On the Casey Anthony case....

Since the news broke while I am on the road, I feel it is okay to mention the Casey Anthony verdict, and my thoughts on it.
Our justice system isn’t perfect. Obviously we all feel like she got away with murder, but none of us really knows the truth. The same with the OJ Simpson case. It is still better to let a million criminals get away with their crimes than it is to send one innocent person to jail, or their death.
What needs to happen, in my opinion, is that the system needs a tweaking. As times change and modern technology evolves, it behooves us to make sure the system evolves with it. The cult of celebrity world that we live in (Remember—we so crave “celebrity” that when we run out of real celebrities, we create them from nothing. Hence TV like the Jersey Shore and reality cooking shows and…all of that folderol.
A side effect of that is this: people on juries now know that the case they are sitting on will be broadcast. They know that the media will be contacting them. They know a book deal looms, making them a quick fortune for sitting and answering questions from a ghost writer. There was a time, and the rule is still in effect, that members of a jury were supposed to have no prior knowledge of a case, or at least be as neutral as possible. In this day and age with every man, woman, child and parrot having a cell phone and internet access in their cereal bowl, it is impossible to guarantee judicial purity in the jury system. Television cameras are an aphrodisiac, and the bigger the case, the hornier these jurists get for the book deal and face time on the TV news. Can we stop it? I doubt it, at this point. If the laws change to stop the broadcasting of high profile court cases, there will be hue and cry from the media about censorship. Sometimes freedom of speech is used as a weapon…
So what to do? What can we do? Crimes will still be committed. People will still be murdered. Attractive women defendants will still be offered big bucks to show their bodies in slick skin magazines. Some moron will always hold up a marriage proposal sign in court when a Casey Anthony, or another attractive woman is on trial for some heinous crime. It is the world we live in, I guess. The bottom line looms large in all our lives and it takes a certain amount of integrity to ignore that bottom line and focus on what is really important in life. Do we think about how much money we can make from something ? Hey, if Casey Anthony is going to be rich, why can’t I? THAT mindset has to go.
And the system needs to go backward. It needs to return to the time when court artists were tasked with drawing the events in court, the lights and cameras were not present, and the juries and lawyers could focus on their jobs. I see Marcia Clark, OJ’s prosecutor, who, by the way, LOST her case, with her stretched out face on Court TV or whatever it is called now, and I see it as plain as day.
Wanna watch compelling TV? Put on Big Brother…..I mean…..Jersey Shore…I mean…oh, never mind.

Where the Rivers Change Direction, Across the Great Divide

More interesting Gunnison info: the land that Gunnison sits on is technically high desert land. Thanks to the ancient Romans, though, it is a veritable garden spot of the old west.
As I was walking to the local WalMart (OK, so there is a downside to Gunnison) I noticed that there seemed to be streams of water running down the sides of the streets, narrow but natural looking straight lines of water. I also noticed that many if not all of the houses had tiny little pumps running from the streams of water with garden hoses attached. I was fascinated by the sight of it, and even more amused that some of the homeowners had built little tiny pump houses over their pumps, and some of them had made the effort to make the pump houses look like their own houses. Very charming indeed. But what did it all mean?
That is when I ran into Eric. Eric is a handyman type character who was working on a small house on Iowa Street, I recall the name was. He was wearing coveralls and looked like a very decent guy, and we started a conversation when he approached me and introduced himself. After a few “How great is Colorado” type sentences (he loves it here as much as I do, and might well move into the place he is fixing ) I asked him about the water running down the street.
“It’s from the Gunnison River,” he said. The land here is high desert, but someone figured out that if trenches were dug at a slight downhill angle from the river it would make the place like this,” indicating to me the lush green grass all around. He also told me that a similar trench system kept all the farmland watered as well. I have noted winding streams that almost look manmade, winding beautifully through the farm lands that I have passed. Im not sure if those are the trenches to which he was referring, but it is easy to see how that very basic and ancient form of irrigation, invented by the Romans, has helped make Gunnison not only a viable place, but a beautiful one as well.
A funny thing—I was listening to a Kate Wolfe song called Across the Great Divide the other day, and a couple of lines are, “Where the rivers change direction, across the great divide”---and I realized as I was walking that the reference was to the CONTINENTAL divide, which I was standing basically on top of, and which did indeed mark where the rivers began to run the other direction. Just sayin’…..
Another thing that I have noticed, and it is something that adds to the beauty of Gunnison---the fact of the college. I was talking to a man from a cell phone store, and as we were talking several twenty-something year old girls walked by in shorts. Being “not dead yet” I, and the man for that matter, looked at them admiringly as they sashayed away. We then looked at each other, and he laughed and said, ”It’s a college town. I see it all the time. You gotta love it”
Indeed.

