Walking

I was on two cross-country walks. One in 1990 & one in 1992. I get parts of them confused with each other sometimes. They were different. Organized differently, going different directions, different reasons, different (for the most part) people. Yet oddly similar. Sometimes they blend in my head. The first walk was the Global Walk for a Livable World. I was on the first phase – Los Angles to New York. The walk went around the world to Japan. The simple part to describe is the logistics. 150 people. 15-20 miles a day. 9 months. There was a kitchen trailer, a potty bus (150 people cannot shit in the woods, nor all use the toilet at a kwik mart), a gear bus (yes backpacks, tents and sleeping bags were carried for us), a small refrigerator truck, an office, water trailers... infrastructure. The harder part to describe is the effect it had... on me and others. I was young, full of myself, eager and righteously angry. I wanted to change the world. The world changed...few people noticed. My world at least. Change. When I think back on it, there are a few overall concepts that stand out for me. Physicality is a large one. There was no chair to sit in, no couch or recliner, no table, no TV, no night stand, no bed. A tent, a sleeping bag, the entertainment of your fellow travelers and a lot of outdoors. I was so in touch with the weather and the moon and the climate and seasons - without even thinking about it. Just living so... outdoors. Strange as it may sound, there seemed more hours in the day. Enough to do your job (walk), eat and take care of chores, have some alone time, some hang out time, and still there was evening entertainment and a good nights sleep. I miss the time to just BE now a days, like there is always more to do and less time to get it done. People, and interacting with them, were a large part of the walk. Singing with people is one of my fondest memories of the walk. 15-20 people singing together, a five part harmony in a bathroom in a town I don't remember the name of (or was that the second walk), two women singing a song without words, a flute, guitars and heartfelt lyrics, a bar and a band and a reason not to die. I think I realized the beauty of music and that it was open to all who dare try it on that walk. Wanting that feeling back is why I started to play guitar years later. Intensity. All the time you didn't spend watching tv or whatever, was spent with people which, well, its like time dilated. Intensified. A day 'walk time' was like a week in the real world. I learned to be brave on that walk. In the sense that I learned to try things I had never done before without hesitation. I remember getting in to drive the refrigerator truck for the first time. Reading the faded sticker on the back of the visor on how to double clutch when using the split shift rear axle button and just doing it.... maybe I didn't learn to be brave I learned to be brash. I learned to assume I could do and succeed rather than to assume I was a fuck up.