How strange it is to wait beside the volcano. Every now and then I have seen its smoke, heard its thunder, felt its quaking. Yet, on a day like this it seemed like just another sleepy hill. Lava may hesitate in its movement beneath the surface, flowing and sometimes clinging to the walls of the arteries that usually defray the pressure of a build up. But who can see from the outside? The calmness of the mountain can be misleading.
It was just another day. I woke up at Heather's and spent some more time hanging out with her. We talked for a good long time and did some laundry. Then we said goodbye and I left to work downtown. I went to the library first, but after having the same connection problems I'd had before I took off for the Ampersand Café, where I got quite a bit of work done. At the end of the day I headed back to the sleep spot...
The Information Building that I passed each day, looking a bit rough around the edges.
The clouds were accruing their golden evening hues, set down in the turquoise jewelled setting of the midcoast sky...
I bought some chicken at the Yellowfront Grocery, a kind of discount IGA supermarket on Route 1. It really had super prices. The fried chicken (a breast, two legs and two wings) was a day old deal, at $1. I also bought some potato salad for $2.
When I got back to the area near the sleep spot, I decided to munch my food on the grassy hill near Hannaford, rather than in the mosquito infested woods. The place where I'd been setting up the tent really wasn't that buggy-bad; not as bad as most other places I'd camped in the last three months. Still, the edge of the woods was better.
There I found a very unusual spider clinging to the fungus of a beech tree branch. It had an extra long leg extended on either side to detect movement...
Sorry this is a blurry image.
I'd be interested to know the species. I searched and could not find it.
When the chicken and potato salad had been consumed, I made my way down the 100 feet or so of Route 1, then cut into the sleep spot where I erected the tent quickly. I went with the simplest configuration (no footprint tarp, just the tent with only two poles). I was tired.
In the last year several times I'd dealt with some chest pain that came along with this kind of exhaustion. Usually it was while walking uphill or when feeling extra anxious about this or that. On this night it was just the hint of exhaustion.
I had been doing this crazy shit for 400 days. I had no desire to be camping like this, as I explained when I returned to Maine. But I was literally beginning to starve without the publication of blog posts from traveling. As hard as I had tried to promote my efforts and ask for assistance with this promotion (e.g. alerting media about my last 366 day Journey, perhaps telling connected folks in the publishing business that a book from me would be well worth their investment, networking with friends or family who were in publishing, media, angel investors, shit!...anything that would help move the project out of exhaustive rough camping and into a few months of book writing), nothing at all materialized when I got back to Maine.
NOTHING was more important than time. This would become incredibly relevant much sooner than I realized as I crawled into my tent.
No one's fault about the failure to reach a bigger audience. It just wasn't the right time yet, apparently. Still, at nearly 50 years old, how much rough camping, insecure food funds, long distance walking, and all out self promotion did I have left in me?
I knew I was reaching my physical limitations. But I felt I had no choice. I needed to eat each day, and the only money that came in for that was from publishing blog posts. It didn't really bother me so much on this day. I didn't yet know that other forces were at play. I had no idea at all that the seemingly dormant volcano...was stirring...
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