The ADT Journey – Week 42

Posted on March 25, 2022 by Humanity Hiker

Cindy and I met as part of a group that hiked the Appalachian Trail in 1980.  Having thru-hiked the AT already, I attempted to show off my know-how.  To lift the group’s spirits after a drizzly first day of hiking I declared to everyone: “Don’t worry, I feel dry air blowing in!”

On the second day our group encountered a hurricane.  My credibility was shot even before being established.

We started this stretch packed for three days.  On the second day out we encountered a downpour for the whole day.  For lunch we took a side road up to the Grouse Nest Resort, where we changed clothes and a manager who looked a bit like Santa Claus put the ones we were wearing in the dryer while giving us hot soup.  We also found protection at our next stop, Ash Caves.  The overhanging cliffs surrounding a waterfall provided protection from the rain, which allowed us to break and enjoy the natural feature.

Unfortunately, the little bit of schadenfreude while anticipating the weather back in 1980 recurred when we set up camp that night.  I felt quite proud of the way I had pitched our tents during the journey, surviving a blizzard in Cripple Creek while a neighboring tent collapsed, withstanding a fierce thunderstorm that created flash flood levels of seven feet in the canyons below.  We were at a closed campground for the night, but the outhouses were open and we sat in them for almost an hour waiting for the rain to subside again before setting up the tent.  Twilight finally forced us to act.

Our tent had a separate rain fly that draped over the mesh top of the tent.  This system creates breathability.  Just as we finished putting up the tent, but before we could get the fly on, the heavens picked that precise moment to send us a deluge.  Within a few seconds of the mesh top being exposed a good quarter inch of water or more had flooded the inside of our tent.

We thought we were going to encounter the Triple-Crowners Boston and Cubby this day, according to the updates ADT trail coordinators were sending us.  They would have doubled the amount of ADT thru-hikers we encountered on our journey, but apparently we missed them around the time we were hiding in outhouses.  From what I understand, Boston and Cubby became the fourth and fifth Grand Slam hikers when they finished.  Since we finished earlier in 2012 than they did I became the third.  Ken and Marcia Powers were the first two Grand Slam hikers.

Fortunately the rain subsided by morning, allowing us to remain in camp for a while to dry out the tent.  We got to dry out completely and in style at the end of the day, when the proprietors of the Georgian Manner B&B spotted us passing through.  BJ and Linda King previously encountered ADT thru-hikers in 2010; when they spotted our backpacks they figured we must be doing the same thing.  As an added bonus I interviewed BJ about his involvement with building the first free school in Honduras, working with Medical Ministries for a time and his current involvement with Village Mountain Mission.

Because the town of Logan was our planned stop we called Ky to come pick us up for a rendezvous with Dan Priedeman.  Dan and his son Doug hiked for the first month with the Continental Divide Expedition I organized in 1985.  We stored a batch of my System out of Balance books with Dan to replenish all the ones I sold during the journey …. except I did not sell any.

Despite my father being a traveling salesman, or maybe because this, selling was never my thing.  Authors are supposed to publicize and market their books, but I abandoned all such activity to become Cindy’s caregiver.  I doubt I even mentioned my book more than a handful of times out of all the presentations I gave about kindness and community, even though my research for the book uncovered the alarming decline in community involvement across the nation.

Systems out of Balance described how our social systems.  Based on the lessons of kindness and community experienced during this journey, if I were to write that book now I would prescribe as well as describe.  I doubt I will get around to publicizing Systems out of Balance when I am no longer a caregiver, instead I will work on new material to prescribe those human virtues that enhance both societal and brain health.

Fortunately, the type of reception we got at our next stay, the Trinity United Methodist Church in Logan, more than compensated for my lack of salesmanship.  The time changed for our first morning there, requiring us to wake up in the dark basement of the church in order to make the Sunday church service, but were rewarded with the rising sun streaming through the stained glass windows of the sanctuary.  I sang in the choir during the service and was quite proud about anchoring the choir with the bass line, despite the organ only playing the melody, until I found out afterwards the church gave up harmony for Lent.

After the service I gave a presentation to an adult Sunday School class, called Progressive Christians in Action, where they took up a collection for donations.  I doubt they were rewarding me for singing bass during a unison choir sing.  After a second service there would be a lasagna dinner, but we really felt like we had to get started hiking again before then.  No problem, the kitchen crew prepared us lasagna meals to eat during the second service.

We set out from the UMC for an overnight camp on the Buckeye Trail.  We ended up by a small stream, the light shining later in the day due to the time change, warmer weather causing both buds and spring peepers to come out.  In other words, we experienced a normal day of hiking and camping, with the only abnormal event being the party balloon we discovered in the midst of the woods and carried with us, with the words “I Love You.’

The day after we experienced drenching rain again but were able to stay at another UMC church in Glouster at the end of the day.  I joined their choir rehearsal that evening; fortunately, they had not given up harmony for Lent.  Pastor Rick Setter and wife Vickie ordered pizza for us all to eat in the church that evening.

With the opportunity to spend more time with some of the people we met along the way, our support person Ky made a few close friends as we hiked.  Rick and Vickie became two such friends.  Since the journey ended Ky has been out to visit them on their farm, usually combined with cross country trips she continues to take with her teardrop camper.

We learned in Glouster that local controversy raged over Burr Oak State Park, due to imminent plans for fracking.  Locals were concerned for both the degradation of the clean water in Burr Oak Lake to be used in the fracking process and the fate of the State Park.  In particular, locals were worried about Burr Oak Lodge, a large employer for the region.  We met park employee Erik Borchers at the shore of the lake, who happened to be an avid hiker with the shared experience of having climbed Mt. Katahdin several times.  He informed us that the park would not be closing but he did not know about the lodge.

We hiked along a small part of the lake until we met two people by what was called Dock-3.  Andrew Bashaw was Directory of the Buckeye Trail and he was there to meet up with Lady Bug, the trail name of a woman thru-hiking the trail.  We first heard about Lady Bug from the proprietors of Rivers, Roads and Trails.  She started hiking the 1500 mile trail on September 20 and was now nearing the end.  Between Andrew and Byron, whom we met at Serpent Mound, we got the impression that all the Buckeye Trail staff and volunteers go the extra mile to accommodate hikers.

Our destination that evening was yet another UMC church, located a surprising distance away from populated areas.  We were there without Ky, as she was spending more time with her new friends Rick and Vickie.  Parishioner and neighbor Sharon Williams came briefly near dusk just to open up the church for us.  We cooked our dinner outside amidst the solitude of birdsong and stars breaking through the twilight on a warm evening.

Cindy could help me set up our tent by this time in our journey, but had yet to touch the cook stove.  Outside a secluded UMC church seemed like a good venue to try, given how important cooking and baking used to be for Cindy.  Alas, she still shied away, as Cindy’s growing confidence in her mind did not extend towards working with fire.

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The ADT Journey – Week 41

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Humanity Hiker

In the intervening years since our journey, I recount three particular kindness stories most often.  One involves the most inspirational quote, “confuse who is giving and who is receiving,” delivered by the director of the community meals program in Leadville, Colorado.  One involves the inspirational initiative taken by a ten year old boy in Lamar, Indiana, after seeing his first homeless person.  The third was the cause for a turnaround in membership at the United Methodist Church in Sinking Spring, Ohio, our next stop after staying with Jim and Beverly MacKenzie.

The population of Sinking Spring is about 200 people.  The active membership of the church had been in the teens, mirroring the attrition of denominational churches we encountered across the country.  Then Greg Seamen became their supply pastor..

