Day Thirty Eight - Out of Order

Thursday, April 28, 2011
Distance: 40.5 Miles

Bookkeeping note: I will get to the backlog of entries, and I will post this now to bob along with what is fresh and recent.

I started the day at the top of the eastern continental divide - Backbone Mountain: to the east, the Atlantic watershed flowing through the Potomac River to the sea; to the west, the Mississippi watershed flowing through the Ohio River and on to the Gulf of Mexico.


I started out at 0720 and finished around 2310. I walked out of Maryland, back into West Virginia and ate breakfast at the rural equivalent of a diner, the family restaurant. An older gentleman struck up a conversation across a table. He laid out in his country baritone the road, towns, and ridges I would travel that day. He asked about my shoes and suggested I rotate pairs daily as he had in Vietnam. I am warmed by the generous goodwill, the gentle, rolling conversations, and the encouragement I have received from the people I have met along my way. The gentleman got up paid his bill and left. When I later asked for my check, the waitress informed me that he had already paid for my meal.

The state flower of West Virginia is the Rhododendron. The S-curved highways, hewn from the rock and hanging over gully and ravine, form beautiful knobs of flora and stone.





I stopped for lunch at a glorious gas station, general store, gift shop, grocery, and hunting supply:


Here a gregarious coal-miner, having asked where I was coming from, told me he had been to New Jersey several times - then ducked my question, Where in New Jersey had he been, later returning to the topic unannounced, to characterize his activity as being "import-export." The wink and nod in his tone left little doubt he had been smuggling and trafficking drugs as a younger man in New Jersey. "And all over. Canada, Mexico" - as by his description.

I humped on in the daylight, past sunset, through the night, under the stars with my headlamp on. The last miles grew slower as I plodded on exhausted not daring to stop, nor let my legs seize, nor allow blood, and with it pain, to flow into my feet. In Grafton, West Virginia I arrived to find the New York Football Giants had drafted CB Prince Amakumara. Nice.