I was crying like a baby on the side of a small road. I could bear the walk, but I couldn’t bear making Natalie miserable. And walking along busy highways makes Natalie miserable.
Meanwhile, above our micro-tragedy, the sky bloomed in a big expansive blue like an oceanic canvas littered with crumpled pieces of clouds, morphing and colliding, numberless, nameless. Sailing east, northeast, the clouds ballooned, some taking on greyer hues so that they resembled tankers of some ethereal navy, immense and unstoppable. Then in the deep distance, a darkening. At first, it seemed an aberration of vision, a halo. But the dark only grew more real and all-encompassing, attenuating the blue in favor of an ashy, purple, pointillistic afternoon sky. Then thunder. First there, then here. Then lightning, almost imperceptible branches of divine white poking the earth. Then fear.
Alas, drenched and nearly defeated, we checked into the Trailway Motel just 11 miles east of St Louis. We were in Fairview Heights, IL, a city whose recent headlines include one man arrested for murder, several people arrested for graffiti, a dog rescued from 15 feet down in a well, a report that cops will be manning the local Dunkin’ Donuts for a special event, and confirmation that, happily, the local Bob Evans wouldn’t be one of 27 closing. The wagon of emotions suggested by these news reports illuminates how we felt as we stepped onto the grimy carpet and eyed our $40 home for the night. Desperate. Sick from walking along dangerous highways. Still astonished by the generosity of strangers. But baffled by the fact that we chose this life, and debating aloud whether to continue it.
After a mediocre Mexican dinner nearby (and after, still hungry, I ordered Chinese takeout), we swung by the gas station across the street from the motel to pick up beer and cider. Even in this town — especially in this town? — we stood out, and as we walked up the concrete stairs to our room, a middle-aged black man hanging outside his room said what’s up. We exchanged a few courtesies, which led to him inviting us to chill in his room. Sure, we said. Hardly thought twice, except for the fact that my food was getting cold.
In his room, which appeared more apartment than motel room, the paragon of hospitality pointed us to a couple choice seats, offered a bottle of brandy, and then asked, “Y’all smoke?” Sure, we said again, and he lit up as we rolled through conversation, first about us and then naturally the broader mysteries of life, love, music. The man’s name was D, and he’d clearly been liberal with the brandy. We’d also been joined by his homie Bigfoot, a younger man (also black) distinctively quieter, humbler, and more sober than D. He was spiritual. Though D didn’t quite understand why we’d choose to walk to St Louis when we could just catch a ride from one of his friends and be there in ten minutes, Bigfoot understood. He alluded to the little religious allegory “Footprints in the Sand,” and then said to the group, “Y’all repent your sins here and now cuz this is Jesus and Mary Magdelene,” nodding at my wild beard, Natalie’s smiling face, and our dirty sandals.
D must’ve caught me grooving to the slow, smooth R&B flowing from his radio on the chest of drawers because he asked me if I liked his music. I said, “Yeh… it’s soulful,” which made the man erupt in hysterical laughter. Bigfoot knew I was sincere and just nodded slowly, perfect counterpoint to his buzzed buddy.
BEAST
Eventually we excused ourselves from the evening revelry to head back to our own apartment. My Chinese food had already cooled a bit.
As was our wont when bumming it up in motels, we flipped on “the tube” to see what drivel we could consume. 2, 4, 5, 6, 7… we paraded through the channels, skipping commercials violently, occasionally stopping to see a pretty person say something pretty stupid, ever onward, looking, searching, seeking, finding nothing except a loud, bright mirror. National Geographic. A British man named Karl Bushby. Determined to walk around the world “with unbroken footsteps” from the southern tip of South America to his home in England. Just like us, but more badass, pushing a handcart named “Beast”:
Much more alluring than my second crappy dinner was this man’s walk. He’d fallen in love with a Latina in Central America who’d housed him, but he pried himself away to continue the ridiculous expedition. He made it all the way to the Bering Strait, and crossed it at the coldest time of the year. Once he reached Russia, the bastards deported him because he didn’t have the proper papers. All this served as background to the “brief” side trip slash marketing campaign he had newly embarked on: a walk from Los Angeles to the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. to earn him the visa he needed to continue walking.
