No, this time I was going to the spa in the building next door to get a massage.  I’d never had one before, but I figured if ever I deserved to pamper myself with a massage this was surely the time.  The masseuse commented on my out-of-season tan, and I told her I had just finished walking across the country.  I spent the next hour lying there face down on the table telling stories of my many adventures (and misadventures) of the last six months, interrupted by the occasional groan of pain as she’d knead a new area of my body, tightly knotted from over 3,400 miles of abuse.  Afterward, she told me that I had just become her all-time number one most interesting client, and wondered how she was going to make it through the next few days with all of the clients that were sure to be boring in comparison.  And it made me wonder: how was I going to get through the next few years of my life?

It’s been over a week now since I completed my goal of crossing America on foot, but I still can’t wrap my head around the magnitude of what I’ve done.  My family put together a victory party fundraiser in my honor last weekend, and even after being told by many friends, family members, and strangers about what an incredible accomplishment this is, I don’t feel much different.  In fact, that final day when I reached the Pacific was somewhat anticlimactic.  I had imagined that moment at least a hundred times during the journey, and each time I thought about it I would feel a rush of energy as I pictured myself taking those first steps into the ocean.  Perhaps that’s why the actual event didn’t have the same effect–I’d already been here one hundred times before.

Now the only question left unanswered is “What’s next?” Initially I started this journey to answer that question, but now I find myself even further from an answer.  I’ve seen many new places, met a lot of interesting people, and opened myself up to new possibilities.  I’m uncertain what the future holds for me, but does anybody ever really know?

Arizona is an amazing state.  I still can’t wrap my head around how beautiful the scenery is there.  Not only is it pretty, it varies so wildly and quickly too.  In just one day (30 miles) I went from2 feet of snow in the mountains of Flagstaff to the green plant life and scenic red rock formations of Sedona.  That evening I was disappointed when looking through all of the pictures I took; none of them came close to capturing the beauty I saw.  And if I can’t capture it in pictures, I won’t even bother with words.

The picturesque landscape wasn’t my only reward in Sedona though.  For the second time on my trip I encountered someone with a book I was currently reading.  This time it was Power vs.  Force, a book about consciousness and human behavior I had stumbled across when thumbing through psychology books at Borders.  Noticing that book on my host’s bookshelf served as an ice breaker for some very interesting and rewarding conversations over the course of the night.

I stayed with Bonnie and Bob again two nights later in Prescott Valley, and in the spirit of our previous conversations about the search for meaning and enlightenment, we went to see a performance by a group called Here 2 Here that performs in a wide variety of genres with lyrics inspired by higher consciousness.  After the show, we talked to one of the singers and the subject of my trip came up.  He said that the name of their tour is “The Waking Journey”, which many people confuse as “walking journey” and they have been asked multiple times if they are walking between all of the destinations on the tour.  Now they can tell their fans that they have indeed encountered someone on a walking journey.

I don’t know what to expect to feel when I reach the Pacific in three days, or when I catch my first glimpse of the ocean in the distance.  I do know though that when I reach it my journey will be over, but it certainly doesn’t feel like that.  Many people have told me that this will mark an amazing accomplishment, or will likely be the greatest experience of my life.  As nice as that sounds, I certainly hope they are wrong.  I’m young, and like to think I have a long life ahead of me, and if this is as good as it gets then it must mean I didn’t try hard enough for the last two thirds of my life.  I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of my spiritual side.  When I reach that pier in three days the walking journey will end, but my waking journey is only just beginning.

I’m not sure why falling back into my old behavior patterns surprised me, seeing as we humans are creatures of habit.  Often when we think of a habit we have a bad connotation, like biting fingernails or smoking.  (At Christmas, my grandpa told my sister that smoking is a $3,500 a year habit.  Overhearing this, my grandma said, “If I had known that I would have married someone richer!”)  But in fact, we develop habits mostly as a survival mechanism.  The human brain is designed to recognize patterns, and once it learns responses to these patterns, it starts to ingrain automatic responses into our subconscious so that we don’t have to waste time thinking about a response for every situation.  Even our own personalities are a collection of habits containing preferred actions and responses for when we interact others.

It’s the subconscious nature of habits that makes it difficult to change our diets or change the way we treat people.  To change a habit, we have to pull the decision making process back into our conscious awareness. Not just once, but every time a pattern arises that would generate the behavior we are trying to correct.  New Years has always been one of my favorite holidays because it gives me a reason or excuse to redouble my efforts toward this process of self improvement.

