Landscape 1 - The Omaha Walk
Approximately 70 miles, 3 days, 2 nights and some tired feet
Some reflections on the Omaha Walk
Part One - Introduction
I have been wondering what this place is that we call the city. Is there a connection between the idea of city and the idea of community? If so, where is that intersection? I have been spending so much time on my computer for work lately and then driving to so many places that are so far apart for meetings and classes and meals and a thousand other things. It makes me sad when these things begin to take up the majority of my time. I needed to step away from these patterns for a few days. I am a sensory/sensual person. I needed to try to get back in touch with my body traveling through space of its own accord. I also needed to try to find a deeper connection to our landscape, to this place that I call home. As always happens when making art, something bigger moves in and takes over if you let it.
On the walk most of the places that I moved slowly through were places that I had never been to or seen, or perhaps only once or twice very briefly as I drove quickly past inside my car. I saw so many beautiful things. I saw wild things. I saw death. I saw old life and new life. The landscape is indeed rolling, from the river all the way up to the hills above the Platte River valley, and it keeps extending out in every direction.
Emerging Terrain. Anne Trumble left me several intense messages about how hard they have been working to bring out the idea of the city as a region. It caused them consternation that I picked the city limits as demarcated by the city government as a guide for my walk. She explained a bit about how, if the city is thought of and designed as a region sustainability might be possible. Nick Rebeck was kind enough to come out and walk with me for the most western portion of the walk. (At one point we just stopped and looked through the trees out over the huge valley of the Platte.) He spoke eloquently about their work with Shifting Thresholds which explores this idea of city as a region very deeply and in many different ways. I highly recommend following their work in this area. emergingterrain.org or on their FaceBook page.
Tonight I am suffering from the depression that always comes when a very intense project ends. For a period of time the life created by the project makes everything so very intense and suddenly it comes to a stop. My feet are healing slowly and I am not walking like a sore rodeo clown quite as badly today. Something in me has been moved and it doesn’t seem like it will move back into its old place. I found a lot of peace just walking for hours. I think I will be doing much more of that.
Part 2 - The Three
The best idea that I had with this whole project was to ask Doug Hayko, Jaim Hackbart and Tim Guthrie if they would help me in whatever way they felt they could. I can say without any hesitation that the walk would have never lasted through a single day if it was not for their help and support. These three artists have a deeply generous impulse and are all filled with wild imagination and energy. These three and the energy they brought to the walk was one of the best aspects to the whole project for me. The experience of community was so strong with them. A rare, talented, loving group of people.
Friday - Day 1
I woke at 4:30 am. Too excited. I really had no idea how this would go or what I was doing. I could only rely on Doug, Tim, and Jaim to tell me if I was doing something crazy that they would tell me and also on the fact that, at the base of it, all I had to do was walk, and I had learned how to do that a long time ago. The start at the Main Library was small with Bunny Sparber and Coco Mault joining us to record the beginning of the walk for their podcast “Omaha Party”. So, off we traipsed with Tim running ahead to get footage then, as we walked by, he would pick up the camera and run ahead like a madman again to get another approaching shot. (A side note here - Tim is a true film maker. This guy would not stop. He would stand in traffic to get a shot. He shot Doug and I walking in pitch dark for two hours because it might yield a good shot. He is a bit crazy. A filmmaker.) So immediately there were great shifts occurring in the areas that we walked through. From the empty Central Park Mall with coffin like depression, to Con Agra’s manicured corporate drive, to the back streets of what was once Little Italy and down into the old industrial warehouses along the river where the streets go as low as 2nd Street. I had been looking at the route as closely as possible through Google Earth in satellite mode and the little area that it seemed like we might be able to jump up onto the levee without getting stopped or arrested was very dubious as we approached. I told Tim, “If anyone asks, just tell them we’re doing a project for the city”. It was true in its own way. To all of our great surprise we were able to pass through this narrow dirt road that seemed to be on some ancient warehouse business’ land and suddenly we were up on the levee and we were all jubilant, like we had gotten away with something naughty. Up on the levee we were all amazed by the immense amount of land and forest that lies just south of downtown. It really is a large, beautiful swath of land that goes from the fast flowing waters of the river all the way up to the top of the forest covered bluffs. It goes on for quite a ways. It was like discovering a secret land in a new version of The Hobbit. The river is wide and very mighty there. The rising sun was casting a bright path across its body and I think we were all amazed at the wilderness our surroundings when just moments before we had been walking through tiny sagging wooden houses and cookie cutter new ones.
More reflections on The Omaha Walk - Day One
Passing under I-80 on the levee south of downtown on the first morning was a bit awe striking. It really is a monumental structure and the unearthly sounds of the hidden traffic passing over head were straight out of a science fiction novel. They’ve just finished expanding that bridge and it is a very large amount of lanes now - a whole elevated concrete world of its own. It must have cost millions to make it all. So, suddenly, after walking through the green forested area we are overwhelmed with the giant concrete and steel bridge. It’s just about at that point too that the industry begins to kick in. Strange warehouses and factories. There is an animal feed business that had big oil refinery looking towers and smelled of something like molasses gone bad. There were refineries of some kind or another, trucking/shipping businesses, and a whole lot of train tracks heading south down the river. Bunny and Coco turned back just after passing I-80 with hugs and well wishes, and Tim ended up disembarking once we got to the 275/Missouri Avenue Bridge. I attempted to continue on the levee, but was brought short by the city’s waste treatment plant, which seemed to have a barbed wire fence all the way down to the river. (As a side note - I have seen projects like this one in Arcata, CA
http://www.humboldt.edu/arcatamarsh/
where a system of marshes help to treat the wastewater and reduce the strain on the environment while also created a beautiful system of wildlife marshes and parkland. I must admit I wondered about this along our river.) So, I had hit my first roadblock on the trip. I reversed direction back to 275 and climbed the hill up to 13th Street and began walking south. Cars were moving very fast here as this is one of the main feeder streets into the city and serves almost as a mini highway. This is where I came across the dead raccoon. The first of many dead animals I would see on the journey. Once I reached Y Street I cut up into the neighborhood heading west for Gilmore Avenue, which was the only place it seemed that I would be able to get under I-75 on foot and connect up with Harrison Street. As I walked through this neighborhood I spotted several memorials to people in the front yards of different houses. There was a sign saying, “Stop The Violence!” in spanish. I noticed a fair amount of tagging on the signs and fences in the area. There were also a number of empty or abandoned houses, but mostly what I noticed were small houses that were well kept up. They gave off the energy of families and people who were working hard together to make a good life possible for each other.
Eventually I found my way to the beginning of Harrison Street which I was surprised to discover is dirt for the first few blocks from 21st through 25th Streets. I wondered, as I began walking, how different the street would look when I reached my destination of 168th and Harrison much later in the day.
By the time I reached 28th and Harrison it was already around lunchtime. Walking south along the river and then getting up to Harrison had taken longer than I had thought. I sat down in McKinley Park and took out my little sack lunch of a turkey sandwich, yogurt, and fig bars. Doug Hayko joined me there and I was so happy for a bit of company.
After a short break I began walking west again on Harrison. The houses were relatively small here and appeared to be from the first half of the 20th century. There were sidewalks on both sides of the street here and I wondered if that was because this neighborhood had been built during a time when people walked a lot more. I can remember taking a walk almost every night with my dad when I was growing up and everyone being outside in their yards working on projects or playing in the evenings.
As I started to move into the forties Streets the architecture began to change and become more modern. Chain stores began to occasionally pop up. I did wonder about this city limit border - one one side of the street it is one city and on the other it is another. Could you rob a bank on the Omaha side and quickly cross the street and be safe from arrest when the police came? How was this line decided? What are the politics involved? I’m sure there are some very passionate people with differing opinions. It harkens back to what Anne Trumble pointed to in her email; that Sarpy County is perhaps the major key to sustainability for the city’s future so we need to think beyond these political demarcations as we create the future of the city.
I stopped briefly to take a photo of the old Shamrock Bar sign and a white pick up zooms in and a smiling Jay Rybin jumps out and gives me a hug. We chat for a bit and it’s a great boost to know that he is following the progress with interest and just to feel his support.
I continue pressing on to the west, feeling like I am behind schedule with around a hundred blocks left and the afternoon flowing quickly by. Out by 60th Street I see a corn field being plowed under. This was the first of many cornfields that I would see surrounded by housing developments. Once I pass Seymour Smith Park the feel of everything begins to change to a much more isolated contemporary deal. The layouts of the houses are more subdivisions with high fences fronting the street rather than houses back down south where they line the street and people sit on their porches and wave as you walk by. I start to feel a strange sense of isolation as a walker now. As if I’m someone odd and not in the right place where in the southern blocks of Harrison I was just another person walking. The street has widened, too. Traffic seems to be moving much faster, as if everyone has long distances to go and they are all a bit late getting there. It’s a distinctly different feel.
Final Reflections of The Omaha Walk - Day One
The first half of afternoon on day one unfolded in a solitary way. I walked the long stretches of sidewalk along Harrison and watched the changes of landscape and architecture pass by. It was almost like moving through some kind of slow time machine from east to west. There is a rhythm that develops, too. The loping steps coming, one after the other without cease, for hour after hour as the cars blast by and the wind rushing past without cease. The solitude of this time is deeply restful to me. Moving at the pace that my feet can carry me and feeling all the muscles of my body working so lightly and in synch, measuring time by the next hill, the next valley - a peace overtakes me. Life becomes as simple as sky, earth, water, body, journey, landscape. In the late afternoon I cross a street and suddenly notice David Hedman standing on the other side with a camera poised on an electrical box. He takes a few shots and then looks up and smiles. David is my first visitor to come out and walk with me since this morning and it surprising and wonderful to see him. He begins to walk with me a we talk about the project and Omaha and walking and life in these times as it relates to time and our bodies. Its so lovely to converse with someone while walking. It allows all of the relaxation and meditative aspects just mentioned infiltrate the energy of the conversation. Soon, we are joined by Jaim and Tim and we sit down for a few minutes on the hill of of the golf course at 96th Street. Tim takes out his camera and discovers that he has an uncharged battery so he decides to head back home to try to correct the situation. David and Jaim begin a dance with cars where one will drive ahead while the other walks with me and takes photos and talks and then drives the other person back to their car after a while and so on. This brings up an interesting aspect of the project and a question that I always struggle with in terms of balance when making art - the public aspect, specifically as it pertains to the digital. How much of this experience should I share? How much is too much? When does the energy put into digitizing the experience begin to overshadow the actual work itself? With this project I knew from the beginning that I wanted to share as much as was reasonably possible for people to experience digitally if they wanted. As it turns out, many people followed the check ins and the photos that were posted along the way. There did seem to be a sense of community in all the responses and there were many moving, interesting and funny outcomes from this. One friend wrote me and said that years and years ago he had walked to and from work everyday. The Omaha Walk had reminded him of this and he remembered it as one of the most vibrant times of his life. He can’t remember why he stopped. He said that he was going to start walking again on Monday. I am looking forward to hearing how it goes for him.
