kansas has become all about survival and the weight of my pack. You can't always depend on finding a farm house once you leave Hwy 50, so the distance between me and the grain elevator is often times the distance between me and the next place I can get water and sometimes food. Water and food determine the weight of my pack, and the weight of my pack determines how far I can travel that day. It is quite an interesting way to live.
The walk to Pierceville was pleasant. The weather was perfect, and there was a dirt road that followed the railroad tracks the whole way. I put three pennies on the tracks like I did when I was a boy, but I couldn't find them after the train went by.
At Pierceville, the dirt road ended. It was time to stop walking for the day and do the customary walk one mile south to the river. I stopped at the grain elevator and asked some locals if there were any back roads that follow the river east. There aren't any. So I walked south to the bridge, followed a cow path one mile east, and tonight I have beach front property on the Arkansas River. My campsite is one mile away from any road and on a sand bar. The sunset on the river is so beautiful tonight, and the geese continue to fly south over my head, like they have all day, in perfect V formations.
Saturday, October 24, 1998: four miles west of Cimarron
The coyotes woke me up last night. They must have killed something really good to eat. The farmers around here shoot them, not so much to protect their animals, but because the coyotes dig holes in their fields that damage farm machinery if they drive through them.
It's a dreary morning today. The sky is gray all around me without a speck of blue in it. Autumn Saturday mornings out here always put me in a melancholy state. They always remind me of my first year of college at Iowa State and going to the football games. Iowa State would rarely win, but we had been conditioned not to expect them to. It was just fun to go to the tailgate parties and the game with friends. Those were fun days a long time ago. I haven't been in the Midwest in the fall since then, and I would imagine that it is the particular feel of Midwest autumn weather that causes the melancholy. The air didn't feel this way in Boulder and certainly not in Los Angeles. It must be the certain barometric pressure that Saturdays have in this region.
Across the river and one mile north, I can see the trucks traveling on Hwy 50, and it provides me with a decision this morning. I can put on my sandles, wade across the river, and walk one mile north through a harvested corn field to the highway. I can continue east on the cow path (and who knows what else) five miles to the next bridge, or I can walk one mile west back to the bridge that leads to Pierceville. No, only under extreme circumstances is walking west ever an option. I will try cow path east, and hopefully I wont be shot by a near sighted hunter who might mistake a man carrying a blue backpack for a deer.
I walked on through a field on the cow path until I heard a shotgun fired. At that point, I went straight south towards a strip of telephone poles that I could see in the distance, which meant dirt road to me. This section of Hwy 50 runs southeast, whereas all the dirt roads run directly north/south or east/west. Although it means more miles, walking down the middle of a dirt road, on a squared plus b squared, is always so much more quiet and peaceful than walking on the shoulders of c squared. The hypotenuse has too much traffic.
I followed that road east for at least sixteen miles--past Charleston, past Ingalls, and about four miles from Cimarron. I saw less than ten cars (well, I guess they were all pickup trucks except one) all day. The plan is to get up early tomorrow and walk into Cimarron to get me some churchin'.
Sunday October 25, 1998: near Howell
I walked into Cimarron today. I didn't get there until 11:30 am, I guess I will have to try for church next Sunday. The girl working at the Conoco station told me that a woman came in yesterday looking for a guy with a beard who is carrying a large backpack. I laughed. I know that it was Jill from Garden City. She probably drove out on her day off to bring me some food. While I was in Garden City, she was always trying to get me to eat more. I tried to call her, but no one was home.
The people of Cimarron were kind. I had Kansas points and waves all over main street. Small town America at its best. Cimarron (if you are a local, you pronounce it simmerin' and say it in as close to one syllable as possible) got its name as the starting point of the shorter "dry route" of the Santa Fe Trail. Here the trail divided, one branch headed directly southwest, the other followed the Arkansas River to La Junta, CO. If you took the Cimarron route, you had to travel sixty miles without a water source and were subject to more Indian attacks. The Mexicans called it Jornada del Muerte--the journey of death. Despite the danger, the Cimarron route was actually used the most.
I walked ten miles past Cimarron. There was a dirt road that followed the railroad tracks southeast to a little town called Howell. I love it when I find those. The railroad tracks are always the shortest and most direct route to a town. There has to be a side road next to them though. Walking the tracks is too hard on the ankles.
