Day 110d: Walking in wonderment anyway … (August 17, 2019)
The roadway then entered another longer stretch where there were essentially no walk-able shoulders at all, so much so that I ended up walking “against traffic” in the central median for a time. Unsurprisingly, this proved to be not the best of ideas, so I tried the opposite shoulder for awhile as well, which – just as unsurprisingly – proved to be just as dangerous & uncomfortable. After continuing onward in this slow and at times quite scary fashion, I saw a gas station with an 18-wheeler parked at its pumps, and I waddled over to ask the trucker if there were any handy alternate routes available to the one upon which I was already walking. He sighed sympathetically and said there weren’t – at least not any accessible in this area. “You’re going to have to just keep on going, nice & easy.” Fair enough – if that is what I have to do, the that is what I will do …
“Either I shall plunge down into the abysmal horror of madness and death — or I shall walk upon the dawn. And yet one thing that I will never do is abandon the cause or its course … We all must die. And yet must we then die lamenting? We all must be put in chains. And yet must we then also lament? We must all go into exile. And yet does any man hinder me from walking there in smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?” ~ via Marjorie Cameron & Epictetus
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