It takes a lot of patience
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Mar 27
Sorry for the predictable headline. I get punchy out there walking. But the point is…
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There have been times, during the two years and hundreds of miles walked far from home as part of this project, that I have wondered: What am I doing? Why am I shouldering a 45-pound pack, picking up my walking stick, and wandering off into the unknown? Plenty of answers to that, of course, but a big one came courtesy of a 20-ton farm machine just before I was to begin walking in Texas wind country.
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Idle ideas looking out to sea…
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Going out to sea to help a ship come in to port. A serendipitous encounter while walking the tidal coves of Eastport.
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An encounter on the trail …
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A short version of a very long story, as seen from the river’s edge…
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A moment moving downstream…
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A small story of the past and future from a forgotten bit of riverbank in Calais, Maine.
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Sometimes, to find a new way forward, it helps to go to the edge. A quiet place. Where things move slow and, it can seem, little is happening. Slow down, too. That’s the idea now, as I walk along the eastern edge of Maine in November.
It’s known as Down East, and a lot of time it’s the coastline that people think about. But follow the St. Croix River upstream, and it’s a watery world, too. Forests are thick with lakes and bogs, streams and puddles. The St. Croix itself is a force, currents rushing toward the sea, where they meet, twic a day, the incoming tides — some of the highest and most powerful in the world. So during the days ahead I will pick up the old stick that I’ve had as a companion since North Dakota, and I’ll walk along the water’s edge, following the flow.
Final thoughts of coal country…
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A story from day four walking Wyoming coal country.
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Thanks for reading.
Catching up here at Fuel Walk with a story from day three walking Wyoming coal country.
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Thanks for reading.
I’ve always planned for this walk through Wyoming coal country to be more solitary than those I took last summer through oil and gas country. During the first two days, I met no one. More a chance to watch and wonder at the scale and substance of the nation’s largest open-pit coal mines.
On this walk, I’m also changing a bit the way I share dispatches as I walk. I’m posting more to Instagram than WordPress, as I like the integrated format of a single photo partnered with text. So I’m sharing the #instaessays, as they’re called, here. This is number two of a series.
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Thanks for following along.
A story from the first day walking, posted on my Instagram account…
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About to climb out of the tent and start another day of walking. Sixty degrees and full sun. Meadowlarks calling. Coal trains rolling. But the ground feels so good.
This time last year, I set out on an uncertain project: walking across the Bakken oil field in the prairie of North Dakota. I was searching for stories about how our energy appetite changes people and places so often unseen. I found a lot. I shared some on this blog and elsewhere.
I was hooked on this odyssey: moving close to the earth to consider how we live in the natural world today. So I walked on last August, across the Marcellus Shale country of New York and Pennsylvania. Scroll down for dispatches of encounters and anecdotes on the ground during those first two journeys.
It’s time to walk again. Tomorrow, I head on foot into the coal country of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. The 12 mines here produce 40 percent of the coal in America.
Here is a coal train headed to market yesterday afternoon.
I arrived in Wyoming two days ago and have been sorting my route as I wait out weather that shifts between sun and rain. This is the sky one hour after the coal train rolled by.
The forecast has cleared just in time, so stay tuned for updates over the days ahead. I may post less frequently, as coverage is spotty. But I’ll catch up when back, if needed.
Thanks for reading.
It’s getting into autumn in New England, and I’ve been spending a lot of time lately revisiting my walk last May through the Bakken oil field in the prairie of North Dakota. I kept a lot of notes, but also took photos and audio of things encountered along the way. I’ve been writing these past days about a Saturday morning spent with several local families who had gathered to brand more than 300 calves. Listen in as the cowboys separated cows from calves early that morning.
The oil field has settled over this land of ranching and farming, bringing new sounds. There is relatively little pipeline infrastructure in McKenzie County, so natural gas that comes up with oil from the wells is flared off. Hundreds such flares light the night sky and burn in the bright of day.
I also had a chance this summer to sit down and talk about the North Dakota walk with Virginia Prescott, host of NHPR’s Word of Mouth program. You can listen to that conversation over at Word of Mouth.