Monday Oct 26: Dodge City
I made it to Dodge City. My first stop was a pancake house, my second was the Boot Hill Museum. The girl working at the museum said, "You must be Tom." She told me that I had been the topic of conversation this morning and that Jill wants me to call her collect when I get to the museum. I called, and she wants me to come back to Garden City and stay with them longer. I am going to spend the day here in Dodge and call her back around 5:00 pm. It would be nice to sleep in a bed for a couple of nights, and she said that I would be welcome to use her car while she is at work.
It is funny, you know? Guys are always bringing this guy home to camp in their back yard or sleep on their couch, without asking their wife if it is okay with her. Then I go through the ritual of helping the wife to understand that I am not a serial killer, there is a purpose to what I do, and I mean them no harm. Once the trust is established, they start giving me the keys to their house and the keys to their car. It is unbelievable to me sometimes.
Tuesday, October 27, 1998: Garden City Community College
Back in Garden City now. I checked my e-mail and found out that Ray Quick's sixth graders in Canon City are putting together a care package for me. I told them they could send me anything except barbells, encyclopedia sets, large pumpkins, watermelons, or any furniture of any kind. That stuff is far too heavy.
Sunday November 1, 1998: Garden City
No good adventures lately, I'm just waiting for the water to stop falling from the sky. There has been 48 hours of continuous rain, and the Arkansas River that I have been following is flooding. They have declared a state of emergency east of here--right where I'm heading toward. I am so glad that I have a home to live in, with some very nice people who have become very good friends of mine. One day the rain will stop, and I will get a ride back to Dodge City and continue east.
Jon and Jill have a daughter (Jara) who is eight and a son (Sean) who is four, so yesterday was filled with Halloween stuff--family style. Carving pumpkins, taking the kids to a haunted house at the college and trick-or-treating, of course.
Wednesday, November 11, 1998: Garden City
Frightful weather (it snowed on Monday) and being sick with a really bad cold have kept me from walking for over a week now. The past four days have been spent laying on the couch in the basement, sleeping, coughing, and watching TV in a daze. I am so sick of television. I can't take it any more. If there is nothing on HBO in the day, all you are left with is sleazy talk shows or reruns of Beverly Hills 90210, MASH, and Miami Vice. Can you believe that Miami Vice is in syndication? I would have thought that those reels would be locked in some type of permanent storage. The most disturbing thing is that I have actually looked forward to seeing what will happen next in the lives of Brenda, Kelly, Brandon, and Dillon. Anyway, it hasn't been fun, but I have felt so drained that it's all I could do. I should have been reading, but it's so hard to concentrate when you feel like that. It's easier to let the TV do the thinking for you. I feel better today, and I can't wait to get back on the road.
It has been getting very cold here in Kansas. A girl that I met last year while walking in Oregon, Melissa, is sending me her -20 degree sleeping bag to borrow. Mine is rated at 15 degrees, so I should be much happier in a -20 bag. I don't know who rates those things, but they must be numb or have a ridiculous amount of body hair, or possibly fur. When I have slept in my 15 degree bag in 30 degree weather with every piece of clothing I have on my body, the cold wakes me up in the middle of the night. That is the worst feeling, because there is nothing you can do except kick your legs to warm up your sleeping bag with the power of friction, and then try to get back to sleep before the heat wears off.
It is an interesting story how I met Melissa. She was bicycling from the Oregon coast to Colorado in the summer '97. At a campground in Sisters, OR, she met a very nice English couple who had sold their business at home and were now riding on a tandem bicycle from Costa Rica to Alaska. I had met them on the road a week earlier. They told her that when she sees a guy walking with a large pack to say, "hello" because it's Tom, and he's a "delightful chap" or something like that. So, I'm out in the middle of nowhere in the desolate ranchlands of central Oregon, and a girl rides by on a bicycle, turns around, and says, "Hey, are you Tom?" We had peanutbutter and honey sandwiches right there on the side of the road that day.
She rode on to the next town (Dayville) and to the church that we both had been told welcomed travelers. When I arrived at the church, she had dinner waiting for me. We couldn't travel together, though. She was doing forty to fifty miles a day, and I was doing fifteen. Although I haven't seen her since Oregon, we have been friends ever since. She now lives in San Francisco and is going to art school for computer animation.