Soon we find ourselves approaching I-80. This would be the second time in the day I would cross this great road that carries so many people and products across the country. David says goodbye to us after spending an hour plus walking and photographing and driving. His quiet kind energy has been a huge boon at this point in the day when I am realizing that I may have the start of a blister/pain problem with my feet. Jaim and I head out onto the overpass of I-80 and she tells me that an old friend, Paul Ranney, is heading over to walk with me for a bit. Once we get out onto the overpass it is amazing to realize that we have to shout to each other to be heard because the noise of the traffic racing below is roaring loud and non-stop. The wind is blowing hard up there, too. I wonder about that phenomenon - is this simply a factor of the wide corridor that is created by the highway, or does the traffic actually contribute somehow? Either way, it is a powerful experience to stand directly over this major road and feel the passage of so many people flying underneath your feet. Where are they all going, I wonder? Some are from Omaha or the outlying communities, but some are truckers headed to LA or New York loaded with cargo for this business or that. Some are trucks filled with cattle who know not where they are headed and have never been in a moving vehicle in their lives - or there is the young couple in the van who are transporting twenty-five pounds of weed to a friend in Chicago and if they make it safely they plan to use their cash to go to Turkey where they can smoke hash, drink Turkish coffee and write in the cafes all day - the elderly woman being driven by her grandson to the funeral of a friend whom she hasn’t seen in forty years since they laid together and kissed each other one late afternoon in the 1970’s.
Paul joins me as we reach the west side of the interstate and Jaim drives ahead. I have not seen or spoken to Paul in years and we drop straight into a beautiful long conversation to catch up as I push on walking at a good clip, hoping that I might still be able to make my goal before nightfall. My legs are sore and aching now and the balls of my feet have started to burn with a distinct, strong pain that alarms me if I let myself think about it. Paul begins to catch me up on his life and we quickly open to a place of intimacy of detail that is perhaps an aspect of walking together with someone else, and maybe it also is affected by the nature of the project, too. It seems that people’s sense of community and sharing rises to the surface easily if there is a goodwill effort made to reach out. Hopefully this is the greater motivation behind sharing these projects with others (the lessor always being self promotion, etc).
Paul and Jaim stay with me for the rest of the walk that day. This energy of support creates the will to deflect the pain that I am now feeling intensely not only in my feet, but also in my legs. I have never walked for nine, ten, twelve hours with barely a rest before. It is a very specific kind of challenge to the body to do this continuous, all day exercise. As we get down to the final miles it becomes work to focus on the conversation with Paul and not on the pain and exhaustion that is radiating through my body. The sun is starting approach the western line of the earth and Tim and Doug join us once again. I will be sleeping in the backyard of Doug’s sister's family in a subdivision off of Harrison and 168th Street. I begin counting the blocks and they seem to be going very slowly now. “If I can just make it to 150th, 160th, 168th . . .” I keep thinking. Once we make to 168th we enter into a subdivision and I only have a short half mile or so left. Paul is with me and I know he knows that I am I pain. He keeps talking steadily and slowly we make our way to the Hartmann’s house. Chad Hartman is there and he is so welcoming, kind, helpful and interested. I end up standing for a half hour talking to him about the project while my body is crumbling inside. Finally, I set up my tent and get ready for a night of sleep. As it turns out, Scary Acres if just over the hill and so I am warned that I will hear screams and chains saws late into the night. They weren’t kidding. Doug, Chad, Tim and Paul all say goodnight. The temperature is dropping fast. By the morning it is predicted to be in the low forties. I pull on my long underwear, a fleece jacket, wool socks and my thick stocking cap and slide into my sleeping bag. I take advantage of technology to call my partner, Jenny, who is enjoying a lovely seventy five degree night in Las Vegas and we talk until I can stay awake no longer. I am not sure how I will be able to get going tomorrow with the depth of pain and exhaustion that I feel tonight. I have asked Doug to bring some mole skin in the morning and I am hoping that will hold back the damage that has begun on my feet, but now it is time to sleep and not worry about that. I lie back and listen to the chain saws and screams echo over the neighborhood and slowly I fall into a deep cold sleep.
Omaha Walk - Day Two and Three Impressions
I must apologize for the delay in posting these impressions. A business trip took over my time for the last week and like so many other reasons that seem to present themselves for diffusion in our world each day I had to set this journal aside. This was one of the great privileges of the walk - I could just focus on one thing, one simple, straightforward, physical thing . . . walking.
Day two started out cold. I think the temperature came in at around 44 degrees when I woke up. I had long underwear, pants, wool socks, a long sleeve undershirt a sweater and a jacket on as well as a neck warmer and a think wool stocking cap. I woke up hoping that the extreme tenderness on the pads of my feet had subsided a bit over night. I texted Doug and Tim to let them know that I was up and going to be moving soon, then shut my eyes for a few more minutes. Not much was comfortable about the morning. When Tim and Doug arrived they stood off in the sun while I packed the equipment away because the cold in the shade quickly froze the fingers. After performing surgery on my feet with two strips of mole skin in the cold air and eating a breakfast of several handfuls of granola and a small bottle of kefir I started off on my way into what would turn out to be one of the hardest days.
Walking back out of the Hartmann’s subdivision I noticed that there was a fair amount of active new construction going on. Crews actually out on the sites building. It made me feel hopeful in a way onto to just see empty lots, abandoned streets in the middle of fields, or houses boarded up. This area is distinctly a part of the city where there can be rows and rows of houses that are suddenly backed by acres of corn fields and an old farm house looking down over it all from a hill which seems like a vision straight out of the past. Of course, many of those fields had for sale signs on them, perhaps queuing up to be the next subdivision of houses.
The next stretch of Harrison, from 168th to 192nd, felt cold, windy and a bit impersonal. The housing projects just seemed to be floating out there in the fields and hills. Tim was running ahead with the car to get footage so thankfully, I did not feel too alone.
When I turned north onto 192nd Street I had a long stretch of walking that was just high speed roadway banked by tall white plastic fences that tried to create a sound and sightline break from the street for the houses on the other side. These fences sort of create a gated community feel for each subdivision, all of which had there own specific names. At one point I stood at an intersection and each of the four corners had a little landscaped wall announcing the name of a different subdivision. As I was walking past all of these houses, I noticed that many of them only had one small window on the entire back side of the house. Many had yards that were empty of trees or gardens or lawn chairs or any sign that they were used at all. Suddenly a very large sadness began to overtake me. I think I was remembering back to the loneliness and isolation that I had felt growing up in my own neighborhood in Minnesota. Somehow, despite all starting as a community when everyone moved in in the early 60’s, all the families drifted apart as children became teenagers and the larger struggles of family life began to manifest in so many ways. I can remember feeling profoundly lonely at that time in that neighborhood and in my family. For some reason, the vision of these subdivision houses, all with their shades of beige, brought these feelings back up for me.
Eventually, we made our way to Whitehawk Park and the lake. I took advantage of the porta potty at the lake and also took a short break to sit by the water for a moment and rest my aching feet and legs and eat an apple. Although the lake did have a fair number of waterfowl on it it also struck me as very strange. For most of the circumference of the lake there are absolutely no trees or shrubs or bushes. Just very rough mowed weed grass. The whole start of this morning had seemed a bit cold and alien to me and so it was a great pleasure when Angie Heim texted and joined up to walk with me on the north side of the lake. This was also interesting timing because it was quite possibly the most inhospitable stretch of the entire walk. There were no sidewalks and in many spots very little shoulder to walk on. The traffic was so heavy and moving so fast that we had to raise our voices a bit in several places. Still, it was great to have the company and Angie’s positive energy helped to bolster mine. Once we made it to West Center Road and began walking west again it became ver apparent that there was no thought whatsoever for humans to be walking or biking. This was basically a stark, divided highway of sorts and traffic boomed by us at high speeds. Angie was kind enough to walk on the uneven grass as I took the edge of the road. This was easier on my feet, which even with the mole skin were beginning to really hurt. Our conversation moved from walking and community to theatre and landscape. Angie stayed with me all the way up to the intersection at 204th Street and then she turned back around to make the hike back to her car. Her visit meant a great deal to me, as did everyone who came out to share the experience and lend their support.
When I turned into 204th I was shocked at the volume of traffic. This is a four lane divided highway type of set up and it really feels a bit like an interstate, including the extremely loud sound of the passing cars. The cars were definitely going at highway speeds and there was so much of it. Where the hell were they all going? Was this a secret back way to the NU Football game? Walking that stretch was perhaps the most inhumane part of the entire walk. It was quite a surprise then when Nick Rebeck and his wife Sarah pulled up on the shoulder and hopped out. It was great to see their smiling faces and Nick joined me for the next section of the walk while Sarah ran some errands. Luckily Nick and I didn’t have too much farther to go on 204th before turning west on Pacific Street. Suddenly the entire environment changed drastically and for the better. The road was an old two-laner, and although there were no sidewalks it was easily walkable because there was so little traffic. There were some nice stands of trees and the whole thing felt much more human and much less like the Mad Max highway of 204th. As we walked we started to talk about the land and about how things were laid out a long time ago for farming uses and how the thinking had not really changed much. He spoke of all the hard work that they are doing at Emerging Terrain to try to look at these issues and see the land and its development with a much deeper understanding of past, present and future. (Again, I would really encourage you to follow their amazing work at emergingterrain.org)
While we were having this interesting talk we also saw some very interesting sights - one of them being a subdivision that seemed to be designed for people who also wanted to keep a horse stabled by their home so that they could ride an time. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a subdivision of really giant homes popped up. We both really marveled at the size of these places. A family of four might never be able to find ech other inside one of these homes. Finally, we made it to the end of Pacific and turned north on Skyline Drive. I had never been out this far and had no idea why it was so named, but it wasn’t long before we both stopped to look out across the entire Platte River Valley. It is quite a vista from up there. Nick walked with me for a little way more along Skyline. His quiet, positive energy was hugely helpful and when Sarah swung back by to pick him up her bright smile and hug was also a great boost. After they left it was close to 1 pm and Jaim called and was on her was with a bag lunch. I was very ready to sit down for a break, drink a lot of water and get some nutrition in my body. The day was going quickly and it still felt like I had a long way to go. Still, it had warmed up and the mole skin was allowing me to keep walking and despite a very sore set of feet and legs, things were going pretty well.
