DAY 25 - Mountain Home, ID - 491 miles from home

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 City, Oregon poured me a pint of Dead Guy from the tap of the saloon she was getting ready to sell. "Don't buy a bar," she deadpanned Ed and Elijah and me: her advice for the ages.

And now Ed - our pilgrim from Amherst, MA - has a hankering for spaghetti bolognese for dinner. So just a few hours ago he went to Albertson's to get fixings, and came back with Dead Guy.

But I'll always think of my guy, Will, as the original dead guy. The ODG. Where there's a will, there's always a way.

ANYWAY. Today's walk was simple but oddly, deeply nourishing. I don't know exactly why - but maybe it was the ease and the openness. The boys headed out west from the RV park at 6 a.m., traipsing through town and ending up on Ditto Creek Road - a very straight stretch of asphalt, cutting through the plains between interstate and railroad. I met them at 10 miles, and turned around and headed back east. 10 up, 10 back. That's how we got our final 20 miles in between Kuna and Mountain Home. You can't get there from here, but where there's a will there is in fact a way.

<She takes a long swig of beer.> No deep thoughts today. Just realizing that my heart loves the open expanse - loves that wide gap between those two massive rivers of commerce: between the rails and the roads. That dry, sunflowery, gentle brown and dusty sage green swath of canvas. My pilgrim's heart feels deliciously stretched wide - ready for the gesso and the oils and the painter's brush.

Ditto Creek Road, near Mountain Home. Between interstate and railroad.

Ditto Creek beauties.

Fish out of water. Roadside mysteries.

Passing of Liberty's torch. Ed heading west - I'm passing him, heading back east.

Such kind folks. Such a clean bathroom! A pilgrim needs to find her places.

Little Free Library - complete with gnome and phone booth - near Mountain Home.

The Best Thing Ever. (I picked up a copy of a childhood favorite: Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising. The plucky child hero is named... wait for it... Will.)

Mountain Home has its Meredith Wilson-y gazebo charm (Legacy Park).

And ducks.

And ponies.