Highway 1 was less traffic-laden by the time I started walking back down its zooming route, and yet it was still highly unpleasant treading. Even the glorious sunset was hard-pressed to offer me any lasting solace. Fortunately, I soon spotted two couples hanging out in a highway-side mall parking lot and they told me how to get to State Road 27, which apparently flowed parallel to Highway 1 all the way to Trenton as well. And so off I went into the gathering darkness, finding 27 with little difficulty, and then flowing along its slightly softer (and much less busy) shoulders all the way to Franklin Park, where restaurant owner Sue gave me a huge plate of rice and vegetables, and a nearby open office building gave me my makeshift bed for the night (behind the pictured chairs) …

“The physical marvels of the universe produce little more reflection than the profoundest moral truths. A million eyes shall pass over the firmament, on a cloudless night, and not a hundred minds shall be filled with a proper sense of the sheer & vast power involved in the creation all witnessed. In truth, not even a hundred hearts glow with the proper adoration that such an appeal to the senses and understanding ought naturally to produce … There is nothing noble in arrogantly dismissing the amazing as normal or in any way feeling superior to your fellow man. For in fact true nobility comes while seeing the phenomenal in the familiar, and thereby being superior to your former self.” ~ inspired by James Fennimoree Cooper & Ernest Hemmingway

“I wasn’t planning to lead. I was just standing in the back and then everyone turned around.” ~ Avery Hiebert

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt