Photo courtesy of Darren Chemick, without whom I would have no starting at the Pacific photo. Thank you Darren.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
It begins. (August 27th and 28th)
Where to start. Gina and David drove me yesterday to within 3 miles of the coast. (pictures to follow if I can get it to work). The day before that they found me, fed me, drove around to get my last minute gear, and took me into their home. They are amazing people.
I stand at the trail head.
I hike the three miles out.
I make camp at the coast and work some of the bugs out of my gear. It rains.
Today I wake up, break camp, my phone dies, and I walk 3 miles along the coast.
Met Darren. Darren took photo of me leaving the Pacific. (Photo soon to follow once I figure out how to get it out of my email). I drink a single tiny drop of the Pacific. It tastes delicious.
I walk for what I guess is about 12 more miles (15 total) maybe more. Pass woods, logged clearings, blackberry bushes, and small beef farms. Am tired. No blisters yet. Knot in right shoulder. Made camp. Is raining again. Am happy. Goodnight.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Donate Button and American Chestnuts.
After much consideration (and prompting from friends and family), I have added a donation button.
Wasn't sure about this, but many people want to help.
To square with my conscience about this, I have decided that half of all donations will be used for gear/food/supplies/etc. on my trip.
The other half of donations shall go to environmental protection non-profits (most likely The American Chestnut Foundation, http://www.patacf.org/ ) once my trip is complete.
If I fail in my endeavour, an amount equal to all donations will be sent by me to environmental protection non-profits.
Any extra donated funds left-over after my trip will be donated to environmental protection non-profits regardless as to whether I succeed or fail.
People who donate will be thanked by name unless they request otherwise. Specific amounts donated will not be revealed by me unless the person(s) who make(s) the donation specifically requests that I do so.
Wasn't sure about this, but many people want to help.
To square with my conscience about this, I have decided that half of all donations will be used for gear/food/supplies/etc. on my trip.
The other half of donations shall go to environmental protection non-profits (most likely The American Chestnut Foundation, http://www.patacf.org/ ) once my trip is complete.
If I fail in my endeavour, an amount equal to all donations will be sent by me to environmental protection non-profits.
Any extra donated funds left-over after my trip will be donated to environmental protection non-profits regardless as to whether I succeed or fail.
People who donate will be thanked by name unless they request otherwise. Specific amounts donated will not be revealed by me unless the person(s) who make(s) the donation specifically requests that I do so.
Nerves.
Starting the trip west today, car to Pittsburgh, plane to Seattle, and then another car ride to the coast.
Will start walking by the 27th or 28th.
Feeling extremely nervous. Have been a raw bundle of nerves all week long.
Easier to write if I use travel shorthand. Easier to think; easier to type.
Assailed by last minute doubts.
Planning for trips always stressful. Didn't expect this much, though.
Wondering if the winter will stop me.
Wondering if I will not make it back in time for spring planting.
Wondering how I will feel a week from now; a month from now; six months from now.
Writing makes me feel better. Helps clear my head. Gonna get back to packing now.
Thank you all for your help. Will try to type more specific details soon about gear, pack weight etc. later. For now, just trying to stay focused.
Will start walking by the 27th or 28th.
Feeling extremely nervous. Have been a raw bundle of nerves all week long.
Easier to write if I use travel shorthand. Easier to think; easier to type.
Assailed by last minute doubts.
Planning for trips always stressful. Didn't expect this much, though.
Wondering if the winter will stop me.
Wondering if I will not make it back in time for spring planting.
Wondering how I will feel a week from now; a month from now; six months from now.
Writing makes me feel better. Helps clear my head. Gonna get back to packing now.
Thank you all for your help. Will try to type more specific details soon about gear, pack weight etc. later. For now, just trying to stay focused.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Why.
WHY:
So the original plan was to start with a few stories. You know, get whoever might be reading this up to speed on who I am (and was) and who some of the other characters in this narrative might be. After wards, I was going to write a single entry on what I might call “the bad thing that happened” so that this trip I'm going on would all make some kind of sense.
Well that plan fell apart. Turns out that if I ever want to get any sort of lengthy back story in place, I might have to do it after the fact. I want to write some things down here and its hard enough to get it out without putting all the back story in place first. So this entry is going to be as short as I can make it (you might call it the back story cliff notes). It's going to be a long post, though, non-the-less.
So lets get started:
THE BAD YEARS, THE CLIFFS NOTES:
A note: This is not so bad as many of the bad things that have happened to other people. I acknowledge this. Never-the-less it messed me up a touch. Messed me up worse than anything else I've had to deal with, in fact, and that includes what happened to my brothers. What happened to them was due to bad choices that they made. What happened to me was due mainly to a bad choice that I made. Therein lies the difference.
Another note: What I am about to write, in truth, amounts to little more than a long complaint against my parents that spans nearly two decades of time. I'm pretty sure that writing this makes me a bad person. I should have at least started with a long list of all the ways they were good parents. Complaints should be kept to a minimum if possible, but I aim to work this thing through, and if that means making me sound like the sort who lives just to cry and complain about things, so be it. So there you have it reader. You've been warned. I don't blame you if you want to skip this post.
Spring of 2002, just after High School:
Mom says “go to college”.
I say “I don't want to end up a slave to a huge debt”.
Mom says “that won't happen”.
I say “I don't even know what degree I would want to get”.
Dad says “It doesn't matter what degree you get, it only matters that you get a degree”.
Turns out my fears were more than justified. It does matter what degree you get and you have to be really, really careful or you are going to end up a slave to your massive debt. All through my teenage years, I listened to my folks. I assumed they knew what they were talking about. A lot of people say they didn't listen to their folks and wish they had. In this case I listened to my folks and really wished I hadn't.
The (unfortunate) Results as I See Them:
Now-a-days I don't listen so well as I used to. I can trust people to have my best intentions at heart (cause a lot of them do), but I have a lot of trouble trusting that people know what the hell they are talking about. I now operate under the assumption that if my opinion is different in any significant way from another person, I am probably right and they are probably wrong. This has proven to be the case again and again, reinforcing my notion that I am nearly always right. In fact, the more that I ignore the advice of others and do what the hell I think is right, the better things tend to turn out. One day, this insufferable arrogance is likely going to come back and bite me so hard that it might kill me. It hasn't happened yet, though.
Spring of 2007, just after College:
Mom says “Tom, its been two months since you graduated. I think its time for you to start paying back what you borrowed from the farm.”
What Tom should have said: “No way. You told me that I wouldn't have this massive debt at all, and now I have more than just the farm to pay back. Besides, you're the one who worked so hard to talk me into going in the first place. I mean come on, you even offered at one point to pay for the entire thing yourself, you wanted to see me go so badly, and now here you are asking me for the money? It's not your fault that the economy just took a major dive, but it isn't my fault either, so I think you can just hold your tongue and wait your turn.”
What Tom did say: “Okay. Fine.”
The (unfortunate) Results as I See Them:
I used every cent I made the next year to pay the farm back completely. I lived off of credit. Once the farm was payed back, I decided to work extra hard to make up for the year's worth of growing debt from the interest on the college loans and credit cards I was now failing to pay off. Unfortunately, I was working for the farm at the time (I'd been working there since I was ten, and had never worked anywhere else).
The Fight of the Winter of 2007:
Dad and I never fought so hard, before or since, as the fight we had when he told me to stop working so hard. I'm ashamed of all the things I called him, and I got so angry I think I would have tried to hurt him and hurt him badly if he had tried to physically restrain me from finishing the job I was doing.