After Nick and Sarah left I walked for a very short while before Jaim arrived with some food and a lot of great energy. We were on a long curving stretch of Skyline Drive so we just decided to eat along a wide stretch of the shoulder. Jaim even had a blanket with her to spread out and sit on. I had discovered late on the first day that stopping was actually the hardest part of the walk in terms of pain and possible injury. As long as I was moving the pain and stiffness were kept at bay, but once I stopped these things would rush in and overtake me. By this point, on day two, I was probably forty miles into the walk and I had to be careful and move slowly to avoid an injury as I sat down on the blanket. Although the night had been very cold the day had warmed into the high seventies and I had been out for many hours in the sun. I applied some sunscreen and began to eat as Jaim practiced her art, taking photos and asking questions. Jaim has the great quality of curiosity combined with compassion that is heralded in the Buddhist traditions and also helps to make a strong artist. We sat in the hot sun and shared the conversation of two people stopped in a strange place in the midst of a strange pilgrimage. What a beautiful moment in time that was - so far out on the edge of the long Platte River valley. I experienced so many moments like this with Jaim, Tim and Doug over the three day journey.
After eating a bit of a sandwich and drinking some water I slowly made my way back up onto my feet. I was hobbling a bit as I rose and began walking again, but I tried to hide it as best I could. Jaim drove ahead to take some photos as walked down the long hill toward Dodge Street and crossed over to the north side of the city for the first time in the journey. The overpass over Dodge was windy and harsh. Cars raced out into the valley which was immense and opened wide below me. On the other side, to my great surprise, there was a pedestrian walkway and a bike path. As I climbed the long hill to the north I began to pass one subdivision after another, some with the white border fences, some still being built. By the end of day two I think I may have seen as many as forty or more different subdivisions. It’s a strange name for these places. Really they are neighborhoods and I imagine that each one has its own unique character, with the residents making as much or as little community and life as they have the ability to. I know that many of them are very warm communities where families share friendship and celebrate life and help each other as hey raise their families. Others may be somewhat isolated.
Soon I began to make my way down a long hill moving through some border farmlands that leaned out toward the west. Jaim broke off to get some photos of landscapes that had caught her eye, and I became a bit lost as the paper maps that I was carrying had some gaps in them around this area. It was at this point that I noticed that my ability to think clearly was a bit inhibited from exhaustion. I had run marathons before so I knew what was happening, but in a way this was a more intense and taxing experience than a marathon which was one four hour stint as compared to three days, ten to twelve hours a day of walking, and in essence traveling a marathon distance each day. I knew that I needed to acknowledge the slight panicky feelings that began to come up in the back of my mind as I was lost and gently move toward relaxing and taking my time. I stopped, drank some water and had a bite of an energy bar. Soon I was able to see that I was close to the southern edge of Elkhorn and so I began heading toward Main Street.
Crossing over the railroad tracks into downtown Elkhorn and seeing the old grain elevator looked like a scene from the first half of the 1900’s and made me think of the early days here. As I worked my way up the hill of Main Street a large wedding party of young people were taking photos and celebrating with whoops and hollers and raunchy jokes about the honeymoon night. It was a bit surreal to suddenly be in the midst of this group. Just as quickly as they had come they disappeared. As I climbed further up through town (at that point it felt like a steep and long climb) the town seemed to be almost completely deserted. It was a strange sensation because I also had the feeling that I had stepped back in time to the 1940’s or 50’s with all the older businesses and houses, and I was the only one out walking. Where was everyone? This was Saturday afternoon. Then I began to hear it - through screen windows and from radios inside open garages where people were sitting with beers and barbecues going - the Huskers game was underway. It seemed as if everyone was listening to or watching the game somewhere and the streets were virtually empty. Suddenly it felt like an older, simpler time. There was something beautiful about thinking back to the times when there were no computers or cell phones. Little did I know I was about to experience one of the most dramatic shifts of the entire trip. As I stepped out of Elkhorn onto West Maple Drive it was like stepping through a time portal and moving from 1950’s America into the 21st Century in one shocking jolt. I turned out onto the four lane highway of West Maple at 204th Street and began what was to be one of the most challenging and revealing stretches of the walk.
Coming out of Elkhorn onto West Maple I was hit with a stiff wind and the sun was at full strength. I was disconcerted to note that the sun was moving into that high afternoon angle and I knew that I still had a very long way yet to walk that day. The Maple Street stretch would be five miles long. It sounds easy enough, but I had already walked eleven miles that day with only a few very brief stops and I had logged twenty miles the day before so I was really feeling the miles. I tried to pick up my pace a bit to make some time, but the uneven terrain of dirt and grass set the weight of each step at a different angle and significantly increased the pain from blisters that were beginning to form on the balls of my feet.
West Maple, at that point, is four lane divided road with stop lights being very few and far between. I crossed over to walk against traffic, as I was taught to do for safety, and the road is about 100 feet wide from one side to the other. There are no sidewalks there. No landscaping. There is nothing whatsoever in consideration of the walker or the biker even though there are houses all along the south side of the road, and just a few blocks back in old world Elkhorn there was a side walk on almost every side of every street. What a different mentality had taken ahold. Was it economics? Had the car become so dominant that we no longer even thought about these other forms of transportation? Had our sense of community fragmented so much with technological “improvements” which also function as factors that keep us evermore isolated that we began to leave considerations of our bodies and the earth behind? The next five miles of Maple would allow me to ponder these questions deeply. I was feeling a somewhat depressed by this change of scenery when Jaim joined me with her abundant energy and her camera. She instantly picked up my spirits, as did the fact that I had started the eastward portion of my journey - slowly making my way back down toward the river. Here’s a survey of what I saw along this stretch of Maple:
Walgreens
9 Banks
3 Churches
Harley Davidson Store
Sherwin Williams Paint Store
Walmart
Panda Express
Pet Smart
Runes
Taco Bell
Urgent Care Omaha
McDonald’s
Hair Salon
Fitness Place
American Nail and Spa (Not European apparently)
Total Sass-Y-faction Salon
AAA Travel
2 Starbucks
Max I Walker
Fuddruckers
The UPS Store
All Care Dental
Lighthouse Bar and Grill
Tom Rivera
Domino’s Pizza
Russell Speeder’s Car Wash
Jensen Tire and Auto
Centris Federal Credit Union
NuTrend Dry Cleaners
China Buffet
Donut Professor
Chipotle Mexican Grill
Rode Court Floral Gifts
Verizon Wireless
Jiffy Lube
Sonic
Buffalo Wild Wings Grill and Bar
Carrabba’s Italian Grill
CVS Pharmacy
Massage Heights
Red Robin Gourmet Burgers
20 Grand Cinema
Sprint Store
Lowe’s
Great Clips
Target
Hy-Vee
Godfather’s Pizza
. . . and many subdivisions with one mile wide swath of farmland still running through the middle of it all at around 185th Street.
Each subdivision was laid out on about one square mile of land and bounded by roads that fed into the main thoroughfare of West Maple. At one point, Jaim and I came across the entrance to one of these subdivisions that had built a very large fake waterfall and stream at its entrance. They had gone to great expense to make it seem almost as if you were deep in the northern woods with water tumbling between a chain of lakes. There were pines and Paper Birch planted thickly around. I immediately had to climb up on the falls for a photo op. Once Jaim had snapped a few shots I noticed that the name of the subdivision was Indian Creek and that there was a life size statue of a Native American man, in historic Native dress, kneeling at the edge of the fake water and looking up toward the sign for the housing project. This immediately made me feel sad. Unless the Ponca and Omaha Tribes had given permission to the developers to use the their image, culture and history to sell their houses I don’t feel that it’s right for a business to so deeply appropriate these sacred things to make money. We walked on. Soon Doug appeared at the top of a hill. He helped me get fresh water and drove Jaim back to her car. He said he would join me at 144th were I would turn north once again. So I walked the remaining miles of West Maple alone, listening to the cars booming by so loud and fast and seeing all the chain stores pass by. That stretch of the walk felt long and difficult. I was also hungry, tired, and constantly thirsty (and sipping water) at this point. The hills are long and rolling out there, and it seemed to take forever to travel from 204th to 144th. Still, I was moving at the rhythm of my own body. The sun shone down and warmed my face and arms. The walking created a sort of internal rhythm that was like a mantra and brought me a kind of peace which was the complete opposite of the pain that I was feeling simultaneously. I saw one group of three teenagers on bikes in the distance, and there was one young man who walked by me, which seemed miraculous at the time - that there would be somebody out there besides me. I smiled and said hello as we passed, but he kept his eyes steadfastly trained on the ground. I would guess that my windblown, sunburned, limping, long-haired, back pack carrying appearance may have prompted that reaction from him. It really is an inhospitable stretch of road for anyone not in a car. You feel completely the outlier in that place.
Just as I turned onto 144th Street Doug suddenly appeared from behind and joined me. We started north up a long hill and began a quiet conversation. It was a great relief to get off of Maple and onto the significantly more quiet side street. This would be one of two stretches on this day that Doug would walk with me. At that point I was on mile seventeen and everything was aching. I had pushed for a good pace on Maple and now that we had turned off I slowed down a bit to try to save some energy for the final section of the day. The sun was already starting to head down the arc of the late afternoon sky. There was still around ten miles left in the day. It was very good to have the company.
As we came to the top of that first big hill we could see houses spreading out for miles in every direction. I had seen the same thing for mile after mile after mile throughout the entire day. I was just amazed by the sheer numbers of houses, and more going up each dy. The one thing that I had not noticed anywhere for the entire day was any public transportation. No transit centers anywhere.
After about a mile we dropped down a hill and cut into Standing Bear Lake Park. This is a beautiful lake with walking/biking paths around it and thickly forested places. It was such a lovely change to suddenly come upon a place designed for humans to interact with nature, or at least move through it. Walking along the top of the dam provided a beautiful view and Tim met us on the other side with camera in hand.
