Manifest Destiny: America from the Bottom Up - 45 - Texas County, MO - Just Cows and Coyotes

I pulled my walking stick up close to the tent entrance, eventually falling asleep again. I woke at 5:15 am to the sound of a deer barking loudly; more loudly than the buck I'd caught in my light several nights earlier (and mentioned here, down the timeline). He just keep barking and scraping the ground prominently. The horse ran by way down by the fence, nearer the roadway. My alarm was due to sound in 15 minutes anyway, and my inner voice told me that it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. There were just too many uncertain things in there, and I had many miles to go before reaching Licking.

I went through the mental list of the "pack up" and then went at it with a gusto. The sleeping bag fit nicely in the pack--through the brute force of simply stuffing it into its pocket, for once. The rolled up blanket-pillow slid in well afterward. I put on my army vest and clicked its straps up tight. The Camelbak had slid off the backpack so I spent a while getting that back on and tightened up. I then untied the tarp from its tree-hold and removed the bungee from the foot-end, where it had secured the tarp in a bunch to form the characteristic triangle-tent shape that was working so well lately. I laid it out and folded it up as tightly as possible. Bungeeing the tarp to big fold-up rain coat and then securing them to the top of the pack went well too.

On went my new glasses. I extended the walking stick, pulled on the pack and snapped it to the vest, and I was off!

It was very dark still and I took out my smaller flashlight to find my way back to the fence. I was worried that that one section where the barbed wire was missing might be far down the line, but *amazingly* I walked out of the woods at exactly the spot where I'd climbed over the evening before.

There were no cars on the road yet and I easily made it down and across the road to continue on. When I checked the watch it said 6:00 am. I simply couldn't believe how well the pack up had gone. There had been a slight amount of rain over night and the tarp was wetter than I'd wanted it to be. I resolved to wipe it down on this next night before setting it up.

The miles passed by quickly for the first three hours, then less so as I approached Licking. I entered the town with great hopes of being able to find an internet connection, but my hopes were dashed. As Cherryville had been, Licking was a bit of a non-town. It has a main street that was mostly filled with closed businesses. There was a supermarket, but I still had one of my sandwiches with me.
There is a chain of old-fashioned serve-you-outside restaurants, called "Sonic" down here. It was open. The air was a chilly 36 F, and a coffee sounded really good. I figured that sacrificing $2.00 would be worth it. I asked the servers inside if there was internet in the town. They said, "No, but further down on Route 63, in Houston, there is a McDonald's with it."

I checked my map - which had been notoriously short on the distances, making them more of a hike that I'd expect each time I used it - and it said Houston was 13 miles. I interpreted that as being about 15 in REAL mileage. So, having already walked 17 miles that morning, I decided to make my way to Houston. [Interestingly, I was and still am in Texas County. In between towns here in Missouri, areas are known only by the county land they exist on. Anyway, I write this account from Houston, Texas (wink).

As Iwallked I formulated a plan about pulling off the road sooner than the normal 4:30 pm. I figured I'd be able to do some changes on my tent to make it even better. I could also catch up on more rest, as my left thigh muscle was hurting pretty bad. I thought that if I could have walked about halfway, then camped, I'd only have about seven or eight more miles before getting to Houston. It turned out that another circumstance would save me that walk the next day. I will describe it in "Part Three."

Route 63 was a MUCH different road than Route 32 had been. Sixty three is a fast-moving, main thoroughfare, with larger shoulders and tons of land spread out on either side of the highway. I knew I'd find a good spot as I passed dozens of acres of woods, gullies and hillsides. Some had fencing, but most of it was accessible. I just hoped that the situation would remain that way until I reached the halfway point.

When I started to really tucker out, I'd reached a point where there was a ditch on the left with no fence and a sharp rocky cliff on the right with no fence. I chose the left side, but in retrospect, I wish I'd explored the right side. Anyway, it is what it is. Everything was being set up for something the next day, though I was wholly ignorant of what it was.

When there were only cars at each distant point of the highway, I made my dash over the left side of the road and into the woods.

There were several spots where the trees had been cut down - it seemed - years earlier. Strange blue-shaded prickers were taking over the wood piles and twisted brush that had been cast aside and left there.

Other raspberry-type prickers lined an area that I pushed my way through, to the detriment of my jeans and backpack. After nearly being caught in a web of thorns and tangled sticks I practically fell through into another clearing. I looked around carefully - as I always do when vetting a sleep spot - and saw nothing of human origin. Then...boom...there up to right on a large hill was the shining metal roof of a cabin. I crept forward a bit and saw a yellow pick up truck with its lights on, pointed right at me.

