Manifest Destiny: America from the Bottom Up - Day 5 - Easton, MA to Dighton, MA - Talking Turkey

The dream was strange from the beginning (or what I remember about the beginning). I was back in Yarmouth, Maine. My sister, Deb, was taking care of my dad for some reason. It wasn't Bayview Street (where I grew up) but at some boat yard with a small parking lot. I recall that the parking space lines were newly painted.

I had to go somewhere and was not able to talk to Deb. I'm not sure why, but I really wanted to check in with her. I would do things like go to a store or fill the car up with gas and then forget to use the payphone (remember those?). Apparently, I didn't have a cellphone.

The day was going by and I was getting frustrated with my forgetfulness. Finally, I got to a phone. I called Deb and got her answering machine. I left the number of the payphone I was at. I turned my back to the wall and slid down it until I was sitting on the sidewalk, next to the phone booth.

I think I was starting to wake up, because I kept dreaming but felt the sleeping bag around me--a situation almost like when I have a lucid dream. As I was being pulled from the dream consciousness, the dream-phone rang. Everything was black, like my sight in both the dream and real life were closed.

I answered. Deb said quietly, "Hi Chuck."

And I just said, "What's up?"

She was silent for a moment, and then said, "It's Dad... He's...dead." I was suddenly transported back to that Yarmouth boat yard that I saw in the beginning of the dream and it's parking lot, as if there were a camera there from which I could view it. Over by the dumpster in the corner sat an empty gurney, rolling backward very slowly...

My eyes immediately flashed open and I quickly sat up, there in the woods of Easton, Massachusetts, wrapped in my sleeping bag.

It was the way Deb said the word, "dead." My sister would never say that. She would say "passed away." There was a kind of wind-swept, skeleton bone-coldness to her pronunciation and a well-defined punctuation to its brutal finality.

I was glad it was just a dream, but it festered in my mind as I packed up to get moving again.

I was getting much more organized and efficient with the pack-up process. Instead of rolling up the sleeping bag, I simply stuffed it into its big pocket, along with its carrying bag. Stowing the sleeping bag was always the longest process.

My Android had been in my pants pocket while I slept. It held all of the videos and pictures of my journey out of Boston. Yet, I didn't even think of it as I poured over the list of things that I carry. I felt around my body, tapping the binoculars, my wallet, my glasses... Apparently, I had dumped the phone out on the ground when I shook the sleeping bag. Feeling confident about my pack-up, I grabbed my stick and crunched through soft leaves of the woods until I reached the grassy ball field.

I was a little bit late, and orange light was flowing across the sky. The air was definitely colder than the night before. But the fact that I'd had my first dry night of sleep made me unusually happy. I remember laughing a bit about how it all had worked out. The toughest part of the journey - so far - was over.

The fact that I had been panicking at North Station in Boston several days before, that I'd told my sister and mother that I thought I should take a train back to Portland--afraid I would have a heart attack, the unrelenting rain, the city's merciless traffic, the weight of my pack, the lack of money... It was all in the past now. Given a little time, even the most disturbing days do not last forever.

As I write this now, a week after leaving Maine, I understand fully what had happened to me in Boston. It was a test of my commitment, my strength, my fortitude and my focus. When I had been sitting there in the train station with everything going to hell, the simple act of choosing to continue on, without any sense of security was an undertaking of pure will. It was the strongest affirmation that will could profoundly determine my fate that I had even known. I knew that what was being asked of me - from within - was a project that no one else would be able to accomplish. I had been dreading this trip from the moment I that it was Proposed by the inner voice. That voice had become like a spark that had ignited the dry kindling of despair and could not be extinguished, shining out from me, illuminating the world for me.

All of this was going through my mind as I stepped back onto Route 138, continuing south on my American expedition; a personal manifest destiny of self-discovery. By shedding the last uncomfortable vestiges of my personal ambitions, fears, and skepticism, a New Light had come on in my mind.

In the morning chill, with the birds singing everywhere, under the grandeur of a violet-sky, being washed aside by the dominating glow of the rising sun, with my stick clicking, clicking, clicking on the tar, I progressed forward. I was also traveling inward, toward the center of myself as I existed in this world. My anxiety, my pain, my insecurities and fears were gone--truly gone.

It became fully apparent that all the time I thought I'd wasted in the last five years walking everywhere, being hungry so often, learning how to sleep and wake at random times, testing ideas for writing, and watched dozens of survival videos, was actually an unconscious training for this very moment. In fact, my entire life has been directed by tests from something higher and greater than myself, all, it seemed, for this journey.

If I'd only known over the years that this would eventually be happening I think I would have been a happier person. Instead I'd doubted why I was even alive. I'd seen myself as a burden on society, and even some of my closest relatives were saying as much. I'd felt ashamed, because I was too cowardly to just kill myself and relieve both the world and my own psyche from the constant feeling of self-hatred and uselessness that I'd thought were the only things I'd ever feel. I couldn't play the "game" anymore, but when I'd tried to make my own game I also failed--over, and over again. I'd never considered that I was part of a Plan that rests above all games. That Plan was not a game. On this morning I'd discovered that IT is the Rule.

For the first time in my life I felt no anxiety at all. I had learned in the last few days that working with whatever this Light was (what I would soon come to call the Spark) ALWAYS resulted in positive results. Now that the pattern was established, it was easy to be led by it.

I was contemplating all of this when I came upon a turkey farm. Outside in the yard were the birds. Some were lounging around and some just wondered aimlessly. They paid me no attention until I decided to make a gobbling sound. That piqued their interest. They rose to their feet as though they'd been waiting for a great leader to free them from their prison camp. I had to laugh at what I saw. Turkeys are funny looking birds, as we all know. But they have no idea about that. They are proud and filled with all the dignity that any creature should possess.