This year, my resolutions are to finish walking across the country, quit drinking soda, and become more positive in the way I talk to myself and others.  The first is obviously in progress, as is the second.  I’ve been pop-free for over two weeks now, and I’m proud to say so has my brother (we even went through the worst of the caffeine withdrawal headaches at the same time.)  The third will take a lot of time and work, but there are proven benefits to having a positive mindset and attitude, especially when working to change habits.  I’ll save the talk about those benefits another time, probably when I myself need to be reminded of them.  For now, I’d like to wish everybody a happy and healthy 2010, and good luck on any resolutions you may have for the New Year!  And feel free to share any of your own personal resolutions here, I’m interested to see what habits others are striving to change!

The sun recedes from the cloudless sky without much fanfare, ducking behind the ridge of a mesa miles ahead.  The coming darkness of dusk reveals something in the distance, the towering light posts of the rest stop ahead.  I know it’s closed from the signs I saw a while back, but this is a good sign.  It means I won’t have to worry about being disturbed by any motorists during the night.

When I reach the rest area, I see there are many picnic shelters, each with a roof, two high side walls, one back half-wall, and an open face.  They are all oriented in different directions, so I choose one in back that has one of the side walls blocking the wind.  It’s barely past six o’clock, but the sky beyond the rest area is already pitch black, and the disappearance of the sun has caused the temperature to drop suddenly.  I sit at the picnic table and log on to my computer to update my progress and consider reading one of the books I have, but the wind and chill soon remove those ambitions.  My priority quickly shifts to getting into the sleeping bag and huddling up against the side wall to keep warm.

It’s still early in the night, and the sun won’t rise for another twelve hours, but there’s not much I can do besides lay there on the concrete and wait for sleep.  When sleep finally does come, it’s in increments of one hour or less, moving from one side, to my back, then to the other side to minimize the discomfort.  By the time the sun rises though I’m already packed and ready to go–somehow I received a full night’s rest during all that tossing and turning.

Walking along the New Mexico highway I’m rewarded with some stunning views.  Giant, wide open landscapes spotted with shrubs and cacti, and bordered by mesas and rocky cliffs.  Even a roadrunner came out to play for a bit!  The scenery here is unlike anything I’ve seen yet on the journey, but it signifies the most difficult leg of the trip.  With less than 1,000 miles to go I’m entering the most challenging segment by far, both mentally and physically.  Towns are spread so far apart that many nights will find me a day or two away from civilization in any direction.  The Rocky Mountains are coming, meaning I have some uphill battles to face.  Not to mention I’ll be doing this all during winter.

I had considered continuing on during the holiday season, which would put me a tent somewhere near the Arizona/New Mexico border on Christmas, and outside of Flagstaff for New Year’s Eve.  I was debating whether or not it would be “cheating” to take some time of to visit with family and friends, but one specific incident finally tipped the scales for me.

On my way into New Mexico, an SUV pulled over and parked on the shoulder of the highway in front of me.  As I approached it, a man and his wife and daughter got out and came to meet me.  He said that he had seen me on the Amarillo news a couple days ago and then saw me walking along the side of the road the day before.  He said that God had told him to give me some money, but that day he was already running late, so he couldn’t stop.  He had told his wife about this that night, and she said if God really wanted it to happen then another way would present itself, and there I was.   He handed me one hundred bucks and asked if I didn’t mind if he prayed for me.   I said sure, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

I thought he meant that he and his family would keep me in his thoughts and prayers, or something like that, but he put his hand on my shoulder and linked up with his wife and daughter until we were all in a circle, bowed his head, and began to say a prayer aloud right then and there.  Now I’m not a very religious person, but I found the gesture and the words very touching, and while I was there with his family I though about mine.  I had already missed spending Thanksgiving with them, where I likely missed standing in a circle with them and saying grace, and then each saying what we were thankful for.  It was then I knew the trip could wait a couple weeks, I’d go home and spend time with my family and friends, and New Mexico, Arizona, and California would still be there when I got back.

I’ve decided to give this zen thing a chance.  I’ve been reading a lot about it since I started the trip, but never sat down and tried it.  In the books, zen masters describe a feeling of one-ness with your surroundings, and they call this experience enlightenment.  In our minds, most of us see and experience daily life as us versus the world, not so much a struggle or competition as that may sound, but just that our mind and body is a separate entity from everything around us.  I really can’t explain it much deeper than that since I myself haven’t experienced it, but I do know that before I started this journey I knew there was something I needed to discover about myself or about the world, and I believe this may be it.