When he told me the work I was doing to try to clean up and fix up the animal pens “wasn't a priority” I let him have an angry tirade of hellfire, threats, and admonishments stemming all the way back to the winter of '94. You see, my ten year old self had always assumed that the unsatisfactory animal housing conditions were a result of an unfortunate lack of money or manpower. My ten year old self was, in fact, upset at the chapped, bleeding hands, and the raw cold, and the wallowing in the shit and snowdrifts, and the gloves and boots full of holes, and all the rest of what he had to put up with that winter. (Seriously Dad, you could have at least bought me a pair of thermal underwear. It was cold out there.) My ten year old self was proud though, because he was doing an important job and there was clearly no one else who could spare the time and energy to help even though they surely wanted to. My ten year old self was just a scrawny little thing that couldn't carry the water buckets very well, but he did his best even though he kept slopping the water down his boots and wasn't able to work fast enough to get everything fed before dark.
When my 23 year old self heard that it wasn't a lack of manpower or money, just the fact that it was a low priority job you could pawn off on a ten year old, he took it very, very poorly. That wasn't what Dad said, mind you. He just said it “wasn't a priority”.
The (unfortunate) Results as I See Them:
I left the farm, and spent a year (2008) looking for work with a huge debt on my shoulders, a BA that was mostly useless, and absolutely no experience on how one even goes about finding work. I lived on the couches of friends, bought my meals, gas, and auto repairs with what credit I had left, found no work, and bit by bit slipped further and further into debt. (Special thanks to Sara Fitzsimmons for finally giving me a chance that summer to work for The American Chestnut Foundation. I know it was just minimum wage grunt work, but I was thankful to have it. Thanks also to my Grandfather, Jadek. I know those three months you let me live with you while I was doing the job Sara gave me were rough on you. I wasn't in a good place, I know you could tell, and I know it hurt you not being able to help me more than you did.) As it fell, The longer I struggled to pay for what my monetarily impotent college degree cost me, the more the resentment and anger towards my folks built and built. Finally, it got so bad I told them everything I've just written above. I'm not sure I explained it correctly, though. To this day I'm still not sure if they understand why I got so angry.
2009, 2010, and early 2011:
I went back to school. No one wanted to hire a guy with a BA in Environmental Studies so I decided I would be the guy with the BS in Mathematics. The Teach for America Website said that they were desperate for math teachers, and I was going to get a good job, damn-it, and get out of my shackles. My folks, seeing that I was in a bad way, offered to help me. They're good folks, despite the fights we had, and they really didn't have a reason to help me go through college another time after how much I resented them for my first time through. I took their help because I needed it and didn't have anywhere else to turn. I had been telling myself since early 2007 that I would never trust any money the folks lent me ever again, and that I would never be a dime's worth in debt to them again. Turns out I was lying to myself. They offered me another loan for college and I took it.
What followed was two years of pretty fair hell. I was going to have to do the entire four year math degree in 2 year's time because after that the government wasn't going to lend me any more money. After all, my folks couldn't afford to loan me everything I needed a semester all on their own, even though I was in such bad shape that I think they would have tried. In fact, I'm still not sure where the money they did lend to me came from those two years. The economy was still in really bad shape, then, and the farm wasn't bringing in much cash. Looking back, I'm thinking a lot of it was probably the blood money the marine corps gave them after Sam died.
I was determined. I took 16 credits a semester of nothing but upper level math courses. 16 credits was nothing compared to what I had taken per semester in my first four years, but 16 credits a semester of straight calculus and physics was a different game entirely. I should mention they were calculus courses I didn't have the prerequisites for. I didn't have time for the pre-reqs. So I found a loop-hole; a hack of sorts in the online class registration that would allow me to sign up for classes I had no business being in. I ate little and slept less. My face got thin, and my eyes got hollow. My left arm developed a twitch that acted up during quizzes and exams. I juggled workloads and started performing triage on my grades. I worked out which tests I could afford to fail and let those tests slide so that I could do the work for the classes that I couldn't afford to let slide anymore.
The first semester, all of my teachers and advisers tried to talk me out of what I was doing. “You can't pass these classes,” they'd say, “You shouldn't even be in them.” But I ignored them. I had decided that it was often best to assume people giving me advice didn't know what they were talking about. And I did pass those courses. After that, during the last three semesters, my teachers and advisers were rooting for me every step. They went out of their way to help me. I shouldn't have been able to, but I passed each and every course on the first go round. I had to, although I'm pretty sure that one of my professors bumped my grade in one class from a 69% to a 70% out of sheer pity.
It became hard to go to sleep and harder to wake up. My concentration was shot, and I remember always being hungry. I lost over 10% of my body weight in all. Not a bad thing for some people, but I was a thin man to begin with.
I graduated college for the second time in December of 2010. They let me carry a flag during the ceremony. I was finally on my way to fixing the mistake I had made 8 years earlier when I went to college the first time. I finally had a degree that would get me a job. Only problem was: it didn't.
Teach for America didn't want me.
I kept applying for teaching gigs and finally The New Teacher Project gave me a few interviews. They offered me a job teaching inter city schools in Baltimore. I accepted. They gave me a ton of paper work to fill out in the spring and summer of 2011 and brought me in for a 6 week training session around the last week of June. I was to start that August as a math teacher. That August I was to start, finally, to repay the debt; a debt that was twice as large now, as it had been in 2006. Things were going smoothly until they gave me a particular assignment. I was to write a three page paper on why I agreed with an article entitled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. Search for it. Look it up. Don't take my word for it. It's an article that will tell you that all white men are privileged and that every one else is not. I read it. I wrote my paper. I agreed that many white men (myself among them) had advantages. I agreed that many said individuals were not conscious of it. I agreed that many non-white, non-male people did not have these advantages. Then I said that that I disagreed with some points. I said that many of the things the article was calling unearned privileges unfairly given to many white males, I would call basic rights unfairly denied to many women and minorities. I also went on to say that it was a basic logical error to say that “all” white men where advantaged and that “all” other people were not. You can say “most” and argue it successfully. But you cannot say “all”.
The
(unfortunate) Results as I See Them:
Mid to Late
2011: A time of Giving Up:
I went back to the farm. I spent a few weeks and applied for a few more jobs here and there. I got rejected from anything worth doing.
Mom said: “Just keep trying. Everything will work out fine.”
I lost it. I know she meant well, but all I heard was “You just haven't tried hard enough, yet.”
Dad had apologized for the mistaken advice he had given me about college, but mom never had (and still hasn't) admitted that the financial advice she saddled me with was not only incorrect but disastrously wrong. Half a decade's worth of stress and poor sleep, and the best she could say to me was “I am sorry you made a decision that has made you so unhappy.” That decision, in truth, was mine to make. But the unhappy decision my 17 year old self had so mistakenly made was to listen to her.
I was tired. I was angry. I had been tired and angry for years. I told her off so thoroughly and completely that it's a wonder she still speaks to me at all.
Then I gave up.
For the first time in my life, I completely and utterly gave up. I stopped looking for work. I stopped paying the loans. I stopped answering the calls from the student loan organizations. I stopped talking to friends. I stopped talking to family.
I slept in the attic of the farm house and I ate whatever food was put in from of me. Other than that, I did nothing. I was down and out this way for two weeks.
I figured that it was only a matter of time before the folks told me to leave. I figured when they did, I would walk into the woods and survive as well as I could. That might sound like a load of bullshit to most people, but those of you who know me, know I would have done it.
But they didn't ask me to leave. Instead, they offered to pay off my loans. Just like that. Somewhere late that summer, Dad told me he would make things right again. This put a spark back into me.
With the spark came the guilt. Hard work and determination counted for nothing, whereas anger, disrespect, and sloth gave immediate reward. I couldn't stand it, so I left the farm again.