In other words, Natalie and I were suffering and crying on a trip this man considered merely an annoying detour.
With new perspective, we slept well and set out from the motel just before 8 AM, while it was still raining. Just a gentle, drizzly rain. We walked about 10 miles out of Fairview Heights and through East St Louis, a city whose murder rate in 2014 surpassed that of Honduras, the country with the highest murder rate in the world. But it was a quiet, rainy Saturday morning, and all the murderers were probably inside warm and dry.
Finally, we reached the Mississippi.
The Arch greeted us at noon. What better time to reach the Gateway to the West? I had begun to justify—even to celebrate — a decision to quit. We had walked over a thousand miles from the east coast to St Louis — pretty impressive, no? And my younger brother’s graduation party was coming up; we could secretly buy plane tickets, fly home, and show up at the party completely out of the blue. There’d be crying and laughing, delight and confusion. We’d have to explain ourselves; my mom would be joyous, but everyone would be at least a little disappointed, if only secretly. And Natalie and I would be the most disappointed of all. But at least we wouldn’t be sweaty, dirty, and crying on the side of a highway.
As we crossed that great American river into St Louis, however, the old determination rose up again. After all, we had something to look forward to.
A good buddy back home had been so enthralled by the walk that he’d been tracing our route on an actual map pinned by his desk at work. A few days before we reached St Louis, he had texted me to say he’d reserved a room for us at the Renaissance Grand Hotel. As a result, at our very lowest point, we had slogged our bodies and buggy from one of the grossest motels east of the Mississippi to one of the finest in the west. Sixteen floors up, satiated by an Indian lunch buffet, freshly clean from a luxurious bath, and listening to Judy Garland, one couldn’t help but think things were looking up.
RIVER CITY
Admittedly, we’d given ourselves good reason to hate our lives. When we finally arrived in St Louis, stopped to breathe, and took stock of the situation, we realized that we hadn’t really rested since leaving Louisville — two states and nearly 300 miles earlier.
Even in St Louis we failed to rest.
After a couple hours refreshing in the hotel room, we ventured out to tour the Arch. Previously, I’d only seen it in pictures and postcards, usually dismissing it as an overwrought waste of stainless steel. In person, however, the thing is a marvel.
Weighing nearly 43,000 tons, the 630-foot-tall Arch is the tallest stainless steel monument in the world. At its base, your eyes glaze up its legs in absolute wonder that such a thing stands. From the top, you see the world.
Happy to knock out one major tourist attraction, we wandered back to our room, where we sipped Four Roses on the rocks and laughed our asses off to Bill Hicks standup. Laughter was the prescription. When we ventured out into the city again that evening, it was to see a theater screening of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure put on by some local college group. Even more hilarious than the movie was the college kid who mistook me for some celebrity, expressing astonishment and shame that I’d paid for tickets and telling me to get any drink I wanted on the house. I shrugged, ordered a tall can of PBR, and joined Natalie on the couch.
The second day in the city, we strolled our stuff an easy four miles south to our second St Louis home. Our original Couchsurfing host DJ had texted us to say he couldn’t have us anymore, but his friends Stephanie and Graham would be glad to fill in. Beautiful people, they treated us to breakfast upon arrival, and then invited us to join them and some friends to explore a local arts and crafts fair in the shadow of an old brewery.
It was a calm day, completely different from the debauchery some friends back home at Bay 2 Breakers were experiencing. But that wasn’t the only major contrast. White and about our age, Stephanie and Graham lived in the rapidly gentrifying Benton Park (typical), but they owned their home (???). In San Francisco, only leprechauns and people with butlers buy homes.
They put us up in the carriage house, a kind of auxiliary building where people used to leave their horse and carriage while wining and dining all fancy-like in the real house. Not only did this young couple own a sweet piece of property complete with home and carriage house, but they also owned more property a few blocks away that they were fixing and flipping.