As you can probably tell from the first paragraph, I still have a long way to go, but at least I am on the path.  Reading about Zen Buddhism is pretty interesting, it can sound so simple and yet so complex at the same time.  Maybe I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, so I’ll give it some time.  I’ve also been reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.  It’s quite amazing to read a Roman emperor’s words that sound just as applicable today as they were nearly 2,000 years ago.  He talks a lot about how to accept different people for who they are, and how to keep your mind and emotions under control when dealing with difficult people or circumstances.  It’s hard to separate one good quote from his body of work, but here’s one I particularly like:

When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it.  If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger.  Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them.  Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs.  In which case they’re misguided and deserve your compassion.  Is that so hard?

I should probably give a little background on the situation first.  My parents were very young when I was born, my mom was 16 and my dad was 18.  I have a younger sister and brother, and that my parents stayed married until just shy of my brother’s 18th birthday is nothing short of amazing.  Sure, they had their share of arguments like any married couple–my mom saw my dad as lazy, and he just thought she nagged too much–but I’d say I had a pretty normal childhood.  But in the later years, the arguments became more than mere bickering, so when my parents announced they were getting a divorce it didn’t surprise me.

Actually, I could already sense it coming with the change in behavior in my father, and if that wasn’t enough to tip me off, a call to me asking, “If your mom and I split up, how soon would be too soon to start dating?” was a big hint.  Now I was always more successful academically growing up.  I played some sports, but my dad shared a different bond with my brother, who was actually good at them.  After the split, there would be periods where he would seem interested in our lives, followed by weeks where he wouldn’t talk at all.  This didn’t bother me much, but I could tell it was really affecting my brother.  As for my sister, she had a young daughter and son and told him she wouldn’t stand for a grandpa who would come and go into the kids’ lives. Somehow this all led to a falling out, and I hadn’t spoken to him in over two years.

Early on in the run I would think about him from time to time.  I wondered if he knew about what I was doing.  Secretly, I wanted him to know, and one day while checking my email in a Missouri motel I found out that he did.  He had sent me an email telling me that he was proud of me, and how it broke his heart that we didn’t even talk anymore.  I was glad to be reconnected with him, and was eager to start putting the past behind us and start moving forward.  However, it wasn’t to be.  Like many times before, he turned from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.  He wrote back, accusing me of neglecting him and his entire family, blaming me for putting him through all of this pain, and calling himself a martyr for sacrificing 20 years of his life to raise me and my siblings.

Somehow though, emailing me wasn’t enough.  He tried posting to my blog, and even in the comments section of the Tulsa World article about my run to throw a pity party for himself, even going as far as to request that I change my last name because I allegedly hate that family.  The nerve of this guy! I’ve tried to be as forgiving as  possible through all of this, but I feel he crossed the line when he tried to make what should be a very private matter public.

However, it’s not anger that has been at the forefront of my thoughts today.  I still believe there’s a part of him that really is proud of me and really does love me, as well as his other estranged children and grandchildren.  Today I’ve mostly wondered when, if ever, he will realize what he is missing–especially with my sister and her family.  He has two grandchildren that are now 4 and 5 years old, and he has missed out on making many precious memories with them in probably the most important years of their lives.  If this is all just a game to him, I hope he realizes soon that he’s the one with everything to lose.

It’s also made me think a lot about family.  They say that blood is thicker than water, but that in my mind is a definition of a relative, not a family member. Blood alone doesn’t make a family, and I wouldn’t even count it as a prerequisite.  I’ve been fortunate in my life, and even on this trip, to know and feel part of many different families, and to me being part of a family is about selfless giving and caring above all else.  When my father realizes and internalizes this, I’ll be willing to welcome him back into my family.

Oh, also, I got bitten by a dog today.  How did I not even mention that?!  I’m ok though, just one of the many challenges I face trying to get from one end of the country to the other on foot!