I lived in a friend's spare room, payed her a little bit of rent, and I worked a few odd jobs here and there (having finally learned the art of finding odd jobs.) I did some factory work that was not worth doing. I worked as a roustabout some, putting up large tents for special events, and once or twice I spent a few days helping the Sheetz company unload tractor trailers. This lasted a few months while I tried to get my head on straight.
I didn't want 'giving up' to be the solution to my problems, but working hard had certainly never produced anything for me. So in the end I took Dad's offer, and I went home. I think this was in late September but might have been October or even November. It's blurry.
So I came home, and I slept. For months and months, I just slept. I tried working a little bit on the farm, but my head was full of voices that wouldn't be quiet. Too many fears and suspicions about all the bad things that happen when you apply yourself to anything. I was still cold towards mom, if no longer openly hostile. I kept expecting to be told to leave. I kept expecting the offer to be withdrawn and the promise broken. Within a few months, though, Dad refinanced some things, and in March of 2012, he just cleared away tens of thousands of dollars of my college debt. Just like that.
The (unfortunate) Results as I See Them:
Years of hard work, determination, and skill earned me nothing. In fact, the harder I tried, the worse my situation became.
When, in 2007, I tried to work hard to make the farm better and to pay off my loans, Dad fought to make me stop and mom demanded money she had promised she wouldn't demand.
When I tried to work hard to get a degree that would matter, the university itself tried to stop me, and only started helping me when I hacked the system and stubbornly ignored everyone I should have been listening to.
When I stuck to my guns about the unfortunate connotations of a paper about why “all” of any type of person is privileged and “all” of any type of person is not, it only served to get me fired.
Giving up completely, though; utterly ceasing to work, care, or try make things better...set me free. What's more, it set me free in a matter of months when I had spent years trying to do what was right. This is a bad lesson for anyone to learn.
After March of 2012 and into 2013.
Once Dad lifted the loans, things began to get better. I still didn't bother to look for work or help at the farm much, but I started selling my time to people I knew who were having trouble with math and physics. I began tutoring family, friends, and friends of friends who could spare some cash and felt I was doing them good by showing them how to sort the numbers. I didn't expect it to generate much income, but I no longer needed much income. For six years, all I had wanted was to claw my way back up to where I was when I had first graduated high school, and now I was there.
I had done a lot of tutoring over the years for food or for free, and someone suggested I do a bit of it for money. Turned out that once people were paying me, they felt a lot less guilty about asking for help. My schedule slowly started filling up. Word got around, and within a year, I was making more per week tutoring than I would have made at any job I had ever even applied for, much less gotten. My clients tell me I charge half what other math and physics tutors charge. I didn't believe them until I looked it up. When I started doing all my tutoring online, things got even better. I no longer had gas as an expense, and I could tutor anyone anywhere. My last client was in Puerto Rico, and he heard about me through word of mouth.
I was still at the farm. My relationship with Mom patched up slowly. Rather than talk about it, she seemed content to pretend that nothing had ever been wrong to begin with. Less closure this way, but less fighting too, I suppose.
And that brings us pretty nearly up to date. I've spent the last year or so patching up things that fell apart or had been neglected during the last half-decade or so. I went back and thanked my professors. I used the money from the tutoring to clear out my last few thousand dollars of debt from, among other things, my credit cards, an old utility bill, and a really understanding landlord who never got the last month's rent. I sent a Christmas present to my one cousin that was quite some years overdue.
Mom does little kindnesses for me each day, and I have taken to building her walk-ways and grape arbors; rebuilding chicken coups and fixing leaky pipes. I did a lot of cooking while she was away for part of each week pursuing her own college education. Just little things, I know, but the little things seem like they really matter.
Despite how well the tutoring was (and is) going. I took three months off this last spring to help Dad and Joe with the planting. I hadn't done it last spring, but this one felt different. I didn't have those voices in my head echoing over and over “How are you gonna get free? How are you gonna get free?” You can't sit in a tractor cab for hours on end with nothing but your thoughts, not when your thoughts are tearing you up. The three of us planted more acreage this past spring than any spring in over a decade. It's all growing well.
I still don't feel comfortable enough to go back to work for Dad with the animals on a regular basis. I help whenever we are improving the facilities though; building new calf nurseries and such. Ever since Dad and my big fight in 2007, he's seen to it that the conditions and facilities for the animals have been steadily improving. The animals, in general, look pretty good now, and within another year or two the facilities might actually be up to where they should have been 20 years ago. I'm pretty sure Joe has had a big hand in all this. He keeps things clean.
The (fortunate?) Results as I see Them.
My face is no longer thin, my arm doesn’t twitch anymore, and the claustrophobic nightmares have all but disappeared.
I've been trying to make amends to my folks bit by bit for my anger and my coldness.
I work for myself, and I love my job.
There is still a lingering fear or two that haunt me, though. If I hadn't broken down, I would still be struggling to get free. I wouldn't have thought to try the tutoring. I would still be scrapping the bottom of the job market for work I didn't really want for money that just gets passed on to pay the interest. Debt, as I had long suspected, is a walking prison. Beyond that, I can't shake a lingering feeling that, despite their repeated assurances, one day my folks will come asking for the money again; forcing me to fall back into either defensive anger or wage-slavery.
I need to let it go. If I ever get a windfall, I'll pay the folks back, but only on my terms and only in my time. This was the original bargain I had with them, and, after what has happened, I think they'll stick to it this time. I still have my fears, but I aim to walk it off.
My folks did wrong by me when I was doing right by them, and they treated me with incredible amounts of help and kindness once I no longer deserved it. I feel a weird mix of anger and confusion over this, as well as guilt and shame. But that's another thing I need to let go. I aim to walk that off, too.
When I was 18 and just out of high school I told myself that I was going to go on an adventure. I had read too much Tolkien in elementary school, I suppose, and I had been itching for a long walk ever since. I agreed to put it off for four more years. 22 didn't seem that far away to me, and the folks really wanted to see me go to college. I am 29 years old, now. This whole thing is 7 years past due. So in my selfishness, I have told my father I won't be around to help with the fall harvest. I have told my tutoring clients that they are going to have to get by without me between now and next spring.
I am going very, very far away, and then I am coming home bit by bit. When I get back, I am not going to be angry or guilty anymore. I am going to forget about the trapped feeling and the sleepless nights. I'm going to forget the injustices done to me and the pain and injustice I have inflicted in return. I aim to go walking.
I aim to walk it off.
Final Thoughts.
If you read it this far, good for you. I won't give you another post like this; I promise. A lot of you who know me were with me through bits and pieces of this narrative, and so a lot of you know that in the midst of all this life was going on: People got married, babies were born, suicides happened, hearts were broken, and people died. Not all of it was bad, and I had some good times. A lot of you who know me didn't see this story unwinding. You just knew something was wrong with me. Now you know what. Sorry I didn't tell you sooner.
So the original plan was to start with a few stories. You know, get whoever might be reading this up to speed on who I am (and was) and who some of the other characters in this narrative might be. After wards, I was going to write a single entry on what I might call “the bad thing that happened” so that this trip I'm going on would all make some kind of sense.
Well that plan fell apart. Turns out that if I ever want to get any sort of lengthy back story in place, I might have to do it after the fact. I want to write some things down here and its hard enough to get it out without putting all the back story in place first. So this entry is going to be as short as I can make it (you might call it the back story cliff notes). It's going to be a long post, though, non-the-less.
So lets get started:
THE BAD YEARS, THE CLIFFS NOTES:
A note: This is not so bad as many of the bad things that have happened to other people. I acknowledge this. Never-the-less it messed me up a touch. Messed me up worse than anything else I've had to deal with, in fact, and that includes what happened to my brothers. What happened to them was due to bad choices that they made. What happened to me was due mainly to a bad choice that I made. Therein lies the difference.