North of the park we connected up with Military Road, which is like a mini highway, again, with no sidewalks, and is bounded by farmland with subdivisions mixed in. Doug went up ahead to our ending destination at Cunningham Lake and Tim stayed with me and shot more footage. Tim would run back and forth, stepping out into the road walking backwards until I had to tell him that a car was coming and even then he would shoot for an extra few seconds, counting, I guess, upon the the speeding drivers to know that we are working on a project here so please cut us a break and slow down and don’t kill him. Soon we broke off onto Ida Street (with sidewalks) and headed up a long hill which was lined by the fences of backyards. It was so interesting to see what each family or individual had done with their back yards. Some people clearly used theirs quite heavily and some, it seemed, never stepped foot in them. Some people had created little sculptural gardens or shrines to Big Red. One house had planted several rows of grapes, creating a mini vineyard.
At this point my struggle to hide my pain from the others began to fail. The blistering on my feet had begun to become so painful that I began to try to walk without putting too much weight on the balls of my feet, which gave me a vague bow legged rodeo cowboy sort of walk. The sun was going down now and there was still four to five miles left to go so I knew stopping and trying to reset moleskin was not a good idea. We kept pushing on until we made it out onto Blair High Road (Hwy 133). This is four lane divided highway with a decent size shoulder for us to walk on and the sun disappeared as we turned onto it. The temperature had been slowly dropping from the earlier 60’s headed quickly toward a low in the low 40’s. Each mile now felt like five. When we finally turned onto County Road 17, the last road we had to travel on that night, I had walked about twenty-five miles and was beginning to feel slightly weak/sick with all the muscles in my body aching. Doug joined us there. He walked with me while Tim drove ahead in a car and kept shooting footage even though it was now full on night. Doug has a quiet presence that is filled with an open endedness that has a kind of deep compassion in it. We slowly climbed the hills on 17 and talked quietly. I think he asked once if I wanted to just ride the last few miles, but we were on a roll, a slow roll but a roll and I wanted to stick to my goal of walking the entire way. On either side were farms now with scattered stands of woods. Up ahead and to the south a little in the distance were the red flashing lights of the four TV towers at 72nd Street. We kept those as a marker of where we were headed. When we started up the first hill on 17 they seemed impossibly far away.
Paul Ranney, in an incredible gesture of kindness, had secured a campsite at Cunningham Lake and had called us to let us know that he was there with a fire going and food ready to throw on the fire. After what seemed like several hours we finally turned into the southern end of the park. Tim joined us on foot and the three of us began to walk, in pitch darkness, on a dirt path around the south eastern point of the lake to get to the camp grounds. This was mile twenty seven. Each step on the uneven ground made my feet bleed a little and my back threatened to give out. I began telling dirty jokes to counteract the strain of the situation and Tim and Doug jumped into the game. Finally, we made it back out of the woods and onto the camp site road and slowly made our way down to the camp sites. At the bathroom Tim needed to stop. As Doug and I stood there I began to feel nauseous and thought I might become sick. When we finally pulled up into the camp site there was Paul and his good friend Murph, sitting in chairs around a roaring fire. They had extra chairs, a complete meal ready to go, and a tent the size of a garage set up with a bed already set up for me inside. The kindness of this gesture was overwhelming and felt life saving to me. If I had had to try to find and set up a camp site in the freezing air on the edge of sickness it would have been a very rough night. Without the company and help of everyone that day I never would have been able to make it.
I sat down by the fire in a daze, warmed my frozen hands and ate what little I could with my nausea still plaguing me. Then I begged forgiveness for needing to retire early. Paul walked me to the bathrooms as I was a little wobbly by that point. My feet felt shredded. Inside someone was taking a shower and the warmth of the steam filled room felt so good. Across the campsite, down by the lake, a large group of young men had a 48 inch T.V. set up outside and were watching a football game and drunkenly screaming. Later they started to jump into the lake - a bold move as it was now in the mid thirties and the air was bitingly cold. I struggled to remove my shoes and clothes and slip on long underwear as my body shook in the cold. I decided not to take off my socks and look at my feet. There would be time for all that in the morning. Then I put all my clothes back on including my fleece jacket, scarf and thick wool winter hat, slipped painfully inside my sleeping bag and pulled the thick Mexican blanket that Paul had brought over my body and head. I had very serious concerns about if tomorrow would even be a possibility, but I decided not to think about it at all until I woke tomorrow. Before long I drifted into a deep sleep.
Day Three
There is a collection of poems that is titled “The Soul is Here for its Own Joy.” I always loved that title (and collection). It reminds me that the wildness inside me that doesn’t fit in well to my plans nor the structure of society is really that soulful place. That pain, loneliness and sadness, are as much a natural outgrowth of life as anything else. That the wild river running through my heart and mind belong there and to try to dam them up for whatever purpose is fatal.
The morning of the third day was freezing. I woke to the sounds of someone coughing and choking on vomit. I was in a large tent with a nylon dividing wall zipped up the middle to create two rooms. I was in one and Paul was in the other. I listened for a moment or two feeling quite panicked that Paul was somehow chocking on his own vomit. Just as I was about to call out I heard Paul’s voice call out to his dog. I was very concerned about Paul’s dog but quite relieved that I was not going to be performing mouth to mouth on an unconscious, vomit covered Paul. It was clear from this auspicious beginning that today would be a day of extremes. Paul and his dog left the tent and I lay there under my blanket and let the conscious world slowly start to sink into my mind and body.
As a child I had always felt the strangeness and danger of new situations, i.e. - We’re going to be left with strangers at a place called “school”? I know no one here. What will happen? Will you, my parents ever return to claim me again? Who is in charge? Will I be fed? Will I be hurt? Who are these other kids? Why are you leaving me in a strange land of people with whom I have no connection? Leave me sitting on the shore of a lake and I was fine, but leave me in a strange group of people and I became a nervous wreck. Perhaps this is why I felt some kind of strange energy that allowed me to rise on that bitingly cold morning on day three and very gingerly slip on my shoes and attempt to slowly stand up in the tent. I had walked forty severn miles in the last two days. Every muscle in my body felt the exhaustion and strain of the effort. Slipping on my shoes sent electric shock waves of pain up from my feet into my whole body. “I am not going to make it anywhere today” was the first thought and then I shoved that down and took my first few steps to try to exit the tent and make my way to the bathroom. My body crouched over with the pain from my feet and I stepped as if I was a ninety eight year old man walking on a field of sharp glass. When I emerged from the tent Paul and his dog were gone and Murph was standing by the fire and building it up with small pieces of wood. We said good morning and although he saw my poor condition he did not give away any concern, for which I am deeply grateful to him. He was giving me the room that I needed to see on my own if this final day might be possible. I limped to the bathroom. After peeing in the urinal I went into the one stall to take care of a very specific travel problem to walking long distances. The stall was filthy. Piss and shit splattered on the rim of the toilet. I think some vomit, most likely from the young partying guys last night on the floor. No toilet paper except that which was on the floor, wet and covered in muck. The walls were painted that institutional yellow and there was only fluorescent light and a bit of small sunlight from a tiny window covered with wire mesh and a heavy layer of dirt. This was a lovely vision to start the day. Nevertheless, I needed to be here, with my sheets of toilet paper that I had brought with me in my pack. The reason was not what you would first guess - to take a morning crap. No. Yesterday (day two), about halfway through the walk, I had begun to feel a burning sensation between my ass cheeks from all of the sweat and walking that I had been doing. It built in intensity during the day until it became one of the key players in the little symphony of pains that I was experiencing on the walk. I folded the toilet paper, dropped my pants and long johns, bent over and wet the paper in what I hoped was clean water, and wiped in between my ass. It stung like the dickens, but I did this several times over. I then took some arnica cream from my pocket, spread it on a fresh fold of tissue and wiped in between my ass. It’s lots of details to write about, but don’t they say god is in the details? So, the start of the day involved vomit, extreme pain and wiping a burning ass clean. I came out of the stall and there was an elderly man wearing just a pair of old pants and an old, stained muscle tee. He was shaving at the mirror - the sinks as dirty as the stall had been. Steam was rising from the water. He moved over to the other sink and said, “There’s hot water there. There you go.” and I said thank you, but I’m good. I washed my hands and brushed my teeth, amazed at this elderly man standing in next to nothing in the thirty four degree air and shaving. Not that this was this man’s situation, but camp grounds are becoming more and more places where people who are without homes are surviving while looking for work. I saw it all over as I camped through the west this summer. A sign of the times. The growing population of people who are living in poverty.
As I hobbled back to the campsite I realized I was in bad shape. Back at the tent I swallowed a pain killer and hoped for the best. Aside from my feet my body was very depleted. I had not been able to eat much because of the slight nausea and my muscles and bones were weak. I slowly packed up for the day, took off my long underwear, and hobbled out to the fire. Before long Jaim, Tim and Doug arrived. The campsite was still fairly quiet and Tim shot some footage of me preparing for the day. The first order of business was to assess my feet. As I peeled off my socks the pain was sharp. The next step would not be fun. I had to peel off the mole skin from yesterday. I could see that it had slid down the sole of my foot at some point and so the edge of the mole skin had actually been cutting into the area on the balls of my feet that was blistering. As I pulled the moleskin away, the adhesive pulled on the blisters and pain shot into my stomach. Doug had brought some scissors and I cut two new pads of mole skin, making them much longer so that they would hopefully not slide away today. Looking at the blisters I could see that they had to popped or I would not be able to walk. The only pointy object that we could find was a wooden toothpick from Paul’s truck so that was what would have to do. As I dug deep into the rubbery thick skin Tim aimed the camera at my feet. Orange liquid ran from the wounds and, quite oddly, it was a relief to see it. Tim was ecstatic at the gruesome shot he got. I loved that. Jaim had brought some special juice for me to give me strength. I drank some of that and after a bit of talk and preparations and some deep hugs of thanks to Paul and Murph, I started off on the road back out of the campsite. Before I had hardly gotten out of the campsites Angie Heim texted me and said that she was just outside the park and waiting to join me. I hobbled along in the early morning sunshine with Tim filming me from a car moving just ahead. The pain pills had kicked in and now that I was moving at a regular pace the pain was tolerable. The woods along the road were beautiful and I began to feel, for the first time, some hope for the possibility of making the day.
