Titusville

I think I'm getting used to the heat somewhat, and I've been making good time the last few days. It helps that I've walking fairly close to the inner coast, now, as well, so that when I want to I can jot over to cool my feet for a while in the middle of the day, and the breeze that comes in off of the water keeps me reasonably cool as well. I've only slept on the beach once so far, and actually felt chilled at night for the first time since leaving home.
My feet are doing pretty well, finally starting to heal up nicely from their blisterings. I cut one of my toes on a piece of glass two days ago and had to wrap it up, but it's feeling good now.
Was sleeping in the grass, in some shade under a big tree under a cloudless afternoon, maybe four days ago, and woke up to find a sprite and some walnut fudge in the shade of the tree next door, a little ways away from my feet. I looked around, of course, for the party who'd left them, but found the roadway empty as far as I could see. So I reveled some in the aura of my unexpected treat, scanning each passing car thereafter for some sort of sign. I pictured, though I realized it probably wouldn't be the case, that whoever it was might come past again for another look, to see their gift being enjoyed, and what a wonderful feeling it was to gaze in the window of every passing car and wonder if that face was of the secret santa. Each stranger had the potential, then, to be an unknown friend and small protector. More than just a sweet snack I was given the anonymous gift of feeling watched over by an unseen eye, and indeed I felt the physical lethargy of being cared for, as if my head was being given a tingling, electric massage by a godly hand. Do you ever feel that, when someone cares for you? So impossibly content that your brain feels numb from it, that you keep your limbs deadly still for fear of breaking the invisible, humming, stroking, bond? The first time I remember feeling the wave of it I was in first grade, sitting on the couch by the bookshelf next to Niki Witzel and she was reading aloud. I've felt it on and off over the years, and have never been able to characterize it, in the same way that I'm failing now to do so. If you've felt it, I suppose, then maybe you know what I'm saying, and if you haven't, then there isn't much I can do to describe it better. The science is probably that my brain is releasing some chemicals in a certain way or another, and though I've never been spiritual enough to give another view my trust, I still like to picture, when I feel such, that I'm feeling the caress of something more mysterious than chemicals. I watched the faces in the passing cars, then, for something more like the face of an angel, watching back. Does that seem silly, to use the 'a' word after a small incident involving Sprite and fudge?
I don't know what I feel, I guess. But certainly the road reminds me to be careful in my cynicism, to be accessible to change and open to wonder.
Anyway, sometimes a gift is more than a gift.

Vero Beach

Man there are some interesting people down here in Florida. That is to say, there are interesting people everywhere but in Florida they seem to swarm, like somebody's taken a stick and swirled it around in the crazy people hive. Maybe it's the heat that does it, I don't know. More than anything, I guess, it's just that there are a lot of homeless, and most of them are eager to claim me as one of their own. One man had just gotten his weekly allowance from the Salvation Army and was eager to buy me a sandwich. "You's gotta eats whatcha can, brother," he said with a big grin, laying it down at my feet as I read a book by headlamp in the muggy evening. I ate it, yes, though I'm pretty sure he needed it more than me, because it seemed to make him happy to help me out. When everyday is a struggle to fend for yourself, I guess, sometimes it feels good to feel that you can still lend somebody else a hand, too, as if you're not quite at the bottom of the rung. Hospitality is hit and miss with the sun burnt men who carry around plastic bags filled with their clothes, but mostly lately I've been looked upon with pity.
How I view myself is hit and miss, as well, anymore. I still understand where it is that I come from, still remember home and my comfortable life clearly, but every day that I'm shunned more and more by rich white women in Bentleys and embraced more and more by the haphazard and the toothless I question where I really fit in. Homeless, perhaps, is a state of mind as much as it is anything else.
On a different note, the sprinklers, my old nemesi, have caught up with me. Saturday night, spread out on the grass in front of a library, I awoke abruptly to the terrifying sound, and within seconds was drenched with cold water. I dragged my sleeping bag and my pack to the sidewalk and angrily set up again where I thought it was safe, only to be reminded, half an hour later, that sometimes sidewalks are sprinkled more heavily than the grass. Now I know for sure that the trip is fully underway.
Sorry if I seem a little downtrodden. My spirits are good, I swear, it's just that I'm still struggling to acclimate to this new course of direction. But I'm still waving at cars, still singing my marching songs loudly as I go down the road. No regrets that I'm here, none at all.

Boynton Beach

How quickly I remember, how quickly I forget. In the blazing Florida sun, the sticky heat, blisters stinging, I glare and I mutter viciously. And then a small thing will happen, a certain song will come on my mp3 player, say, or a pretty girl will smile cautiously at a stoplight, and suddenly I will understand, again, briefly, why it is that I'm here, in the sun, and a smile will creep back across my face, spread quickly until I can't contain it and it explodes in delicious laughter all over the sidewalk.
Though I haven't been making very good miles, to this point, as I'm still whipping myself into shape, there have been no major setbacks nor unexpected delays, and the signposts go by.
Two nights ago, after filling up my water bottle at a McDonald's and heading out the door, I was accosted by a man sitting nearby. After a bit of conversation about my trip he offered that I could stay at his house for the night, and so I threw my pack in the back of his Jeep. At Doug's house I showered and shaved and then he and I sat on the deck and talked into the night, fish splashing about in the still canal that runs alongside, a small breeze toying with the palm trees, not a quarter of a mile from the ocean. As Doug, a Yakima, Washington native, talked about politics and economics and told stories about his life I basked in the moment, sitting quietly and wondering where else in the world there existed such peace and ease, such tranquility. And then, because there is always balance, Doug talked about all of the hurricanes that have passed over the very spot, all of the times he's had to quickly differentiate between what is needed and what is expendable, stashing his car with the former, and flee the violent wind, the angry rain, the pulsing sea.
Doug reminded me, by letting me into his home and sharing his words, that nothing exists without change. Comfort, tranquility, joy: they are mindsets, constantly in flux. A song or a smile can remind us of them, and pain and toil can make us forget. My problem is that I forget more than I remember - every day that I spend surrounded by comfort, by friends and family and shelter and good food I lose track of their worth. My goal, then, is to change that.

Day One, South Miami

There is something about walking - I don't know what it is - that has drawn me back. For a long time I've felt the itch in my skin, heard the quiet taunt of an open map or the nagging whisper of a backpack in a store window. And now finally I'm here, on the road again.
Yesterday I flew from Colorado to Fort Lauderdale and was picked up by an awesome guy named Abe, who took me out to dinner and then drove to Homestead, essentially the southernmost town in Florida. I walked five or six miles last night, and slept behind a tire store. The plan is this: I'm going to walk pretty much straight up the coast all the way to Lubek, Maine, and touch the Canadian border. I'm by myself right now, but in a little less than three weeks my best friend, Timothy Fleming, will be flying out himself and joining me. And once again I'm walking in collaboration with Soles4Souls (see left).
Today I've walked into South Miami, and though my feet are already blistering I'm happy to be here, happy to finally be doing what I've been planning for what seems like a long time.