A Living Magazine - Day 241 - Homecoming - Concord to Kannapolis

I woke up at 6:00 a.m., then as is my habit lately, turned over and promptly fell back asleep again until 8:00. It was very private in the woods, but my instincts told me to get my ass in gear. Upon unzipping the tent flap I realized that the tarp/fly was soaked. I would have just stuck around there and dried it out, but the temperature was about 34° F. There was no way it would dry. I also had no plastic bag to put it in, so I just wrung it out and stuffed it into its regular bag. The tent also was a bit damp especially the slots where the poles run through.

What happens is, once these items are in their separate bags the heat from the interior of the backpack (and it does get warm) will cause the moisture to spread all over the item in question, yet also allows some evaporation to take place. I wanted to dry it out later in the day, but I never got the chance.

Getting back up the little hill was a bit of a challenge. I found that walking sideways and backwards, the weight of the pack would pull me up. I kept slipping but never ended up on my arse. Once that unpleasantness was over, I made my way down the other side, across a small stream and up onto good ole' 29. I was just on the border of Concord and had the whole town to walk through to get to Kannapolis...

Breakfast of champions...or, hungry wallkers.

Neat little place. Would make a good homesteading cabin.

Habitat for Humanity has quite a few headquarters buildings in this state.

I'd seen several on my way to Charlotte. Great organization.

Indications of the spring to come. Reminded me of when I used to go from greenhouse

to greenhouse in Maine, just looking for plants--always loved that.

After walking a long stretch I was coming over a hill and smelled the most intense coffee aroma. There were no restaurants around, but I discovered the source...

Wouldn't be bad to live near this place in the morning.

I thought to myself that I must have been getting farther north and east in this country

(compared with the Northwest and then Georgia and South Carolina) because the trash

was becoming pretty solid along the edges of the road. A sight like this

would be unthinkable in Oregon or Washington.

Loved this! No ambiguity here.

If I'd had the money, I probably would have gone in for the test.

Typical of my arrival in each town, Kannapolis' downtown seemed to just suddenly appear...

I found a Starbucks, did some work and checked Google for possible sleep spots. I saw there was a China Buffet up the road (dinner?) and a large patch of green about a half mile farther past it, along a side road called Ebenezer. Right at sunset I left to seek out these places...

I believe I've seen this at the edge of each town I've been to since Anderson, South Carolina.

I was feeling pretty worn out by the time I got to the China Buffet. Even though I'd only been through two towns on this day, I'd walked 25 Km (15 miles). I also had just a touch of melancholy.

There was so much for me to process. I overthink everything anyway, and I always try to fit what I'm doing into the larger context of my own life and the world in general. I am constantly afflicted by doubt. As you might imagine, after 241 days of walking around different places all across the nation on this Journey, I was beginning to have strong feelings, wondering what my "home" really was or would be.

I could say my home was in Maine. I'd lived their for 45 years before leaving to do all of this. But, in fact, besides my sister's house, I had no place to stay there. It bothered me that even when I return to Maine, there will be no place of my own. I tempered this thought with the hope (it always comes down to hope) that I can find a way to get a piece of land this coming summer. Even without a house right away, I knew that I would eventually be able to develop it into exactly what I've longed for.

Then again, I've felt a sentimentality for each place that I've slept out here on the road. Strange to relate. As I've suggested to others who are in a transient state of any kind: own where you are. I have owned (temporarily) hundreds of places now. I remember each one. I don't think I ever could remember each day of my former domestic life. What an amazing thing that is. Just consider! What if you had all the detailed memories of every day for a whole year? It is a gift. Being in that state of mind is also a kind of home.

All of this begs the question of what home really and truly is. If home is where the heart is, then now my home has to be America--the whole land, from sea to sea, to great lakes, to gulf, and back to shining sea. 

Nevertheless, I do long for a settling down. With each day this longing grows stronger. It seems such a simple thing. One acre of land. That's it. I would turn it into a personal paradise. There are people with billions of dollars, with tastes and wants to match. I can say for sure that even if I had a million dollars I would still do exactly what I've always wanted to do: buy that acre of land and make a little self sustaining cabin. Maybe I would be more satisfied than the billionaire with such a simple thing, because I know that life can be so much harder.

I walked into the China Buffet and asked what the price was. The nice lady told me it was $9.39. That was fine. Sometimes I just feel good at these places, with plenty else on my mind to distract me from empathizing with everyone who is there. But on this night my inner empath emerged. I saw the three other parties there. One was an older guy and what I took to be his son. Another was a thirty something couple. And there was a very large woman eating by herself. 