Gunnison, Colorado, where I saw a Jackalope.

Gunnison, Colorado—one of the wildest of the old west towns. Where the men were MEN and so were the women. (Sorry, old one)
Actually, Gunnison was one of those really old towns that, before they were settled by pioneers, sat on land that was occupied by the Ute Indians, a peaceful tribe who caused the white man little trouble. It was named after a Captain John Gunnison, who passed through briefly in 1853 with a group of Army surveyors. Later, prospectors and miners came in and shortly after that farmers and ranchers flooded in as well, making it a true community and it has grown to be a small but very western-influenced community. Events like Cattlemen’s Days are a big draw, and other interesting activities make it a very nice place to visit.
When I arrived in Gunnison, it was at the tail end of 32 miles of walking, an alltime high number for me. It was getting late and I just made it into town and to a crappy motel with dicey wifi and even dicier people staying in the neighboring rooms. As I entered the town though, I saw a beautiful college campus, Western State University, which looked, in the fading light, like a pretty good place to go to school. Adjacent to the college, though, was a public park, and judging by the number of people still playing on the equipment and just milling around, I figured it must have something that made it special. I was too tired and it was too dark for me to really look carefully. I probably would have let it slip out of my mind but for the trees.
Or what used to be trees. I noticed that there were many trees that were different, but again, it was too dark to really tell. I vowed to return in the morning, and Im glad I did.
Every September, for the past four years, the City of Gunnison has hosted a “Carving Up Colorado” contest, and it is held in the park, sponsored by the Lions Club. Carvers bring their chainsaws and set to work on the dead cottonwood trees that were still standing in the park. When the city ran out of suitable trees for the contest, which was growing in popularity, they began bringing in cottonwoods and planting them, cut and ready for their creative rebirth. And when the park began to get a bit full, the contest expanded outside of that park into others that are located around town. Last year, for the first time, some artists from Africa came and added their own flavor to the event, and now a couple of African art styled trees stand, looking like totems mixed with Easter Island style. Others show scenarios that are more western themed…a mountain lion about to pounce on a deer, a bear emerging from a waterfall with a fish in its mouth, eagles perched above raccoons,a tree with natiove American faces looking out from every angle, and my favorite, and many more, all of different quality but none less than impressive.
Gunnison seem to have evolved from the wild west town that it was into something of an arts colony in some ways. I visited the Gunnison Art Center where everything from quilts to dance were evident, with a dance studio upstairs and paintings, sculpture, and photography on display, and for sale. Very nice work and very much in keeping with the area, with a lot of horse pictures, mountain ranges and more, including pictures of animals.
Speaking of which: it could be argued that taxidermy is not an art form, but from the things I saw today, I would have to argue. There is a place, the Traders Rendezvous, with enough elk and deer antlers outside to supply a battalion of hornless deer and elk with “antler toupees”, as well as having a zoo full of other stuffed critters on display. Wolves, coyotes, elk, caribou, mountain lions attacking a deer, a wolverine , and just about every kind of gentle (deer, ducks and others), and not so gentle (two grizzly bears) creature of the forest has been killed and stuffed and put on public display. They even have jackalopes! (For some reason, when I told the kind lady who runs the store that I cant wait to see a live jackalope, she just said, “Good luck” and I wonder what she meant by that.)
The highlight of my day, though, was a small thrift store called Six Points. It is as well stocked and as well run as any Goodwill or Salvation Army store of its size (smallish) buts it has a story behind it. It is run entirely by developmentally disables men and women, and it gives them a sense of responsibility and accomplishment. I saw several people with Downs Syndrome working, stocking and arranging shelves, and the man who checked me out (two books for 11 cents—Thursday special, two for one—they are usually ten cents each, plus tax) was also a Downs guy. Very pleasant, very funny, and I left there with two great books (Huck Finn and A People’ History of the United States). There need to be more places like this one to help give those of us who were not born exactly the same as everyone else a sense of self and of place. Very good indeed. And so is Gunnison, Colorado.
In fact, it is such a nice place that when I met a woman and her young sons in the park earlier, with their dog Astor, she told me that she moved to the Denver area from Michigan. That they chose to vacation in Gunnison, as opposed to out of state somewhere, tells me that Im not the only one who feels this way about this city.
Yee Haw. Oh wait…. they don’t really say that out here.
Dang.