Another note: What I am about to write, in truth, amounts to little more than a long complaint against my parents that spans nearly two decades of time. I'm pretty sure that writing this makes me a bad person. I should have at least started with a long list of all the ways they were good parents. Complaints should be kept to a minimum if possible, but I aim to work this thing through, and if that means making me sound like the sort who lives just to cry and complain about things, so be it. So there you have it reader. You've been warned. I don't blame you if you want to skip this post.
Spring of 2002, just after High School:
Mom says “go to college”.
I say “I don't want to end up a slave to a huge debt”.
Mom says “that won't happen”.
I say “I don't even know what degree I would want to get”.
Dad says “It doesn't matter what degree you get, it only matters that you get a degree”.
Turns out my fears were more than justified. It does matter what degree you get and you have to be really, really careful or you are going to end up a slave to your massive debt. All through my teenage years, I listened to my folks. I assumed they knew what they were talking about. A lot of people say they didn't listen to their folks and wish they had. In this case I listened to my folks and really wished I hadn't.
The (unfortunate) Results as I See Them:
Now-a-days I don't listen so well as I used to. I can trust people to have my best intentions at heart (cause a lot of them do), but I have a lot of trouble trusting that people know what the hell they are talking about. I now operate under the assumption that if my opinion is different in any significant way from another person, I am probably right and they are probably wrong. This has proven to be the case again and again, reinforcing my notion that I am nearly always right. In fact, the more that I ignore the advice of others and do what the hell I think is right, the better things tend to turn out. One day, this insufferable arrogance is likely going to come back and bite me so hard that it might kill me. It hasn't happened yet, though.
Spring of 2007, just after College:
Mom says “Tom, its been two months since you graduated. I think its time for you to start paying back what you borrowed from the farm.”
What Tom should have said: “No way. You told me that I wouldn't have this massive debt at all, and now I have more than just the farm to pay back. Besides, you're the one who worked so hard to talk me into going in the first place. I mean come on, you even offered at one point to pay for the entire thing yourself, you wanted to see me go so badly, and now here you are asking me for the money? It's not your fault that the economy just took a major dive, but it isn't my fault either, so I think you can just hold your tongue and wait your turn.”
What Tom did say: “Okay. Fine.”
The (unfortunate) Results as I See Them:
I used every cent I made the next year to pay the farm back completely. I lived off of credit. Once the farm was payed back, I decided to work extra hard to make up for the year's worth of growing debt from the interest on the college loans and credit cards I was now failing to pay off. Unfortunately, I was working for the farm at the time (I'd been working there since I was ten, and had never worked anywhere else).
The Fight of the Winter of 2007:
Dad and I never fought so hard, before or since, as the fight we had when he told me to stop working so hard. I'm ashamed of all the things I called him, and I got so angry I think I would have tried to hurt him and hurt him badly if he had tried to physically restrain me from finishing the job I was doing.
When he told me the work I was doing to try to clean up and fix up the animal pens “wasn't a priority” I let him have an angry tirade of hellfire, threats, and admonishments stemming all the way back to the winter of '94. You see, my ten year old self had always assumed that the unsatisfactory animal housing conditions were a result of an unfortunate lack of money or manpower. My ten year old self was, in fact, upset at the chapped, bleeding hands, and the raw cold, and the wallowing in the shit and snowdrifts, and the gloves and boots full of holes, and all the rest of what he had to put up with that winter. (Seriously Dad, you could have at least bought me a pair of thermal underwear. It was cold out there.) My ten year old self was proud though, because he was doing an important job and there was clearly no one else who could spare the time and energy to help even though they surely wanted to. My ten year old self was just a scrawny little thing that couldn't carry the water buckets very well, but he did his best even though he kept slopping the water down his boots and wasn't able to work fast enough to get everything fed before dark.
When my 23 year old self heard that it wasn't a lack of manpower or money, just the fact that it was a low priority job you could pawn off on a ten year old, he took it very, very poorly. That wasn't what Dad said, mind you. He just said it “wasn't a priority”.
The (unfortunate) Results as I See Them:
I left the farm, and spent a year (2008) looking for work with a huge debt on my shoulders, a BA that was mostly useless, and absolutely no experience on how one even goes about finding work. I lived on the couches of friends, bought my meals, gas, and auto repairs with what credit I had left, found no work, and bit by bit slipped further and further into debt. (Special thanks to Sara Fitzsimmons for finally giving me a chance that summer to work for The American Chestnut Foundation. I know it was just minimum wage grunt work, but I was thankful to have it. Thanks also to my Grandfather, Jadek. I know those three months you let me live with you while I was doing the job Sara gave me were rough on you. I wasn't in a good place, I know you could tell, and I know it hurt you not being able to help me more than you did.) As it fell, The longer I struggled to pay for what my monetarily impotent college degree cost me, the more the resentment and anger towards my folks built and built. Finally, it got so bad I told them everything I've just written above. I'm not sure I explained it correctly, though. To this day I'm still not sure if they understand why I got so angry.
2009, 2010, and early 2011:
I went back to school. No one wanted to hire a guy with a BA in Environmental Studies so I decided I would be the guy with the BS in Mathematics. The Teach for America Website said that they were desperate for math teachers, and I was going to get a good job, damn-it, and get out of my shackles. My folks, seeing that I was in a bad way, offered to help me. They're good folks, despite the fights we had, and they really didn't have a reason to help me go through college another time after how much I resented them for my first time through. I took their help because I needed it and didn't have anywhere else to turn. I had been telling myself since early 2007 that I would never trust any money the folks lent me ever again, and that I would never be a dime's worth in debt to them again. Turns out I was lying to myself. They offered me another loan for college and I took it.
What followed was two years of pretty fair hell. I was going to have to do the entire four year math degree in 2 year's time because after that the government wasn't going to lend me any more money. After all, my folks couldn't afford to loan me everything I needed a semester all on their own, even though I was in such bad shape that I think they would have tried. In fact, I'm still not sure where the money they did lend to me came from those two years. The economy was still in really bad shape, then, and the farm wasn't bringing in much cash. Looking back, I'm thinking a lot of it was probably the blood money the marine corps gave them after Sam died.
I was determined. I took 16 credits a semester of nothing but upper level math courses. 16 credits was nothing compared to what I had taken per semester in my first four years, but 16 credits a semester of straight calculus and physics was a different game entirely. I should mention they were calculus courses I didn't have the prerequisites for. I didn't have time for the pre-reqs. So I found a loop-hole; a hack of sorts in the online class registration that would allow me to sign up for classes I had no business being in. I ate little and slept less. My face got thin, and my eyes got hollow. My left arm developed a twitch that acted up during quizzes and exams. I juggled workloads and started performing triage on my grades. I worked out which tests I could afford to fail and let those tests slide so that I could do the work for the classes that I couldn't afford to let slide anymore.
The first semester, all of my teachers and advisers tried to talk me out of what I was doing. “You can't pass these classes,” they'd say, “You shouldn't even be in them.” But I ignored them. I had decided that it was often best to assume people giving me advice didn't know what they were talking about. And I did pass those courses. After that, during the last three semesters, my teachers and advisers were rooting for me every step. They went out of their way to help me. I shouldn't have been able to, but I passed each and every course on the first go round. I had to, although I'm pretty sure that one of my professors bumped my grade in one class from a 69% to a 70% out of sheer pity.
It became hard to go to sleep and harder to wake up. My concentration was shot, and I remember always being hungry. I lost over 10% of my body weight in all. Not a bad thing for some people, but I was a thin man to begin with.
I graduated college for the second time in December of 2010. They let me carry a flag during the ceremony. I was finally on my way to fixing the mistake I had made 8 years earlier when I went to college the first time. I finally had a degree that would get me a job. Only problem was: it didn't.
Teach for America didn't want me.
I kept applying for teaching gigs and finally The New Teacher Project gave me a few interviews. They offered me a job teaching inter city schools in Baltimore. I accepted. They gave me a ton of paper work to fill out in the spring and summer of 2011 and brought me in for a 6 week training session around the last week of June. I was to start that August as a math teacher. That August I was to start, finally, to repay the debt; a debt that was twice as large now, as it had been in 2006. Things were going smoothly until they gave me a particular assignment. I was to write a three page paper on why I agreed with an article entitled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. Search for it. Look it up. Don't take my word for it. It's an article that will tell you that all white men are privileged and that every one else is not. I read it. I wrote my paper. I agreed that many white men (myself among them) had advantages. I agreed that many said individuals were not conscious of it. I agreed that many non-white, non-male people did not have these advantages. Then I said that that I disagreed with some points. I said that many of the things the article was calling unearned privileges unfairly given to many white males, I would call basic rights unfairly denied to many women and minorities. I also went on to say that it was a basic logical error to say that “all” white men where advantaged and that “all” other people were not. You can say “most” and argue it successfully. But you cannot say “all”.
They told me to either
rewrite the paper agreeing with every single point of the article or
leave. In addition they said they would require another paper
apologizing for how I had “failed to maximize my time with them.”
I left. I needed the money badly, but I wasn't quite ready to start
selling my convictions.
I was right in ignoring
the advice of my advisers, reinforcing my belief that the people who
I am supposed to rely on for advice usually should have their advice
ignored. In fact, the only class I nearly failed due to being truly
unprepared was a class specifically recommended to me by my adviser
as one I 'did' have the prerequisites for. Despite what they
thought, I could handle things, but it would have been easier if,
during a period of limited time and energy, I didn't have to spend
the time and energy outsmarting the system. In the end, however,
ignoring the rules won me both their respect and their aid. The
Lesson Learned: Breaking the rules often works better than following
them, and it's a lot easier to break them if you do it when no one is
looking.
I also learned that any
employer paying you will use that money as both threat and leverage
to try to change your beliefs or make you sign your name to
statements you do not believe in. The example with the article was
the most grievous instance of this, but the nature of the
brainwashing and conditioning The New Teacher Project was attempting
would have been readily apparent to anyone who has ever taken even a
rudimentary psychology course. The Lesson Learned: Unless your boss
is Sara Fitzsimmons, you probably shouldn't trust him/her.
I went back to the farm. I spent a few weeks and applied for a few more jobs here and there. I got rejected from anything worth doing.
Mom said: “Just keep trying. Everything will work out fine.”
I lost it. I know she meant well, but all I heard was “You just haven't tried hard enough, yet.”
Dad had apologized for the mistaken advice he had given me about college, but mom never had (and still hasn't) admitted that the financial advice she saddled me with was not only incorrect but disastrously wrong. Half a decade's worth of stress and poor sleep, and the best she could say to me was “I am sorry you made a decision that has made you so unhappy.” That decision, in truth, was mine to make. But the unhappy decision my 17 year old self had so mistakenly made was to listen to her.
I was tired. I was angry. I had been tired and angry for years. I told her off so thoroughly and completely that it's a wonder she still speaks to me at all.
Then I gave up.
For the first time in my life, I completely and utterly gave up. I stopped looking for work. I stopped paying the loans. I stopped answering the calls from the student loan organizations. I stopped talking to friends. I stopped talking to family.
I slept in the attic of the farm house and I ate whatever food was put in from of me. Other than that, I did nothing. I was down and out this way for two weeks.
I figured that it was only a matter of time before the folks told me to leave. I figured when they did, I would walk into the woods and survive as well as I could. That might sound like a load of bullshit to most people, but those of you who know me, know I would have done it.
But they didn't ask me to leave. Instead, they offered to pay off my loans. Just like that. Somewhere late that summer, Dad told me he would make things right again. This put a spark back into me.
With the spark came the guilt. Hard work and determination counted for nothing, whereas anger, disrespect, and sloth gave immediate reward. I couldn't stand it, so I left the farm again.
I lived in a friend's spare room, payed her a little bit of rent, and I worked a few odd jobs here and there (having finally learned the art of finding odd jobs.) I did some factory work that was not worth doing. I worked as a roustabout some, putting up large tents for special events, and once or twice I spent a few days helping the Sheetz company unload tractor trailers. This lasted a few months while I tried to get my head on straight.
I didn't want 'giving up' to be the solution to my problems, but working hard had certainly never produced anything for me. So in the end I took Dad's offer, and I went home. I think this was in late September but might have been October or even November. It's blurry.
So I came home, and I slept. For months and months, I just slept. I tried working a little bit on the farm, but my head was full of voices that wouldn't be quiet. Too many fears and suspicions about all the bad things that happen when you apply yourself to anything. I was still cold towards mom, if no longer openly hostile. I kept expecting to be told to leave. I kept expecting the offer to be withdrawn and the promise broken. Within a few months, though, Dad refinanced some things, and in March of 2012, he just cleared away tens of thousands of dollars of my college debt. Just like that.
The (unfortunate) Results as I See Them:
Years of hard work, determination, and skill earned me nothing. In fact, the harder I tried, the worse my situation became.
When, in 2007, I tried to work hard to make the farm better and to pay off my loans, Dad fought to make me stop and mom demanded money she had promised she wouldn't demand.
When I tried to work hard to get a degree that would matter, the university itself tried to stop me, and only started helping me when I hacked the system and stubbornly ignored everyone I should have been listening to.
When I stuck to my guns about the unfortunate connotations of a paper about why “all” of any type of person is privileged and “all” of any type of person is not, it only served to get me fired.
Giving up completely, though; utterly ceasing to work, care, or try make things better...set me free. What's more, it set me free in a matter of months when I had spent years trying to do what was right. This is a bad lesson for anyone to learn.
After March of 2012 and into 2013.
Once Dad lifted the loans, things began to get better. I still didn't bother to look for work or help at the farm much, but I started selling my time to people I knew who were having trouble with math and physics. I began tutoring family, friends, and friends of friends who could spare some cash and felt I was doing them good by showing them how to sort the numbers. I didn't expect it to generate much income, but I no longer needed much income. For six years, all I had wanted was to claw my way back up to where I was when I had first graduated high school, and now I was there.
I had done a lot of tutoring over the years for food or for free, and someone suggested I do a bit of it for money. Turned out that once people were paying me, they felt a lot less guilty about asking for help. My schedule slowly started filling up. Word got around, and within a year, I was making more per week tutoring than I would have made at any job I had ever even applied for, much less gotten. My clients tell me I charge half what other math and physics tutors charge. I didn't believe them until I looked it up. When I started doing all my tutoring online, things got even better. I no longer had gas as an expense, and I could tutor anyone anywhere. My last client was in Puerto Rico, and he heard about me through word of mouth.
I was still at the farm. My relationship with Mom patched up slowly. Rather than talk about it, she seemed content to pretend that nothing had ever been wrong to begin with. Less closure this way, but less fighting too, I suppose.
And that brings us pretty nearly up to date. I've spent the last year or so patching up things that fell apart or had been neglected during the last half-decade or so. I went back and thanked my professors. I used the money from the tutoring to clear out my last few thousand dollars of debt from, among other things, my credit cards, an old utility bill, and a really understanding landlord who never got the last month's rent. I sent a Christmas present to my one cousin that was quite some years overdue.
Mom does little kindnesses for me each day, and I have taken to building her walk-ways and grape arbors; rebuilding chicken coups and fixing leaky pipes. I did a lot of cooking while she was away for part of each week pursuing her own college education. Just little things, I know, but the little things seem like they really matter.
