And finally a conclusion

After spending some very nice days on Pender Island I promptly discovered that the ferry from Sidney didn't run to Anacortes. And while i should have gone and taken the ferry from Victoria to Seattle, I thought for some reason that I'd be better off going to Vancouver and crossing the border on a bus. I bounced off Seattle by way of en route to Portland, where i enjoyed some tasty breakfast, met some very nice people, and went to the church that Don Miller said was so great in his books. It was pretty hipster, but not un-nice.
I took a bus to Seaside, and knew i was in small-town country now. Hiked to Cannon beach and was taken away by haystack rock which was about a thousand times more inspiring to see than the Space Needle was. On those wobbly hiker legs i stood roadside with thumb in the air and promptly gave up on hitching. Nevertheless, a very nice older woman picked me up and offered me some pot while we drove down the coast to one of the tiny and destitute looking- but in an incredibly beautiful setting- little towns where she lived. I declined the pot, which she only had for medical reasons anyways, but accepted her offer to drop me at the local bus stop which would take me through to the next bigger town. There i found a Starbucks (an institution which would continue to be my internet hub from city to city) and a department store which i walked around for hours before finding my way to the local Denny's, scarfing down a massive meal, and then settling in for the night to read a book. The next morning I found a local bus which would take me back to Portland, which it did, in time to take another bus through the night to San Francisco. With some thanks to a very uncomfortable bus-stop layover (where security would come ask you for your ticket the moment you started to drift off on the hard-floor as if only free-loading bums would do that) and two interesting and long-talking coach-mates I perhaps dozed for an hour. Perhaps. In San Francisco I had coffee with one of my new coach friends before finding a wonderful camera store which sold me a replacement wide-angle lens for the camera i had borrowed from my Dad. I knew i needed a smaller backpack, and after some considerable wandering around and discovery of some of the less romantic parts of the city I eventually bought one and after some more wandering around, found the hostel i had made a reservation at. I don't remember much of the rest of that day except that by the time sleep came i had had the same pair of shoes on for as long as I'd essentially been awake. Sixty some hours. Gross.
San Fransisco was beautiful after that. I ran across the big red bridge. I walked along the boardwalks and saw beautiful people smiling, enjoying the warm evening. I took a great tour of China Town. After eating otherwise poor-quality food everywhere on my adventure, I now couldn't hardly find bad-quality food if i wanted to. But then I went and left.
I loved the train to LA, excepting some annoying patrons. The scenery was great. And rail was more comfortable than bus coach by the length of an American Football field. I got off near UCLA, which smelled beautifully of blossoms or flowers of some kind. It was warm, and I saw many cute couples, some with roses in hand, walking arm in arm with their Valentine's day dates. I imagined that perhaps I'd find something to do on Valentines day somewhere- like singles bingo or something cheesy like that, but instead I had to catch a bus to Santa Monica, and LA's busses were not about to be as conducive as San Fran. By the time I was at my, relitavely expensive and generally blase hostel at SM I was ready to call it a day.
Sure the beach was alright, and I met a nice guy from New Mexico at Santa Monica, and I met a very interesting man dressed as a tree at Venice Beach, and a very funny TV writer who gave me a ride between the two, but by the time I caught a crazy bus to the crazier Greyhound Station, I was ready to get the $%&* out of Dodge... or in this case, Los Angeles. In hindsight, you really do need a car to get around that part of the state.
San Diego was supposed to be reconnassance time. I would gather my chits, consult my new maps, and plan my next move. I though i might go to Mexico for a few days. I had put a reservation on a car rental back in LA to get out and potentially into Joshua Tree or even Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, but that was a few days away.

