A Living Magazine - Day 249 - Homecoming - High Point to Jamestown

At some point during the night I must have shut off the TV. I slept well and woke up, packed up, did some last minute work online and then left at around 10:45 a.m.

The route I had to take was complex, at least for me. It consisted of walking up Main Street to the Amtrak station, then going right onto M.L.K., left onto Centennial, right onto Eastchester (Route 68), right onto Wendover through Jamestown and then the rest of the way to Greensboro. I set off walking directly into a strong wind from the north...  

This was quite a massive campus. And, everything was sparkling new, as if it had been

made last year. I also liked the color blue that they used in the signs--had a hint of violet.

I had very little idea where I would be spending the night. I just wanted to make it about halfway to Greensboro. There was no hint at all during this very windy, hard slog, walking on mostly grass, that I was about to find one of the best sleep spots I'd ever had. I wasn't feeling very good, emotionally.

There was a real funk that had settled in after Salisbury--well maybe it began in Charlotte. I was stuck with a jaded feeling of resentment for the ant colony of human beings around me; their shiny debt-based cars, their distracted minds, their fake pleasantries, the way they just played the roles they thought others expected of them. It was the way they seemed to buy into their own cultural enslavement with such abandon.

While they were stereotyping each other and me, I could not believe how easy it was for me to stereotype them. I genuinely tried not to. I knew that their impressions of me, based on appearance alone, were unfair and inaccurate. How could I do such a thing to them? Maybe they were nothing at all like they appeared to be. I had to catch and stop myself from doing it.

Nevertheless, the ants were so predictable, so stuck scrambling through their excavated mental passageways; wearing the approved garments for their particular lifestyle choices, even walking and talking automatically. They tried to impress each other with the latest this or that phrase. Trendy posing had replaced genuine interaction.

Everything was based on the outside--the surface area of their material selves. I saw they had souls, but those souls were in a kind of hibernation. Perhaps when a marriage, birth, divorce or death shook the coma-bed of the soul it would awaken to adjust itself. Then, seeing that not much else of import was happening, would slip back into its suspended animation. The soul craves Light. Anything short of the striving to find that Light is just too boring and useless for the soul to even consider. Bodies, driving, shopping, eating, sleeping, working...are just bodies. Nothing to see there.

I thought that ultimately when all of the foofoo, face-painted, pedicured veneer was scratched away by the erosive forces of actual REALITY--was boiled off the artificial lives of the majority of people, what was really left of their humanity was simple, undiluted cowardice. They were afraid of the courage to think, speak and act for themselves. Every waking moment was filled with the crouching, hiding, fetal position of doing what they thought others expected of them. The only breath of fresh air I ever got to see was that of their children.

Kids have not yet be reprogrammed. They have not yet had their dreams smashed. They have not yet had their creativity snuffed out by a hierarchical, numbers-based school system, in order to get a college degree they won't use, work at a nineteen different jobs during their lives just pay money down on debt that will never end. They have not yet realized that all of the crap they will face as adults, they will then be expected to train their own kids. Child abuse, generation after generation. That was what made this car-culture, anthill we call modern society the wonderful and stultifying thing it is today.

That pretty much sums up my psychology on this day and the days surrounding it. I just felt so hopeless. This deadness, lack of inspiration, progress-refusal was a battleship headed without a captain at full speed into a breakwater. Everyone sees it in some way or another. But they are simply too afraid to think, speak or do anything about it. I was trying to hitch my little canoe to its bow, and turn the fucker around. And, that pissed me off. The sad thing about my frustration was not that I was so ineffective, but that I looked like such an idiot to even try. For even ME, there was no escape from the peer pressure to not stand out philosophically.

If you want to see the most pathetic thing in nature, take one ant from its colony, walk a hundred yards away and gently put it on the ground. It has no pheromone trail to follow, no knowledge of the direction it came from, no protection from its sisters. It is a death sentence. It will not know what to do. It will scour a hundred square foot area for any sign of its family. But no sign will be found. Night will fall and it will hide as best it can until the next day. It will repeat this process until it is either killed, eaten, or starved to death. Now, my fine people, how much greater are we than ants?

Bear in mind, that no ant ever chooses to leave the colony. Ants are not privy to a sense of free will. Perhaps they are the fortunate ones. I have left the colony. And, now I am scouring the area; not to find it again, but to start a new world where each person chooses their own reality--TOGETHER; unified diversity. But, even I miss the warm, stupid, lazy comfort of my colony still, at the same time I am growing to despise it. I am a creature of two worlds.

Along Centennial I ran across this place. It was a solid two acres stuffed with every possible kind of lawn ornament an ant could want. Shit, if I had a place of my own in North Carolina, I might come here every weekend...

Love this message!

The Festival Park Dam.

My foul mood, jaded disposition, and crappy attitude always needs to be balanced out. No amount of brooding and resentment can be maintained indefinitely--at least in my case. And, that is where the Spark takes over, even if temporarily. 

After turning onto Wendover and walking by the same old businesses I'd seen in a semi-nauseating series for - now - thousands of miles on this Journey, I looked to my right and saw a row of thick short pine trees. Yes! Surely, this could hold a sleep spot. 

It was still light out and the chance to just rest and hang out somewhere alone in nature could not be avoided. I took the opportunity to walk across the street and up the short road past a BP station, all the while scoping out the adjacent land for camping compatibility. It looked great! I went into the BP and bought a beer and a Gatorade, then casually walked over to the edge of the woods. When no cars were coming or going, I passed in through a short path. 

It was grassy, with a thick pine needle base, but interspersed with thousands of sharp pricker bushes. I was willing to sacrifice bits of flesh off my thighs (as you will see in a coming post) in order to find a nice spot, and I did.

When I saw the following tree, I became focused on it. It had been one of the original members of a bulldozed field--somehow left standing. When it was only about five years old, something had broken the trunk, laying it over at a 90 degree angle. Because it was split (having two trunks growing out of the base), it was now growing and still thriving at it's strange angle. Throughout the last two decades, it has watched all the other trees, including its own offspring grow up to shelter it... 

Somehow I'd caught a sprite or Midwayer floating near the base of these trees.

Deer tracks.

Ah... A peaceful place--priceless.

Here are some more photos of this strange and wonderful tree. I named it the Tree of Life...

I always send a scouting party of - um, one - to check out the area. Someone in the parking lot near the Gold's Gym must have set up a makeshift driving range...

Yeah, I got the balls.

Probably the best campsite photo of the whole Journey.

Treetop sunlight.

From fifty feet.

The wind was still really bursting out gusts. The shelter of the trees was quite evident as I could see its effect on their tops but not at their bases...

Wind in the pines.

It was that same orange muddy sand that I spent so much time walking over in Athens.

In fact this spot reminded me of a much more comfortable version of my sleep spot there.

I paced, and thought, and cooled down my formerly-simmering rage. The Spark had made it's point. And, I was able to see the world like one of those kids again--natural, alive, green, golden breezy and idyllic. I knew I would only spend one night here, but I was very thankful to have it. If I were in this area for longer, it would certainly serve as a sanctuary. I would encourage future Nomads to find it if they are hiking through the Piedmont Triad region. I left a sign of my stay, but it will remain secret until the new generation of Nomads begins their campaign of readjusting society. Not all of the kids living right now will be contorted into ant-robots.

After the sun had gone down, and my mind had settled, I climbed into the tent and enjoyed one of the most peaceful and restful sleeps I'd had in weeks.