Tales from the trail #12: A legacy of loss in Louisville …
I eventually came to the initial outskirts of the great city of Louisville, and here is where my Walk truly began to fall apart. Yes, there had been a number of very difficult days tread beforehand, and a number of challenging trials that I had been able to transcend as well, and yet Highway 60W at this stretch of the journey (a highway that flowed all the way through Louisville to the Ohio River and the Indiana border on its far side) presented a set of difficulties that my body simply wasn’t able to handle …
For starters, this proved to be one of the longest stretches I walked without a significant rest-stop for the entire pilgrimage – over 30 miles in total, from the outskirts of Shelbyville the evening before, through the lovely hamlet of Simpsonville in the dead of night, through the city of Louisville proper, and all the way across the Ohio River to Jeffersonville, Indiana on its far side. No respite was “offered” along this particular route on this particular day – no kind motorist stopping to help a limping pilgrim and no suitable bench or church porch seen upon which I could take refuge for awhile. And so on & on & on & on I walked – first gas station to gas station (if they were open, and many were not), then driveway to driveway, and finally business to business – all the way to Indiana. And what made matters worse – MUCH worse – was the fact that this portion of the road, especially the 10+ mile stretch from Middletown through Louisville proper all the way to the Ohio River, had no sidewalks to speak of, meaning that I was repeatedly forced to hop off the roadway onto the uneven (and at times sharply sloped) grass alongside the highway whenever an oncoming car approached. Almost needless to say, this made for a going that proved to be both extremely slow and extremely painful. At one point during the day it became so difficult to proceed that I was “forced” to hop off the road completely and stumble along an uneven & quite undulous tree-laden promenade that formed a border between the highway and neighboring houses on the left-hand side of that thoroughfare …
And so it was that I stumbled and bumbled my way along, eventually making it to a local Hyundai dealership, where the employees there initially welcomed me inside heartily, and even started to show a real interest in my Walk. And yet as soon as I started to enthusiastically expound upon the same (it was always so uplifting to encounter & then communicate with anyone who in any way actually cared about what I was doing and why), they immediately unfeigned their enamorations and proceeded to coldly dismiss me & then completely ignore my presence altogether. Again, almost needless to say, these kinds of encounters were more painful than any torn muscle or turned ankle or twisted ligament, and I proceeded back outside with a wholly heavier heart.
I limp-hobbled onward for quite awhile longer, repeatedly stepping quickly off the highway whenever a zooming car approached, when I tweaked leg pretty severely (getting out of the way of an oncoming driver who was a bit more aggressive than the norm) and started to notice a shooting pain in my right knee with every step thereafter. This wasn’t a normal discomfort at all – not the aching of joints or the fatigue of muscles or the burning of feet. No, this was something more – something serious, of that I was soon sure. Of course, there was quite literally nothing I could do about it at the time, so I limped on a ways and then limped into a local Wendy’s to rest. Grateful for the cool air and the relatively comfortable chair therein, I sat there for quite some time; massaging my injured knee and wondering what I was going to do. And that was the thing: there was nothing I could do – I had reached that fabled “point of no return” that I had wondered about for many months beforehand; that point where some significant difficulty befell me and I would be forced to either receive assistance from strangers or become stranded by the wayside. And to my credit, I responded to this surprising crisis rather well, by simply shrugging my shoulders and smiling and vowing to go on as best I could for as long as I could, and see how far I could make it before I couldn’t go on any more …
And then, just as I was about to rise and continue – very slowly – along my Way, employee Vicki came up to me and told me that an anonymous couple had become intrigued by my smock and had asked her to ask me about my Walk. I of course told her briefly about the same and she told me to wait there a moment while she went and reported back to them. Now this was the first and only time this had ever happened on any of my pilgrimages, the first time that anyone had asked someone else to speak with me for them by proxy. And yet even though my curiosity was piqued, I found it remarkably easy to honor their wish for secrecy and not turn around to see who they were. And so I simply sat there looking out the window at my day;’s primary nemesis (the traffic) until Vicki returned with a chicken sandwich & some French fries, which had been paid for by the same mystery couple just before they departed. Not being able to thank them directly, I thanked Vicki instead (much to her obvious delight). Then I gently explained to her why I wouldn’t be eating the chicken sandwich (Peace Pilgrims don’t eat their friends, and certainly don’t pay others to murder them – even indirectly) and proceeded to thoroughly enjoy the French fries, before then rising slowly and proceeding (just as slowly) out the door and back out onto The Road.
My knee was reeeaaallly hurting at this point – so much so that I ended up making a cardboard hitchhiking sign that I held up (fruitlessly) to zooming traffic as I ambled fitfully along. My suffering was soothed somewhat by Dana at the Beargrass Christian Church, who let me come inside to rest and even gave me some Ibuprofen pills to help ease the pain. And yet the pain was quite intense (even with the pills), and I frankly don’t know how I even made it to the Burger Girl Diner thereafter (one step at a time, Scaughdt – one step at a time), a place where I paused once more to drink some cool water and rest awhile. And this is when, quite frankly, I began to feel deeply depressed – not so much over the amount of pain I was experiencing, or even how “hopeless” my goal of a multi-month pilgrimage seemed at that point, but rather because of the abject lack of empathy that was being extended to me by my fellow humans. Now it is important to note here that this was not some “woe is me” moment, and that I certainly didn’t ever once feel that I was owed anything by anyone on my Walk. After all, I had set the entire Journey up to be extremely difficult & uncomfortable on purpose, and so I was not in any way whining or complaining because it had indeed turned out to be just as awful as I had originally imagined. No, I was upset at this time because I love my fellow humans – all of them – so deeply, and I knew that if none of them could reach out with even the smallest ounce of compassion to a Peace Pilgrim who was in so much pain he could barely walk, then we as a species were in a sorry state of lostness and despair indeed …
And so it was that I left the diner with thick tears streaming from my eyes, making my way ever so slowly down the roadway. In truth there were several moments thereafter when I couldn’t put any weight whatsoever on my right leg due to the pain, and I truly started wondering (through my tears of exasperation) how in the world I was ever going to even be able to exit this Walk, much less finish it.
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