Ordained ministers have been declining along with membership for denominational churches.  To overcome the shortage some denominations train “supply pastors,” who receive enough training to serve a small parish and usually do so part time, while also employed elsewhere.  Pastor Greg worked for GE full time along with his “part time” ministerial duties.

In short order Greg’s leadership doubled the attendance at Sinking Spring UMC with such innovations as a special service with guitar music that appealed to a younger audience.  Yet this did not satisfy Greg.  He kept mulling over:  “What is wrong with MY ministry?  What is wrong with MY ministry?”, until he concluded that the ministry really belonged to God..

Unlike many denominational churches attempting to widen their appeal, Sinking Spring UMC benefited from having just one simple mission statement.  The church existed to serve others as Christ called them to do.  Greg concluded that how best to serve others was not his call to make, but rather the call of individual members drawing from their unique experiences.

Greg shared an example of how this mission worked.  A hairdresser approached Greg about providing free haircuts before school started.  In the back of his mind Greg scoffed at providing free haircuts in comparison to issues of hunger and homelessness, but his new approach to ministry meant supporting efforts of kindness regardless of how trivial they seemed to him.

They implemented the hairdresser’s plan and needed to call in an additional hairdresser.  Even then they had to give out coupons for later because they could not meet the demand for haircuts.  They received feedback for how valuable free haircuts were, particularly to cash strapped families whose daughters would be getting their senior pictures taken.

As a result of their focused mission on grassroots kindness the membership of the UMC increased tenfold, to around 175 members, in a town of 200.  People from neighboring towns joined the church.  Catholics converted and joined.  Atheists remained atheists but joined.  Sinking Spring became the greatest community success story of our journey, because of the solitary mission statement that focused on kindness, along with the grassroots approach that encouraged and facilitated people to rely on their own ideas and experiences to be kind.

On our hike into Sinking Spring we stopped at the Serpent Mound, the largest Native American created mound in the country.  The head of the serpent aligns with the winter solstice and the curves in the mound correspond to different points of the lunar calendar.  Our previous host Jim MacKenzie belonged to Friends of Serpent Mound and came out to see us off one last time.  We also met Byron Guy there, supervisor for the Old Man’s Cave section of the Buckeye Trail and now the Ohio Coordinator for the ADT.

As we neared Sinking Spring we were hailed from the doorstep of a large farmhouse by Steve Wolfe, who shouted:  “Hooray!  Another man with short britches and a long beard!”  He asked us to come in and help celebrate his mother Mary’s 92nd birthday, along with four of her nieces and nephews.  Apparently word travels fast in a town of 200 and they knew we were coming.  We followed Steve inside and joined in the singing of “Happy Birthday” and eating pumpkin pie.

While at Sinking Spring we stayed one night at the church and a couple nights at the home of Dwight and Betty Crum (and Betty’s mother Frieda).  News again traveled fast as Betty knew about our visit with Mary Wolfe, down to the detail of joining the family for pumpkin pie.  We stayed with the Crums while Ky went to have dinner with Diana, a friend she recently met.  This led to us being in different places when the tornado warning swept through, a warning we first had when the sky turned bright orange that morning.

This was the same series of tornadoes that destroyed the Henryville High School and diner across the street that we visited two weeks earlier.  We felt fairly safe in the basement with our hosts, but Ky had a little more harrowing experience.  Being more used to tornadoes than us New Englanders, Diana still insisted on taking Ky out to a restaurant for dinner.  Ky had visions of destruction, but Diana calmly responded that the restaurant had a basement that they could go into if need be.

After Sinking Spring, Ky slackpacked us as we hiked towards and away from Waverly, with a residential retirement community serving as our base camp.  This came about through Ky contacting the Pike County Visitor Bureau in Waverly, where Sharon Munson became enthused about our endeavor and hooked us up with Bristol Village.  They provided us our own vacant apartment to stay in and an invitation to use their community pool and hot tub.  During our few days of cold weather hiking around Waverly, we were satisfied to just sit in front of our apartment’s fireplace.

We attended a potluck at Bristol Village, where I presented a slideshow of our journey.  I figured this was not the audience for preaching about community and kindness and instead gave more of a travelog about our hike.  My belief continues to be that younger audiences benefit most from talks about community and kindness.

I interviewed folks at the Pike County Visitor Bureau about their various nonprofits whose combined missions were to address hunger, homelessness, emergency services and keeping people in their homes.  The nonprofits networked in a manner similar to the ministerial alliances we had been encountering.  They reported a growing need over the past five years, an echo of what we learned in Pueblo, St. Louis, Marion and other places.

Pike County was the poorest county in Ohio in 2012, the year we came through.  With our walk across the country occurring near the end of a recession, we discovered the hardest hit counties across the land were the poorest already.  A corporate tactic in the face of recession is to consolidate, with the consolidation tending to concentrate resources and labor in areas already better off.

This reflects an unfortunate reality of our corporate system.  Over the past few decades bankruptcies for small businesses have increased with more stringent bankruptcy laws, though large corporations receive large bailouts.  Curbing government spending under the guise of fiscal conservatism or balancing the budget focuses on items that do not affect corporations, while the military-industrial complex consumes more than half the federal budget.  Increased spending for comparatively small social programs draws concern for inflation, while increased spending for the military or large bailouts do not trigger the charge of inflation.

This boondoggle corporate system that disadvantages the worst off at the worst times might cause despair, or at least disgust, but then I am reminded of Sinking Spring.  Reliance on the local community not only provides relief for those most in need, such reliance also provides an ounce of prevention by shifting dependence away from a corporate system.  While the Grand Towers of the country languish as their corporate sugar daddies downsize and/or locate elsewhere, towns like Syracuse, Kansas retain their resiliency through diversification and incentivizing smaller businesses to succeed.

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The ADT Journey – Week 40

Posted on March 14, 2022 by Humanity Hiker

We followed the blue-blazed Buckeye Trail throughout this stretch.  While often an actual trail through the woods, the Buckeye “Trail” also followed both improved and unimproved roads as well.  This provided us the opportunity of encountering both natural and cultural features throughout the day.  In addition to the roadkill and mailbox calendars I already conceived for the future, this stretch gave me ideas and material for future barn, small church and cemetery calendars.

As we weaved on and off the improved roads of this section, Ky occasionally picked us up and transported us to sleeping arrangements she made that were off the trail.  The first off trail arrangement was in the home of a pastor who recently changed parishes in order to care for her mother at home.  I stayed up well after Cindy went to bed to chat with the pastor, not about kindness and community, but because we both cared for our mothers who had Alzheimer’s.

The pastor recounted that her mother had good days and bad but, even though incapable of simple tasks, always wanted to pitch in to help with the household chores.  This reminds me now of a memory with Cindy that occurred years afterwards.  Because of her physical decline, we started taking the ramp instead of stairs when visiting the post office.  I claimed we were getting extra exercise and should consider running marathons again someday.  As I held Cindy’s hand guiding her down the ramp she enthusiastically agreed with the idea, fully believing in the possibility.  I find this a comfort, these many years hence, that reality need not ruin perception or confidence in oneself.

Ky shuttled us to a United Methodist Church in Blue Creek for a couple evenings.  We arrived too late for their monthly potluck after church service that day, but they saved us a couple of plates full of food nonetheless.  I interviewed one of the parishioners about kind stories she witnessed as a youth and family mediator for the court system.

We spent our last evening on this stretch with Jim and Beverly MacKenzie, who lived near the prominent Serpent Mounds.  Besides granting a right of way through their property for the Buckeye Trail, the MacKenzies were heavily involved in a variety of community activities.  Their kitchen gave out an aura of community bakes and homemade goods.  We intended to set up a tent in their yard, but they insisted we stay in their guest room as another powerful storm swept through the area.  