Angie joined me as we turned out onto Rainwood Road. Angie’s energy was like a lush autumn wind blowing in through the windows of my exhaustion and we started into a lovely conversation. I cannot convey how much this helped to forget the pain, or at least push it into the background a little. As we headed away from the park, crossing over 72nd Street on Rainwood, we entered a section of land that contained rolling, wooded hills that are comparable to any lush wooded land in the world. We both marveled at the beauty of this land as the morning sun lifted its way up across the land. Omaha is truly a place of vast diversity in so many ways and I would learn this profoundly as this day progressed. The landscape reminded me of the countrysides of Van Gogh or even of the land that I had seen on train rides through the eastern regions of France. Angie spoke of how she connected to the idea community with this project, her desire to give energy to that part of her life, and her hope that others would also grow toward strengthening community, too.
Once we left Rainwood and made our way onto McKinley Street the landscape and environment changed from the deep, beautiful rolling hills to a bit more industrial - from two lane back country to four lane divided once we crossed under 680 with its gargantuan bridge structure. Slowly we made our way down to the river, detouring briefly to walk through the Farmers Market at the Old Mill Museum in Florence. It was so strange to suddenly see so many people moving through the social world. I had been fairly isolated from people for days now. It felt nice to see it, to pass through it, and to keep moving back into the zen like zone of walking and talking. Angie stayed with me long beyond when she had thought she would turn back. It was a great kindness on her part. When we approached a large hill would sort of wince with concern. We talked and talked with our conversation roaming across all areas of life and as easily covering philosophical perspectives as which aches and pains our bodies were feeling. Once we made it to the river we had the great joy of jumping on the walking/biking trail beneath OPPD’s plants. Tim and Beth and their dog Gozer joined us there and we all made our way along the river. The trail was heavily wooded and gave marvelous views of the water. It wasn’t until a little after we made it to the river that I realized that it was actually a big milestone in my journey that I had made it back down to the river after three days of walking.
Before long Tim, Beth and Gozer headed back to their car and Angie and I continued onward past all of the city utilities that line the northern river. Interestingly, there was another sanitation plant processing more poop from the residents of the northern half of the city - just like the one I had seen on the southern edge of the river two days earlier. Then we came across the power plant and were both completely blown away by the size of the mountains of coal that are piled up outside the plant waiting to be burned. I wondered how quickly we would burn through those giant mountains: a season, a month, a week? As we walked past we saw a little league baseball field right at the base of the gates. It made me a bit uneasy to think of kids spending large amounts of time so close to the toxicity of the coal and the plant. The breadth of the utilities gathered on this northern edge of the city is pretty profound. It gives one pause to walk past all of them, water, sewage, power, and see their size and the amount of energy that they take and give.
Shortly after we passed the coal plant the path turned east and shot straight down to the river. By this time Angie and I had walked about eight miles. My pain was staying at a steady level that seemed manageable as long as we did not stop walking. Angie had started to experience some aches too and we made our way out into one of the most strange cityscapes I have experienced in Omaha as the walking path came right up on top of the levee along the river and headed south. West of the levee is a flatland that must have been river flood plain before the levee and dam systems came in. Now it is a little industrial universe unto itself. There are giant warehouses from different eras and in so many different styles of construction, but many of them seem to be ancient and half tumbling to the ground, but still somehow in use. Because it was Sunday we didn’t see a single soul in all of these industrial places that spread out almost as far as the eye could see. There’s a lonely desolation to this type of landscape. Meanwhile, on the river side of the path, were docks with rusted, crumbling equipment like old steam shovels and augers from the 1930’s that were slowly sinking into the river. As we walked along this area I don’t think we saw another human being the whole way. This was the peak of the day too, so the sun was hitting us hard and we shared a single bottle of water to try to slake the thirst that gripped us both. I had a few energy bars and we ate those to stave of the hunger of walking for the entire first half of the day without cease. Time began to stretch out here. My pain began to slowly rise like a tide and along with thirst and hunger a slight disorientation began to take hold. There are stretches of the river here where you can look downstream as far as the eye can see and not spot any buildings of signs of humanity so my mind began to wander back to the days when Lewis and Clark rowed past here. Could it have looked that different to them then what we seeing today? A strange sort of time travel began to seep into my weakened mind - jumping from the present where I could see the distant skyline of downtown in the southwest, to the fifties industries in the north that were lined up along the river, to the ghost structures of the 1930’s, like metal giants rusting away into memories, to the beginning of the century over 200 years ago to the southward bending river, where men paddled by in canoes and looked up at the two strange people from the future walking along the bank of the river.
I could feel Angie’s strain now as well as my own and so it was wonderful when Jaim texted that she was by the airport and looking for us with lunch. We finally met up on a strangely empty Ida Street service road and ended up just sitting down on a blanket on the wide sidewalk to take a break and eat. Sitting and standing was, at this point, a difficult and slightly risky proposition. All my muscles were completely depleted and the chance of pulling a muscle or throwing my back out was very great in these rickety negotiations. We sat on the pavement for a short while and I ate part of a sandwich and drank water and we talked about this and that. There was still about ten miles left to walk and before long I realized that I needed to rise and continue on or I may not be able to do so. Angie would leave me now and get a ride back to her car with Jaim. I rose and gave as strong of a hug of thanks and love to Angie and Jaim as I could and set off down Ida toward the airport, trying to limp as little as possible while they were watching. It wasn’t long before I reached Lindberg Plaza, the road that goes around the backside of the airport. It’s a long curved road, maybe four to five miles worth, and it has almost no traffic on it. There is no landscaping, no trees, no sidewalks - just the levee hill rising up on one side and a barbed wire fence on the other. For some reason that Sunday there were relatively few planes, too. It was a long, long lonely stretch on that day when exhaustion and pain had completely overtaken me. As I walked along my only company were the birds that dove in and out through the air around me as if it was a game they were playing, and the crickets that were calling to each other occasionally. The sun was coming down hard and I was sweating through my shirt. Anyone who did drive by was heading to the private jet airport on the backside of the airport. They almost all drove in SUV’s and I smiled and waved to each and every one that passed trying to radiate as much love as I was feeling. As I walked around that road the combined elements of being so alone and in such a weakened state created a situation where I began to feel time slipping away and a euphoria began to creep in. I began to sing little melodies out loud to myself as each new step added to the ten thousand others that I had taken in the days before and the sky opened up its vaults to my eyes as it had done on some several other occasions. To experience this place where the illusion of time drops away from the world and how you perceive it is to eat a kind of soulful nourishment that will give sustenance for seasons to come. So the sun beat down on me and I limped my way around the eternal airport road. I have not been more happy in all of my life.
Eventually I came back around to the other side of the airport and began receiving texts from Doug and Tim. They were waiting for me in Freedom Park and I was going to try to follow the river as closely as I could to get down to them. I ended turning down a side road called North 25th Street East and then onto a short dead end called Avenue J. These roads lead me right up to the gates of the prison which was surrounded by two story tall multiple fences topped with huge spooling circles of razor wire. In my altered state I walked right up to the front gate and took a few photos, disregarding the no trespassing signs which threatened arrest, and then I headed out onto the field grass behind the prison toward the levee. I saw the men in the yard slowly walking back and forth. I waved to them and one man waved back. I found it so interesting that the homeless shelter was so near to the prison. Perhaps men would just go from one facility to the other in an unending cycle. Unbelievably, no guards or police came running out or called for me to stop and so I very painfully climbed the hill up to the top of the levee. Up on the levee I saw old Freedom Park stretched out below me. The giant old Navy ships and submarine. The old out buildings - all abandoned now. I climbed down the levee and snuck through a hole in the gate. As I walked by the old military vessels I thought about how much giant machinery of death we have built over our short history as a country. More perhaps than any other country in the history of the world. I made my way slowly south along the river and ended up climbing up on a giant sandbar that had a marina and cove to my right, the river to my left and downtown laid out before me, shimmering in the distance. Tim texted and said that the police looking around suspiciously and that I needed to turn back rather than get arrested. I knew that if I tried to go back past the prison I would surely be arrested there, not to mention I didn’t have the energy to go back that far. I began to become confused and feel despair from my weakness and exhaustion and so I simply sat down ontop of this giant desert like sand dune and looked out across the water and over the trees at the skyline of the city. Where was I? Where was this place with this giant sand dune? Was I still in Omaha? Was I about to be arrested at the end of this journey? I could not seem to gather my thoughts, but I had so little energy left that I knew that I just had to move - so I rose and began to move forward. I snaked my way through some woods and over twisted rotting docks and past abandoned boats and finally came to a dirt access road. I followed this road thinking I would just tell the police that I got turned around and was leaving the no trespassing area now. After some time I came out to the end of the dirt road and into the part of Freedom Park that was still open and legal and there were Tim and Doug and David. I was strange and wonderful and sad all at once to have found them after so many hours on my own in such a surreal, ecstatic place.
The last phase of the walk became a bit swallowed up with photos and filming. I needed to give into this for these good folks who had helped me so immensely and certainly their artistry and efforts deserved as much attention as any other aspect of the walk. Finally, I ended up making it back to the top of Gene Leahy Mall where we had started three days ago. It was, of course, anti climatic so thank goodness we had all planned to go to La Buvette to celebrate the whole undertaking.
I walked there.
We celebrated in proper style. Three weeks later I would finally pull off the remaining skin flaps from the blisters that had set to my feet. Time quickly restored itself in my life, but I am in love with this place we call home in a whole new deep and complex way, and I know again about the illusion of time.
I have said it already throughout, but the real heart of the project were the people who gave of their time, energy, artistry and hearts to help make this all happen. I am so deeply in their debt. What a gift they gave me.
Get out and go for a day long walk across some new part of the city. You will not regret it.
Here is a short poem from the final day of the experience:
The crickets whispered to me
all the way around the airport.
Green confessions in the burning sun
as I sucked the last drops
of the water from a bottle.
Walking by the prison
I saw a dead bird
hanging upside down
fifteen feet in the air,
caught by its feet
in the razor wire.
Then I closed my eyes and saw it
cutting through the orange light
at the end of the day.
Just across the street from these
whirling galaxies of wire
is the homeless shelter.
Groups of men wander
slowly back and forth in the sun
in both of these places.
I limp slowly by and wave
then climb up onto the levee.
A little further down the river
there are large rolling sand dunes
and abandoned ships.
As if I had wandered
into a child’s story book.
