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.