We had snowshoes stored in the support vehicle with the intent that the Buckeye Trail in February would call for their most likely use, but that did not come to pass.  We hiked on trails cold enough not to have turned muddy from spring melt, yet void of any snow.  We experienced a few days of below freezing temperatures, with light snow on one of them.  We arrived amongst flurries at the mailbox of Bonnie Brigss just as she was retrieving her mail, who in turn invited us inside for hot chocolate and some warm conversation with her and husband Ronnie about hiking.

We backpacked and camped out a couple of nights on the Buckeye Trail as well.  We were now two months beyond the solstice, with enough light to prevent me from going stir crazy in the middle of the night.  A photo reveals that Cindy spent some of the evening writing in her journal, aided by the innovative Technical Lighting Solutions flashlights given to us by the proprietors of Gearheads in Moab, Utah.  Unlike her journal writing during the western part of our journey, Cindy no longer asked me for help recalling recent events, which I interpreted as an encouraging sign of her recovery at the time.

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The ADT Journey – Week 39

Posted on March 8, 2022 by Humanity Hiker

I gave four presentations while in Cincinnati:  one to the Sisters of the Transfiguration with whom we were staying; one to the Bethany elementary school; one to the Northeast Lions Club in Milford; and one to Northern Kentucky University.  The previous university talk I gave was back at the University of Colorado, Denver, and the Director of Student Orientation there connected us to his counterpart, Jeff Iker, at NKU.  Unfortunately, I competed with a Blake Sheldon concert on campus that night, but at least Jeff got his staff to attend.

We were first greeted at the Northeast Lions Club by my contacts before the journey started, Dan and Lin Ladrigan.  The event became another example of receiving more inspiration about kindness than I presented in my talk.  I interviewed Lions Chris and Debbie Nichols about their assistance of a homeless man.  During that interview they expressed how good helping the homeless man made them feel, a testament to why altruism has been found to enhance brain health and longevity.

On the day I presented to the Northeast Lions Club we stopped at the Roads, Rivers and Trails outing store to buy maps.  The owners Kara, Emily and Joe treated us like rock stars, not so much because of our present journey as our past ones, with Cindy being the first woman to thru-hike the Continental Divide Trail and me being the first person to achieve both a hat trick (having hiked the Appalachian Trail three times by 1983) and the Triple Crown of backpacking.  A friend of the owners, named Josh, took a particular interest in us, as he was planning to hike a large portion of the ADT on the way to a friend’s home in Montana.

Our reception at Roads, Rivers and Trails led to the store being our destination on our first day hiking out of Cincinnati.   The city walk reminded us of St. Louis in terms of the upscale skyscrapers and upscale neighborhoods along our route.  With the temperature in the sixties on February 17, Cincinnati also reminded me of Sacramento in reverse.  Cold rain greeted most of our days at the beginning of our hike in “sunny California,” with our hike through Sacramento epitomizing that contradiction.  Now “wintry Ohio” in February treated us to gorgeous weather, allowing us to bask in the sun during lunch time near the Krohn Conservatory.

We (meaning me) had trouble navigating the Cincinnati streets.  I discovered that following the ADT route description in reverse was easier to do with a Forest Service map in hand than a city map.  Fortunately, I never have a problem with approaching strangers for assistance.  First Deandre, whose job was to keep the streets clean in the neighborhood around Cincinnati Reds Stadium, walked with us for a while as our guide, treating us to his infectious laugh along the way.

Lawyer Bob Smyth similarly guided and walked with us for a ways.  He then tried to explain how we might proceed through the Mt. Adams neighborhood when it came into view.  Lawyer Kathleen Brinkman, a former resident from that area witnessed our scene and came over to provide further assistance.  We thus became the catalyst for introducing these two lawyers to each other.

We met Jean Abrahamson in the Hyde Park section of our day.  Jean was an author that insisted on mailing us books she wrote about manners.  Let me clarify that Jean wanted to do something kind for us, not remedy our desperate need for manners; at least that is what I think.

We finished our trek into Milford on a bike trail in the company of Lauren and Laney.  Milford was not their original destination, but Lauren made a call to her boyfriend to meet them there so they could join us.  The owners were there waiting for us past their store hours and treated us to Mountain House freeze dried dinners that we cooked on the spot.  Josh made a point of being there again to speak to us about his future ADT hike.  Kara Lorenz and her roommate Joyce Brockman welcomed us into their home that night, providing us a great breakfast with strong coffee in the morning.

The next day we journeyed to Batavia.  Lo and behold we ran into Josh a third time, now sipping beers with his two friends John and Jillian, the people he would be hiking out to visit in Montana.  We found them sitting on the opposite bank of the Little Miami River, obviously expecting and waiting for us to come by.  Once Josh spotted us he came over a bridge to our side of the river, delivering a couple of beers for us.

We stayed at the Faith United Methodist Church in Batavia that evening.  The combined impact of coffee and beer that day, both diuretics we seldom drank, led to me getting off the church floor seven times to visit the bathroom.  We still managed to get up and clear the area before church activity started Sunday morning.  I gave an hour talk to the church school and a 10 minute talk during the church service about Micah 6:8 and kindness.

Sunday, February 19, happened to be Cindy’s birthday.  Pastor Dave Phaneuf and wife Bonnie took us out to lunch after the church service.  After a half day of hiking to Bethel, Ky picked us up and brought us back to Batavia, where we ate supper at McDonald’s and took advantage of their wifi for Cindy to read her Facebook birthday greetings.  She considered her birthday a success!

Ky continued to slackpack us even though we now hiked on backcountry portions of the Buckeye Trail.  We had packed snowshoes in the support vehicle with anticipation that we would need them on the Buckeye Trail in particular, but the warmer winter in general, capped by the recent temperatures in the sixties, gave us mud instead of snow to navigate.

Our next stop was Williamsburg, where we were met by Dan Ladrigan again from the Northeast Lions Club, who filled in for Ky while she had her hatch repaired.  Unfortunately, Lin Ladrigan was not at home for our stay, but she knitted us a pair of scarves in Lions Club colors.  She also wrote a kind note to us that referred to Ky as our daughter.  I had gone from being an old man with a young blonde in Kansas, to a father hiking with his “daughter” Cindy, to a father being supported by his “daughter” that was actually older than me.  I did not like the age appearance trajectory I was on.  Dan prepared “Cincinnati chili” for us that evening, basically chili substituted for sauce on top of spaghetti.

Our last stop on this stretch was Russellville, where Jim Potts served as our host at the United Methodist Church there.  Jim’s personality resembled a religious version of John Nicholas, our humble host back in Leadville.  After bearing us a variety of gifts and singing the hymn Safe in the Arms of Jesus to us, he asked for us to pray with him for his church, which had reduced to about 15-20 members at a service.

Attrition was common among denominational churches across the country like the UCC, Methodists and Baptist.  This was part of the larger societal issue of shrinking community involvement, the issue my talks on kindness and community addressed.  Nondenominational and community churches fared better across the country, and before we left Ohio we would witness a Methodist Church with astonishing growth in membership, yet this provides no solace for Jim.  In his eyes the center of his faith is dying, taking along a part of this kindly, humble man.

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The ADT Journey – Week 38

Posted on March 2, 2022 by Humanity Hiker

During this stretch trail angels offered us kindness in a variety of ways; our response varied as well.  On the first day we stopped at a store in a small hamlet and asked the proprietor if he had a bathroom we could use.  Roger Huron overheard us and said he thought he knew a bathroom nearby we could use.  We followed him into an alleyway, up an enclosed stairway and into a sparse corridor with a seemingly private bathroom.  Roger left out details of why he would know about and have access to this bathroom, which gave me an uneasy feeling.  I decided to use the bathroom at the same time as Cindy to be on the safe side.