Now that i was in San Diego I began to hit rock bottom. I got a familiar diminishment in spirit which warned me i might need to go home sooner than my plane was booked for- some two weeks away. I would miss seeing Arizona, but I was missing my drive more. I think I was ready to admit that I'm not the lone ranger I've always epitomized. A good thing to know in any case. Pack animals we are, and I missed my pack. But I was also not self-disparaging about this fact. If i wanted to go home, I wasn't about to give myself a hard time about that. It had been a good run, and aside from the jets flying overhead all day, the hostel at Point Loma in San Diego was very nice and affordable; so I stayed a few days. While in SD I ate some fantastic sea food at the beautiful harbour, rented bikes with new friends and rode to the top of point Loma, jammed out pop tunes on a piano and guitar at the hostel with a guy (I think he was from Minnesota) and saw the underwhelming but highly toted San Diego park. The hostel was also only a walk from the Airport, so I rearranged flights and got one that flew from there to Vancouver, and on my way out I saw the anti-submarine, navy-trained dolphins passing through the harbor.
My Flight bounced off Phoenix, which I'm told is not as interesting as Tuscon or Flagstaff, but at least i got to get into Arizona in some respect, and see its horizon for a moment before the light died.
I would like to drive that golden sea someday.

So I returned much sooner than I'd anticipated, which was just as well since I really was pretty broke anyways- or so i realized once i surveyed my accounts. The dollar exchange rate had been cruel, and the fact that the currency exchange at the airport in Vancouver took me for an extra few dollars as a "fee" to change my greenbacks back to Canadian really annoyed me. I had to bunker down in the airport for the duration of the night to catch transit to the first ferry home, and when i did step outside (having abandoned all warm clothing in San Fransisco) I had to grit my teeth and second guess that I'd really wanted to be home again. I had, strangely, missed the cooler climate while in San Diego, but wearing shorts at 6 AM in February made me wonder if I had been delusional.

Its funny. Friends asked me what the deal was with the trip. Was I going to "find myself" or something? I never expected an epiphany to strike me on the road. I didn't expect nothing, but I didn't know what to expect except a change of scenery and lots of time by myself to be self-reflexive and breathe deeply. A change of scenery, I have come to believe now, can do a lot for one's psyche. I felt like I was just going through the motions so much of the time last year. I was living in a blur of time. I sometimes described my life like someone else was living it and i was just a spectator watching it go by. Clarity, however, found me on the road, though it never came like a beam of light or a Eureka. It came in a coming home and cleaning house. I suppose it came in realizing what I wanted, accepting who I was, and leaving some things behind for a new chapter. Three weeks in the wilderness, or whatever, and I get that?! Not exactly. I think maybe conlclusions build over time, but it takes a steppping back, out of the mundanity to get the clarity on it. It was upon stepping back into "my life" that I realized how this all would pan out.

I'm not saying i got it together. I still don't know much of what next month or next year holds, but I'm more confident in who i want to be next month and next year, I think.

Just to clear it up, although I called this short blog 'walking' I didn't walk everywhere. I walked from ship to bus to train to light rail to taxi to car to bicycle to bus to plane and covered distance that way. There was, however, lots of walking in between, and perhaps, more importantly, every trip begins and ends with a walk. There is something about walking I think, that people have done for millennia to figure things out, and it is this persistent idea that persists. Not to be confused with nomadicism, for in my story, as in most, the adventurer comes home, or finds home, or achieves something which he can bring back with him to revive his existence.

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

C. S. Lewis

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Henry David Thoreau

I went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sun down, for going out, I found, was really going in.

John Muir

And then there's places to stay at night.
Camping: good as long as you can get to a site. If you're taking busses and trains and such, however, you're more likely to get dropped off in the middle of cities, the furthest distance from the more affordable campsites... Which brings me to my second point. Camping, unless you're plugging in an RV, sharing a tent site with friends, or otherwise overtly desirous of those wide open spaces, generally doesn't beat a mid-city hostel for value. At $30-35 a night I'd prefer to get a free breakfast and a shower. Hell, when travelling alone I'd probably even rather share a room with a bunch of subsonic snorers than have that isolated isolation of setting up tent and then thinking, "now what"?
Also, if you can plan to never camp, then you don't need a tent or sleeping bag. I used mine once and could've been traveling much lighter if I'd never allowed for the possibility that i might end up at the side of some road for the night (the only time this happened I ended up staying all night at a denny's instead anyways... so there's always that.)

There's this problem with being a tourist who wants to get the insider's perspective on a location: you have to be really intentional about a strategy in which you are not just surrounded by other travelers and un-initiated outsiders. On busses and trains the people most aimiable to strike up conversation with you are likely not the commuters but the adventurers like you- looking and ready for novelty. Unique also to this walking approach is the fact that many Americans- i dare guess the majority- don't really USE sidewalks. They use cars. Those on the sidewalks are going to be the odd ones out. Same goes for those on the city streets in the middle of the afternoon, when most people are in office buildings, industrial sectors, or storefronts actually working their 9-5. Misfits hang around on the street in the mid- afternoon, so your experience is skewed, overpopulated by people like you: transients, oddballs, and misfits.

