I'm writing this on August 6th, the morning of Day 34, as I sit and cool my heels by the Arco fairgrounds - just next to a plaque that commemorates "Atoms For Peace." It's weird to be writing these words today. Exactly eighty years ago, we dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima. Here in Arco, about a decade after Little Boy - on July 17, 1955 - the lights of Arco were lit for one hour by nuclear power, demonstrating for the first time in the history of the world "the peaceful use

I am writing this on the morning of Day 33 - having yesterday walked a mile upwards, toward the moon. Okay... we only gained 1000 feet elevation, and the moon is the National Monument and Preserve, Craters of the Moon. But all the same. I'm feeling dusty and gritty (that lava rock sure does break down into some impressive black powder), and pretty darn good. The walk up along the foothills of the Salmon River Mountains was just delicious. The day started out cloudy and cool -

[written on the morning of Day 32 - August 4th] I'm beginning to think we've got it all backwards. They say: you don't have to like each other - you just have to get along. I think actually the reverse is true: it's impossible to get along unless you manage, one way or another, to like each other. (To find each other's likability, perhaps?) Not an easy task, sometimes. Take the flagpole I saw today. Two flags fluttering in the brilliant blue sky. Stars & Stripes on both, and

[written on the morning of day 31, Aug 3] Little things, big things. We're moving slowly, 20 mile increments, and at the same time we're now closing in on over 600 miles traveled. (Okay, yes, my sister drives that in just a day when she visits me from San Francisco. But, still. We pilgrims are officially badass, I think). Even more to the point - this walk from Richfield toward Carey: little things, big things. Within just a few miles, I started to see the landscape change. A

Quaking Aspens grow fast - 2-5 feet a year, apparently; maybe even more in "ideal" conditions - but still and all: it's quite something, I think, for the owners of the farmstead I passed today to have thought some 20-30 years ago straight into the future... planting the seedlings that would in 2025 provide the only full shade I've yet encountered on Highway 26. What is it to think into the future like that? And were these trees definitely Aspens? I don't know for sure, but th

[written on the morning of Aug 1, day 29...] Pilgrimages are lonesome - but not necessarily lonely. Lonesome as in solitary, reflective. Perhaps a touch mournful. On the road I keep finding myself wanting to photograph a single stand of sunflowers. An open and empty gate. A stop sign, or a calf, finding its shimmering echo in the water. This quality of the Walk sometimes brings me to tears - a melancholy that isn't comfortable, but that even so I wouldn't want to trade for a

People. I'm beat. I'm bunking down in the RV hookup section of a Love's truck stop. My first time "Loving" it... The guys are across the way at a perfectly okay motel called Amber Inn. We are in Bliss. I don't think there could be any more intense contrast between life at this truck stop, and the walk we did today - up on the plains and hills above the Snake River, on Old Highway 30 (until I missed my cut off, and ended up backtracking on E Allen Road) - very few cars - old,

And just like that, we've covered more than 500 miles. The milestone was pretty anticlimactic in certain ways: another long, straight, empty stretch of road. In four hours of hiking, I probably saw no more than half a dozen cars. This was perhaps the loneliest stretch I've walked to date. And yet, our route was none other than the Old Oregon Trail Road, and our destination today was Glenns Ferry: one of the most notoriously dangerous river crossings on the Oregon Trail. Until

I'm sitting here at the Gem State RV Park with a Dead Guy... Somehow this brew keeps following me on my journey.... I first drank Dead Guy in Ashland, Oregon, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the mothership Rogue Brewery. This was back in another lifetime when I was Shakespeare professor Lisa Freinkel - not Esty Myobun Lisa Freinkel Tishman - not this woman with so many freaking names, and with an open road ahead of her. And then Tammy Jones in Prairie Cit y, Ore

[Written on Monday July 28] I'm trying to remember what our host in Kuna, Ginny, said to us about this portion of our route. There was a shrug, a knowing smile, a bit of a smirk perhaps. Something like: "Yeah, there's no real way to get from Kuna to Mountain Home." - I mean, of course there IS a way. But it's called Interstate 84. And no matter how badass we asphalt warriors are, we don't do interstate . So the two days worth of distance between our last hike and our home in