Roger offered to buy us coffee after our bathroom break but I declined, partly because the short winter day was getting on, partly because of my uneasy feeling.  The conversation we had with Roger should have dispelled those feelings.  In his youth he hitchhiked to Alaska with his fiddle, performing for the locals he met along the way.  Obviously, we reminded him of these glory days and he wanted to relive them with us.  I later received a comment on my blog from someone who knew Roger, confirming his status as a nice guy and an accomplished bluegrass musician.

Later in the week we declined a kind offer of food by two women we met at a convenience store after we had crossed into Ohio.  Linda did treat us to hot chocolate while Roseanna bought a lottery ticket with the number 264, the number of days we had been hiking up until then, but we declined on their offer to load us up with more food. We had received so many offers of food during the course of our journey, I can say that kindness cured me of gluttony.  Yet I remain haunted by the lonely expression on Roger’s countenance when we declined his offer.  Sometimes the kindest thing to do is to accept someone’s kindness.

The day after we met Roger we received kindness by a trick played on us before by trail angels.  We met and chatted with a 911 dispatch worker named Jared.  When I declined his offer for a donation, he then offered for us to exchange cards.  Instead of his card he snuck a twenty in my hand before I realized the deception.

That same day a more unusual act of kindness benefited us.  A snowstorm, the gentle and beautiful kind rather than a raging blizzard, accompanied us throughout the day.  We came to an intersection where the turn our route requested appeared more like a private road.  A short distance away Laughery Creek flowed across the road, appearing more like a river.  We decided not to take the route less traveled.

Shortly after we headed on our new route a salt of the earth farmer named Gene pulled up to us in his truck, wondering why two people were hiking back roads in the middle of a snowstorm.  In my response I confessed we were on our current route to avoid a “river” crossing of Laughery Creek.  He informed us that we would find the same conditions up ahead as well, then continued on while I dealt with some damage control in regards to Cindy.

Cindy’s initial apprehension of the cold during our journey had been appeased by a relatively warm winter, part of the reason she had been in high spirits as we hiked into February.  Yet the warmer winter also brought a wetter winter, with the rivers and streams we encountered often at flood levels.  Jim Shaner, an ADT hiker before us, crossed Laughery Creek without getting his feet wet.  We faced getting wet up to our thighs or higher in the midst of a snowstorm; this alarmed Cindy.

In her precognitive decline days this would have been no big deal for Cindy the Expedition Woman:  “Mind over matter!” she might have declared, despite her abhorrence of the cold.  However, I can tell you now that the earliest signs of dementia are not memory loss, but how people react differently to stress in their lives.  Cindy first ignored stressful situations as I looked back on her overall decline.  Then she went the opposite way and became fatalistic over them; she was in her fatalistic mode of handling stress as we hiked towards Laughery Creek.  I spent the time continually trying to partly reassure Cindy and partly establish that we had no choice.

Except we did have a choice once we reached Laughery Creek.  Gene was there waiting to ferry us across the creek in his truck.  He had to have waited at least twenty minutes for us to get there but that did not matter.  This simple act of kindness from a salt of the earth farmer outshone in our minds some of the more magnanimous acts benefiting us during our journey. 

Overall, we were notably ecumenical with the churches that hosted us with their kindness.  We stayed with the UCC the most often, in large part because of the serendipitous encounter with Missouri conference minister Jeff Whitman.  Methodists came in a close second.  Baptists, Assembly of God, Presbyterians and Episcopalians hosted us as well.  Apparently we now walked through Lutheran country, as they became our hosts both before and after our snow day, with a couple more churches passed by in between.

Before the snow day we stayed in the home of Pastor Ralph and Sue Camden.  The heartwarming tale from this stay was how the congregation assisted their pastor during a time of illness.  Also noteworthy was Ralph’s John Deere tractor collection, located in the room where we spent the night.

In contrast to this quaint stay, we spent the night in a school classroom associated with the St. John Lutheran Church of Aurora.  Ky scouted and secured both of these Lutheran connections for us; in the case of Aurora we did not meet a pastor or church elder.  However, the school hosted a basketball game for their sixth graders that evening and the coach warmly invited us to attend.

Wintry cold joined us again on our last day of hiking in Indiana, with the high temperature in the teens.  Mile for mile we witnessed the most acts of kindness and community building in this state, which made our last lunch break in Indiana particularly fitting.  We noticed activity going on at the First Baptist Church in Greendale; to get out of the cold we entered the building and asked if we could eat our lunch inside.  We discovered a youth basketball tournament occurring and we intended to be inconspicuous, but word got out about us quickly.

Pastor Steve Fagersburg and wife Marcia came to meet us.  In keeping with our mission’s theme, Steve informed us about his friend Ed Casheen and a movement called Hate Busters.  Hate Busters did things like pledge money on behalf of “haters” to the cause they hated, with instructions for a thank you note to be sent.  Their targets included Westboro Baptist Church, the church we learned was running a money-making First Amendment scam from lawyer Reid Nelson in Kansas.  Marcia left during our chat and came back with a bag full of food to take with us.  Maybe kindness had not entirely cured us of gluttony.

Ky again resourcefully scouted, arranged and provided transportation to our last overnight stay in Indiana, this time at the United Methodist Church in Lawrenceburg.  Ky made the arrangement with the church council and we did not meet the church’s pastor as we settled into a classroom for the night.  The next morning Pastor Bob Cannon received a big surprise when he entered his church early in the morning, as the council had not informed him of guests.

After the initial shock of seeing us, Pastor Bob followed the lead of many before him and was delighted to share his church’s humanitarian involvements.  One thing in the works for the church was acquiring a neighboring property to be used as housing for vagabonds passing through.  I imagine we would have qualified.

Soon after entering Ohio we crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky on Anderson’s Ferry, one of three water crossings along the ADT route that officially could not be done on foot.  We were in Kentucky long enough to encounter Rodney and Tara, a young couple who had seen the Evansville coverage of us, then crossed over the Ohio River again on the Roebling Suspension Bridge into Cincinnati.

Ky picked us up on the Cincinnati side of the bridge to bring us to the Convent of the Transfiguration, a connection made while we stayed with Pastors Cynthia and Nancy at the Emmaus Order of Pilgrims in Mt. Vernon, Indiana (where we first heard tornado sirens).  Here we would spend the next five nights and four days while I gave presentations and we took care of a few errands.

There are three categories of women at the Convent. In addition to the Sisters were the Oblates who lived “off campus.” They had yearly vows similar to the Sisters but had one foot in the “real world.” The Postulants were Sisters in training. One Postulant, Nike Spillson, had an appointment with a foot doctor and insisted I come with her to get my left foot checked. Dr. David Zink concluded the problem was due to over pronation and recommended an arch support. The doc was an amiable man who would not charge us for the visit. Well, that did not sit well with Nike, who wanted to pay for us; she paid for my arch supports instead.

During meal times at the convent we each had our own napkin and ring holder with our name. For silent meals the napkins were placed in advance where we were to sit at a table. This occurred at breakfast and lunch. The silence was broken by prayers before and after, along with the ringing of bells by the Sisters heading up each table. At lunch one Sister read a thought-provoking passage while all others listened. The suppers we attended involved the same bell ringing and prayers, but we grabbed our own napkins and determined where we would sit and talk with others.

