A Walk Across Texas

Chapter Thirty-One

ChapterThirty-one When we reached Granbury People made a loud cheer They said “You old codgers made it. You’re welcome back here.” Walk across Texas With its wonderful sights. Walk across Texas With its beautiful nights. Iwent to bed feeling a scratchiness in my throat, and my nose had begun running. I took some aspirin and echinacea tablets that are supposed to increase the body’s immune functions. I woke up at four A.M. My throat had gotten so bad I could barely swallow. So much for the echinacea. I took two more aspirin. When I got up at six A.M., I really did not feel very good. I thought, “If today were not the big day, I certainly would stay at home and in bed.” Aw, what the hell. I knew that I had things I had to do . . . walk the final three miles of our 450-mile trek. I walked down the hall. I could smell coffee brewing. Norm looked up from his computer and said that the weather today would be in the upper sixties with strong north winds. We drank coffee and ate breakfast. We packed and carried our gear to the car. Bear and Isaac sat watching us. Eddie petted them and said, “You dogs make a pretty sight. The only thing that can beat this is to be sitting around a campfire watching the sun come up.” We climbed into the car and headed for Thorp Spring. This being the last day, I was surprised that none of us said anything reflective or philosophical. But, as I thought back, this really had not been much of a philosophical group. I remembered a question Pete Kendall had asked yesterday. “After a day of walking, and you were sitting around the campfire, what did you talk about?” We all had looked at each other and I had said, “Duh.” As we drove, Eddie said, “I’ve learned one thing from this trip. It was the Double Mountain Fork and not the Salt Fork that put that salt into the Brazos.” I thought of all of the people we had met. I asked myself if I would attempt such a walk again. I thought of the strings of red, blue, and black clouds, looking almost like shredded ribbons in those West Texas skies and the absolutely stunning beauty of them. I thought about that powerful wind smashing into our faces and blowing our hats off and bending those skinny stems of gramma grass almost to the ground and making the tree limbs bend in and out like dancers doing fancy steps to some tango. I thought of the blisters and the back pain and the urge calling to us every morning to get up and go, and stand in line for the sun to come up and be participants in this part of Texas and its rich life and growth. I thought of those and said to myself, “Yeah, I would do it again.” And, really, at age sixty-nine, I did not feel that I had pushed myself too hard physically. Mentally, maybe. I thought of all of those days when I wanted Jane to talk to and when I wanted to feel her lying beside me in my bed and when I had thought, “This is too much to take on.” Feeling that and then hearing Jane say, “Aw, sweetheart, you can do it. You must do it.” Norm interrupted my thoughts. “The weather report for Perrryton this morning is winds out of the northeast at seventeen miles an hour with a wind chill factor at eighteen degrees,” he said. “Oh, yeah, they are expecting possible sleet, too.” I rolled my tongue and sucked on my sore throat tablet. I looked at my notebook. I realized that I had taken something like 250 pages of notes. I smiled as I thought, “There’s got to be a book in there somewhere.” I looked across the pasture and saw crows sitting in some trees. I thought of their cries that I have always loved. Some people claim there’s no melody in the crow’s staccato blasts. But, to me, they break the shadows where loneliness abounds, shattering them with bold and loud cries like the crow is saying, “Here I am. Here I am. You’re not the only one out here.” As we neared Thorp Spring, I felt a funny feeling come to my stomach like I feel sometimes before I...