Greyhound

 "I can feel their goodness" I remarked. Their tender, witty, intelligent, tired, odorful selves, selfing along, unaware of my smiles and admiration, I humble and almost embarrassed of their intermittent awe and respect for me. I met an ex-military 20-something who told me all about Kuwait and the Constitution. Talked a good deal with a young amiable (yet mild) Cherokee person coming all the way from central California to Fort Smith, AK, whose grandma practices ancient medicine and who loves heavy metal. A black bus driver who whooped and hollered more than all the passengers put together, and was so kind. A middle-aged lady from Denver in a wheel-chair who loved helping others in her small way. A woman just offered me the rest of her snack after hearing me talk about hunger over the phone with a friend. I found finally and for all the goodness of women and men from all of America. More to come, but this would make a perfect ending

My (then) new friend (turned new love) had made the journey east from Arizona a week prior via greyhound. She gladly spoke of how those who ride that bus are often poor and don't have much, but they have been through so much hardship that the friendships you make on that bus can become lifelong, because they will have your back when need be, and they have compassion. She says she remembers almost no like interactions while riding an airplane, what an insight. I definitely understood that within the first two hours. I also saw the weakness and fragility of humankind. I also remembered a platitude that I had bucked against in the past: that those with money are usually far more moral than those without. Think about how much crime is associated with cities and poor neighborhoods. Think about how homeless are treated like criminals. We in America, and many other other developed nations live in a mindset (which I am confident is shaped by those who everything to gain by preaching such repugnant ideas) where if one isn't consuming or selling, they are of no use to society, and thus deserve exile. You may have heard it as ," if you aren't going to buy anything, please leave," or " you need to get a job so you can contribute to society." As if our income determined our outcome! It is the same mindset that lost trust in some of those I visited in California. Comments such as "why are you bicycling all those hundreds of miles?! Don't you have a car? Its hard for me to be comfortable with that. There seems to be something strange about that," as if low expenditure of money was the product of vice rather than virtue! We are trained to distrust those with little money. "They must be on the run from the law," we might be tempted to think were we to be fooled by those in financial power who would have us worshipping (or otherwise being distracted by) their god The Economy -- all simply because that individual chooses to lay low and have little to no fluid assets. 

I must be upfront and relentless about this, for that is the nature by which the antithesis has been shown me. Of those who would ask how tough it was to do all this in the coldest season, I would reply briefly:

It was the warmest winter of my life.

 As I finish my journey west (far removed from the post date, i finished mid-February) I close this chapter with timeless wisdom that has been written upon my heart since my first motion of this kind in the autumn of '09

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your Heavenly Father knoweth  that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.