Staying in one place the whole time made this less hectic than our four day stay in Kansas City, particularly considering that the convent was a sanctuary for peace and tranquility. Their motto was “Simplicity, Kindness, Joy,” which they manifested in their daily lives. Rather than a romantic night out in the big city for Valentine’s Day, we spent the two days leading up to that romantic holiday mainly resting at the convent in peaceful observance of their motto and in reflection of all the ways our journey lived up to a lifestyle of simplicity, kindness and joy.

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The ADT Journey – Week 37

Posted on February 24, 2022 by Humanity Hiker

We depended on Ky to slackpack us along this stretch where we stayed at a church, a hotel and two homes.  Usually, our stays at people’s homes occurred from us meeting them, such as our last stay in the home of the Coopers, but in this case Ky scouted out and arranged for this hospitality before our arrival.  As a result the quotient of kindness received and observed continued to be the highest for Indiana out of all the states we traversed.

Sandwiched in between our two home visits was New Albany, where my contact with Lions Club member Donna Robinson led to a variety of mission related activities.  With her training as a distant runner Donna had no problem coming out to join us on our walk into New Albany.  Ironically, one thing I did not do in town was present at a Lions Club meeting, though we did gather with a few of the members at a Mexican Restaurant our first evening in town.

With Donna as our guide, I instead presented at a bookstore and a church meeting at St. Mark’s UCC.  I also performed at a talent show held at St. Mark’s.  A children’s choral group singing “Seasons of Love” at the show brought me to tears.  The lyrics of the song ask how to measure a year in one’s life, with the resounding refrain:  “How about love?!”  Indeed, with our year long journey focusing on kindness observed and received all across the country, what better theme song for us could there be?

One of our days in New Albany Donna brought us to a community meals program at St. Mark’s for lunch.  There we chatted with Snow about all the different organizations that communicate with and supplement each other to help those in need, similar to the approach in Tell City, Indiana and Marion, Illinois.  Donna also brought us to a clothing thrift shop as part of this network, where I picked up my 6th pair of sneakers to wear.  All our activities required us staying in New Albany a few nights at the Holiday Inn Express, which they comped us thanks to Director of Sales Mandy Cobb.

Before arriving at New Albany we stayed at the home of Frank and Annette Price, thanks to Ky’s diligence on our behalf.  After New Albany we stayed at the home of Jay and Fran Munk near Henryville, also thanks to Ky’s connections.  We arrived at the Munk’s in time to watch the New York Giants win the Super Bowl.

Jay Munk was a contractor who built his own home as well as the one next door for his widowed sister.  Jay and Fran gushed with pride over their children, including their special needs daughter who was a very confident and happy person.  They also had an extended family whose birthdays they celebrated while we were there.  One was for their nephew’s daughter, the other was for an African-American named Rich who called Jay “Pops” in recognition of all Jay did for him.  Rich was attending the University of Kentucky on a football scholarship, drawing an obvious parallel between the Munks and the Tuohy family in “The Blind Side.”

The first morning we were in Henryville, and had yet to visit the Munks, I entered a restaurant to gather information.  My maps indicated a back road that would be more suitable to hike after Henryville than the main road on the ADT route.  I wondered what unforeseen problem might have caused the ADT to avoid the back road and consulted a table of after service gatherers from the local Methodist church, which included the pastor.  They assured us of no problems with the back road alternate route.  They then included us in a prayer circle for our journey and took up a collection for us on the spot.

The morning after we spent the night with the Munks, Jay arranged for me to give a talk at Henryville High School.  We ate breakfast at a diner across from the school, then I spoke to the school’s Key Club, a charity driven organization affiliated with the Kiwanis Club.  As usual for this audience, a couple of young people approached me afterwards to ask what they could do to make a difference in their community.

Little did I know at the time that a couple weeks later an F4 tornado would destroy Henryville High School, while tossing a school bus like a javelin into the diner where we ate.

After Henryville we slackpacked our way into Madison, where we stayed at the St. John’s UCC.  Madison stands out as a town with a part European, part old time feel.  The town survived the 1937 flood that decimated most Ohio River towns.  As other towns were modernizing in the aftermath, Madison focused on maintaining and restoring their existing charm.  To underscore this quaint history, one of the first things we witnessed in Madison was a paperboy, in the employ of the oldest family owned newspaper in Indiana.

St. Johns faced the same struggle of many church denominations with a dwindling congregation served by a now oversized church structure.  They held an intimate soup dinner for us, echoing the homey vibe of Madison as a whole.  I did not give a talk, but rather just ran a slideshow of photos from our journey in the background as we chatted with each other family style.  Pastor Mike Straub and wife Harriet were particularly welcoming to us and we could tell he took great pride in his church in his town. Mike also availed Ky and myself of his familiarity with the region to map out alternatives to some of the main roads on the ADT route.

One thing I noticed in looking back on this week, indeed all of Indiana, are all the gag photos I took of signs and other oddities along our route.  Does Indiana have a greater sense of humor than other states?  Was I naturally in a better mood to see the humor in most things?  Or was Cindy’s increasing health having a positive impact on me as well.

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The ADT Journey – Week 36

Posted on February 18, 2022 by Humanity Hiker

Our 15 miles of fame from Evansville print and television media extended further.  As we continued on roads through this stretch people hailed us from passing cars, from workplaces we passed and even from a graveyard (a live person visiting her Mom’s grave, not a ghost).  This continued until we started hiking by an establishment called Put N Take.

The proprietor and his friend came out to invite us into the store.  I got the sense that they did not know who we were, besides two grungy looking people hiking by on a cold, raw day.  They invited us to join them sitting around a woodstove, amidst a shop that looked like a cross between a firearms and antique store.  They invited us to stay longer, but an impending rainstorm persuaded us to get a few more miles in.  We parted with two multipurpose knives branded with Put N Take advertising, which we discovered was short for “Put down your money and Take away some merchandise.”

We continued to hike as the heavens poured down on us until we reached Waninger Auto Parts.  Since I had another speaking engagement away from the trail, we waited there for Ky to pick us up and bring us to the St. Peters UCC in Lamar.  Pastor Chip and Gayle Jahn welcomed us into their home for our stay there, enabling us to avoid the continuing cold deluge which lasted throughout the following day.

I presented to their Young Disciples program which explored the “fruits of the spirit.”  I wove tales of kindness and community from the journey to easily fit their curriculum, but as was so often the case during the journey I came away with as much inspirational material as I provided.  The story of Young Disciples member Ethan Roos would rival “confuse who is giving and who is receiving” as one of the most inspirational lessons from the journey.

Small towns like Lamar do not have a noticeable homeless population.  Thus ten year old Ethan did not witness his first homeless person until his parents brought him to a Cincinnati Reds baseball game.  On the way back to the hotel from the game Ethan saw them in their urban habitats, such as a parking garage or a bridge.  Once they reached their hotel Ethan cried for an hour (his Mom’s words, Ethan claimed he “had a tear leaked out”) and vowed to do something about such an injustice.

He rallied the Young Disciples group to support a homeless shelter in Aurora, raising $3500 in just a couple months.  They called around for donations with the air and confidence of a 501(c)3 charity.  They had too much compassion and too little experience to know what they were doing was difficult.

We had a great time with our hosts Chip and Gayle during our day off.  Chip and I discovered we had similar entrepreneurial dreams.  I wanted to produce a calendar with road kill photos from our journey; Chip wanted to publish a scratch and sniff road kill book.  We decided we should collaborate on a scratch and sniff roadkill calendar some day.

Our next day of hiking brought us to the town of Santa Claus which, as my research indicated, had the historical lowest temperature on our journey for the same time and place when we would be passing through, twenty-five below zero.  Though the weather remained cold and rainy for us that day, we never got close to that kind of cold during the hike in a year that was warmer and wetter than usual.

We stopped at Holiday Foods in town to supplement our lunch.  Some folks recognized us from the media coverage and stopped to chat; some folks stopped to chat even though they did not recognize us.  Eighty year old Walter Beumel had not seen the publicity but sat down with us at the picnic table outside the store as we were eating lunch.  He invited us to stay at his 100-acre ranch, adding that we were doing what he always wished he had the guts to do.  We really enjoyed Walter’s company; really wanted to stay with him overnight at his ranch, but we had to meet Ky at the end of the day and travel with her to Tell City.

Rebecca Fenn learned about us through a UCC church bulletin, came to see us while I was presenting to the Young Disciples in Lamar and invited us to stay with her and husband Mark in Tell City for the purpose of discovering the vibrant community initiatives going on down there.  Tell City had a coalition of services with a particular emphasis on educating people about generational poverty and addressing the needs through various charitable organizations.  The current model reminded me of our visit to Marion, but their immediate goal was to locate the different services in one building, similar to the Hedges School in Mt. Vernon.

Rebecca’s passion and compassion came through impressively when I interviewed her.  The couple then took us on a tour of Tell City with evident pride that rivaled the pride of Chester being the home of Popeye.  I could hear in the background of the interview that Cindy was engaged.  When Rebecca asked if she talked too long, Cindy responded emphatically that her interview was just right.

The four days of our journey after Newburgh underscored the tradeoffs we made on this hike.  Visiting Lamar and Tell City fueled our public mission for kindness and community.  Without Ky and some publicity those field trips away from our route would not have been made.  Yet the most treasured acts of kindness towards us come from unexpected sources like Put N Take and Walter Beumel, who we meet along our route but know nothing about who we are, except that we are hiking a long way.  We must pass on their offers of kindness and friendship because of obligations resulting from our public mission.

The day after Tell City, unexpected kindness along our route combined with our public mission.  We were full packing for this stretch but on the first day ran into brothers Charlie and Allan Waninger, cousins to Scott Waninger of the Waninger Auto Parts store we visited.  They spotted us as we neared their farm and, having read about us in the paper, came out to talk with us.

Charlie wanted us to join him and his girlfriend for dinner later that day and suggested an alternate route for us to follow that would coincidentally make a rendezvous with him at the end of the day easier.  He even transported our packs for us a few miles along this route to sweeten the offer.  Though we took him up on the alternate route the distance would be too great to make the rendezvous in time and where we might end up guerilla camping that night became a question mark.

Fortunately, another solution presented itself.  Motorists Claire, Ross and Corey had seen our media coverage and stopped to chat.  Claire made some calls and arranged for us to stay with her mother Carla, who was watching Claire’s daughter for that Saturday evening and lived just a few miles further along our route.   Carla was married to Kurt Cooper, a high school English teacher, and both of them gave us a warm welcome into their homes when we arrived.

“Coop” arranged for us to speak at Perry Central School two days later.  Over a hundred students came to my first presentation for a high school.  I also spent time with one of Coop’s classes.  Though I was under the weather with a foggy head that lasted throughout the day, and felt my presentation lacked energy, the students received my message well.  Two students came up to me afterwards to say we were their new heroes.

The Sunday in between our stay with Coop and Carla and our presentation at Perry Central we attended a service and potluck at Crawford Consolidated United Methodist Church (UMC) in Leavenworth.  Pastor Jason Walton’s sermon was about belonging to others.  The potluck was not for our benefit, but rather the tradition of Crawford on every fifth Sunday.  I spoke a little bit about the kindness we witnessed at the luncheon, drawing from Micah 6:8: “Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”

We stayed at the church while Ky slackpacked us on our way into and out of Leavenworth.  Though I may have lacked energy during this stretch, Cindy was in high spirits throughout the whole week.  A look at the photos from this period revealed Cindy to be always smiling, sometimes with her impish grin of old.  The warmer weather than usual for winter accounted for some of this.  The week that historically projected to be our coldest had a couple of cold rainy days, flood causing deluges actually, but we also had late January days when the warm sun shined and flowers temporarily bloomed.

We went on this journey knowing the potential of long distance hiking for alleviating stress, but that was not the only tonic provided.  Awe-inspiring beauty no doubt helped Cindy’s mind as well, but above all else Cindy felt joy.  We felt the joy of life, the joy of living and the joy of sharing these experiences together.  Without at least an MRI scan I suppose there was no way to definitively declare her brain health to be returning, but she certainly felt like that was happening.

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The ADT Journey – Week 35

Posted on February 11, 2022 by Humanity Hiker

The “trail” for this week was all roads, from Shawneetown, Illinois to Newburgh, Indiana.  We encountered scenic moments when our route came next to the Ohio River in Evansville and Newburgh, but otherwise the only memorable part of the “trail” was leaving behind our seventh state and crossing into Indiana.  Most of what was memorable occurred in towns.

Our last town stop in Illinois was Shawneetown, where we continued to run into friendly people wanting to at least chat with us.  One notable thing about Illinois kindness, people did not know about us in advance, yet responded to us as if they were auditioning for a footnote in my kindness and community presentations.  One in particular, James Head, acted as our host while we stayed at the United Methodist Church in town.

James shared some of his stories from his 82 years on earth.  He told us he was an 18 pound baby at birth; his grandpa walked across the Ohio River when there were plenty of trees to control water flow; there were bootleggers back in the day that would have shot us if they saw us hiking; and he lost three toes to a combine.  James was one of those personalities from our journey that I will always remember and miss.

We stopped at a grocery store in Shawneetown that had been in business for only two weeks.  Larry Uselton, the proprietor, recently overcame a slew of health problems before opening the store.  Given his history, we really wanted to pay this new owner for our food items, but he insisted on donating them to our cause.

The last friendly person we encountered in Illinois was a motorist who had five empty beer cans in the passenger seat and another one in her hand.  Had I been by myself I would have suggested, maybe insisted, that I drive her somewhere.  I still wonder if I had been negligent in failing to do so.

Mt. Vernon became our first town stop in Indiana.  Our fortunate chain of UCC connections having ended in Marion, Illinois, Ky “beat the bush” to find us a place to stay.  We landed at the Order of Emmaus Pilgrims, a semi-monastic order founded by Pastors Nancy Johnston and Cynthis Priem.  The Order was a UCC version of living in religious community with objectives of: maintaining a daily rhythm of work, prayer and nurture; spiritual support of each other; rule based living for a spiritual life; and the sharing of material goods.

While in Mt. Vernon I gave a talk at the Trinity UCC church service, as well as sang in the choir.  This time I was not offered a work program in order to stay with the choir.  We also gained the experience of learning what tornado warning alarms sound like, as tornadoes hit surrounding areas.  Our hosts Nancy and Cynthia briefed us on where and how to proceed to the basement during the night if necessary.  We slept lightly on the floor of their first floor den, but the tornadoes spared us.

Even more memorable than the tornadoes was our visit to the Hedges School in Mt. Vernon.  The converted elementary school now provided space for a variety of nonprofit organizations. This centralization of services benefited those in need.  The Red Cross might steer people who have received emergency care to the Food Pantry in the same building to address long term needs.  Parents could bring their kids to the Park and Recreation center while getting assistance from Family Matters.

We stopped in at the Food Pantry, which changed locations from a Baptist Church to a larger Prebysterian Church to the Hedges School, while growing from assisting 50 families a month to over 600.  Like the other food pantries that our journey encountered, they were supported by a ministerial alliance and other local sources while forsaking larger government assistance.  The other food-based nonprofit at the Hedges School was the At the Cross Mission, which offered both a food pantry and a community meals program where we had supper.  The founder, Pastor Hyman Myers, has a restaurant that was going under.  He concluded he needed to be giving out food rather than try to sell it.

