memory log: Thursday, September 3, 2009

The riskiest day of walking by far. Some road shoulders narrowed to inches against a guard rail next to a steep slope with cars curving at 45mph towards me. It was the first time i had to regularly stop walking and make myself narrow along the edge until the traffic passed. Some areas had an impossibility of pedestrians. The insanity of it was that at the entrance to the Perkiomen trail was a US or state highway on ramp without any lights for pedestrians. I had to look, run and hope my way across the street, always envisioning the slam from a high speed vehicle and imagining myself silhouetted against the clear morning sky. Trail to road to front yards to road to a trail through Valley Forge National Historic Park. I kept asking Christy if she could feel the history. The course wound through trees and meadows. Meadows where people died? It's how i imagined it. I tried to look at the scene like a panoramic movie screen where depictions of soldiers stumbled along, riddled with disease. Milkweed sprouted in entire fields. Tourists took photographs next to statues with their children.

When we got out of Valley Forge and summarized the visit in the aptly name "Encampment Center" (aka gift shop), it was going to be just a short walk to the hotel in King of Prussia (non-Philadelphians pause to laugh here at the name of the town). What was a pleasant paved trail turned into climbing over guardrail underneath and overpass littered with cockleburs. They were all over me like parasites and momentarily freaked me out. The shoulder disappeared and we walked on vast lawns that surrounded a convention center and office park. When thinking of going on a hike, i think this is the last idea that would come to mind. But there it is, present in our landscape—just as much a part of it as the nicely labeled trails that walkers get corralled on to. We had one last barrier: the underpass to the PA turnpike. It could have been easy but the non-existent should didn't only disappear to nothing, it did it on a curve in the road so that no car would see us if we walked there. We would surely be dead. And there's no crossing the turnpike either. The only alternative would be to go back the way we came and walk around a circle that would take 5 miles or more and then we STILL couldn't be sure if we'd be able to reach the hotel on foot. We were literally trapped.

My fear of making phone calls dwindles in a situation like this and within minutes i managed to find a car service that serviced our hotel that would come and pick us up to take us to the other side of the bridge. And he wouldn't even let us pay him. I told him what we were doing and he told us how he lost 50 or more pounds and no longer has diabetic symptoms because he started walking the 5 mile loop through Valley Forge. Another savior, another nice guy.

We met Tina at the hotel and proceeded to have to go to the mall for dinner. But that's another surreal experience for the next day.