Tales from the Trail #05: Sweetly saved by Sylvia …
It had been a long and arduous (though admittedly also often quite peaceful) 18-mile stroll along the mostly shoulder-less (and yet for many midnight hours, almost completely untrafficked) Highway 27 – all the way to the small town of Sunbright; a town that essentially consisted of a post office, a small library, a Dollar General store and a lone gas station. And so it was that I wobbled into the latter that early morning to ask for some water and the on-hand attendant’s thoughts about how best to proceed down the road. And to my great disconcertion, there was nothing but poor-tasting tap water offered there, that and the aforementioned attendant’s information that there were only miles & miles & miles of “nothing” between her station and the next city of Oneida – meaning that for a walker in my physical condition hitchhiking was going to be a probable must …
I thanked for her for the advice, and then just as I was leaving to find a good spot to stick out my thumb, she seemed to remember something about another gas station up ahead; a Stop & Go located “just two miles up the road.” And so it was that I headed off towards the same on that seemingly reliable recommendation. And yet even though I believe to this day that my kind informant was in truth sincere in her advice-giving, it became increasingly clear – as I hobbled along that same lonesome, winding, and at the time heavily trafficked roadway – that she was gravely mistaken, as the gas station she had mentioned turned out to be many more miles away than two. And to make matters even more challenging, Highway 27 between Sunbright & Oneida was not only super curvy, it also had almost no shoulders to speak of – no places of refuge for any pedestrian upon which to find solace when cars or trucks hurtled towards him or her headlong. And to make matters far worse still, the folks who were driving along that stretch of roadway that day were doing so like madmen, for whatever reasons seemingly testing the limits of their relative abilities to keep their speeding vehicles on the provided tarmac and away from the road’s neighboring tree-laden ravines. Almost needles to say, this all made for some adrenaline-producing froggering* by yours truly , and as such some quite painful & stress-filled walking as well …
Despite it all I eventually made it to the Midway Missionary Baptist Church where I tried without success to hitch a ride (after gratefully procuring a bit of better-tasting water from its outside spigot). And it was only shortly thereafter – probably only a mile or so further up the road – that I was accosted by an overly aggressive canine cousin, one who dutifully would not let me pass until his “owner” came out, shyly offered me a bottle of Powerade for my troubles, and then physically pulled her furry (and obviously sharp-fanged) companion back inside her roadside home.
I was still in quite a bit of pain at that point of the journey and so I tried to hitch a ride at that point as well, and yet the shoulder-less nature of the highway made it unlikely that anyone would be able to stop to help even if they wanted to. Then, just as I was about to quit on the entire situation and sink down in some roadside shade for a rest, Sylvia Blair saw me and pulled over and offered to give me a ride onward, doing so all the way to the aforementioned Stop & Go gas station in the tiny town of Elgin (a town which was far more than “2 miles” down the road indeed). And it was there that Sylvia bought two biscuits – one for me and one for herself – and told me that she would have liked to have taken me further but that she had to head back to get to work (it turned out that she too had driven me well out of her way that morning). And so it was that she wished me well and departed – and so it was as well that I was once more left on a roadside bench alone, to thankfully ponder my good fortune and the kindness of strangers that had allowed me to get that far …
*“Froggering” is a respectful reference to the once popular video game, Frogger – and describes the practice any prudent pilgrim must engage while walking along any busy, shoulder-less highway; the practice of either jumping off the road entirely (onto often uneven & ankle-popping patches of gravel &/or grass) whenever a car approached, or of quickly crossing in front of said onrushing vehicles to walk on the other side of the thoroughfare (as long as it was untrafficked at the time, of course). Also almost needless to mention, this practice was not a comfortable one. It was often frightening and was always hard on one’s feet & ankles; a reality that soon led me to walk through the night (when traffic was at a minimum) whenever these types of highways were encountered.
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