"Shit!" I exclaimed, and sighed. What I needed to do was creep across their field of view and into another more isolated spot. What I should have done is turn around and get back across the highway to the right side that looked better. But everything, indeed, happens for a reason. Timing in the present is absolutely necessary for what we must accomplish in the future.

I decided to do my sneaky meandering march in front of the house, like a two legged turtle with a canvas shell on a poorly planned path. I was as busy as - and I love this expression that I overheard in Washington while visiting RhonnaLeigh - "a three legged toad on a red ink pad." wink emoticon (Not even sure was that means!!)

No one saw me, and I made it to a gently sloping, leafy hill right at the edge of a cow pasture. Now, one thing I was learning about cows is that there are cows and there are steers. Cows look up and stare before running away if I walk too closely by their fenced field along the road. Steers, on the other hand, will look up and stare before becoming (sometimes) aggressive - even if it is largely just for show - running *toward* the fence and then stopping before reaching it, just to let me know who the boss around these parts is. And that IS a bunch of bull. Ha!

The cows in THIS field were docile and only mildly curious about the turtle man with the big rimmed glasses kneeling down in front of their fence. One came over and simply chewed the long stands of grass, as if watching me was the best entertainment on CowTV. I talked to her and she mooed a few responses. Cows are fun to be with but I must say that they lack a very large vocabulary. There is "moo?" "moo!" "moooooo...." and of course the very eloquent "moo--woo..."

She got as bored of me as I did of her, and eventually turned to walk over to her very small calf who was calling out as it slowly marched up the hill beyond us. This was good because I didn't need the attention, and her calf did.

I was more nervous than I really should have been. I always feel a little bit tense when in a new sleep spot, but this was early in the day and I was still unsure if the yellow-truck guy might decide to go hunting and ruin across me. I decided to wait on my tent improvements and just crawled in instead. I waited before pulling out the sleeping bag. I wanted to have that ole' sun go down, before I got too comfortable.

Amazingly, I fell asleep for a a little while, when I was awoken by a sharp rustling in the leaves at the foot end of the tent. I very slowly poked my head out of the opening and peered around toward the bungee-ed end of the tent. I saw a large grey squirrel look up and practically fall over as our eye met. He jumped straight up in the air. Then, upon returning to the ground moved faster than anything I'd ever seen, practically flying up on to a branch about ten feet above me.

There were no other trees close by, so he was frustrated at his choice of escape. He took it out on me, by barking his little fuzzy head off for about a half hour. He punctuated his angry squirrel admonitions with flicking his tail against a set of dry leaves at the end of the branch. When he'd realized that I probably was not going to catch and eat him, he calmed down enough to climb back to the ground, scooting off along the fence to continue his daily work.

I laid there doing essentially nothing for the next couple hours, simply reviewing what had happened the night before and wondering what would happen that night. I heard dogs in the pasture, way down the hill, getting closer and closer, with the sound of children's voices yelling and playing. I really didn't need to be seen. I was already way too close to the fence and was easily visible to anyone on its other side; something already made clear by my intimate conversation with the cow earlier.

But the sun slid down in the west, giving a slight ray of orange under the constant cloud cover as it went to its evening rest. And the kids were called home for supper. With the darkness sinking in like brown ink into a leaf colored-couch, the dogs in the distance began to bark and howl. This time there was something ominous about the way they sounded. They sounded scared.

Again, for the second night, I heard coyotes not so far in the distance. The tone of the dogs became frantic. I'm never quite sure where the owners of these "pets" are hanging out, nor how they can stand half a dozen hours of constant howling and barking, but, alas...

Suddenly I heard a screaming kind of whining (I've heard coyotes do this in Maine before) and the dogs went completely bananas. It was as if they had caught a coyote and given it a piece of hell. I don't know of course. But after that the barking and the wild howling subsided.

I was able to get to sleep after awhile. Around 10:00 pm I woke up having to take a rather urgent pee. the dogs were going at the barking again, yet much less intensely. There were no other animals making their presence know, besides something small just out about 20 feet away from me. the need to pee got the upper hand on my hesitation to venture out, and off I went to do my thing.

Whatever had been nosing around the leaves took off like a rocket car across the forest floor. I fell back asleep as soon as I crawled back into my sleeping bag. I don't recall any dreams last night. I did have the distinct feeling that I was in a motel room for a little while, before waking to the realization that I was just in the woods like usual.