Hostels naturally attract the likes of European students in a gap year- who are nice but forgettable (if i'm honest in a general sort of way). Other characters include people who are between houses, cities, or jobs, or who are simply on a business trip and too cheap for a hotel or who experiencing some kind of mid-life re-discovery and are self-defined nomads. Sufficed to say: not necessarily "Normal" folk, and unfortunately much less interesting than they often seem to think they are. Again Ruthless generalization, but there it is.

That said, i would use hostels again in certain situations. I think they are great for a certain kind of traveling and really are supurb value- often staffed with very helpful people who can show you how to traverse the local neighbourhood.

But what do I reccomend? Or perhaps better put, what would I do next time?
Probably don't presume to walk around America. Its not that there aren't great places to walk, but these are places, in themselves, that you're probably best getting to by car. America has been defined, probably more than any other country, by highways and the automobile industry.
I'd also look for ways to get the inside view on a destination, especially an urban one, which is to say I'd try and stay with people I know whenever possible. I never tried Air bnb or couchsurfing, but either might be good ideas, but require planning ahead.

More planning all around would be a good idea. Not that this wasn't adventurous. Some flexibility is good, especially when given the friendliness of people you may be directed off the beaten path to worthwhile side-spectacles. But this doesn't mean you can't have a general intinerary.

Finally I'd prefer to travel with another person or people next time. Yes, this limits flexibility to some extent, but it also works the other direction when it means many costs are split (campsites, hotels, gas etc.) as well as duties (navigation, communication, driving). Its nice to have company and if you get hungry, you can always revert to cannibalism and eat them.

this trip was something of an experiment. I wanted to test the workabiliy of essentially walking in a direction, trying impromptu forms of transit and accomodation and see how many things I could see on a budget. I wanted to move slow enough to wittness the culture, geography, and weather shift. I wanted a little to see if the spirit of karoack was still alive.
on a scale of realistic to romantic id have to admit that the experiment fell on the grounded side, and that ground would've been better traversed with an automobile.

walking: you will either be on the unpleasant shoulder of a highway or abandoned drearily to long miles through unpopulated wilderness and wasteland.

hitchhiking: died off some time after Karoack did. if your time is worth literally nothing you might like this method, and though I met a couple locals this way- a rarity in the rest of my trip- it really got me almost nowhere in a long time.

busses: pretty affordable in the states. certainly close to what you would pay for gas in your own car. I rode greyhound, amtrak and bolt. the cheapest runs are the longhauls betwwn cities, so tbe nature of it is tbat you miss lots of interesting in the mean.

train: loved the train. same issue as the bus in that you skip stuff seen better by car, but the view from a train can exceed the highway by a long shot and they are immensely more comfortable than a bus, plane and even most automobiles. have a drink. take a walk. enjoy.

local transit: time consuming to navigate but often the best way to see a city. I found San francisco to be the easiest network, though it might have lacked the glitz of a light rail- which it seems some cities only put in so they can say they have one.

Venice beach wittnessed the formation of the doors as well as the emergence ofJanes Addiction- but that was some time ago now, and I'm not sure if that is really even supposed to mean much to me.
Its a nice beach, sure enough.
But it doesn't seem to inspire me. I don't "want to be in LA", Beverly Hills is not "where I want to be" and I don't wish that all of them "were california girls"- whatever that meant.
They comb the beach in the morning to sweep up the garbage off the beach... I'm glad it gets so much use, but I sure am glad I knoww of some beaches which never need to be raked.

