It was essentially impossible to cross so many lanes of high-speed traffic to make it to the “correct” (i.e. against the direction of traffic) left-hand side of the roadway, and the right-hand shoulder soon became almost completely unwalkable (with me spending far more time looking back over my shoulder and stopping to lean away from onrushing cars & trucks than actually doing any real walking), so I resigned myself to froggering through the two nearest lanes to get to the far wider shoulders on both sides of the concrete center median that had been erected between the two directions of travel. While more dangerous “on paper” (I guess due to the fact that this was the last place any driver would ever think to look for or see a pedestrian), this choice did bear better fruit, and I slowly but surely made my way further down The Road. After a time I finally saw a break in the foliage on the right-hand side of the highway and crossed back over to see about getting off this highly troubling trail. It was only then that I looked down and saw an equally disturbing rash making its way up both my calves & shins. I don’t know if it was due to the extreme heat or the hyper-dirty causeway or my elevated stress levels (or a combination of all three), and yet it goes almost without saying that things were not looking good at this point …

“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were only two ways in which I could respond to my situation — either react to my discomfort with bitterness or seek to transform my suffering into a creative Force for Good. I chose the latter.” ~ via Martin Luther King Jr.

“During any great or stressful undertaking, it is ever important to remember that pain is merely weakness escaping, and that even catastrophic mistakes along the way are but mere conservations of greatness.” ~ inspired by Criostoir O’Reilly

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