Despite how well the tutoring was (and is) going. I took three months off this last spring to help Dad and Joe with the planting. I hadn't done it last spring, but this one felt different. I didn't have those voices in my head echoing over and over “How are you gonna get free? How are you gonna get free?” You can't sit in a tractor cab for hours on end with nothing but your thoughts, not when your thoughts are tearing you up. The three of us planted more acreage this past spring than any spring in over a decade. It's all growing well.
I still don't feel comfortable enough to go back to work for Dad with the animals on a regular basis. I help whenever we are improving the facilities though; building new calf nurseries and such. Ever since Dad and my big fight in 2007, he's seen to it that the conditions and facilities for the animals have been steadily improving. The animals, in general, look pretty good now, and within another year or two the facilities might actually be up to where they should have been 20 years ago. I'm pretty sure Joe has had a big hand in all this. He keeps things clean.
The (fortunate?) Results as I see Them.
My face is no longer thin, my arm doesn’t twitch anymore, and the claustrophobic nightmares have all but disappeared.
I've been trying to make amends to my folks bit by bit for my anger and my coldness.
I work for myself, and I love my job.
There is still a lingering fear or two that haunt me, though. If I hadn't broken down, I would still be struggling to get free. I wouldn't have thought to try the tutoring. I would still be scrapping the bottom of the job market for work I didn't really want for money that just gets passed on to pay the interest. Debt, as I had long suspected, is a walking prison. Beyond that, I can't shake a lingering feeling that, despite their repeated assurances, one day my folks will come asking for the money again; forcing me to fall back into either defensive anger or wage-slavery.
I need to let it go. If I ever get a windfall, I'll pay the folks back, but only on my terms and only in my time. This was the original bargain I had with them, and, after what has happened, I think they'll stick to it this time. I still have my fears, but I aim to walk it off.
My folks did wrong by me when I was doing right by them, and they treated me with incredible amounts of help and kindness once I no longer deserved it. I feel a weird mix of anger and confusion over this, as well as guilt and shame. But that's another thing I need to let go. I aim to walk that off, too.
When I was 18 and just out of high school I told myself that I was going to go on an adventure. I had read too much Tolkien in elementary school, I suppose, and I had been itching for a long walk ever since. I agreed to put it off for four more years. 22 didn't seem that far away to me, and the folks really wanted to see me go to college. I am 29 years old, now. This whole thing is 7 years past due. So in my selfishness, I have told my father I won't be around to help with the fall harvest. I have told my tutoring clients that they are going to have to get by without me between now and next spring.
I am going very, very far away, and then I am coming home bit by bit. When I get back, I am not going to be angry or guilty anymore. I am going to forget about the trapped feeling and the sleepless nights. I'm going to forget the injustices done to me and the pain and injustice I have inflicted in return. I aim to go walking.
I aim to walk it off.
Final Thoughts.
If you read it this far, good for you. I won't give you another post like this; I promise. A lot of you who know me were with me through bits and pieces of this narrative, and so a lot of you know that in the midst of all this life was going on: People got married, babies were born, suicides happened, hearts were broken, and people died. Not all of it was bad, and I had some good times. A lot of you who know me didn't see this story unwinding. You just knew something was wrong with me. Now you know what. Sorry I didn't tell you sooner.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Rule 3 Envoked: A first round of thank you's for gifts and good will.
The last two weeks have been quite exceptional, and much busier than I expected them to be. The number of people who are offering me gifts, rides, and aid of all sorts to help me in my adventure has been overwhelming.
True to rule 3, I am trying to graciously accept as much help as I possibly can. I didn't expect to have so many offers, but I suppose I should have expected it, given the high caliber of the people I know. What follows is a list of first gifts and other acts of goodwill people have already bestowed upon me.
My long time friend Josh Lang (whom I met 17 years ago in middle school) and his wonderful wife Kristi have not only offered to let me stay the night of the 25th in their house in Pittsburgh, they are also taking me to the airport the morning of my flight out. Since it's a Monday, I do believe Josh may have actually taken off of work just to do this for me. He hasn't confirmed or denied that, but he's a great guy and I certainly wouldn't put it past him.
So thank you Josh and Kristi.
Another friend of mine, Lindsay Kromel (met her 5 years ago in a physics class in college), drove several hours down to the farm from Philadelphia last weekend to bestow upon me good advice, well wishes, and the following gifts:
For those who can't quite see, they are as follows: a lightweight LifeStraw water filter which I intend to use as a backup in case my primary filter fails or becomes damaged, a new pair of wool socks (always useful, don't ever hike in cotton), and a very small bracelet that, when broken, extends out into over 8 feet of emergency use para-cord. I was planning on bringing extra para-cord from the start, based on some advice years ago from my Uncle Jeff, but now I will be able to carry it in a much more compact and lightweight manner.
Thank you Lindsay. :)
Next up, my cousin Victor (17, in high school, and several states away) took the time to cut, bark, sand, and then wood burn the following walking stick for me. Then he got it the whole way up to Pa from Georgia. It's hardwood, is almost 6 feet tall, and has one of my favorite walking poems carefully burned into it in a spiral around several feet of it's middle section. The hat is there to help with scale.
True to rule 3, I am trying to graciously accept as much help as I possibly can. I didn't expect to have so many offers, but I suppose I should have expected it, given the high caliber of the people I know. What follows is a list of first gifts and other acts of goodwill people have already bestowed upon me.
My long time friend Josh Lang (whom I met 17 years ago in middle school) and his wonderful wife Kristi have not only offered to let me stay the night of the 25th in their house in Pittsburgh, they are also taking me to the airport the morning of my flight out. Since it's a Monday, I do believe Josh may have actually taken off of work just to do this for me. He hasn't confirmed or denied that, but he's a great guy and I certainly wouldn't put it past him.
So thank you Josh and Kristi.
Another friend of mine, Lindsay Kromel (met her 5 years ago in a physics class in college), drove several hours down to the farm from Philadelphia last weekend to bestow upon me good advice, well wishes, and the following gifts:
For those who can't quite see, they are as follows: a lightweight LifeStraw water filter which I intend to use as a backup in case my primary filter fails or becomes damaged, a new pair of wool socks (always useful, don't ever hike in cotton), and a very small bracelet that, when broken, extends out into over 8 feet of emergency use para-cord. I was planning on bringing extra para-cord from the start, based on some advice years ago from my Uncle Jeff, but now I will be able to carry it in a much more compact and lightweight manner.
Thank you Lindsay. :)
Next up, my cousin Victor (17, in high school, and several states away) took the time to cut, bark, sand, and then wood burn the following walking stick for me. Then he got it the whole way up to Pa from Georgia. It's hardwood, is almost 6 feet tall, and has one of my favorite walking poems carefully burned into it in a spiral around several feet of it's middle section. The hat is there to help with scale.
I'm not sure just yet how to get it out west with me. I doubt they'll let me take it on the plane, so I am going to see about mailing it. If it can't be mailed, I intend to pick it up on my way through Pittsburgh so I can at least carry it with me the last thousand miles or so. More on this later. Regardless, it is by far the finest walking staff that I have ever owned.
Thank you Cousin. I'll put it to good use.
Last up (for this post, anyway) are David Chadwick & Gina Pace. They barely know me. We met once this past spring at their niece's college graduation. I met their niece (Evelyn Erickson) in college about 4 years ago. Evelyn put me back in contact with them seeing as they live out near Seattle. Not only have they offered to pick me up at the airport when I land, they have also offered me their home for a night, and even a ride all the way out to Lake Ozette near Cape Alava. As such, these two almost-strangers have made it possible for me to start my trek all the way out at the Pacific Ocean, instead of settling for the Puget Sound.