[written on Day 24 - July 27] Okay. This was a rough day - with a nonetheless smooth finish. There were some fiddly bits with today's route itself, including a kind of U-turn at the end of the route and some roadblocks for Libby due to the Boise Ironman Triathalon (the outdoors badassery of Boise - and Idaho in general - is kind of breathtaking. I mean: our hosts in Kuna, Ken and Ginny Greger, backpack in the mountains with their llamas!). And so - I hit a bit of a wall in m

[written on Day 24 - July 27] Friday we walked from Caldwell to Kuna - a trek that reminded me of our very first day on the road, when we walked through Eugene, Springfield and into the McKenzie Valley. From full-on city to full-on country. But this was even more surreal, since a huge chunk of the walk was along a wide busy suburban sprawl street - with landmarks like Lowe's and Les Schwab. As I took the second half, I snaked into the back streets of Nampa, walking along the

What we say at Liberty Walks: The Walk keeps Walking . In order to manage 2800 miles in just five months, we need to keep up a nearly continual pace of 20 miles a day. That means that if any given Walker needs a rest at any point, we nonetheless keep moving forward. So - while both Bob and I have taken rest days before - nonetheless, we made up the mileage that day either by having just one of us on the road, or by having Libby "walk" for us (she walks a bit faster than we do

Today we officially made it to Idaho. But we've nonetheless managed to cross the Snake River - the natural border between Oregon and Idaho - four times: we crossed it once when we drove to our lodging last night in Payette, ID.... Then for a second time when I drove Bob back to Oregon in the inky pre-dawn to start his hike today in Nyssa... Then for a third time as I drove back to Idaho to pick up our newest pilgrim, Ed Markiewicz, who'd flown into Boise... Then fourth and f

[Written on Day 20 - July 23] Bob and I left Vale at dawn, and I met him in Libby about 7 miles into his morning hike - so that he and I could cross Keeney Pass together. We were on the deliriously beautiful desert back road to Nyssa - Lytle Road - and the morning felt perfect. And the poignancy of all those travelers, some 250,000 of them, their wagon wheels catching the grooves of the Oregon Trail, mile after mile, wending toward their future. I'm aware that in many ways

Lightning keeps striking. Today the Vale Pool - the only active swimming facility in the 9930 square miles of Malheur County - was closed due to lightning. I nonetheless strolled by, checking out one of the city's many historical murals - this one detailing the history of the "Nat": the geothermally heated 'natatorium' that inspired the pool, built in 1908 on the site of a hot springs and serving the area as a bona fide sanatorium. (The Murals of Vale are a wondrous thing, b

I met Matt Davila today. "We love Vale! We moved here from Elko, Nevada. That was not a good place to live." BUT, here, Matt tells us, things are quiet, the town is quaint, folks are older, and it's a great place to raise kids. "The schools here are AMAZING." On the other hand, he shares with an apologetic shrug - a sort of go figure gesture - his house's ceiling just got split open by lightning. On July 4th, almost exactly as we were arriving at our very first stop on this

"There's a whole lot of nothing between here and Ontario," Julia told us yesterday. Today Bob and I walked a lot of that nothing, and it wasn't nothing. It started with a delicate pink sunrise, and then carved through the pale sages and light russets of the high desert, up and over Eldorado Pass and into Mountain Time (yes, I guess Eastern Oregon really does end up being Idaho), and then down into the valleys that make my heart soar, lined by cows and finally, sadly, past a f

Julia bought the Stratton Station in Unity, Oregon three years ago. Built a cabin. Made Unity her home - coming out west from southern Ohio, farming land. "Farming culture is different from ranching. Farming's more communal. But there's a rugged individualism here. You're maybe going to wrassle with your neighbors over grazing rights and water and fences - but at the same time, you'll come together, bring your bulldozers, put out the fires destroying everyone's land. Self-rel

There's something lonely about a forest road... especially if you're literally walking it alone.... I found myself melancholy today, high on a hill hiking through the Malheur National Forest - home of some of the oldest trees in Oregon: ponderosa, douglas fir, white fir, lodgepole pine, larch... And then the road dipped down, and suddenly there was meadow. Why does the valley do that to my heart? The land spread open - and something opened inside. My soul sighed, and the cows