January 16, 2008

Today’s miles: 17.0

It was an uneventful day until around Stacy (population 191). All morning, I listened to NPR on the radio. I was walking through town when a door swing open and out walked an attractive, young guy “Where are you walking to?” I told him (Josh) and asked to fill up my water at his house. He was watching country music videos, getting ready to go set up some duck hides. He ticked off what he does, “Guide duck huntin’, go fishin' some, and I’m a cap’n. And pretty much, when I’m not workin’, I’m drinkin’.” And then he took about two facts about my trip for his article for the local paper – name and that I was hiking from Kitty Hawk to “Asheville.” Then he recommended that I go visit his buddy Jeff, who was crazy and had done plenty of interesting things, like hitchhike to Alaska, and invent the Tigerclaw saw (ohhh… the tiger claw!). So I said I might visit, then trucked on down the road. I reached Davis (where this character lived, population 350) late morning, and went into the corner variety store. While drinking coffee and eating cookies, sitting on my backpack, a fellow climbed out of his truck and said, “You must be the traveler,” and that was Jeff. We talked for close to an hour, about near everything.

He looked to be in his late 30s, with dark curly hair and a relaxed demeanor. He sat on top of the ice cooler and me on my backpack. He’s from Wisconsin, been living in Davis for the last 4 years, finishing a house, before that Asheville for a long while. Next week, he’s actually planning on traveling back to Asheville to move there with his 15 year old son, who’s having behavioral troubles at the local school. We talked about life on the road, good hitches and drunk hitches and he seemed to be nostalgically looking back to an earlier time when he said, “It’s amazing, whatever you need, it seems to appear right in front of you, on the side of the road.”

I felt such affection for this man, an intelligent single father stuck not knowing how to reclaim the freedom of the road off the road. He gave me $15 coupons to a bar/restaurant in Asheville that he’s a partial owner of, and off I go and he goes, and for the rest of the afternoon it was as though I had a special glow all around me, from a run-in with a common soul.

I stopped for a late lunch at a Methodist church picnic table. As the sun was setting, I became worried, because I had not seen the campground I was looking for. Stopped a woman driving out of a driveway to ask for directions and sneakily solicit an invitation to sleep in my tent in her yard. She, being the wife of a Baptist preacher, instead offered me to stay in a trailer vacated in their yard and we went to do some errands around town, with Rhonda’s grandson the very cute Dean. She bought me a BBQ chicken dinner and we rode the whole way listening to baby songs full blast on the stereo, to stop the baby’s fussing.

I slept in their RV, getting up a few times to coat my face in cocoa butter and lips in medicated lip balm. I really do resemble a ripe tomato. Yum.