I must stress that it is NOT a short drive from Seattle to Lake Ozette, but they offered me a lift anyway. I am quite overwhelmed by this generosity.
So thank you David, and thank you Gina, and thank you too, Evelyn, for setting this up.
I think I might be writing quite a few more thank you posts in the future, as well. I have received what must be dozens more messages from family and friends offering places to stay, contacts out west, hand made gear, and donations for gear that can't be hand-made. I, in fact, just received a few more of these messages while I was typing this. In addition, I haven't even started thanking my Cousin Pat and his family for what they have offered me (that's going to need a whole post to itself at least).
So thank you all once again.
More posts to follow soon.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
The Rules.
Since I couldn't think of a good photo to go with this post, here is a
picture of me from several years ago pretending to fall off of the
Italian Alps:
Man, do I miss that scarf...
Anyway, down to business. So if one is going to go on a cross country trek like this, I think it's best to put down some rules to challenge ones self. After all, if the point is just to get from A to B you take the easiest route. If the point is something else entirely, i.e. the way you get from A to B, you maybe better make up some rules.
Rule 1:
The method. Once I officially start the walk, I will no longer be using any mode of transportation involving a wing, wheel, or motor. This means that walking, swimming, horseback riding, kayaking, sailing, pogo-sticking, dog sledding, hot air ballooning, etc. are all viable means of travel.
This also means that cars, bikes, scooters, planes, motorboats, most ferries, and similar other things are right out. If I get the chance to hang glide or ride an Ostrich, this rule will be immediately and shamelessly broken.
Rule 2:
The money. I intend to limit myself to a budget of approximately $1 per mile traveled. This is to cover food, clothing, gear, (shoes), laundromats, hostel stays, and anything else that I might need or want to spend money on. I'm going to try to include in this budget the gear I buy ahead of time, the plane ticket, and the bill for keeping my smartphone active so that I can continue to post pictures and updates here as I go along. This might prove a little difficult, however, given some of the things that I intend to do and some of the gear I am going to need to do it more or less safely. That's where Rule 3 comes in.
Rule 3:
The mooch. I will accept charity. In fact, unless it breaks one of the other rules, I will try to accept any and all charity whether offered from home or in the field. I'll be going through towns; I intend to give a heads up a few days before each one and then stop to check the post office. When I was hiking through Europe, I had a stranger invite me in for dinner. In any case, I will make said charities known unless specifically asked not to do so.
In addition, I had someone suggest I add a donation button to this blog. I'll have to think about that one. I'm not sure if that would break Rule 2 or whether I could accept it on account of it not coming out of my budget. Plus I'm not sure if that feels dirty or not. More on this later.
In any case, I am going to try to keep a running tab so that you can see what I'm buying and how much it's setting me back.
The Final Rule:
I intend to follow the above rules, each and every one, with the following blanket exception: I reserve the right to ignore any and all rules in the event of severe injury, life-or-death circumstances, or to comply with the demands of legitimate law enforcement agents. That is all.
Anyway, down to business. So if one is going to go on a cross country trek like this, I think it's best to put down some rules to challenge ones self. After all, if the point is just to get from A to B you take the easiest route. If the point is something else entirely, i.e. the way you get from A to B, you maybe better make up some rules.
Rule 1:
The method. Once I officially start the walk, I will no longer be using any mode of transportation involving a wing, wheel, or motor. This means that walking, swimming, horseback riding, kayaking, sailing, pogo-sticking, dog sledding, hot air ballooning, etc. are all viable means of travel.
This also means that cars, bikes, scooters, planes, motorboats, most ferries, and similar other things are right out. If I get the chance to hang glide or ride an Ostrich, this rule will be immediately and shamelessly broken.
Rule 2:
The money. I intend to limit myself to a budget of approximately $1 per mile traveled. This is to cover food, clothing, gear, (shoes), laundromats, hostel stays, and anything else that I might need or want to spend money on. I'm going to try to include in this budget the gear I buy ahead of time, the plane ticket, and the bill for keeping my smartphone active so that I can continue to post pictures and updates here as I go along. This might prove a little difficult, however, given some of the things that I intend to do and some of the gear I am going to need to do it more or less safely. That's where Rule 3 comes in.
Rule 3:
The mooch. I will accept charity. In fact, unless it breaks one of the other rules, I will try to accept any and all charity whether offered from home or in the field. I'll be going through towns; I intend to give a heads up a few days before each one and then stop to check the post office. When I was hiking through Europe, I had a stranger invite me in for dinner. In any case, I will make said charities known unless specifically asked not to do so.
In addition, I had someone suggest I add a donation button to this blog. I'll have to think about that one. I'm not sure if that would break Rule 2 or whether I could accept it on account of it not coming out of my budget. Plus I'm not sure if that feels dirty or not. More on this later.
In any case, I am going to try to keep a running tab so that you can see what I'm buying and how much it's setting me back.
The Final Rule:
I intend to follow the above rules, each and every one, with the following blanket exception: I reserve the right to ignore any and all rules in the event of severe injury, life-or-death circumstances, or to comply with the demands of legitimate law enforcement agents. That is all.
I will walk 500 miles, then I will walk 479 more. (The Plan for the First Leg.)
The First Leg:
The plan begins as follows: I will be taking a plane (which is both cheaper and faster than a train) from Pittsburgh, Pa to Seattle, Washington. From there I'm going to try to make it another 150 or so miles west to Cape Alava if I can. (Anyone out there have a friend in Seattle with a car and a day to kill? Gas and food is on me.)
Cape Alava, according to certain websites, is marked as the furthest point west in the contiguous lower 48 states, so I figured it would be a nice place to start. If I can't make it all the way out there, I will just have to console myself with the fact that the Puget Sound off of Seattle is salty enough to convince anyone from the Appalachians that I started at the Pacific Ocean. I doubt that's quite going to work with anyone who draws their living up outta the brine, but it'll work at least for telling stories back here at home.
Anyway, after all of that, I plan on making use of Washington State's extensive and highly reputed rails-to-trails system. Below is a map of every rails-to-trails trail that is both suitable for hiking and over 20 miles in length in the greater Washington State area.
I plan on taking the one that runs out of Seattle, right past Ellensburg, and on towards Missoula, Montana. You can see there are a few places (I count 3) where the trail disappears and I'm going to have to wing it. Those gaps are only about 50 miles in length at the longest, though, and, unlike the times I went hiking about 'winging it' through Europe, this time I will actually be able to speak the language and ask for directions if needs be.
From Missoula I am going to be going south and a little east all the way to Idaho Falls. There are some intermittent hiking trails along U.S. Route 93 that should help get me there, and the highway itself looks to be two lanes in most places, so for long stretches I am most likely going to be walking along the berm. It's about 300 miles from Missoula to Idaho Falls, but about 140 miles along the way there is a little town called Salmon and a road labeled State Route 28 that's even smaller and therefore hopefully better for the walking beside.
As a rule, I don't much care for walking along highways. People can be dangerous, but people in cars can be worse. This particular route, though, passes through a wildlife refuge or two and has quite a few smaller back roads paralleling it in places. As such, I'm betting that if I really get to feeling like I need to leave the side of the highway behind, there will be some relief. Here's hoping, anyway. The route also goes straight through Main Street of several towns along the way, providing sidewalks and slowing traffic down.