A true sweetheart, Stephanie gave us a ride to REI in the afternoon so we could solve some shoe issues, and then we hit up Trader Joe’s to stock up on food. As sweet as his woman, Graham hooked us up with bikes for our third day in the city.
It would have delighted Natalie’s younger sister, who a year earlier had printed out insanely-ambitious plans for doing Paris in a day, to see our third day St Louis itinerary: First, the Botanical Garden. Then Forest Park. Then City Museum. Amazingly, in spite of Natalie’s bike losing a pedal at some point — can’t even catch a break in the city—we got everything done.
We also found time for serendipity: at a cozy shop called Left Bank Books, I ran into an old college friend the same way I’d always run into her on campus — through happy chance. We said “wow” at each other a bunch, she passed on to me her copy of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen (since I’d just finished Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass), and we reconvened later for phở.
All told, we’d biked 20 miles around the city. So much for rest.
A RIDE ON THE KATY
We departed from our gracious hosts’ carriage house at around 9 in the morning, and left the city slowly. Hit up the bank, the post office, the cafe — executing all the errands. Strolled through the city, through Forest Park, through Washington University, through Clayton, through wealthy ass Ladue (median household income: $141,720), through Creve Coeur (location of Monsanto’s headquarters), through a Chipotle for dinner, into Creve Coeur Park, complete with over 2,000 acres of lake, hiking trails, tennis courts, an archery course, and, naturally, zero official campsites. So, at sunset, we hopped off the trail into the thickest woods around to camp anyway.
Part of me felt anxiety creeping in again. We were stealth camping, so I wondered whether we’d be woken up by a flashlight-wielding officer. Also, everything was wet and, as you can tell in the above photo, tree branches had clearly been falling left and right. “Widowmakers,” they’re called. Also, we’d rolled up to the site in half-darkness, so who knows what poisonous plants we’d steamrolled through. Also, do lightning bugs bite?
But a larger part of me felt lighthearted. And that was thanks to the Katy.
After the C&O Canal in Maryland and the North Bend Rail Trail in West Virginia, we’d become big fans of rails-to-trails programs, which convert old, unused railroad lines into trails for hikers, joggers, and cyclists. The 240-mile Katy Trail, which in 1982 converted from the former Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (aka the MKT aka the KT aka the Katy), is the country’s longest rail trail. We hooked onto it near the eastern end in St Charles and would ride it halfway across the state to Boonville.
The gloomy morning greeted us with cold and rain, but so what? We couldn’t be more relieved to be off the highways. Limestone over cement. Baby black frogs over roadkill. Everything over cars.
After the second day on the Katy Trail, this was the first paragraph in my log:
holy shit everything is going our way and i know i shouldn’t get used to it cuz it’s only one day but my god it’s everything and oh i just can’t help it.
Aside from the mysterious, miserable, screeching thing that had woken us up in the middle of the night, we had slept beautifully, peacefully. A light grey fabric covered the sky, but it wasn’t too cold. The Katy is graceful and easy, meandering at times along country roads, sometimes through acres and acres of corn and wheat, but most often through seemingly interminable tunnels of greenery. A botanist would’ve been a treasure to have identify every vine genuflecting at our feet, the flowering bushes and swaying ferns, the tall, tall trees soaking up every square inch of sunlight.
Our feet felt fine too. And finding a place to sleep meant lying down. While my mom texted photos of my brother’s graduation, we were here:
Walking on the Katy meant hours and hours of bliss, both visually and sonically. But the lack of cars gave our minds even more room to wander, so we sometimes listened to music (or, in Natalie’s case, podcasts). My soundtrack on the Katy consisted of Mary J. Blige, Mary Jane Girls, Rhythm & Sound, 2Pac, the Isley Brothers, Air, Steely Dan, Steven Drozd, Syreeta, Bobby McFerrin, Yo-Yo Ma, and Mozart.