I sit on an empty dune
and watch the skyline of the city
shimmer in the distance.
“Not much time here”
is all I can think.
So little time here like this.
Tim sends a text through.
The police are circling the area.
No doubt called by the prison guards.
I am dazed and in no man’s land, literally.
I slowly push myself back onto my feet.
Is there any tenderness
riding secretly
along these lightning ridges of pain?
Some hidden door of time
has opened itself up.
There is a blue valley
that stretches out there.
Here is a link to the FaceBook page where updates will be happening.
Here is a link to the route.
What are the smells, the sights, the sounds of this place where we live?
What does it feel like to connect our bodies with our home?
What is this landscape that we call Omaha?
The Omaha Walk is a trek around the perimeter of the city.
Beginning on Friday September 21st at 9 AM
from Central Park Mall in front of the Main Library (heading south)
and ending, if all goes well, in the same place on Sunday September 23rd
The walk will be done carrying most everything needed and sleeping in friendly, welcoming people's yards or fields (I hope, I hope).
Omaha Artists Tim Guthrie, Doug Hayko, and Jaim Hackbart will be taking part, curating, and helping sustain life during the walk and video documenting and posting portions of the journey.
Could it become a yearly journey? Who knows . . .
The map.
Here is a link to the route.
This is the approximate route for the walk. I say approximate for two reasons: 1. Because I was working with city maps that are difficult to read and translate so I will be walking as close to the entire perimeter as possible while staying on streets for most of the way and skipping some insane tiny islands that seem to have some unknown and obscure logic as to why they are part of the city - #2 there are some areas along the river that I might not be able to get through, and perhaps the police will not allow me to walk on some roads or in some areas. We'll see what happens. The route is just about 70 miles. I will be starting downtown at the Main Library and heading south. There will be regular updates as to where I am on the walk and please feel free to come out and join me for some exercise.
There will be updates every few hours during the walk as to where we are at the moment. People are welcome to join anywhere along the way for as much or as little of the walk as they would like.
Check back here for further details.
Contact: [email protected] with any questions or comments.
Some reflections on the Omaha Walk
Part One - Introduction
I have been wondering what this place is that we call the city. Is there a connection between the idea of city and the idea of community? If so, where is that intersection? I have been spending so much time on my computer for work lately and then driving to so many places that are so far apart for meetings and classes and meals and a thousand other things. It makes me sad when these things begin to take up the majority of my time. I needed to step away from these patterns for a few days. I am a sensory/sensual person. I needed to try to get back in touch with my body traveling through space of its own accord. I also needed to try to find a deeper connection to our landscape, to this place that I call home. As always happens when making art, something bigger moves in and takes over if you let it.
On the walk most of the places that I moved slowly through were places that I had never been to or seen, or perhaps only once or twice very briefly as I drove quickly past inside my car. I saw so many beautiful things. I saw wild things. I saw death. I saw old life and new life. The landscape is indeed rolling, from the river all the way up to the hills above the Platte River valley, and it keeps extending out in every direction.
Emerging Terrain. Anne Trumble left me several intense messages about how hard they have been working to bring out the idea of the city as a region. It caused them consternation that I picked the city limits as demarcated by the city government as a guide for my walk. She explained a bit about how, if the city is thought of and designed as a region sustainability might be possible. Nick Rebeck was kind enough to come out and walk with me for the most western portion of the walk. (At one point we just stopped and looked through the trees out over the huge valley of the Platte.) He spoke eloquently about their work with Shifting Thresholds which explores this idea of city as a region very deeply and in many different ways. I highly recommend following their work in this area. emergingterrain.org or on their FaceBook page.
Tonight I am suffering from the depression that always comes when a very intense project ends. For a period of time the life created by the project makes everything so very intense and suddenly it comes to a stop. My feet are healing slowly and I am not walking like a sore rodeo clown quite as badly today. Something in me has been moved and it doesn’t seem like it will move back into its old place. I found a lot of peace just walking for hours. I think I will be doing much more of that.
Part 2 - The Three
The best idea that I had with this whole project was to ask Doug Hayko, Jaim Hackbart and Tim Guthrie if they would help me in whatever way they felt they could. I can say without any hesitation that the walk would have never lasted through a single day if it was not for their help and support. These three artists have a deeply generous impulse and are all filled with wild imagination and energy. These three and the energy they brought to the walk was one of the best aspects to the whole project for me. The experience of community was so strong with them. A rare, talented, loving group of people.
Friday - Day 1
I woke at 4:30 am. Too excited. I really had no idea how this would go or what I was doing. I could only rely on Doug, Tim, and Jaim to tell me if I was doing something crazy that they would tell me and also on the fact that, at the base of it, all I had to do was walk, and I had learned how to do that a long time ago. The start at the Main Library was small with Bunny Sparber and Coco Mault joining us to record the beginning of the walk for their podcast “Omaha Party”. So, off we traipsed with Tim running ahead to get footage then, as we walked by, he would pick up the camera and run ahead like a madman again to get another approaching shot. (A side note here - Tim is a true film maker. This guy would not stop. He would stand in traffic to get a shot. He shot Doug and I walking in pitch dark for two hours because it might yield a good shot. He is a bit crazy. A filmmaker.) So immediately there were great shifts occurring in the areas that we walked through. From the empty Central Park Mall with coffin like depression, to Con Agra’s manicured corporate drive, to the back streets of what was once Little Italy and down into the old industrial warehouses along the river where the streets go as low as 2nd Street. I had been looking at the route as closely as possible through Google Earth in satellite mode and the little area that it seemed like we might be able to jump up onto the levee without getting stopped or arrested was very dubious as we approached. I told Tim, “If anyone asks, just tell them we’re doing a project for the city”. It was true in its own way. To all of our great surprise we were able to pass through this narrow dirt road that seemed to be on some ancient warehouse business’ land and suddenly we were up on the levee and we were all jubilant, like we had gotten away with something naughty. Up on the levee we were all amazed by the immense amount of land and forest that lies just south of downtown. It really is a large, beautiful swath of land that goes from the fast flowing waters of the river all the way up to the top of the forest covered bluffs. It goes on for quite a ways. It was like discovering a secret land in a new version of The Hobbit. The river is wide and very mighty there. The rising sun was casting a bright path across its body and I think we were all amazed at the wilderness our surroundings when just moments before we had been walking through tiny sagging wooden houses and cookie cutter new ones.
More reflections on The Omaha Walk - Day One
Passing under I-80 on the levee south of downtown on the first morning was a bit awe striking. It really is a monumental structure and the unearthly sounds of the hidden traffic passing over head were straight out of a science fiction novel. They’ve just finished expanding that bridge and it is a very large amount of lanes now - a whole elevated concrete world of its own. It must have cost millions to make it all. So, suddenly, after walking through the green forested area we are overwhelmed with the giant concrete and steel bridge. It’s just about at that point too that the industry begins to kick in. Strange warehouses and factories. There is an animal feed business that had big oil refinery looking towers and smelled of something like molasses gone bad. There were refineries of some kind or another, trucking/shipping businesses, and a whole lot of train tracks heading south down the river. Bunny and Coco turned back just after passing I-80 with hugs and well wishes, and Tim ended up disembarking once we got to the 275/Missouri Avenue Bridge. I attempted to continue on the levee, but was brought short by the city’s waste treatment plant, which seemed to have a barbed wire fence all the way down to the river. (As a side note - I have seen projects like this one in Arcata, CA
http://www.humboldt.edu/arcatamarsh/
where a system of marshes help to treat the wastewater and reduce the strain on the environment while also created a beautiful system of wildlife marshes and parkland. I must admit I wondered about this along our river.) So, I had hit my first roadblock on the trip. I reversed direction back to 275 and climbed the hill up to 13th Street and began walking south. Cars were moving very fast here as this is one of the main feeder streets into the city and serves almost as a mini highway. This is where I came across the dead raccoon. The first of many dead animals I would see on the journey. Once I reached Y Street I cut up into the neighborhood heading west for Gilmore Avenue, which was the only place it seemed that I would be able to get under I-75 on foot and connect up with Harrison Street. As I walked through this neighborhood I spotted several memorials to people in the front yards of different houses. There was a sign saying, “Stop The Violence!” in spanish. I noticed a fair amount of tagging on the signs and fences in the area. There were also a number of empty or abandoned houses, but mostly what I noticed were small houses that were well kept up. They gave off the energy of families and people who were working hard together to make a good life possible for each other.
Eventually I found my way to the beginning of Harrison Street which I was surprised to discover is dirt for the first few blocks from 21st through 25th Streets. I wondered, as I began walking, how different the street would look when I reached my destination of 168th and Harrison much later in the day.
By the time I reached 28th and Harrison it was already around lunchtime. Walking south along the river and then getting up to Harrison had taken longer than I had thought. I sat down in McKinley Park and took out my little sack lunch of a turkey sandwich, yogurt, and fig bars. Doug Hayko joined me there and I was so happy for a bit of company.
After a short break I began walking west again on Harrison. The houses were relatively small here and appeared to be from the first half of the 20th century. There were sidewalks on both sides of the street here and I wondered if that was because this neighborhood had been built during a time when people walked a lot more. I can remember taking a walk almost every night with my dad when I was growing up and everyone being outside in their yards working on projects or playing in the evenings.
As I started to move into the forties Streets the architecture began to change and become more modern. Chain stores began to occasionally pop up. I did wonder about this city limit border - one one side of the street it is one city and on the other it is another. Could you rob a bank on the Omaha side and quickly cross the street and be safe from arrest when the police came? How was this line decided? What are the politics involved? I’m sure there are some very passionate people with differing opinions. It harkens back to what Anne Trumble pointed to in her email; that Sarpy County is perhaps the major key to sustainability for the city’s future so we need to think beyond these political demarcations as we create the future of the city.
I stopped briefly to take a photo of the old Shamrock Bar sign and a white pick up zooms in and a smiling Jay Rybin jumps out and gives me a hug. We chat for a bit and it’s a great boost to know that he is following the progress with interest and just to feel his support.
I continue pressing on to the west, feeling like I am behind schedule with around a hundred blocks left and the afternoon flowing quickly by. Out by 60th Street I see a corn field being plowed under. This was the first of many cornfields that I would see surrounded by housing developments. Once I pass Seymour Smith Park the feel of everything begins to change to a much more isolated contemporary deal. The layouts of the houses are more subdivisions with high fences fronting the street rather than houses back down south where they line the street and people sit on their porches and wave as you walk by. I start to feel a strange sense of isolation as a walker now. As if I’m someone odd and not in the right place where in the southern blocks of Harrison I was just another person walking. The street has widened, too. Traffic seems to be moving much faster, as if everyone has long distances to go and they are all a bit late getting there. It’s a distinctly different feel.