After planning out this route, I typed it into to Google maps just to see what would happen. This is what I got:
Yes it's blurry, and yes I had to move the route a bit so that it went through Salmon, Idaho instead of swinging out further into Montana, and yes this particular map isn't really legitimate since it's not actually the route I'm taking. Despite all of these huge and glaring flaws, though, you might notice that this less than quality image seems to suggest that the driving directions actually come out fairly close to the rails-to-trails route. So, based on that flimsy argument and the resulting semi-irrelevant data, I intend to declare that the first leg will be approximately 979 miles long. To be on the safe side, I'll be giving myself a good 2 months + to cover this route and intend to budget myself $1 per mile for food, new shoes, etc.
I was hoping for an even 1000 of course, but that would have just been too perfect.
Coming Soon: A overview of the second leg involving Cousin Pat's Idaho Horse Ranch, and a winter trek through Yellowstone.
The plan begins as follows: I will be taking a plane (which is both cheaper and faster than a train) from Pittsburgh, Pa to Seattle, Washington. From there I'm going to try to make it another 150 or so miles west to Cape Alava if I can. (Anyone out there have a friend in Seattle with a car and a day to kill? Gas and food is on me.)
Cape Alava, according to certain websites, is marked as the furthest point west in the contiguous lower 48 states, so I figured it would be a nice place to start. If I can't make it all the way out there, I will just have to console myself with the fact that the Puget Sound off of Seattle is salty enough to convince anyone from the Appalachians that I started at the Pacific Ocean. I doubt that's quite going to work with anyone who draws their living up outta the brine, but it'll work at least for telling stories back here at home.
Anyway, after all of that, I plan on making use of Washington State's extensive and highly reputed rails-to-trails system. Below is a map of every rails-to-trails trail that is both suitable for hiking and over 20 miles in length in the greater Washington State area.
I plan on taking the one that runs out of Seattle, right past Ellensburg, and on towards Missoula, Montana. You can see there are a few places (I count 3) where the trail disappears and I'm going to have to wing it. Those gaps are only about 50 miles in length at the longest, though, and, unlike the times I went hiking about 'winging it' through Europe, this time I will actually be able to speak the language and ask for directions if needs be.
From Missoula I am going to be going south and a little east all the way to Idaho Falls. There are some intermittent hiking trails along U.S. Route 93 that should help get me there, and the highway itself looks to be two lanes in most places, so for long stretches I am most likely going to be walking along the berm. It's about 300 miles from Missoula to Idaho Falls, but about 140 miles along the way there is a little town called Salmon and a road labeled State Route 28 that's even smaller and therefore hopefully better for the walking beside.
As a rule, I don't much care for walking along highways. People can be dangerous, but people in cars can be worse. This particular route, though, passes through a wildlife refuge or two and has quite a few smaller back roads paralleling it in places. As such, I'm betting that if I really get to feeling like I need to leave the side of the highway behind, there will be some relief. Here's hoping, anyway. The route also goes straight through Main Street of several towns along the way, providing sidewalks and slowing traffic down.
After planning out this route, I typed it into to Google maps just to see what would happen. This is what I got:
Yes it's blurry, and yes I had to move the route a bit so that it went through Salmon, Idaho instead of swinging out further into Montana, and yes this particular map isn't really legitimate since it's not actually the route I'm taking. Despite all of these huge and glaring flaws, though, you might notice that this less than quality image seems to suggest that the driving directions actually come out fairly close to the rails-to-trails route. So, based on that flimsy argument and the resulting semi-irrelevant data, I intend to declare that the first leg will be approximately 979 miles long. To be on the safe side, I'll be giving myself a good 2 months + to cover this route and intend to budget myself $1 per mile for food, new shoes, etc.
I was hoping for an even 1000 of course, but that would have just been too perfect.
Coming Soon: A overview of the second leg involving Cousin Pat's Idaho Horse Ranch, and a winter trek through Yellowstone.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
I aim to walk it off.
I am going to walk across the country.
Hell with that. I'm going to walk, run, jog, jump, swim, paddle, kayak, and ride a horse for a while if all goes as planned.
I have decided to write about it here.
There's a problem with that part of the plan, though. I'm pretty sure that even at the best of times I'm an overly dramatic and verbose sort of fellow with a strong predisposition towards unabashed bragging. As such, I'm not entirely sure that what I write is going to be that much worth reading.
But to hell with that, too. This blog might end up the most self-centered, egotistical "look at me" tale that I've ever written, but I'm damn well going to write it anyway. I'll do my best to keep things short and to the point in hopes that this makes things a better read while still picking out the best highlights of where I go, who I meet, and what I do. It'll be hard for me to excuse myself from trying to write down every detail of the whole affair, but no story I ever tell feels quite complete to me anyway. No reason that this should feel any different, I suppose.
Someone told me yesterday that I shouldn't worry so much about how this comes across. Said it was best just to write things down for my own sake if that's what I needed to do, and to let the rest fall where it will. I'm not sure if that's good advice for any author, but I get so tangled up in my own head sometimes that I'm willing to try said advice if it helps me get a few thoughts untwisted.
So here we go. I am going to "walk" across the country.
People so far have responded to this statement in one of two ways: Either they say "Cool!" or they say "Why?"
Cool speaks for itself and needs no response from me.
As for Why, I've got a whole bunch of reasons; some of which make sense and some of which really don't. The short version is that I have been feeling very, very restless for a very long time (read "about two decades"). Circumstances have kept me in one place for much longer that I have had any liking for, and I've got a lot of anger and resentment towards the people responsible for that; not least amongst whom I include myself.
I'm tired of being angry. It's been easier the past few months, but I still feel it gnawing at me now and then. So I aim to get at the root of it; I aim to walk it off.
Check in here for periodic updates and pictures. I'm leaving come September, and the next few posts are going to be mostly about preparations. I'm going to keep this blog going until I get back which is likely to take some time. So if you have a certain restlessness too, you can follow me along. It might make it better for you, or it might just make it worse.
Hell with that. I'm going to walk, run, jog, jump, swim, paddle, kayak, and ride a horse for a while if all goes as planned.
I have decided to write about it here.
There's a problem with that part of the plan, though. I'm pretty sure that even at the best of times I'm an overly dramatic and verbose sort of fellow with a strong predisposition towards unabashed bragging. As such, I'm not entirely sure that what I write is going to be that much worth reading.
But to hell with that, too. This blog might end up the most self-centered, egotistical "look at me" tale that I've ever written, but I'm damn well going to write it anyway. I'll do my best to keep things short and to the point in hopes that this makes things a better read while still picking out the best highlights of where I go, who I meet, and what I do. It'll be hard for me to excuse myself from trying to write down every detail of the whole affair, but no story I ever tell feels quite complete to me anyway. No reason that this should feel any different, I suppose.
Someone told me yesterday that I shouldn't worry so much about how this comes across. Said it was best just to write things down for my own sake if that's what I needed to do, and to let the rest fall where it will. I'm not sure if that's good advice for any author, but I get so tangled up in my own head sometimes that I'm willing to try said advice if it helps me get a few thoughts untwisted.
So here we go. I am going to "walk" across the country.
People so far have responded to this statement in one of two ways: Either they say "Cool!" or they say "Why?"
Cool speaks for itself and needs no response from me.
As for Why, I've got a whole bunch of reasons; some of which make sense and some of which really don't. The short version is that I have been feeling very, very restless for a very long time (read "about two decades"). Circumstances have kept me in one place for much longer that I have had any liking for, and I've got a lot of anger and resentment towards the people responsible for that; not least amongst whom I include myself.
I'm tired of being angry. It's been easier the past few months, but I still feel it gnawing at me now and then. So I aim to get at the root of it; I aim to walk it off.
Check in here for periodic updates and pictures. I'm leaving come September, and the next few posts are going to be mostly about preparations. I'm going to keep this blog going until I get back which is likely to take some time. So if you have a certain restlessness too, you can follow me along. It might make it better for you, or it might just make it worse.
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