We even found time for silly panoramas:
Day three ended after 23 miles. Legs tired, feet throbbing, birds chirping. The sky a collage of textures and colors — space gray, white, green-orange, blue. A great, antiquated tower loomed by the side of the trail, junky farming equipment scattered at its feet. “Should be fine,” said the sheriff when we called to ask about our camping there. “Not allowed,” said the parks guy. “Oh well,” said I. “At least the sheriff won’t bother us.”
Joining us at our semi-approved campsite was a young white biker couple, who’d taken time off work to bike the Katy back to their home in Lawrence, KS, home to the University of Kansas. Short and heavyset, Jenn wore a shaved head and thick-rimmed glasses. A bit taller, Harry had curly dark hair to his shoulders. Both smiled immensely. The four of us immediately hit it off and enjoyed each others’ company over our respective simple dinners.
In the morning, we said our goodbyes as they cycled on ahead.
Day four lasted 24 miles — our longest stretch on the Katy. All that time amid the moths and psychedelic butterflies and lizards and salamanders and squirrels and snakes gave us time to think. Time to think about how we’d planned to do this thing and actually went through with it. Time to think about all the dangers involved, and how we’d managed to survive.
In the evening, we camped under a wide outdoor structure in the middle of a large town park. Proof of Saturday night, a bar down the road raucously sang out with drunken laughter and tires screeching. Before bed, Natalie and I hopped on the phone to talk to friends and family gathered in San Francisco for Danny’s college graduation party — the one I had secretly contemplated crashing after quitting the walk. We were homesick, but also glad we hadn’t given up.
Day five we only walked six miles because that delivered us to shelter in two hours flat — on a day when the weather forecast called for severe thunderstorms. Even if there hadn’t been a 100 percent chance of cold wind, torrential rain, and electric death from above, we almost certainly would’ve stopped in Tebbetts anyway to enjoy the Katy Trail Turner Shelter.
Originally built in 1889 as a general store and later turned into a church, the Shelter is now one of the most beloved treasures of the Katy. Furnished on two floors with enough bunk beds for over 40 people, kitchen, bathroom, showers, bike repair shop, and even a balcony to gaze over the village — and all for a suggested $5 donation — the Turner Shelter is a jewel.
Of course, we signed the guestbook:
See the 5–23 entry signed by Harry and Jenn of Lawrence? Our cycling friends weren’t just names on the page; we’d actually caught up with them at the Turner Shelter because they’d been waiting out the rain!
It’s hard to describe, but sometimes we get along with people like they’re old friends, and that’s how it was with Harry and Jenn. We spent the whole day hanging out at the Shelter with the whole place to ourselves: got lunch at the diner next door, talked, smoked, drank, played cards, bullshitted, returned to the diner for dessert, cooked and shared dinner together, and didn’t say any farewells until the morning. Silly ape, I’d forgotten how good friends aren’t just a bonus or a luxury—they’re essential.
As Natalie pointed out on the sixth day, one of the most refreshing aspects of the Katy was continually running into like-minded individuals. Nobody ever asked, “Why are you doing this?” We were all just travelers.
After 22 miles, we set up our tent in a teeny wooden gazebo in the middle of a small town with nothing open but a bar that sold me a six-pack of beer and microwaved pizza to go. Back in the gazebo, I offered beer to a couple cyclists who had politely asked if they could pitch their tent away from the rain as well. Of course, we said, as I handed them a couple bottles. They were man and woman—middle-aged, white, and from Minnesota. Lovable accents and everything.
CODA: THE GOLDEN YEAR
The beer explains itself, but I neglect to admit why I’d bothered to waste money on shitty pizza from a bar: we were running out of food.
