DAY 34 - Howe, ID - 668 miles from home

I keep calling this journey a pilgrimage - but maybe the term is misleading, if it conjures up a merely individual, personal pursuit - a single person after their own "pilgrim's progress." Bob and I - and Ed who just left us on Tuesday, and Kate who will be joining us on Sunday, and all the other lovely folk who will Forrest Gump-style step alongside us for a spell ... we are all walking in our own footsteps, but we're on a collective journey. We're stretching beyond the comfort zones of our "bubbles"; trying to remember that our hearts are bigger than we think they are, that the world is bigger than we realized. We're looking to regain (or to help create?) a sense of the "We" in "We the People." We're searching for a healed sense of connection and community, a sense of what can feel "united," these days, in these United States.

In her wonderful book Wanderlust : A History of Walking , Rebecca Solnit says that the pilgrim walks "in search of something intangible." And yet, as they walk, the pilgrim's feet make the intangible real (blisters and all).

These past few days, as we've been lovingly handed off from one community host to another, we pilgrims have been tracing a path of family and friends, of neighbors and childhood sweethearts. Our community host in Carey - Pastor Richard Kimball and his wife Cris at the Larkin Community Church - were the folks who originally connected us with JoAnn and Glen, Tena and Delwin at the Richfield Bible Church. Delwin's sister, Juanita, was our host in Arco. Juanita and Delwin are childhood friends of our hosts in Howe: Colleen and her husband Raymond. Another dear friend of all of these generous souls will be our host in Mud Lake: Mary Tonkin, a leader in the Mud Lake Community Church.

And so, we recipients of hamburgers and Basque sausages and sweet corn and hot showers and dog licks ... every step of the way, we're being woven into a network that has existed for years and years, but may not have been fully visible, even to the folks who comprise it, until we needy travelers rolled into town. I texted Tena yesterday, thanking her for all her help in finding us places to bunk down. "You have wonderful friends," I wrote. "Yes, I really do,"she said.

Maybe that sense of connection is precisely the "intangible-made-tangible" that Liberty Walks seeks.

And there's something about that glint in the eye that we sometimes see, when we tell people about the Walk. "Oh, I've always wanted to do something like that!" - You can! we always say. The world is big!

Highway 33 toward Howe. Desert and Lemhi Mountains. Mount Borah, part of the Lost River Range and the highest peak in Idaho, is about 100 miles away.

Colleen and Raymond's ranch. Raymond is originally from the Basque region - like many Basque, coming to the states to work as sheep-herders and ranch hands. Colleen and Raymond have known each other since childhood.

Raymond.

Colleen and Rosie (one of three border collies - none of whom work the sheep, however... but two of whom enjoy good skritches.) (The third, Peanuts, is kind of nuts actually - unless Raymond is nearby. Raymond says: 'he's a one-man dog.')

Colleen with her wicked sense of humor - irreverent and holy all at once - cracking us up over dinner.