The older guy was swearing like a sailor loudly as he joked around. The son seemed to be slightly embarrassed, but laughed and tried to keep up. They would pile up plates of food, eat just a few pieces and then stack all the plates with uneaten food up on the side of the table. So incredibly wasteful. But this is not unusual. People don't think about it. The server didn't quite know when to take plates away. I felt for her. She'd ask if they wanted more soda, and the old man would just nod and point at his cup with his mouth full. The son was a bit more polite, perhaps making up for his dad's lack of tact.

All I heard from the couple was the woman. "I don't know what you want. I ask you over and over again, and you say nothin'... Just like rat now! Why won't ya' just tell me?" He kept eating and looking around. This was driving her insane. She was angry as hell, but doing that yelling-by-whisper thing. "It's her isn't it? You talk to her. Let me see yer phone..." He put the phone in his pocket and finished his egg roll.

The woman eating alone was especially hard for me to see. Don't know why. I mean, I was eating alone. There is nothing wrong with eating alone. She was so overly obese though. To live in a body like that is hard enough. But to be at the China Buffet near to closing time, alone... the Spark connected with her Spark, and for just a moment I was seeing through her eyes. There was too much and also too little in her life. Too much pain, shame, guilt, discomfort; too little support, care, companionship--love. I had to pull myself out and look away. She didn't look sad on the outside. She was just eating, slowly, seemingly enjoying each of the many tastes on her pallet. I knew that food was a distraction. I knew that it gave her the only satisfaction she could find in her life. 

None of this was helping my own downcast disposition. I looked across the table at my only companion, Saggy. With its ripping straps that never seem to rip all the way through, its zippers with little collected twist ties--some broken now, bulging at every seam, discolored and dirty, with a patch of sweat almost dried where it came into contact with my back. What would a caring and empathetic person imagine my life to be, were he/she sitting across the restaurant? I felt... lost.

I was very careful to eat mostly sushi. This place wasn't as good as the the Dynasty Buffet in Gastonia. Their salad options were lacking. Whatever though, it was just sustenance. That really is what it boils down to for me now. Other people go out as a special treat. I go in as a way to build reserves for walking. It isn't a treat. Sometimes it isn't even very good. 

I guess that all of the overthinking and the visual impression of the surface areas of things - the quintessential Asian decor, faded pictures of high mountains and bamboo--wrinkled at the edges, the servers politely putting up with patrons who treat them like slaves, the companionship of father and son, the falling apart of Romeo and Juliet, and the despair of a hunger that can never be satisfied - became overwhelming. I just wanted to leave. 

In addition to my meal I had only ordered a water, so with tax my total was $10.04. I had enough food in me not need to eat again for twenty four hours. I wasn't overly full either, as I pulled Saggy up onto my back. I clicked my pedometer to measure out 0.8 Km (a 1/2 mile), and started off down the dark street.

Sure enough I saw Ebenezer Road right at the half mile and took a right, heading down that road until there were nothing but trees. What I could not see in the Google earth images, nor Street view earlier that day was that the place I wanted to get down into was actually a steep valley.

In between cars going by, I walked to the edge of the bank and looked down. I saw that if I walked sideways down the hill there was a kind of flat landing that I could set up at right before reaching the small stream. So that's what I did. It wasn't ideal. Cars going into town could still see down there if it were lighter out. But, it would work for the night.

When the tent was set up I stood outside of it for about an hour just communing with the Spark. I saw things... Sunsets on the West Coast, long Midwestern stretches of road that never seemed to end, but when they did, didn't seem long enough, the majesty of the purple mountains as I rode the Amtrak across Montana and North Dakota... Then, I was a bird able to fly far up above the highway, to a place where only the wind could be heard and the asphalt arteries of humanity looked like rivers; the strip malls and city centers were like sand poured out in concentrated amounts. I could see the Atlantic Ocean glimmering in the half-moon light. 

When I am weakened by my own inability to shut down my thoughts, the Spark takes me away to memories or distant places. It shows me the bigger picture. It puts the place where I stand in perspective. I knew that ultimately my body was nothing more than a spec of virus on this land. Liberated from the body, my mind could soar--see it all. The little brook bubbled and gurgled next to me. A small waterfall out of sight must have been hitting a patch of leaves, because every so often it sounded like someone walking through the woods. It took me a while to realize it wasn't a visitor--it never got closer or farther away.

I wanted to record the brook, but my digital audio recorder finally died (the on/off switch is broken). Given the right tools I think I could fix it. Oh well, only so many things can be dealt with at once. I climbed into the tent. The leaves under me were especially soft and I quickly fell asleep.            

See how wet the tarp/fly still was?

Having it up in the rising temperatures would dry it overnight.

Kannapolis Sleep Spot