Tat sleeves, lanky, a well-kept black mohawk: a metro punk. That's my initial profile. Well spoken, intelligent, kind: upon his opening a conversation with me. As I began to return his niceties with questions, I illicited information about his past career which far outstripped mine in interest.
Anton had grown up with a Greek (and Greek Orthodox) Motheer who had migrated from Qubec, and with a father, who I took to be Italian, (and Roman Catholic) in Sanfrancisco;s Little Italy- a stone throw from Chinatown. Thus he had political dual citizenship, religious dual schismship (if you see what I just did there) and was naturally aware of cultural diversity.
When I told him where I Hailed from he told me he loved it, that if he were to live in another city on basis of its own merits, that victoria would top the list. Considerable, esspecially considering he;d been around.
Anton received his masters of divinity from a Roman Catholic institution in New orleans before beccoming a monk in a monestary in Athos for what he said was "many years", though this confused me, because he didn't look so much older than me. In time he decided to study eastern traditions by living at their monestaries, and as an ambassador on behalf of his tradition. Now he was a lay monk, living back in his home city of San Francisco- a place I wonder if he;d ever left in spirit.
He was my tourguide through his old backyard of chinatown, and as he took me into, first a bhuddist, and then a dowist shrine (forgive me if that's the wrong term) he revealed that his immerrsion to an understanding of these traditions dated to his childhood there. He would never leave San Francisco for Victoria on basis of its own merit, not while this was his home- I could tell that. For me Anton will personify what I liked best about his city.
That night he called out spanish names in a impromptu game of bingo in the pub next to the hostel. And as he did I heard him laugh to his friend, the bartender, how there was something absurd about someone, with his mdiv, repeating mispronounced spanish phrases.
like a trained parrot, in a game of bingo, for a few people, in some hole in the city's
many walls. And yet, he came back, continuing his aside a few minutes later.
"And yet this is actually one of my favorite things to do!"
I Wish I knew more of Antons story. I wish i could ask him questions for hours, but San Francisco itself, those answers would not be rendered for a mere passer-through.
Yes, you may see the smile genuine on my face, but you may not know why I smile.
a beauty of diversity. no gloss. no charms.
a trueness to joy, to self as a gift for others joy.to be the part of a mosaic. its ok to go home if that feeds you, for perhaps that is what defines it in large part- even the simplest and the smallest of joys.

Sure, I had been fortunate to find the trail at all, but at least I was getting off the beaten path.
My pack is extraordinarily heavy. I must find a way to lighten it without throwing e?xtra items into the old growth forest- that wouldn't seem right. 900 feet above sea level and the trail is still flooded. How?!
When I find the bivoaks in the woods I resign to a lonely and dreary night in the misty ancient forage, that is until Adam and Tina show up, all californian and sprightly. Just thought we would hike in and see the lighthouse on our way up the coast. Ok Ill join you. Only a few more strides down the trail takes us to a creepy old barred doorway. Adam insists we must find a way inside, which we do, to my initial dismay. Once inside, Adam turns to me to shake my hand, introduces himself. Just in case we are about to die, he explains.
70 years ago this was a ww2 radar station, we will learn later. Its interesting to consider, that along with the war sites and retired equipment in museums or turned into tour stops, there are also those like this, which are slowly and surely. being taken back by the forest. Maybe 70 more years from now it will be forgotten, but those lucky few who find it as a relic will not forget it.
Adam and Tina drifted back up the path they came from so as to get back to their car before dark. But a few minutes later Adam came back and handed me his email and phone number, in case I was in his neighbourhood.
While memories fade, Impressions leave tracers, to find our way back, with new ones.

On a road between forlorn brick industrial shops, beside an old railway track, under a new overpass and scattered about by the odd street tent, lies an otherwise ignored road. So ignored, in fact, that the last time it was paved it was done without thinking that the cobblestone underneath the new overlay wasn't worth seeing again.
And yet, the pavement upgrade has now worn away by the years of hard use and revealed the cobble shining clean and uncompromising beneath. The remaining makeover now simply imitates sand being washed helplessly over sea-side-sapphire, before being washed back into the greatness of time.

I'm reading a book from a guest lecturer I had last year in one of my classes. His book is called "the small heart of things" and in it he suggests that

Place has a profound bearing upon our lives, from the countries we are born into, or end up inhabiting, to the light, landscape, and weather peculiar to our home regions. Each has a say in shaping our cultures and our souls

He quotes from artist Alan Gussow:

The catalyst that converts any physical location-any environment if you will- into a place, is a process of experiencing deeply. A place is a piece of a whole environment that has been claimed by feelings. Viewed simply as a life support system, the earth viewed as a resource that sustains our humanity, the earth is a collection of places

The concept of self-determination as a value and thereby our pro-view to borders defining nationhoods, plays into our politically correct neurosis that some geography belongs to the ethnicity which has the longer or stronger claim to it. The very reality that the longer culture is attached to where they call home, has validity for the very fact that for them it likely feels more like home. But does it hold that someone else might approach that geography and find something of themselves in it from a different relationship?

