Episode 10: Whitman By Moonlight (2012)

My solace sings to the rhythm of the north and southbound trains

carrying commerce – corn and coal and unknown cargo

harmonizing with the crickets

and with the sounds of the deer rustling nearby in the brush.



I wrote those lines lying on my bedroll along Route 66. I was walking from Staunton to Litchfield, where I was planning to spend the night before walking to Carlinville and catch the commuter rail into Chicago.



The walk from Staunton to Mount Olive was beautiful. My friend, the amazing artist Heather Houzenga, gave me a ride from Mount Carroll to Stauton. From there, I walked along Route 66, one of the most nostalgic arteries of travel in America. So nostalgic, as a matter of fact, that we built two of them… one right next to the other. And even though I-55 eventually replaced it as a regular traveling route, the romance with it really hasn’t diminished – at least for those of us who travel for its own sake.



While I was in Mount Olive, I stopped at the Union Miner’s cemetery to pay my respects to Mother Jones, a true patron saint of the radical labor movement – in as much as it still exists in these, the waning days of Babylon. She said she when she died she wanted to be laid with the 25 victims of the Virden Massacre – a little chunk of history you should learn about if you’ve never heard of it, and one you should brush up on if you have.  I would have stayed in Mount Olive if there had been a place; but there wasn’t, so I kept walking.



When I didn’t make it to Litchfield, I found a quiet spot behind a giant fir tree, just over an embankment in the brush near the railroad tracks. The sky was cloudy and it felt like rain as the rattling of passing trains soothed me to sleep. When dewfall woke me like a kiss, my eyes opened to a clear cool sky and a moon so full and so bright I could read and write by it. I heard a rustling in some brush near me saw a large deer settling in for some sleep. There we were, two creature of the earth, bedding down, and while I was terribly lonely, I didn’t feel alone. I thought about my Grandpa Dunn who didn’t go to church because he said God was in the woods behind his house, and I thought of all the stories I’ve read and heard about people meeting God, from the burning bush to white light stories old drunks had told me. At that moment, I finally understood what they were all talking about.



I read from the closest thing to scripture I had with me, one of my favorite poems, “Song of the Open Road”, and wrote until my eyes were too tired to stay open. Then slept deep until the morning light woke me.



O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?

Do you say Venture not—if you leave me you are lost?

Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied, adhere to me?



O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,

You express me better than I can express myself,

You shall be more to me than my poem.



Thanks again for listing to this episode of a Record of a pair of well-worn traveling boots. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, Stitcher, or Podbean. Check out our previous episodes if you haven't already. I drop a new episode every other Monday. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram... the handle is dirtysacred. Thanks again for listening. And may the road always rise to meet your feet.