The nonprofits at the Hedges School underscored a reality that confronted us during the journey.  A follower of the blog requested at one point that we scouted out more secular examples of community kindness.  Considering that I started out mainly to observe and provide testimony for secular Lions Clubs I wanted to oblige, but my main issues were about “housing, health and hunger.”  Hedges School included secular nonprofits, but the ones addressing the need for food were religious based.  We found this to be true for addressing homelessness as well.

Halfway in between our hike from Mt. Vernon to Evansville we discovered the official ADT Route had been closed and we needed to backtrack 2 miles.  This landed us at Hawg ‘N Sauce along our alternate route, where we asked if we could take a 5 minute break in the warmth of their establishment while contacting Ky to let her know of our change in plans as she slackpacked us along this stretch.

Instead of allowing us five minutes, the staff at Hawg ‘N Sauce sat us at a table, gave us huge cups of hot chocolate, then cooked for us cheeseburgers and french fries.  They gave a Hawg ‘N Sauce T-shirt to Cindy and cap to me upon our departure.  I pointed out that, being from Connecticut, no business would result from us donning their swag, but they insisted on us accepting their gifts anyways.

This bit of trail magic would be the last before a tidal wave of publicity hit the Evansville area.  On our way hiking into Mt. Vernon two newspapers came out to interview us, the Mt. Vernon Democrat and the Evansville Courier Press, the latter putting us in their Sunday feature.  On our way hiking out of Mt. Vernon and through Evansville two television stations came out for a story, the local ABC and NBC affiliates.  This led to what I called our 15 miles of fame.

Many people waved to us in passing, while several motorists stopped to say they saw us on TV or read about us in the Sunday paper.  Two insisted on making a donation (we still were not asking for any), while one went back home to get his daughter because she wanted her picture taken with us.  As we hiked past the Menke muffler shop, the owners Barbara and Vernie invited us inside because the whole crew wanted their picture taken with us.  As they took pictures Barbara kept repeating: “What an honor!”

One motorist, Liz Gilles, turned around her car in order to speak to us, not the first one to do so.  She persuaded us to come home with her where she provided snacks and shared ideas she had about hiking and community.  Then she brought us back to hike with us for a couple miles.  Between the two of us, Cindy warmed up to our hostess more, another positive sign of her recovery.  I wonder now if I deliberately held back just to watch them get along, pleased to witness Cindy’s gregarious nature on the mend.

The highlight of our 15 miles of fame came in a seedy section of Evansville.  An African-American named Joe Lewis recognized us and wanted a picture.  As we went over to him a few of his friends did as well.  We gathered in a convenience store owned by Bashere, a Pakistani, where everyone wanted to shake our hands.  As we took photos, Joe shouted out:  “This is HISTORY, right here!”  In a neighborhood where many with my skin color would not venture we got treated like celebrities.

We had become “famous” not so much because we were walking 5,000 miles across the country, but because the message of kindness and community appealed to depressed areas of the nation.  This positive message ironically helped us secure our next urban base camp.  Pastor Dan Kennedy of the Zion UCC in Newburgh read about us claiming kindness was natural just after delivering a fire and brimstone type sermon that same morning.  Ideally, he wished we could have arranged a discussion with our contrasting points of view in front of his congregation, but he and his wife Amy settled for hosting us a couple evenings while Ky continued slackpacking us beyond Newburgh.  Cindy quickly fell in love with their two dogs.

We had our discussion about kindness over dinner at a restaurant.  Dan cited kids being territorial at a young age as evidence that kindness had to be bred; I cited kids being social at a young age.  Had that discussion occurred now, years after I started researching brain health, I would have cited the evidence from the fields of ethnography, ecology, biochemistry, behavioral economics and even child development connecting altruism to brain health.  Even equipped with that information I doubt I would have persuaded Pastor Dan that humans are naturally kind, but perhaps a walk across the country would do the trick.

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The ADT Journey – Week 34

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Humanity Hiker

The week started with a heavy rain overnight.  Fortunately, I set up the tent where the forest floor featured thick, water-absorbing litter and soil.  Heavy mists enveloped the following morning, as if we were walking through the set for a horror movie.

The River to River Trail came onto a road that we followed to Goreville Waterfall.  After checking out the engorged waterfall, the flooded road in the area suggested that this would be a good time to heed the trail closure warnings.  Our route instead followed a road where we encountered a road sign proclaiming Goreville to have won the Governor’s Home Town Award of 2001.  Given the mission, I naturally had to find out what that was about.

We stopped at Carroll’s Food Market, a family run operation, to grab a snack and ask why Goreville garnered such an honor.  The clerk at the check-out told us to go in the back for coffee and to ask proprietor about the award.  Steve Carroll did not know the official answer, but asserted that Goreville was a place where people took care of their own, including his own food market helping out people in need.

While we were in the back we were invited to join Steve’s Mom and two employees for lunch.  The man who cooked us all hamburgs was not an employee nor a family member; he was taking a break from his own work nearby to cook for everyone in the back.  This added to the neighborly aura of Goreville.

Ky picked us up in Goreville to bring us to the Zion UCC in Marion, Illinois.  This would be the end of the serendipitous chain that began at the Copper Mountain resort in Colorado.  To recap one last time:  because we met Andy Held at Copper Mountain we ended up in Frisco; because we met Ardie and Gretchen at the Frisco Visitor Center we ended up spending several days in Kansas City; because we stayed with Lorene Miller in Kansas City she took us to her church’s KristKindl Markt; because we met the Missouri UCC conference minister at the Kristkindl Markt we stayed with UCC churches all across Missouri.  Jeff Whitman also put us in the conference newsletter, which was read by John Holst of the Zion UCC in Marion, Illinois.  John contacted me via email and invited us to speak at his church and learn about the vibrant community initiatives in Marion.

We had lunch at a community meals program hosted by Marion”s Ministerial Alliance.  While we encountered several Ministerial Alliances already, this one extended beyond churches.  For example, when facility repairs were needed the Lions Club stepped in.  On the flip side, they refused any type of government funding at a higher level, preserving the autonomy to provide assistance in the best way they saw fit.  This vibrant alliance contrasted with Grand Tower, a town that remained anemic after the automation of a power plant despite a federally funded stimulus program.

After lunch we visited the Lighthouse Shelter, an initiative to help the homeless.  Wanda Zwick started the shelter because of a few people she knew to be homeless, acquiring and converting an abandoned elementary school.  Little did she know that “a few” people would turn into hundreds per year.  They house men, women and children for up to a month, while working with partners to find jobs and homes, also providing training when possible.  Residents leave with appliances, small furniture and food for their new homes.  Fifty volunteers help out at the Lighthouse Shelter, which is funded mainly by local churches and foundations.

During our stay in Marion a snowstorm enabled us to spend some cozy family time with the Holsts.  Throughout our journey we avoided hiking during snowstorms pretty well, but this was the best time spent of all.  Drinking hot chocolate, eating pizza, chatting and playing games with a family conjured warm images of being home.  Even for two stout adventurers such as Cindy and myself the lure of the family hearth always resides within.

I gave two presentations to Zion UCC while in Marion to two different audiences.  For the youth group I talked about our hike; for confirmands and their parents I spoke about kindness and community.  They received the presentations well, but upon returning to the trailhead for the River to River Trail we met our most enthusiastic audience.  Three college students out for a birthday hike received the message about kindness and community involvement with the same enthusiasm as Dan Brunson, the young adult who convinced me to start presenting to colleges.  Unfortunately, after four speaking engagements at colleges in Colorado, I had no further engagements since.