Now, I’ve been stopped by many police officers along the way.  Most of them were responding to a call from somebody thinking I’m stranded and have a baby with me.  I tell them my story and they let me carry on, and once one even gave me a $5 donation!  But the cop that stopped me on the turnpike was on some kind of power trip.  I tried pleading my case to him to let me continue on foot at least until the next exit, but he just kept looking at me from behind his dark sunglasses saying that it wasn’t an option.  It was either his way or the highway.  Well, not even the highway.  He said my only options were to have him drop me off at the next exit or he’d have to take me to jail if I tried to keep going.  Well, out of those two I was leaning towards jail.  I wasn’t about to let this jerk ruin the 1,800 miles of effort I’d put in so far.  My mind was searching, there had to be another way.

Finally, we came to an agreement.  He would let me climb up an overpass and hop a fence to get on a country road and take the backroads into town.  I agreed, but soon discovered this wasn’t as easy as it sounded.  The hill to the overpass was steep, and covered with tall grass and weeds.  Some of the weeds had thorns and pickers that I could feel even through my pants as I fought to keep the weight of the cart from pushing me back down the hill.  I thought the worst was over when I got to the top, until I saw the fence.

The fence was about four feet high, with barbed wire at the top.  I definitely wasn’t going to be able to simply ‘hop’ it as suggested.  I searched up and down the length of the fence to see if I could find an opening.  There was nothing.  The best spot I could find was near the top of the hill where a small tree was leaning against the fence.  I was able to maneuver the tree so it pushed the barbed wire down a foot or so, which was fine for me to cross, but I still had the stroller to deal with.  I was angry.  Didn’t that cop realize how much that thing weighed?  It’s not like I was pushing an empty cart around.  Wait! That was it!  I started throwing stuff out of the cart over the fence until it was mostly empty.  Then I balanced on the tree and pulled the cart over, then hopped off to the other side.  I made it!

It wasn’t very long before the anger and frustration of dealing with the police officer subsided.  I was walking along a dirt country road that was quite peaceful, and there wasn’t a cloud or car in sight.  Soon, a little black and brown Rottweiler puppy joined me.  He would run ahead a short distance and then turn and wait for me to catch up only to sprint off again, or he would pounce into a patch of weeds on the side of the road as if to scare off a critter.  That little pup didn’t have a care in the world.  He was playful and fun and enjoying life, and he reminded me there’s no reason I shouldn’t be like that.

Staying as a guest with all of these different folks in so few days has made me think a bit about the relationship between a guest and a host.  For some people, like my aunt, being a host just comes naturally.  She’s always having friends and family over at her cottage in northern Michigan, and any event or party she hosts just has a natural flow where everyone can just purely enjoy themselves.  But I’ve also been to various places where things didn’t have that flow, regardless of how much the host tried to be a ‘good’ host and the guests behaved like ‘good’ guests.

I’d often wondered why this difference existed, and I believe it’s because sometimes we become aware of ourselves.  Imagine you’re having a few friends over for a small gathering.  Suddenly in the middle of a conversation you may realize, “Oh, I’m the host, what would a good host do right now? Should I offer my guest a drink?”  That moment of sudden self-awareness pulls you right out of the genuine interaction you’re having with someone and casts you as a character in a play in your own mind.  The organic moment you were both enjoying now feels slightly contrived, even though your intentions are good.

In college, I gained my own experience as a host when my seven roommates and I would throw parties at our big red house we affectionately called ‘The Barn.’  What I learned was that the role of a host really only exists before and after the party.  You gather all the things you know you’ll need during the event, such as cold beverages and a party music playlist (usually hand-selected by Dave), and you accept that there’s going to be clean up work required afterward (which was almost always fully completed by Zack by the time anyone else woke up.)  Once the guests arrive, you just exist in the moment, allowing everything to come as it may.

On my way into Springfield, Missouri, I reached mile 1,700, which puts me by the numbers in the second half of my journey.  I’m trying not to think of how far I’ve come or how far I’ve yet to go, but just enjoying where I’m at every moment.  It’s difficult at times, but I feel it’s the way I should be focusing my energy.  I’ll leave you with a passage from the book I’m currently reading, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, which says it better than I can:

Our life can be seen as a crossing of a river.  The goal of our life’s effort is to reach the other shore, Nirvana.  The true wisdom of life is that in each step of the way, the other shore is actually reached.  To reach the other shore with each step of the crossing is the way of true living.

There was a transition taking place during my week off in Chicago, the change of seasons.  I was striding up the lake shore path enjoying the Summer sun and 70 degree weather, but when I hit the road the next week Fall was in full force.  Also, most of Route 66 through Illinois is pretty boring between towns–train tracks and cornfields on the left, freeway and more cornfields on the right.  When you mix together the 45 degree temps, completely overcast skies, days of endless rain and drizzle, and unchanging, flat scenery, you get a pretty depressing result.