See me,Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me

It happened again.
I was walking down the side of the Monarch Pass, after walking up the side of the Monarch Pass for five pretty tough and rugged miles. After reaching the summit, at 11,233 feet, or close to it, its all downhill from there. Literally. The down side (as opposed to the downside) of the Pass is ten miles to the town of Sargents, and it is incredibly steep and winding, making this the toughest day of walking of the entire trip so far. And, to boot, when I got to Sargents, I had no choice but to either rent a teepee for the night or sit outside. I chose the teepee. I doubt that Indian teepees had electric outlets, but hey, its progress.
So, as I was saying, it happened again—this incredibly weird synchronicity between the music I am listening to on the mp3 player and what I am seeing as I am walking at that particular time. It often brings about an unexpected result, but more on that later.
The song that came on was John Denver, singing Rocky Mountain High. I was looking at the snowcapped mountains directly in front of me as it came on, and the lyrics, which I have always known, suddenly became so much more relevant to my life and this experience: “ When he first came to the mountains, his life was far away, on the road, hanging by a song…but the strings already broken, and he doesn’t really care. Been changing fast, but it don’t last for long.”
My life seems to be hanging by a song. Or a thread. Or both. All I can say is that the overwhelming power of this place, these mountains and the endless possibilities here, is something that I cannot ignore, and won’t. What exactly that means isn’t totally clear to me yet, but I know Ill be back here sooner rather than later.
Anyway, as I was saying…it happened again. It wasn’t the John Denver song, though, even though right after Rocky Mountain High came I Guess He’d Rather Be in Colorado…It was a song by the Who, of all people, that brought me to tears, hard tears, again. Men aren’t supposed to cry. I do, and I’m not ashamed of that fact. But, damn it, this stuff is coming out of nowhere, it seems. The song was Listening to You, maybe my favorite song of theirs. Its got powerful chords that drive my feet forward, but it was the words that got to me. Just as I rounded a corner and was suddenly faced with the sight of an entire, vast mountainside full of tall, straight Colorado pines of some sort, the words came into my earphones:
Listening to you I get the music.
Gazing at you I get the heat.
Following you I climb the mountain.
I get excitement at your feet!
Right behind you I see the millions.
On you I see the glory.
From you I get opinions
From you I get the story.
I think it was the line about climbing the mountains, and then me seeing the millions of trees and their glory that got to me, but suddenly the tears were flowing, and the world seemed a little clearer for some reason. I don’t mean to get all gooey here, but it was a transcendent moment for me. I’ve had a few others, including the sudden burst of tears when my hearing cleared up at the Ave Maria Grotto and when I saw strange and ghostly apparitions along the fields and paths of the Santa Fe Trail. All I know is that when it happens, and then passes, I feel oddly better and much more clear on things, so it isn’t an unwelcome reaction, just a surprising one. And Im okay with it.
John Boehner can cry all he wants. And so can I.

What Ive learned, part 2.

Six hundred miles of Kansas and Eastern Colorado, on foot, is a good way to test your patience. And your feet.
Getting hit in the head by a lemon-sized hailstone might not kill you, but it sure can raise a lump.
By now, I have been stopped by police at least fifty times. Not a single jerk among them, and more than a few great and concerned individuals who do their job and their departments proud.
The only two civilian dumbasses I HAVE met on this trip were both in Alabama. Take that information and do what you will with it. (Except for Morgan County, a piece of paradise on earth, that is)
Walking 1750 miles isn’t as hard as it sounds, but you do need to be in shape.
Hydrate people. Hydrate!
Gas station food is probably the worst crap imaginable.
There are a lots of younger people, like Tim, Kat and Han, Elliott and John, and many more, out on the road, trying to do good for the world, and have an adventure to remember. I’m lucky to have met a lot of them.
You cant really judge a place by the pictures or the things you read about it---you need to go there and see for yourself.
Forget the redwinged blackbird as my favorite bird. It is now, and forever gonna be the hummingbird. I watched a bunch of them last night as I was eating dinner, and they are just so darned cool. Zipping around and making that electric buzzing sound. Go H-birds!
If you treat your body with respect, it will treat you with respect.
Anyone who lives in the United States and has never been to Colorado needs to correct that situation. I met a guy the other day who told me a “joke” that is popular in Colorado. “What do people bring with them the second time they come to Colorado?” The answer: A U-Haul. I can see why. I might well be one of them.
Waking up in a ski lodge with a mountain stream roaring under your window, hummingbirds flitting around, the sun on the hillside five hundred yards away, and a mountain goat staring your direction….does NOT suck.
Having to leave the above…DOES.
Emotional baggage is heavier than the real stuff. Leave it behind if you can.