Some of my best memories hiking are about waiting out storms with Cindy in our tent, but as we continued hiking on the River to River Trail I acquired some of my worst memories of hiking, caused by being in a tent.  To beat the dark we had to start putting up the tent around 4:30 pm.  While daylight arrived a little before 8:00 am, ice-coated January mornings delayed our starts to no earlier than 9:00 am, often later.  That meant being inside a tent for 16 hours.  Add to that the cold I caught on this stretch, keeping me awake with a runny nose, and the nights became pure torture.

On our final day in the backcountry of the River to River Trail we hiked through an area  of rock formations called the Garden of the Gods.  A lost Basset Hound adopted and followed us as we came out of the backcountry onto roads.  Occasionally the dog would go charging off and then come back to us with an expectant look that seemed to say:  “What is wrong with you guys?! I just tracked down something great!”

As we neared , we flagged down a motorist to make contact with the owner indicated on the dog’s collar.  She was able to contact the father of the dog owner, who came out to meet us.  He said that when the dog ran off in the Garden of the Gods, he put out an overcoat for the scent to attract the dog overnight, but the next morning the coat was gone.

On this last stretch of the River to River Trail people asked us several times to buy us lunch or bring us home, but having spent a rest day in Marion due to the snowstorm we declined.  We also encountered the private landowner who makes his spring available to RtR hikers.  Reuniting a dog with its owner gave us the rare opportunity to pay back the abundant kindness bestowed upon us throughout the journey.

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The ADT Journey – Week 33

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Humanity Hiker

After we endured our coldest night of the journey, clear skies and increasingly warm weather blessed our thirty-third week of hiking, though we still witnessed the effects of the misty, rainy Missouri weather as we walked along the floodplains of the mighty Mississippi River.  We encountered a town, New Valmeyer, created after flooding of Valmeyer led to astronomical insurance rates..

Fortunately, the flooding was not severe as we walked south along the lengthy Bluff Road that sliced between the Mississippi River to the west and limestone bluffs to the east.  The bluffs looked brighter than the ones lining the Missouri River, due to the sunny skies.  Bright red cardinals continued to conspicuously appear amidst the dull winter vegetation, joined now by turkey vultures, flying and resting high up in the bluffs.

We encountered many dogs on this stretch.  Though Cindy loves dogs, she hiked by the side of me away from barking dogs whenever we encountered them.  Having encountered black bears under various circumstances, barking dogs did not concern me, aside from getting tired of listening to them.

We passed one home with a bunch of small dogs yapping, calling their owner’s attention towards us.  Mary came over to find out what we were doing.  That led to a conversation where we learned Mary acquired all the dogs from the humane society.  While many people we encountered had rescue dogs, Mary took adopting a step further.  She acquired guardianship of two boys unrelated to her, one now eighteen, the other ten.  Both their original parents and grandparents were meth users and occasionally in prison.  After we continued on hiking, Cindy chatted about Mary being a saint.

On our last afternoon of hiking on Bluff Road, a car stopped to tell us we went beyond our rendezvous point with Ky at a state park.  Bob and Joan Reid first brought us back to Ky, then invited us all to stay at his Best Western Reid’s Inn in Chester.  That evening Bob took us out to the Harvest House buffet restaurant he owned.  He also called the Ad Editor of the local paper to come and do a story on us; I suspect there was an additional, savvy self-interest involved.

In addition to being a savvy Chester businessman, Bob loved his childhood hometown.  After our buffet dinner he took us on a ride around town which, considering that Chester is the decidedly proud home of Popeye, was akin to a film studio tour.  Murals and statues let tourists know that the Mississippi River was home to the most famous cartoon tug boat.

We headed south from Chester on Illinois 3, which turned out to be the worst stretch of the entire ADT.  I thought that would be the case as we were hiking along the road and now in retrospect I can confirm.  Mainly coal haulers passed us on this narrow road, sending gusts of wind to blow us off balance.  The shoulder sloped treacherously to the side of the road, but our only choices were to either walk with a slant within a very narrow space or to be crushed by a coal hauler.  The only good feature of this stretch was a two-seater outhouse at Rockwood Memorial Park, located where we finally and thankfully left Illinois 3.

From there we got onto the Levee Road, where King Coal was still very much in evidence.  Mountains of pitch black coal delivered by the coal haulers were loaded onto rail cars of the Union Pacific Railroad.  As glimpses of the Mississippi River occasionally came into view we also spotted massive barges carrying coal as well.

Our last town stop along the Mississippi River was Grand Tower, a modern day version of the boom and bust mining towns we encountered in Nevada.  A power plant became the main source of jobs and income for Grand Tower, which built up accordingly.  Then the plant became fully automated and went from employing four hundred to five people.  Not even a government program meant to be a stimulus could reinvigorate the town, according to the hosts we stayed with for two evenings while Ky slack packed us.  Grand Tower, like the old Nevada mining towns, provides a cautionary tale about choosing the short term riches of a sugar daddy corporation over the long term stability of diverse, smaller businesses.

Mike Ellet was the mayor of Grand Tower and former park manager for Devil’s Backbone Campground, which marks one end of the River to River Trail we would be hiking on next.  His wife Joyce was a nurse who engaged Cindy in “shoptalk” while we were there.  Cindy appeared to be completely at ease chatting with Joyce, an unfamiliar person with something in common, more evidence that Cindy was on the mend.

Mike had thru-hiked the River-to-River Trail with mules and welcomed the chance to talk about the trail ahead of us.  He warned us about athletic people being surprised by the trail.  Considering that we looked like “an old man and a young blonde,” he no doubt thought of us as the next “victims” of surprise.  The RtR guidebook supported this cautionary view, informing readers to expect one mph as the pace through the wilderness area the RtR traverses.  As someone for whom only White Mountain Trails in New Hampshire limited me to a one mph pace, I just nodded respectfully at the cautions.

We donned our full packs for the River to River Trail, which slices across the southern tip of Illinois to connect the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.  Cindy and I were glad as always to get back on trail, though this one was officially closed for the season.  We could understand why that might be so, as the muddy trail we encountered was vulnerable to erosion.  Besides not having much alternative in the midst of a long, cross-country trip, we trusted that being the only hikers on that trail for weeks meant little harm done.

We had three sets of maps to guide us along the RtR Trail.  I plotted the official ADT waypoints on maps I printed out with software from National Geographic, one of our sponsors.  I also had a Forest Service map and the maps that came with the RtR guidebook.  Unfortunately, the three maps did not agree with each other, nor did the actual trail, marked with white blazes on wood nailed to trees, always agreed with the maps.  The numbers designating different trails were also nailed to trees, which caused us a bit of consternation when we could not find the trail marked 001 because the marker had been inverted.

Even with the hindrance of different maps, inverted trail markers and muddy trails we hiked at well over one mph.  Yet after our first night on the trail a sobering realization came to me.  After a week of clear skies, a very light drizzle left us with a thin, brittle sheet of ice on our tent and on the ground.  What if instead we had been hit with a New England type ice storm?  We have hiked during snowstorms and over crusty, slippery snow, but never over a thick sheet of ice.  Under such conditions even one mph might be an unattainable pace.

Occasionally the RtR trail came onto a road.  During one such stretch we happened upon Mike Long, a forester out doing some yard work.  He invited us into his home where his wife Julia made us a lunch of soup and sandwiches.  While there Cindy sat on the floor and played with their three-year-old Amelia.  On occasion where we hiked Cindy would confess that she could not wait to have grandchildren.  Though Cindy’s brain health had been improving, I watched her play with Amelia with a bit of sadness from wondering what will be.

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