Cities

Strolling through cities have been a challenge for both Dad and I.  On the one hand, you certainly have relatively easy access to anything you could possibly need during the course of a cross country walk. This single advantage is not a trivial one.  When you’re carrying as little as we carry, sometimes it’s a huge moral boost to pop into a convenience store and grab a nice chilled bottle of seltzer out of the refrigerator, drain it before the condensation even begins to form on the outside, and toss the bottle in the handy garbage can right beside the door.  Our trip to Rochester and the REI there probably saved the pilgrimage a couple of cities back.

On the other hand, challenges abound when traversing the urban environment.  I like to take photos of landscapes, and inspiration is often hard to come by in the concrete wilderness.  It’s there if you’re patient, but it’s not all around like it is in the more rural areas we’ve traversed.

You can find good landscapes in the city, but you’ve got to be a little patient.

One of the other challenges is the atmosphere.  Having spent weeks out in the countryside, the pervasive competition that seems to come part and parcel with large human populations living together is particularly acute and noticeable.  It seems like people are more reserved….more skeptical in the cities. Making that comfortable, easy connection takes a little more effort….a little more time.

We’re on the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio this evening.  Tomorrow we’ll really start the traverse through the main body of the city.  It’s the last truly big city we’ll cross on our path toward the west coast. We’ll pass through the outskirts of Chicago, but we’ll be pretty far out.

I wonder if I’ll miss the hustle and bustle, the art, music, and unpredictable things that emerge when large numbers of people gather.  After the next three or four days, I suppose we’ll start the process of finding that out.