Everyone wants to be an initiate. And home is an important idea.

But the pavement rubs away, and Identities shift like tectonic plates. Earthquakes come and remind us we are moments, lucky to witness a re-ordering. Nature, and humans, adapt. And something about that is strangely comforting. That this story goes on. And maybe we play a valuable part.

"Want one?" asks Brian, the tenacious 5 year old standing, duck-dynasty backpack laden- next to his quietly smiling mother at the bus stop. He offers me a chip.
"Can I have some water?" he asks when he discovers the bottle hanging off a caribeaner on my backpack. His mother nods, and I try to teach him how a caribeaner works to get the bottle off.
"How old are you?" he asks accusingly.
"How old do you think I am, I answer predictably.
"I don't know" he return squeakily. Then marks out my height with 8 inch intervals of his hand, counting them off.
"one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine... You're NINE years old?!" he half asks, half declares.

On the bus to Tilamook Brian apologizes needlessly to the bus driver for eating chips on the bus. In the back a drawling roadworn pilgrim named John calls out "Yeah, you BETTER stop eating on the bus, or else we gonna THROW you off at da next STOP."
Brian glares at him through the seat divisions, finally cracking under a few more teases.
"No!" he yells, "And if you say that one more time, I'll throw YOU off the bus."
"Oh meen, I'M sorry. I didn't mean nothin by it. I'm just jokin but I'll stop now. Don't throw ME off the bus."
"Well I'm not joiking either" Brian continues, "Go ahead and see what happens!"
This was escalating nicely! Unfortunately the altercation was interupted when a former street kid from LA got on the bus next to John and noticed the tree schulptures John was making from copper wire as he travelled.
"That's really cool" comments LA Streets. "I;'ve seen this kind of stuff before. You're really good at it." LA Streets pauses, "Can you make scorpions"

In a small town enroute a girl gets on the bus, no more than 40, she is by far the most attractive person on the bus now. She moves to sit beside LA Streets. I'm sorry, you can't sit there" Streets flirts unsuccessfully. An awkward exchange later Streets realizes that his city charm and humour has failed him.
"I was just kidding" He surrenders.
"you can sit here."
They proceed to chat. John gets talking to me again. Brian is pacified by chips he managed to hustle off another bus-rider.
And the road goes on.

First people I get talking to at the Portland Hostel ask me where I'm from- this is after we were pleased to find some common ground over humor and music. Imagine the commonality of travelers otherwise far flung! When I said, Victoria, she said, Victoria Canada? When I said yes, they said, oh, us too. Same university in fact. Same Friggin classrooms. A few days later I stumble out of a long and isolated hike into the beautiful Oregon Tourist destination of Cannon Beach. I find a burger joint fast, order, and sit down next to someone who was not only from my city, my university, and my same field of study, but obviously knew a couple of my good friends.
Somehow its comforting that I'm still at one degree of separation.

Getting out the door can be the hard part. The door, in my case, being my own neighborhood- a vicinity I'm not sure I've yet perforated. I spent two days on a gulf island, playing disk golf and mucking around in the rain. The plan was to cross back into Sidney to take the ferry to Anacortes- camp in a park there, etc. I realized, after hanging around the decrepit and abandoned terminal long enough, that the ferry wasn't running. Only runs seasonally i discovered. About turn. I grew up in this town, watching the ferry come and go (forming a fantasy that someday I'd escape on it). Instead I found myself mucking through a flooded trail as I took a detour on the way to Schwartz bay again. Everything was screaming abandonment before I even left the blindly familiar. Like a bad dream where i can't get out. A part of me wants to wake up in my bed with the revived ability to choose to leave and then not choose to. Such is the nature of some dreamers. And I am something of one. But I made the ferry and escaped my shire. I've been spinning the tires. Time to pop the clutch.