I stopped and gobbled some more. A few birds in the front began to walk toward the fence. Then others joined them and when I started walking forward again they all began to run toward me. They gobbled back teaching me the correct way to talk turkey. So, I did, and they went crazy. Feathers were flying around in the air. The birds themselves were trying to fly. When they reached the far side of the yard and got to the fence, the entire crowd pushed the birds at the front right into it. A mosh pit of white turkeys squawked and fell all over each other. I, as their long-sought messiah, was passing by them without even helping them!

I was laughing so hard, walking backward in order to watch what they were doing, that I almost slipped off the tar, over the soft shoulder and into the ditch. It really made my day. I felt glad to be a Jesus, or maybe an Elvis, for once. I was also glad they were fenced in, or I would have had an unwanted army behind me.

Route 138 is relatively flat and straight, free of large hills. There are regularly located stores along the way. It wasn't long until I found a Stop n Shop in Raynham. My EBT food stamp card still had about $20 on it. Few stores besides the major supermarkets would accept the card. I knew these guys would.

I was very thirsty again. All I could think about was drinking something cold and sweet. I meandered around the store occasionally bumping into things with my back pack. I made myself a salad at the salad bar and bought a half gallon of lemonade. When I returned to the parking lot the sun was higher above the trees. There were plenty of grassy spots where I could sit and eat my salad, re-dry my sleeping bag which was damp when I stuffed it in my pack, and maybe even take a nap.

I sat against a wooden fence and enjoyed my heaping salad. Chugging down a quart of lemonade felt like heaven itself. There really is nothing that comes close to drinking as much lemonade as you want when you are parched dry.

Down by the roadway a man and his unleashed dog were walking toward me. The dog, seeing an opportunity for good lovin' skipped over to me. I scratched her short haired neck. She was a sweet pit-bull looking breed. Her owner made his way up to us and thanked me for not freaking out about the dog. There was nothing to thank me for. I love dogs.

I stayed a long time in that parking lot area. Around 2:30 pm I decided that I needed to keep moving. After refolding the tarp to make it smaller, and getting the sleeping bag into its own little bag, I was ready to go. It appeared that Taunton was a bit further down the road. I would have to get there and through it by sunset if I wanted to find a good place that wasn't very populated to sleep that night.

I reached Taunton around 4:00 pm. It has some great architecture...

Bristol County Courthouse Complex, Taunton, MA

I have to be honest, I'd never even heard of the town before. It was colder out now. The sun was veiled by a layer of skim milk clouds. In the center of town there was an open park called Taunton Green. It appeared to have been built around the time of the Civil War (1864). Several statues populated the edges. I sat to rest for a moment on the bench. A young man wearing an iPod walked by and then stopped, turned and looked at me, then away again. He tried to walk back toward me, but kept getting sidetracked by adjusting his tunes. It seemed that he wanted to sell me some weed.

But before he reached me two of his friends - a young man and woman  - walked up to him. The woman was sobbing. The man helped her walk. The three of them continued down the sidewalk to the corner where they met up with several other people.

My intuition told me that she was mourning the death of someone. They all looked like town folk, maybe even street people. Their clothes were ripped and dirty. They all stood for a while with their arms around each other in a circle. They had lost one of their own. This was the kind of thing I would never have experienced had I been driving through town. It didn't even have to do with me. But somehow by witnessing it, I had become part of it.

It was time to get through town, turn west onto Route 44 and find a sleeping place. The sun slipped below the edge of the high clouds, which were now fluffy and clearing out...

One of my favorite pictures.
Sunset over Route 44 in Taunton, MA.

Before long it was dark and the stars reemerged from their daylight aiding places. I walked as far as I could go. I got part way into Dighton. I was tired again and my shoulders were hurting. There were lots of potential places to sneak off the road. I walked until a particular spot caught my eye.

It was thick with pricker bushes on the edge of the road. I would learn that pricker bushes would become a good omen. But that night one long barb caught me right above the eye. After breaking through them I found a small unused road running parallel to Route 44. I walked down it until I found the right kind of place.

I used the walking stick in my usual way to search for a three foot by eight foot area to sack down. When I found it, off came the pack. I sat and listened for a long while to my surroundings, which would also become a custom from then on. When I felt comfortable and had heard nothing large out there in the forest, I pulled out the sleeping bag and then tied up my winter jacket as a pillow.

Lying there, I saw the sky through the tops of the trees. To my left there was a truck repair shop located diagonally across and down the road. Far beyond that the main building was a very tall cell tower. I watched its red light flash on and off.

Then suddenly I saw an enormous meteor flash through the sky, straight down to earth, burning out just before passing beyond the horizon. I thought to myself that there was no way a little piece of that sucker couldn't have reached the ground. Cool. While I didn't exactly make a wish, I did close my eyes and thank the Universe and the New Light inside me. I also felt as though my unseen companion was sitting nearby.

The only thing that bugged me was a constant beeping pattern down the other road-direction emanating from a larger building. I thought it might stop but it just went on and on. It didn't take long to become drowsy. And, even the beeping couldn't keep me from sinking into unconsciousness. Another day had passed. My progress was slow. But I was making it. I hoped the next day to leave Massachusetts in the past and step into Rhode Island.

My sleeping spot in Dighton, MA

* * * * * * *

This adventure is turning into a kind of addiction. The satisfaction I feel with each day that passes and each night sleeping outside in the beauty of nature is changing me. I'm having difficulty being comfortable indoors. I know that someday I will remember this and wish I could be back here.
So, with that in mind, I intend to appreciate every second of it.
This is the time of my life... The Age of Blue has begun.