There are a lot of parallels in life to this type of depression.  It’s something we face in many different forms, a transition period where we are leaving something comfortable and familiar behind in favor of something we are sure is better in the long run, but requires some struggle to get there.  Maybe after a difficult break up, or the beginning of a diet or training regiment, sometimes the gray skies don’t clear right away we seek the comfort of what we had before, ignoring what we know and feel in our hearts that the sun is behind those clouds and better days lie ahead.  Well, the sun literally and figuratively came out for me on Saturday morning.

I’d been looking forward to Saint Louis for some time, it’s the biggest city on my route that I’ve never visited before, and I was excited to cross the Mississippi and see the Arch.  I also knew I had a couple friends that lived there that I’d be able to visit.  One was a buddy from college, Reid, whom I already had contacted and planned to stay with.  The other, Matt, was a friend I had known since 4th grade and had been a very close friend all the way through high school, but I hadn’t seen or talked to him in 7 years.  I knew he was in Saint Louis from his Facebook page, so the night before I arrived I thought I would surprise him with an email letting him know I would be in town for the weekend.  However, I was the one surprised when I got his voicemail message the next morning: “Hey Joe, this is Matt.  Yeah, I’d love to see you while your in town, and I have something you might be interested in doing.  There’s a wedding reception I’ll be going to tomorrow night. Mine.”

Now it definitely took some time to fathom what just happened.  We all have those times where things fall into place in such a natural way that we classify it as fate or karma or God or simply say “Everything happens for a reason,” but I don’t even know how to begin to classify this event.  What are the odds first of all that I’d even undertake a cross-country trek, then factor in that I hardly know what city I’ll be in more than a week in advance, and somehow I end up randomly reuniting with my elementary school best friend on the day of his wedding?  Simply indescribable!

I know I’ve still got a long way to go, but this feeling of coming full-circle will surely help me for more depressing and lonely times I’ll face ahead.  I’ll keep this experience in my pocket for the next time I’m wondering why I’m wandering through gray skies when I don’t know what lies ahead, because it’s the not knowing that allows what finally comes to fruition to be something above and beyond anything I could even imagine!

Now I’m not really talking about fear in the most literal sense.  Sure, I felt a sense of fear when a motorist stopped me near dusk in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts to warn me she had seen a bear crossing the road a few miles ahead.  But that fear was more a sense of terror that brought my mind and body to a heightened state of fight-or-flight awareness–a hormonal adrenaline rush more than anything else.

The fear that now surfaces is a fear of the unknown; a fear that lingers in my mind as it grinds away trying to solve a problem that has no solution.  With the bear, it’s easy to rationally think of the possible outcomes in the event of an encounter.  I have many options of what to do if a bear were to attack: run, play dead, somehow try to fight it; but only three possible outcomes: I either end up unharmed, injured to some degree, or dead.

Leaving the familiarity of Chicago I was entering the unknown, physically, mentally, and spiritually.  The feeling brought me back to the days when the idea of doing this journey had invaded my thoughts and kept me up nearly every night.  One particular night I was lying awake with a pen and a notepad, jotting down any thought that would pop in my head.  The thoughts were pretty random and mostly unrelated, but they formed a steady stream of consciousness that seemed to be flowing somewhere.

It’s difficult to put into words what exactly I was thinking or where the thoughts were leading, but I finally reached a climax when I went to grab some McDonald’s breakfast after a full night of swirling thoughts.  One particular idea suddenly led to a revelation.  It seemed there was a simple formula to achieve success in any given profession or game or endeavor–all one needed was an understanding of the rules of the particular system, and the execution of the actions required to meet the conditions for success according to those rules.  I briefly saw in that instant that so much of our world is comprised of these systems and rules that are not real, tangible things.  I was looking at the Matrix!  I felt an overwhelming rush of excitement with the feeling that whatever I decided to do, I could be successful by applying that basic formula.  But immediately following that was a wave of fear that I’ve never felt before.  Being unplugged from the Matrix brought me face to face with an odd realization: knowing I had the potential to do whatever I wanted, what was it that I wanted to do?  Feeling this immense excitement and fear simultaneously, I began laughing and crying at the same time.