Miles to Go (27 page)

A big smile crossed her lips. “Yes. Thank you. Yes.”

We finished eating, then Nicole drove us back to the hotel. I stayed in the lobby with Nicole while Kailamai ran upstairs to get her things.

“Remember what I said to you the day you left?” Nicole asked. “The happiest I’ve ever been was when I was taking care of someone.” She smiled at me. “Once again, you’ve changed my life.”

“Well, no one deserves a chance more than Kailamai. She’s lucky to have a mentor like you. She’ll go far.”

A big smile crossed Nicole’s face. “Thank you.”

A few minutes later Kailamai came into the lobby carrying her backpack.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

We went outside and I put her bag in the Malibu’s trunk.

“I’m going to miss walking with you,” Kailamai said.

I looked at her fondly. “Me too. Be a good roommate. And a good judge or chef. Make me proud.”

“I will, I promise.” She looked down. “Will I ever see you again?”

“Absolutely.”

She hugged me, then she turned to Nicole.

“Let’s go, roomie.” She climbed into the car.

Nicole walked up and hugged me. “Another goodbye. It was hard enough the first time.”

“I hate goodbye,” I said. “How about I just say, ‘See you later.’”

“Promise?”

“I promise. I’ll call to see how things are going.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” She was starting to tear up, so
she quickly kissed my cheek, then climbed into the car and started it. “Bye,” she said sweetly.

“Goodbye,” I said.

Kailamai waved as they drove off.

“Alone again,” I said. I took a deep breath, then went up to my room and took a long, hot bath.

The next morning I went downstairs for breakfast—Raisin Bran with skim milk, a banana, and a glass of orange juice. At the table next to me was a man wearing a lanyard that read HI, MY NAME IS TONY written in blue marker. He was watching ESPN on the television mounted on the dining room wall.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you know the fastest way from here to Highway 2?”

He turned to me. “Sure. Just turn right in front of the hotel and keep going south about two miles down to the MT2 sign. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you.”

“Where are you headed?”

“I’m walking to Yellowstone.”

“You’re walking all the way to Yellowstone?”

“Actually, I’m walking to Key West.”

“Florida?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me for a moment, then said, “Man, I wish I were doing that.”

I was on the road by eight. I already missed Kailamai. I missed her spirit. I even missed her jokes.

Outside of Butte, I got on Highway 2 toward Whitehall. The next three days took me through the towns of Silver Star, Twin Bridges, and Sheridan. Silver Star was a small but legitimate town. It had a scrap metal yard, a taxidermist, and a stop called Granny’s Country Store with a sign outside that said FREE COFFEE, WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY, 10-6.

I stopped at the store, where I picked up a wilderness survival book and a pamphlet that claimed it would help
me predict the weather using the wisdom of our forefathers. The small book was filled with chestnuts like:

When the dew is on the grass,
Rain will never come to pass.
When grass is dry at morning light,
Look for rain before the night!

And (according to the book) the single most useful weather proverb of all:

Red Sky at night,
Sailor’s delight.
Red sky in the morning,
Sailors take warning!

I filled up my canteen from the bathroom sink, bought some honeycomb, and chose two cellophane-wrapped sandwiches from a refrigerator. I learned that the woman who ran the store was the owner, which, I guess, technically made her Granny. She was probably in her late thirties, had long, brunette hair that fell to her waist, and didn’t wear shoes on the hardwood floor.

I passed Jefferson Camp (where the Lewis and Clark expedition had camped), then a few miles later crossed the Jefferson River and followed the Lewis and Clark Trail all the way to the town of Twin Bridges.

Twin Bridges bills itself as “The Small City That Cares.” The town had GO FALCON signs posted in most of the store windows. I ate dinner at the Wagon Wheel Restaurant, which was surprisingly crowded, and bought supplies at the Main Street Market.

I spent the night at King’s Motel, which had a sign
outside proclaiming AWARD WINNING ROOMS, which was infinitely better than “world famous” or “historic.” I was skeptical of the claim until the owner—a fishing outfitter named Don who looked like Ernest Hemingway in shorts—gave me a tour of the place. The rooms were cozy, wood paneled cabins with kitchenettes. The cost was just $73 a night, and as a bonus, Don offered to take me fly-fishing in the morning. I told him I’d have to pass on the fishing, but rented one of his rooms.

Sheridan was only eight miles from Twin Bridges, and most of the terrain between them was smooth, with green meadows and grazing sheep. Sheridan was larger than the last three towns I’d passed through and had a bank and a Napa Auto Parts Store alongside the Ruby Saloon, which had a sign advertising BOOZED BUNS, which I mused was either a bread product infused with alcohol, or referred to the help.

I stopped at the Sheridan Bakery & Café and ordered a ham and cheese roll and a cinnamon bun. Next to my table was a sign on the wall that read:

We have the right to refuse service to anyone at any time.
No exceptions, Steve, Joe, and Allen

A whiteboard mounted to the wall across from my table read:

TRIVIA QUESTION:
Where is the Trevi Fountain located?

Someone had scrawled beneath it: “Trevi?”