Out of the entire walk across America, including those four-day excursions through empty western desert, the day we were hit hardest by poor food planning also happened to be the day I turned 27. Natalie felt guilty, but I assured her all was well. Though we obviously wouldn’t be feeling like superheroes, I knew we’d survive just fine. Halfway through the 18-mile day, with my limbs already feeling weak and malnourished, we stopped at a place called Cooper’s Landing, famous in online reviews for its nearly authentic Thai meals. The kitchen proper, sadly, was closed when we arrived, but we still loaded up on what was available: hot dogs, potato salad, and various random snacks. Even humbler, dinner that evening would be a can of smoked oysters Kait had gifted me back in Louisville:
That night, which would be our last on the Katy Trail, we camped several yards from the majestic Missouri River. Since crossing so many streams of such variety over the previous 1,300 miles, since tracing the Potomac River and its Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, since crossing the Ohio River on three separate occasions, since marching over the massive Mississippi, I had opened my eyes to the dazzling, intoxicating nature of flowing water. And the Missouri seemed to me an apex. Ancient, vibrant, eternal-flowing monster of muddy water. A vision for wanderers wondering what direction to head. A holy, living shrine boring through the rocky Earth.
And we planned to sleep near it one more night.
The campground was a fairly large, open area called Katfish Katy’s. To find our home, we had walked along a dirt road for a few minutes, past a long line of campsites in the open sun and dirt, and then a few more minutes to the river. Not a soul in sight.
Or so I had thought.
Suddenly, two souls emerged. The first was a wire-haired Jack Russell Terrier named Jackson. The other was his mama, the last remaining attendee of a festival that had just rolled through Katfish Katy’s. A young, dusty hippie from Colorado, Bri was a long-distance cyclist, guitarist, and spirit so damn free she spilled it all over the place. After spending the better part of the day dazedly rummaging through piles of junk left over from the festival, she’d made a mess of the campground registration table. She talked and talked and talked and, when she found out it was my birthday, she clawed through her junk to offer me gift after gift, including a plastic pink solo cup, plastic spoons, some gum, several rocks, and a couple shiny… things. She also gave me free reign over a bottle of vodka she’d procured, which I used to make myself a fancy cocktail: a vodka water.
While all this went on, I prepared myself for another flavor of weird.
A few days earlier, I’d received a message from an old colleague who knew I was on “the trip of a lifetime” but wanted to let me know about a “very lucrative” position managing social media for “a serious presidential candidate.” I couldn’t believe it. Scraggy, unwashed, high as heaven and more sober than a boulder, halfway through Missouri and almost the entire country, I was quite simply in no place to be thinking about scheduling tweets, organizing Facebook ad campaigns, connecting, following, sharing, or endlessly brainstorming yet another clever way to make content go viral.
Unless it was gonna be for Bernie Sanders.
I’d told my friend I was “curious” to hear more. So we scheduled a call, and the call happened to land on the evening of my birthday—crazy hippie girl rummaging through her crazy hippie wares, my love and home established just above the Missouri River, and glorious thunder clouds floating like a puffy white warship in the distance.
The call didn’t last long, but it was great as always hearing someone from home. She spoke softly and candidly, explaining to me how this person hoped to “throw their hat into the ring” by end of week and needed a smart young person with a deep knowledge of social media to help run his campaign online. Not only did my friend estimate that the salary would be in the mid-six-figures, but she said they would send a private jet to pick me up wherever the hell we happened to be so I could start immediately.
So who was the candidate? A name’s a name, but I’ll say this: it was a wealthy white man running as a Republican. With every tidbit of information she related, I just said “wow” or guffawed a bit. She mentioned the private jet situation as I stared at those puffy clouds, and suddenly I found myself imagining myself and Natalie, both desperately in need of a shower, wearing dumpy hiking clothes with the giant awkward buggy at our side, sitting on the plane, drinking champagne out of flutes, and discussing the fine art of social media with some upper echelon dude in an upper echelon suit. I guffawed again.
And then my mind raced ahead.
Missouri, gateway to the West, but still rich with nature and humanity.
Kansas and increasing desolation.
Colorado, the beginning of the end.
Denver, the last great city, one mile high.
The Western Front, the Rockies.
Utah, beauty beyond beauty, and Nevada, hellish nothingness.
Finally, California, Olympia, Arcadia, Elysium, home.
As you might’ve guessed, I didn’t take the job. In fact, I declined on the spot. Maybe I’m a dummy, but this dummy got to spend his 27th birthday sleeping with his love of loves on the edge of the Missouri River, and that’s living.
