Morning Person

I hope I don’t contradict a previous post, but I’m a little tired and I’ll beg forgiveness rather than do the research.

I’m going to share a secret that I’ve tried to keep hidden as far back as I can remember. My caginess with this particular piece of knowledge went so far that I even had myself fooled for quite awhile.

Morning Rainbow - Lowden, IA

I’m a morning person.

There, I’ve said it, and it feels good to finally get it out in the open.

I know that being a morning person is not necessarily a popular approach in our culture.  There are meme after meme after meme commenting on coffee or time or some other way to kick start the morning. There are mugs and shirts and hats and tee shirts all warning others not to approach until a person’s had time to get rolling.

I actually like the morning because that’s when I have the most energy. The day is fresh and young and with the passing of night, it seems imbued with almost limitless possibilities.

This is especially true at this point in the walk. Now I’m not gonna say that the morning is fresh and crisp. Mornings of late have been humid steamy affairs, but let’s face it….the temperatures and humidity aren’t going to get any more conducive to walking then they are in the morning. It reminds me a little of Navy Dive School in Panama City, FL where eighty-five degrees and sixty percent humidity at six thirty in the morning was as cool as it was going to get.

My legs and back are fresh, and the pack just doesn’t seem that heavy. The grips on my trek poles are dry and supple rather than slimy and slick with the afternoon palm sweat that’s just around the corner. Twenty or twenty-five miles doesn’t sound too difficult in the morning. That spring in your step that makes you believe this fallacy, but it will not survive very long as the sun makes its steady climb to its zenith. Still, in the morning anything seems possible.

Today, the thunderstorms that ushered in crashing rain and lightning that lit up the sky last night had passed. In their wake, as the sun peaked up over the eastern horizon, a full rainbow winked from the west. This morning, anything was possible. The rainbow was a sign from the Universe that the time to slog westward had arrived, and I’m grateful I was up and around to see it.

Common Ground

Flags in a Cornfield - Calamus, IA

One of the great benefits that I’ve realized over the course of the pilgrimage has been the great gift of time to step back from the complexity of day to day living and reflect on concepts and ideas that have crossed my path.

Today, my only company was the steady plop, plop, plop of my feet on the asphalt shoulder of the road, the screeched warnings of the red winged black birds escorting me from their territory, and the occasional car or truck swooshing in from the east to bomb past my steady, if slow, westward plod.

I caught myself thinking about something I overheard on a television news and commentary show the other day.  As a practice, I’ve made an attempt to remove television programming from my day to day life, and on balance, I feel quite a bit more serene because of this policy. That said, the proliferation of constantly broadcasting screens in diners, hotels, and in any number of surprising places makes it nearly impossible to remove the influence of television entirely.

The discussion I overheard was surrounding the upcoming 2020 election cycle, and the topic being discussed involved the strategies associated with one candidate or another’s ability to connect with “rural Americans.”

I’m not really sure what “rural American” means in modern era. A great deal of the area we’ve been traversing could probably be categorized in the rural bucket. Compared to the cities, population densities are lower, and there have been times that we’ve walked for several miles without seeing another human being.  In the age of vehicular travel, this is a pretty amazing occurrence.

We’ve also had the great experience of meeting a great many people, but at no time did I find myself thinking of any of these people as “rural Americans.” If I bucketed them at all, I might think of them as hailing from a particular state, but even that is not a common thought that runs through my head.

The people we’ve met have been friendly and welcoming and curious and hard working. Almost to the person they want to improve themselves and provide a good environment to raise their families. They’ve been older and younger, highly educated and some had degrees from the school of hard knocks. They’ve come from India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Honduras, Nicaragua, Russia, Georgia (both the state and the country), Ukraine, Germany, France, and many people who are multi-generational Americans.

Today I met Mike who was originally from India. He moved to Queens, NY about twenty five years ago, but he’s spent the last eleven years as a successful small business owner in Calamus, IA. Mike asked about my backpack and trekking poles, and we spent a moment commiserating about the heat and the gnats. On the issue of gnats, he had a solution which he generously shared with me.

I guess my point is that Mike, whatever he may be, is not a “rural American.” He’s an American, and he had a solution for gnats that he was willing to share.

These labels that slip into our consciousness are largely not useful in my experience out here on the road.  While our individual experiences are unique, we all are generally seeking the same fundamental things out of life, and we’re certainly bedeviled with common problems….like gnats.

This trip has served as an important reminder for me of our common ground and connectedness, and I’m grateful for all the people I’ve crossed paths with that have served as examples of these truths,

On an unrelated side note, I’d like to give props to whoever designed the Iowa State Flag. The colors coordinate nicely with our National Ensign, the seal in the middle conjures images of the history associated with this great state, and the flag leaves no ambiguity about which state it symbolizes. It’s a great boon to the poor twelve year old struggling mightily with a flag recognition quiz in the geography block of a fifth grade social studies class. Truth be told, it helps me quite a bit too.