Whoever answered the questions correctly got a free maple bar, which I hope hadn’t been made especially
for the contest, since the sign had been posted a month earlier and still no one had won. I asked the manager, a woman named Francie, if I could give it a shot.

“Sure thing, honey. Where is the Trevi Fountain?” she asked with the intensity of a game show host.

McKale and I had been to Rome twice on advertising incentive trips, and I was quite familiar with the beautiful fountain of Neptune that capped the end of the ancient Roman aqueducts.

“The Trevi Fountain is just a little east of Via Veneto, about a half mile from the Spanish Steps.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said sadly. “It’s in Italy.”

I just smiled. “Well, I tried.”

The next day I walked along the Ruby River, which, in the 1860s, was originally called the Stinking Water River by the miners. Sometime later it was renamed the Ruby River after the gems found along its length, which turned out not to be rubies, but garnets.

A sign mounted near the river shared several interesting facts: First, the gold once mined there by dredges was used to finance Harvard University in the early twentieth century. Second, the Ruby River was the site of the Vigilante Trail, and the dreaded numbers 3-7-77 were of historic significance, though it didn’t explain why.

The next town I came to, Nevada City, was closed. Literally. Nevada City was an authentic old western town with a music hall, blacksmith shop, barbershop, saloons, and a saddler. The town looked like a movie set—which it was—and outside the village entrance was a long list of all the movies that had been shot on the premises. The numbers 3-7-77 were posted on one of the buildings here as well.
Maybe it was a date
, I thought. March 7, 1877.

Eight miles down the road was Christine City, which
was also an Old West town, and more authentic than Nevada City though not as colorful. Fortunately for me, it was open. I stopped in a small tourist shop to browse, and I asked the shop’s proprietor the meaning of 3-7-77’. She seemed glad for the question.

“If you had that number placed in your yard by the vigilantes, you had 3 days, 7 hours, and 77 minutes to get out of town or you would be buried in a grave 3 feet wide, 7 feet long, and 77 inches deep. However, some believe that those numbers were also connected to the local Masonic order, who in the 1860s had 3 deacons, 7 elders, and 77 members.”

The woman told me that their town had a “boot hill,” which is where the vigilantes’ victims were buried, placed in graves with their boots pointing away from the sun.

I ate lunch at a small restaurant called the Outlaw Café. When I asked the waitress, Cora, if their food was any good, she replied, “Oh, it’s good all right. Before I worked here I looked like Twiggy, now look at me.” She spun around, modeling her plump physique for me.

I told her about my walk, and she said another man had walked through Christine City on his way across the country—Tim. “He carries a cross with him.” She gave him extra tea bags and sugar packets to help keep him warm in the winter.

I kind of hated leaving the town. I walked until dark and spent the night in the city of Ennis, which, no matter how many times I read the name, didn’t seem right.

The next two days were some of the dullest walking I’d encountered yet on my journey. The view came with two options—flat, dull landscape with trees or flat, dull landscape without. The roads were smooth, with wide shoulders but no coverage from the elements. The only
excitement was when someone threw a plastic cup filled with soda at me from a speeding car.

Seven days from Butte, I entered the Gallatin National Forest, Earthquake Lake Geologic Area.

The lake had a surreal quality. The water was thick with moss and the tops of dead trees poked out of its surface like stubble, some even in the center of the lake. A mile or two past the entry there was an observation point with a plaque:

On Aug. 17, 1959, a 7.5 earthquake triggered
a massive landslide.
80 million tons of rock—half the mountain—fell,
creating this lake, now 4 miles long and 120 feet deep.

That explained the trees in the middle of the lake. The next day I reached West Yellowstone.

When I was seven years old, my family took a trip to Yellowstone National Park (the same trip my father and I had talked about at the IHOP). That was years ago, a unique era, when America’s love affair with the car was on a par with our old fear of beeping Russian satellites. There was a remarkable, though admittedly charming, naïveté to our perception of the park—almost a collective suspension of reality in our national imagination. Yellowstone was just a grand, outdoor stage show with animal actors conveniently placed for our entertainment—moose were gawking, Bullwinkle creatures, and bears were domesticated fur balls with names like Yogi and Boo-Boo, who loved picnic baskets and tourists and were more than happy to pose for photographs. It has taken more than a few grisly maulings to alter our collective paradigm. Wild animals are, well, wild.

While my mother was standing in line at the restroom near the Old Faithful Inn, my father and I watched a tourist (I remember her looking like a larger version of Lucille Ball) walk up to a wild buffalo for a prized photo op, her husband, eyeing her through the lens piece of a Brownie camera, verbally nudging her: “Just a little closer, Madge. Yes, just a few steps more. Yes! Like that! Put your hand up, yeah, rub its neck.”

The buffalo looked at her through glassy eyes roughly the size of tennis balls like she was the stupidest creature on God’s green earth (possibly true), trying to decide whether to walk away in disgust or trample her for the ultimate good of the human gene pool.

My dad watched the scene unfold with a curious, mixed expression of amusement and envy. Ultimately, the buffalo didn’t do anything but walk away. Sometimes nature takes compassion on stupidity.

I don’t know what self-talk might take place in a buffalo’s brain, but I imagine it went something like this, “These guys are really at the top of the food chain?”