DAYS 121-123 - Muncie, IN & into Ohio - 2357 miles to go
- Esther Lisa Tishman
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
2357 miles. Let's just let that soak in for a second. We will be in D.C. in fewer than 500 miles. That's a shorter distance than our travels through Idaho alone. How is this even possible? How, when did all of this happen????
There's that concept Malcolm Gladwell popularized in 2000: the tipping point, "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." Somehow things tend to toodle around, same-old same-old... The world just being busy in its business of worlding, things going along in their thinging ... And then, something happens. A tipping point. An overnight success that was twenty years in the making. A pilgrimage of 6.3 million steps that suddenly is (nearly) completed.
I've been thinking a lot about those tipping points, lately. In this walk, the tipping point for me came first of all when we crossed the Mississippi - and then when we crossed into Indiana and the Eastern time zone. America suddenly became older, tamer, smaller. Even though we're still passing cornfields and farmsteads and (small) ranches, we're now staying in houses that are 150 years old, and moving through communities that date back to Revolutionary times.
But the tipping points I'm most interested in are neither geographical nor historical. They are, first and foremost, interpersonal. When does a stranger become a friend? When does an adversary become a neighbor? We had a tipping point like this just yesterday. Let me explain.
It's always tricky finding a good parking spot for the rig when we're waiting to rendezvous with each other. Especially on these narrow country roads, where there's no shoulder and no turnouts. I did my best yesterday, finding a wide gravel parking area close to what looked like an electrical station. True, a farmhouse was next door - but we parked on the other side of the area, tucked into a corner. There were no cars or trucks in view. Shades were drawn on the farmhouse. The area was silent.
Within five minutes the onwer of the silent house was at our rig. He was mad. "This is private property, you can't park here!" I apologized profusely, of course - and tried to explain what we were doing. "You could have knocked on the door and asked!" he reasonably countered. I didn't see any cars, I said.
Well, that didn't help matters. It turns out that the owner - Keith - has been robbed several times, in broad daylight. The fact that I'd parked ever so carefully in a corner, when there were no cars to be seen, was just the sort of thing that one would do if they were up to no good. Keith has a camera set up, and an alarm system - and I had parked precisely out of camera range. I couldn't possibly have been more suspicious if I'd been wearing a ski mask and carrying a crowbar.
I felt awful - I'd literally alarmed the first person I'd met in Ohio. I told Keith I was a chaplain, and placed my card in his hand. The moment tipped. "Here you are just arrived in the state," he said, "And I'm just the rudest person you've met!"
In fact, Keith is one of the kindest - most openhearted - persons we've met.
Keith told us to park as long as we wanted. He told us about his wife overseas and how much he loved her and vice versa; he told us about his trucking business - and reminisced about the times he'd driven the I-5 corridor. We talked about how beautiful Oregon can be. He told us about his health concerns - and the way he'd turned things around, losing 250 pounds.
And then he asked us if we liked spiced pumpkin. Well, yes - we sure do! And he went to his garage, opened his freezer, and brought us a full pumpkin spice pie from the famous Mrs. Wicks (home of that Hoosier masterpiece, the Sugar Cream Pie). Are you sure? All for us? "I can't eat it," he assured us. "Diabetes."
(Spoiler alert: the pie is really good.)
Two days earlier, strangers became good friends in Muncie, Indiana. Our hosts, Eleanor Trawick and Markie Oliver, are the quintessential "trail angels" - perhaps because they have so much experience as long-distance hikers themselves (they've hiked nearly the entire Appalachian Trail at this point). But it's more than that. We met up, first, with Eleanor at the church bazaar at her congregation: the Muncie Unitarian Universalist Church. Eleanor was on chef duty. She served us her fabulous chili. I asked to take her picture, as she stood there behind the counter. She held her spatula aloft as I snapped - Chili Sovereign Scepter. I laughed out loud. That was one tipping point....
More tipping points in Markie and Eleanor's living room and kitchen. Food, comfort, love, hilarity - all were abundant. Markie and Eleanor's home, with its books, its music, its art, its woodburning stove - almost instantly became our home. Here we were, three bumbling pilgrims with our grime and our impressive abilities to track mud and to consume all foodstuffs in sight. And yet... They rose to the challenge, with so much sparkle and grace. Since food is the music of love - they fed us breakfast, lunch and dinner. Twice over! In fact, to my embarrassed and grateful delight - Markie woke up at 4:30 a.m. yesterday to make us four types of pancake before we shoved off into the inky pre-dawn. "I made all four, because I didn't know what you like - and this is what I like!"
Friendfolk and pilgrim patrons of the highest degree!
Meanwhile, there's this other thing about tipping points that I'm coming to realize. It pays to listen carefully - to slow the heck down. These days I'm starting to notice, too often only in retrospect, those moments where the universe branches ever so slightly. Where a choice reveals itself, if you're moving slowly enough: you could say yes, you could say no. That's when the adventures and the encounters can actually take place. When strangers can become friends.
This weekend, two small moments when I said yes: I was killing a few minutes before picking up Chris Kellow at the bus station in Muncie. I ducked into a small boutique. I had that slight embarrassment of browsing with no particular purpose or interest - of wanting to keep a low profile, avoid attention, evade the shopkeeper's eyes.
"Do you have plans for the weekend," the young woman minding the store asked me. Not really, I started to say, but then gave her a Liberty Walks sticker instead. I'm just walking across the country! - A conversation about our starting point in Oregon led to the information that she would be in Corvallis (home of Oregon State) next summer... which led to the question of why, which led to a discussion of her doctoral thesis - in environmental studies - on the topic of peace, indigeneity and water management - involving her field studies in Nepal. This fascinating woman, Emily B. Hayes, had defended her dissertation the day before I met her.
And earlier that day, at the UU Church bazaar, I met an elegant older woman. I noticed her slight accent. Annemarie Voss's family, as it turns out, sheltered a Jewish family in their home in Kassel, Germany. In 1938, the two-year-old daughter of that family - the very same age as little Annemarie - was able to escape Germany. Annemarie herself emigrated as well.
My own parents' families had managed to escape the Reich a few years earlier - different life paths than Annemarie's, or than the little girl she helped to save. Yet all the same, Annemarie reminded me deeply - once again - of just how interconnected we all are. How embedded we all are in the same history, the same grief, the same joy. Different threads; same tapestry.
Tipping points are everywhere when you stop to pay attention.
Beautiful!!!