Final Reflections of The Omaha Walk - Day One
The first half of afternoon on day one unfolded in a solitary way. I walked the long stretches of sidewalk along Harrison and watched the changes of landscape and architecture pass by. It was almost like moving through some kind of slow time machine from east to west. There is a rhythm that develops, too. The loping steps coming, one after the other without cease, for hour after hour as the cars blast by and the wind rushing past without cease. The solitude of this time is deeply restful to me. Moving at the pace that my feet can carry me and feeling all the muscles of my body working so lightly and in synch, measuring time by the next hill, the next valley - a peace overtakes me. Life becomes as simple as sky, earth, water, body, journey, landscape. In the late afternoon I cross a street and suddenly notice David Hedman standing on the other side with a camera poised on an electrical box. He takes a few shots and then looks up and smiles. David is my first visitor to come out and walk with me since this morning and it surprising and wonderful to see him. He begins to walk with me a we talk about the project and Omaha and walking and life in these times as it relates to time and our bodies. Its so lovely to converse with someone while walking. It allows all of the relaxation and meditative aspects just mentioned infiltrate the energy of the conversation. Soon, we are joined by Jaim and Tim and we sit down for a few minutes on the hill of of the golf course at 96th Street. Tim takes out his camera and discovers that he has an uncharged battery so he decides to head back home to try to correct the situation. David and Jaim begin a dance with cars where one will drive ahead while the other walks with me and takes photos and talks and then drives the other person back to their car after a while and so on. This brings up an interesting aspect of the project and a question that I always struggle with in terms of balance when making art - the public aspect, specifically as it pertains to the digital. How much of this experience should I share? How much is too much? When does the energy put into digitizing the experience begin to overshadow the actual work itself? With this project I knew from the beginning that I wanted to share as much as was reasonably possible for people to experience digitally if they wanted. As it turns out, many people followed the check ins and the photos that were posted along the way. There did seem to be a sense of community in all the responses and there were many moving, interesting and funny outcomes from this. One friend wrote me and said that years and years ago he had walked to and from work everyday. The Omaha Walk had reminded him of this and he remembered it as one of the most vibrant times of his life. He can’t remember why he stopped. He said that he was going to start walking again on Monday. I am looking forward to hearing how it goes for him.
Soon we find ourselves approaching I-80. This would be the second time in the day I would cross this great road that carries so many people and products across the country. David says goodbye to us after spending an hour plus walking and photographing and driving. His quiet kind energy has been a huge boon at this point in the day when I am realizing that I may have the start of a blister/pain problem with my feet. Jaim and I head out onto the overpass of I-80 and she tells me that an old friend, Paul Ranney, is heading over to walk with me for a bit. Once we get out onto the overpass it is amazing to realize that we have to shout to each other to be heard because the noise of the traffic racing below is roaring loud and non-stop. The wind is blowing hard up there, too. I wonder about that phenomenon - is this simply a factor of the wide corridor that is created by the highway, or does the traffic actually contribute somehow? Either way, it is a powerful experience to stand directly over this major road and feel the passage of so many people flying underneath your feet. Where are they all going, I wonder? Some are from Omaha or the outlying communities, but some are truckers headed to LA or New York loaded with cargo for this business or that. Some are trucks filled with cattle who know not where they are headed and have never been in a moving vehicle in their lives - or there is the young couple in the van who are transporting twenty-five pounds of weed to a friend in Chicago and if they make it safely they plan to use their cash to go to Turkey where they can smoke hash, drink Turkish coffee and write in the cafes all day - the elderly woman being driven by her grandson to the funeral of a friend whom she hasn’t seen in forty years since they laid together and kissed each other one late afternoon in the 1970’s.
Paul joins me as we reach the west side of the interstate and Jaim drives ahead. I have not seen or spoken to Paul in years and we drop straight into a beautiful long conversation to catch up as I push on walking at a good clip, hoping that I might still be able to make my goal before nightfall. My legs are sore and aching now and the balls of my feet have started to burn with a distinct, strong pain that alarms me if I let myself think about it. Paul begins to catch me up on his life and we quickly open to a place of intimacy of detail that is perhaps an aspect of walking together with someone else, and maybe it also is affected by the nature of the project, too. It seems that people’s sense of community and sharing rises to the surface easily if there is a goodwill effort made to reach out. Hopefully this is the greater motivation behind sharing these projects with others (the lessor always being self promotion, etc).
Paul and Jaim stay with me for the rest of the walk that day. This energy of support creates the will to deflect the pain that I am now feeling intensely not only in my feet, but also in my legs. I have never walked for nine, ten, twelve hours with barely a rest before. It is a very specific kind of challenge to the body to do this continuous, all day exercise. As we get down to the final miles it becomes work to focus on the conversation with Paul and not on the pain and exhaustion that is radiating through my body. The sun is starting approach the western line of the earth and Tim and Doug join us once again. I will be sleeping in the backyard of Doug’s sister's family in a subdivision off of Harrison and 168th Street. I begin counting the blocks and they seem to be going very slowly now. “If I can just make it to 150th, 160th, 168th . . .” I keep thinking. Once we make to 168th we enter into a subdivision and I only have a short half mile or so left. Paul is with me and I know he knows that I am I pain. He keeps talking steadily and slowly we make our way to the Hartmann’s house. Chad Hartman is there and he is so welcoming, kind, helpful and interested. I end up standing for a half hour talking to him about the project while my body is crumbling inside. Finally, I set up my tent and get ready for a night of sleep. As it turns out, Scary Acres if just over the hill and so I am warned that I will hear screams and chains saws late into the night. They weren’t kidding. Doug, Chad, Tim and Paul all say goodnight. The temperature is dropping fast. By the morning it is predicted to be in the low forties. I pull on my long underwear, a fleece jacket, wool socks and my thick stocking cap and slide into my sleeping bag. I take advantage of technology to call my partner, Jenny, who is enjoying a lovely seventy five degree night in Las Vegas and we talk until I can stay awake no longer. I am not sure how I will be able to get going tomorrow with the depth of pain and exhaustion that I feel tonight. I have asked Doug to bring some mole skin in the morning and I am hoping that will hold back the damage that has begun on my feet, but now it is time to sleep and not worry about that. I lie back and listen to the chain saws and screams echo over the neighborhood and slowly I fall into a deep cold sleep.
Omaha Walk - Day Two and Three Impressions
I must apologize for the delay in posting these impressions. A business trip took over my time for the last week and like so many other reasons that seem to present themselves for diffusion in our world each day I had to set this journal aside. This was one of the great privileges of the walk - I could just focus on one thing, one simple, straightforward, physical thing . . . walking.
Day two started out cold. I think the temperature came in at around 44 degrees when I woke up. I had long underwear, pants, wool socks, a long sleeve undershirt a sweater and a jacket on as well as a neck warmer and a think wool stocking cap. I woke up hoping that the extreme tenderness on the pads of my feet had subsided a bit over night. I texted Doug and Tim to let them know that I was up and going to be moving soon, then shut my eyes for a few more minutes. Not much was comfortable about the morning. When Tim and Doug arrived they stood off in the sun while I packed the equipment away because the cold in the shade quickly froze the fingers. After performing surgery on my feet with two strips of mole skin in the cold air and eating a breakfast of several handfuls of granola and a small bottle of kefir I started off on my way into what would turn out to be one of the hardest days.
Walking back out of the Hartmann’s subdivision I noticed that there was a fair amount of active new construction going on. Crews actually out on the sites building. It made me feel hopeful in a way onto to just see empty lots, abandoned streets in the middle of fields, or houses boarded up. This area is distinctly a part of the city where there can be rows and rows of houses that are suddenly backed by acres of corn fields and an old farm house looking down over it all from a hill which seems like a vision straight out of the past. Of course, many of those fields had for sale signs on them, perhaps queuing up to be the next subdivision of houses.
The next stretch of Harrison, from 168th to 192nd, felt cold, windy and a bit impersonal. The housing projects just seemed to be floating out there in the fields and hills. Tim was running ahead with the car to get footage so thankfully, I did not feel too alone.
When I turned north onto 192nd Street I had a long stretch of walking that was just high speed roadway banked by tall white plastic fences that tried to create a sound and sightline break from the street for the houses on the other side. These fences sort of create a gated community feel for each subdivision, all of which had there own specific names. At one point I stood at an intersection and each of the four corners had a little landscaped wall announcing the name of a different subdivision. As I was walking past all of these houses, I noticed that many of them only had one small window on the entire back side of the house. Many had yards that were empty of trees or gardens or lawn chairs or any sign that they were used at all. Suddenly a very large sadness began to overtake me. I think I was remembering back to the loneliness and isolation that I had felt growing up in my own neighborhood in Minnesota. Somehow, despite all starting as a community when everyone moved in in the early 60’s, all the families drifted apart as children became teenagers and the larger struggles of family life began to manifest in so many ways. I can remember feeling profoundly lonely at that time in that neighborhood and in my family. For some reason, the vision of these subdivision houses, all with their shades of beige, brought these feelings back up for me.
Eventually, we made our way to Whitehawk Park and the lake. I took advantage of the porta potty at the lake and also took a short break to sit by the water for a moment and rest my aching feet and legs and eat an apple. Although the lake did have a fair number of waterfowl on it it also struck me as very strange. For most of the circumference of the lake there are absolutely no trees or shrubs or bushes. Just very rough mowed weed grass. The whole start of this morning had seemed a bit cold and alien to me and so it was a great pleasure when Angie Heim texted and joined up to walk with me on the north side of the lake. This was also interesting timing because it was quite possibly the most inhospitable stretch of the entire walk. There were no sidewalks and in many spots very little shoulder to walk on. The traffic was so heavy and moving so fast that we had to raise our voices a bit in several places. Still, it was great to have the company and Angie’s positive energy helped to bolster mine. Once we made it to West Center Road and began walking west again it became ver apparent that there was no thought whatsoever for humans to be walking or biking. This was basically a stark, divided highway of sorts and traffic boomed by us at high speeds. Angie was kind enough to walk on the uneven grass as I took the edge of the road. This was easier on my feet, which even with the mole skin were beginning to really hurt. Our conversation moved from walking and community to theatre and landscape. Angie stayed with me all the way up to the intersection at 204th Street and then she turned back around to make the hike back to her car. Her visit meant a great deal to me, as did everyone who came out to share the experience and lend their support.