The Busker

“Missoula is all tramped out.”
So says Ken Renen.
And Ken should know. He was just there recently.
Ken has been a lot of places, including Salida, Colorado, where I met him one fine morning outside the McDonalds there. He has also been to places all over the midwest and west. He is a traveller, to put it in terms that sound innocent. By his own account, he is a panhandler, albeit one with a gimmick: an Epiphone 6 string guitar. “The greatest friend a panhandler can have, “ he says with a laugh. Guys who can play a little can make a decent income setting up on sidewalks and leaving their case open for coins. When I remark that the British call it “busking” Ken says, “I call it panhandling with a guitar.” He does tell it like it is.
I spoke of my travels and the places I have been or will be. When I mentioned Salt Lake City, Utah, where I will be in a week and a half or so, he tells me, “You can make a load of money in Salt Lake. The Mormons won’t give you a cent when you are playing, but the other half of Salt Lake can’t stand the Mormons and they will give you a lot of money just to piss the Mornons off.”
Sounds like a good gig to me.
At the moment, Ken isn’t playing the guitar. He had taken up with a “friend” who is stationed by the river a few miles east of Salida, panning for gold. I’ve seen a few of these desperate souls, thinking that they will strike it rich, but the odds are greatly against them. Still, Ken tells me, after I express my doubts, that these folks do find gold and do make about 4 or 5 bucks an hour with what that they do find. Still, he says tha it is more of a hobby than a job for a lot of them . As for himself, he got tired of lugging buckets of dirt for his friend and walked away, about 15 miles back. And he came to Salida, probably hoping that there were no Mormons around.
He comes from Wisconsin, and is travelling to see his mother on the east coast. “I keep getting sidetracked, though” he says.
I talked to him for a few minutes, and he explained that he plays the guitar in the populated areas of towns and cities and by that method makes a few bucks for food and other needs. In fact, he offered to buy me a sandwich, but I deferred, having already eaten for the day. A kind gesture, though, and appreciated.
As for Missoula, Montana: as Ken says, it is all tramped out. Every traveller worth their salt passes through there either on foot or by rail, and as a result, there isn’t enough charity to go around any more. Too many tramps, I guess you could say.
Maybe Salida looked more inviting. At any rate, maybe someday soon Ken will come to your town. Or someone else might throw a few tunes your way. Give them a buck. Their life is pretty hard, and they do try to entertain. And they are human beings with families and some of them even are pretty good. Make their day. Good karma comes back at you when you least expect it.

Lonely Days, Lonely Nights

Loneliness. It is a necessary and inevitable ingredient of life on the road. Long hours walking on the roads, connected by cell phones with limited battery life and signal strength, and after a while you crave some kind of human contact. Sometimes you start a conversation with total strangers just to have interaction with someone. Bob Dylan once wrote a talking blues about life after the third World War, and this verse was in it:
I was feelin’ kinda lonesome and blue
I needed somebody to talk to
So I called up the operator of time
Just to hear a voice of some kind
“When you hear the beep it will be three o’clock”
She said that for over an hour
And I hung up.

And that is how I feel sometimes. When I walk past horses, you know they are gonna get a talking to, and sometimes they seem to answer back. They will nod their heads, lift and lower a front foot, and it sure does seem to me as if it is directed at me. Cows…..stare.
The worst time is late at night. Because of the two hour time difference, as I write this, my loved ones are asleep when I am ready to turn in. It might sound pathetic, but it is nice to be able to say , “good night” to someone. Oh, it gets said on the phone, but it isn’t necessarily the same.
That said, I am enjoying the alone time, and have learned the art of patience, and waiting. This is especially true when I arrive somewhere that I want to set up for the night, but it may be too early or too bright out, and people can see me. No matter how noble a cause or how pure the intentions, there is something unsettling to a lot of people about the thought of a stranger camping behind their house, or church, or under a park pavilion. Thus, I try to keep still, blend in, even with a cart, and looking as tan as Wesley Snipes in towns in the Midwest that are more likely to resemble Pat Boone…
I’ve always been an observer, and a tacit commentator on the human condition and the species as a whole. I like watching people, and noting their foibles and follies. Now, with the vehicle of this blog/website, I am able and willing to actively comment on things that I see. You can tell a lot more about a person when watching them, when they have no idea they are being watched. Walking is a silent activity, and I have watched many people doing things, unaware I was watching. Its kind of an exercise sometimes to walk past someone without making it obvious that I am there. Sometimes I can do it, sometimes they see me and act startled. Sometimes we engage in conversation, sometimes just a quick and passing “hello” is uttered.
As I said, it is a lonely existence, and I have gone a couple days with no face to face contact on two occasions. Im still looking at about 1000 miles, but most of it will be in California and the remainder of Colorado, and I look forward to every step of the way.