Mind and Body

3 Replies

I’ve been thinking about this entry for days. There’s a growing conflict between mind and body on this ﬂat, unending, prairie highway. I think it is born of necessity… small cerebral skirmishes to ease tension before the all out meltdown. (If this isn’t a metaphor for a mans life, what could be). I have walked no less than 23 miles a day for the past 7days. There have been a few days that eclipsed 30 or came very close. The body is fatigued, but it is the mind that is the real challenge. There isn’t much to do as you walk 10 hours a day. There is an urge to ﬂy away like the birds overhead and at my side … of course God has left that possibility only to my dreams. God left too much to my dreams. My mind fills with highs and lows, answers and questions, light and darkness. And all the time the body chugs on. We are such a fine piece of machinery. The legs keep moving and the feet keep pounding this endless highway. The mind drifts to a pain in the hip, and a plan ensues to change the way your feet strike. The sun begins to heat your head up, so you water down a bandana. A light headwind begins and you hurry your pace to beat what may grow terribly strong as the afternoon progresses. It is all about maintaining the machine for optimal performance, and to cross the ﬂattest piece of ground one could imagine… at only three miles an hour. Patience is on the table. I never had patience. It was something wise people like my father alluded to in their daily walk. Humbly I say, I know something about patience now. I wasn’t born with it and it didn’t come naturally, but it has nevertheless arrived! When options diminish we learn to outfox ourselves and keep those feet moving forward. It might be one of the grandest gifts given we humans, to walk. It is a place or state of being that allowed we thinkers to solve or create our problems since the dawn. You might attempt to cheat with ear buds and be carried away by the highs and lows of a Beethoven or a Leonard Cohen. This can only be temporary. The road brings you back. It always brings you back. I thought of every one of you as I have made my walk. I am close to certain that over these past 3.5 million steps, everyone I know, everyone I hope to know, and everyone I will come to know, have been recognized as the gifts they are to me.

Nebraska!

1 Reply

Cottonwoods line the highway and hay comes right up to the road. The land is green. Water is running in the small Republican River. My first town to enter is Haigler. It is a farming community built when rail lines were established in the 1880’s. After the depression growth stopped, and with the onslaught of modern agricultural practice it lost 30 percent of its population from the 1970 census to the current one. Its current population is about 200. I can’t see why anyone would choose to move to Haigler, but I also can’t imagine anyone who grew up there ever wanting to leave it. These folks are friendly. They take friendly to a whole new level. I pitched my tent in a small park in the middle of town. In Nebraska small towns have their park space available for camping. After a difficult night trying to sleep thru a thunderstorm and plenty of lightening, I walked back to the cafe for breakfast. Half the town was there before Barb officially opened and they peppered me with questions about sleeping in the thunderstorm and compared personal stories on walking long distances to bring in the cattle or sheep with my efforts. Breakfast was on the house and someone bought my dinner the night before. I had walked into quintessential americana… practical, generous, hardworking, and growing old. How does the issue of Climate Change resonate here? I brought it up to the owner of the cafe. The cafe’s in these small hamlets are its heart and soul. As a farm community its understood that somethings up. The weather has thrown some curve balls these past 8-10 years, but a response to climate change with some type of action is still far off to them. They are listening now and that is a good thing.