When I turned into 204th I was shocked at the volume of traffic. This is a four lane divided highway type of set up and it really feels a bit like an interstate, including the extremely loud sound of the passing cars. The cars were definitely going at highway speeds and there was so much of it. Where the hell were they all going? Was this a secret back way to the NU Football game? Walking that stretch was perhaps the most inhumane part of the entire walk. It was quite a surprise then when Nick Rebeck and his wife Sarah pulled up on the shoulder and hopped out. It was great to see their smiling faces and Nick joined me for the next section of the walk while Sarah ran some errands. Luckily Nick and I didn’t have too much farther to go on 204th before turning west on Pacific Street. Suddenly the entire environment changed drastically and for the better. The road was an old two-laner, and although there were no sidewalks it was easily walkable because there was so little traffic. There were some nice stands of trees and the whole thing felt much more human and much less like the Mad Max highway of 204th. As we walked we started to talk about the land and about how things were laid out a long time ago for farming uses and how the thinking had not really changed much. He spoke of all the hard work that they are doing at Emerging Terrain to try to look at these issues and see the land and its development with a much deeper understanding of past, present and future. (Again, I would really encourage you to follow their amazing work at emergingterrain.org)
While we were having this interesting talk we also saw some very interesting sights - one of them being a subdivision that seemed to be designed for people who also wanted to keep a horse stabled by their home so that they could ride an time. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a subdivision of really giant homes popped up. We both really marveled at the size of these places. A family of four might never be able to find ech other inside one of these homes. Finally, we made it to the end of Pacific and turned north on Skyline Drive. I had never been out this far and had no idea why it was so named, but it wasn’t long before we both stopped to look out across the entire Platte River Valley. It is quite a vista from up there. Nick walked with me for a little way more along Skyline. His quiet, positive energy was hugely helpful and when Sarah swung back by to pick him up her bright smile and hug was also a great boost. After they left it was close to 1 pm and Jaim called and was on her was with a bag lunch. I was very ready to sit down for a break, drink a lot of water and get some nutrition in my body. The day was going quickly and it still felt like I had a long way to go. Still, it had warmed up and the mole skin was allowing me to keep walking and despite a very sore set of feet and legs, things were going pretty well.
After Nick and Sarah left I walked for a very short while before Jaim arrived with some food and a lot of great energy. We were on a long curving stretch of Skyline Drive so we just decided to eat along a wide stretch of the shoulder. Jaim even had a blanket with her to spread out and sit on. I had discovered late on the first day that stopping was actually the hardest part of the walk in terms of pain and possible injury. As long as I was moving the pain and stiffness were kept at bay, but once I stopped these things would rush in and overtake me. By this point, on day two, I was probably forty miles into the walk and I had to be careful and move slowly to avoid an injury as I sat down on the blanket. Although the night had been very cold the day had warmed into the high seventies and I had been out for many hours in the sun. I applied some sunscreen and began to eat as Jaim practiced her art, taking photos and asking questions. Jaim has the great quality of curiosity combined with compassion that is heralded in the Buddhist traditions and also helps to make a strong artist. We sat in the hot sun and shared the conversation of two people stopped in a strange place in the midst of a strange pilgrimage. What a beautiful moment in time that was - so far out on the edge of the long Platte River valley. I experienced so many moments like this with Jaim, Tim and Doug over the three day journey.
After eating a bit of a sandwich and drinking some water I slowly made my way back up onto my feet. I was hobbling a bit as I rose and began walking again, but I tried to hide it as best I could. Jaim drove ahead to take some photos as walked down the long hill toward Dodge Street and crossed over to the north side of the city for the first time in the journey. The overpass over Dodge was windy and harsh. Cars raced out into the valley which was immense and opened wide below me. On the other side, to my great surprise, there was a pedestrian walkway and a bike path. As I climbed the long hill to the north I began to pass one subdivision after another, some with the white border fences, some still being built. By the end of day two I think I may have seen as many as forty or more different subdivisions. It’s a strange name for these places. Really they are neighborhoods and I imagine that each one has its own unique character, with the residents making as much or as little community and life as they have the ability to. I know that many of them are very warm communities where families share friendship and celebrate life and help each other as hey raise their families. Others may be somewhat isolated.
Soon I began to make my way down a long hill moving through some border farmlands that leaned out toward the west. Jaim broke off to get some photos of landscapes that had caught her eye, and I became a bit lost as the paper maps that I was carrying had some gaps in them around this area. It was at this point that I noticed that my ability to think clearly was a bit inhibited from exhaustion. I had run marathons before so I knew what was happening, but in a way this was a more intense and taxing experience than a marathon which was one four hour stint as compared to three days, ten to twelve hours a day of walking, and in essence traveling a marathon distance each day. I knew that I needed to acknowledge the slight panicky feelings that began to come up in the back of my mind as I was lost and gently move toward relaxing and taking my time. I stopped, drank some water and had a bite of an energy bar. Soon I was able to see that I was close to the southern edge of Elkhorn and so I began heading toward Main Street.
Crossing over the railroad tracks into downtown Elkhorn and seeing the old grain elevator looked like a scene from the first half of the 1900’s and made me think of the early days here. As I worked my way up the hill of Main Street a large wedding party of young people were taking photos and celebrating with whoops and hollers and raunchy jokes about the honeymoon night. It was a bit surreal to suddenly be in the midst of this group. Just as quickly as they had come they disappeared. As I climbed further up through town (at that point it felt like a steep and long climb) the town seemed to be almost completely deserted. It was a strange sensation because I also had the feeling that I had stepped back in time to the 1940’s or 50’s with all the older businesses and houses, and I was the only one out walking. Where was everyone? This was Saturday afternoon. Then I began to hear it - through screen windows and from radios inside open garages where people were sitting with beers and barbecues going - the Huskers game was underway. It seemed as if everyone was listening to or watching the game somewhere and the streets were virtually empty. Suddenly it felt like an older, simpler time. There was something beautiful about thinking back to the times when there were no computers or cell phones. Little did I know I was about to experience one of the most dramatic shifts of the entire trip. As I stepped out of Elkhorn onto West Maple Drive it was like stepping through a time portal and moving from 1950’s America into the 21st Century in one shocking jolt. I turned out onto the four lane highway of West Maple at 204th Street and began what was to be one of the most challenging and revealing stretches of the walk.
Coming out of Elkhorn onto West Maple I was hit with a stiff wind and the sun was at full strength. I was disconcerted to note that the sun was moving into that high afternoon angle and I knew that I still had a very long way yet to walk that day. The Maple Street stretch would be five miles long. It sounds easy enough, but I had already walked eleven miles that day with only a few very brief stops and I had logged twenty miles the day before so I was really feeling the miles. I tried to pick up my pace a bit to make some time, but the uneven terrain of dirt and grass set the weight of each step at a different angle and significantly increased the pain from blisters that were beginning to form on the balls of my feet.
West Maple, at that point, is four lane divided road with stop lights being very few and far between. I crossed over to walk against traffic, as I was taught to do for safety, and the road is about 100 feet wide from one side to the other. There are no sidewalks there. No landscaping. There is nothing whatsoever in consideration of the walker or the biker even though there are houses all along the south side of the road, and just a few blocks back in old world Elkhorn there was a side walk on almost every side of every street. What a different mentality had taken ahold. Was it economics? Had the car become so dominant that we no longer even thought about these other forms of transportation? Had our sense of community fragmented so much with technological “improvements” which also function as factors that keep us evermore isolated that we began to leave considerations of our bodies and the earth behind? The next five miles of Maple would allow me to ponder these questions deeply. I was feeling a somewhat depressed by this change of scenery when Jaim joined me with her abundant energy and her camera. She instantly picked up my spirits, as did the fact that I had started the eastward portion of my journey - slowly making my way back down toward the river. Here’s a survey of what I saw along this stretch of Maple:
Walgreens
9 Banks
3 Churches
Harley Davidson Store
Sherwin Williams Paint Store
Walmart
Panda Express
Pet Smart
Runes
Taco Bell
Urgent Care Omaha
McDonald’s
Hair Salon
Fitness Place
American Nail and Spa (Not European apparently)
Total Sass-Y-faction Salon
AAA Travel
2 Starbucks
Max I Walker
Fuddruckers
The UPS Store
All Care Dental
Lighthouse Bar and Grill
Tom Rivera
Domino’s Pizza
Russell Speeder’s Car Wash
Jensen Tire and Auto
Centris Federal Credit Union
NuTrend Dry Cleaners
China Buffet
Donut Professor
Chipotle Mexican Grill
Rode Court Floral Gifts
Verizon Wireless
Jiffy Lube
Sonic
Buffalo Wild Wings Grill and Bar
Carrabba’s Italian Grill
CVS Pharmacy
Massage Heights
Red Robin Gourmet Burgers
20 Grand Cinema
Sprint Store
Lowe’s
Great Clips
Target
Hy-Vee
Godfather’s Pizza
. . . and many subdivisions with one mile wide swath of farmland still running through the middle of it all at around 185th Street.
Each subdivision was laid out on about one square mile of land and bounded by roads that fed into the main thoroughfare of West Maple. At one point, Jaim and I came across the entrance to one of these subdivisions that had built a very large fake waterfall and stream at its entrance. They had gone to great expense to make it seem almost as if you were deep in the northern woods with water tumbling between a chain of lakes. There were pines and Paper Birch planted thickly around. I immediately had to climb up on the falls for a photo op. Once Jaim had snapped a few shots I noticed that the name of the subdivision was Indian Creek and that there was a life size statue of a Native American man, in historic Native dress, kneeling at the edge of the fake water and looking up toward the sign for the housing project. This immediately made me feel sad. Unless the Ponca and Omaha Tribes had given permission to the developers to use the their image, culture and history to sell their houses I don’t feel that it’s right for a business to so deeply appropriate these sacred things to make money. We walked on. Soon Doug appeared at the top of a hill. He helped me get fresh water and drove Jaim back to her car. He said he would join me at 144th were I would turn north once again. So I walked the remaining miles of West Maple alone, listening to the cars booming by so loud and fast and seeing all the chain stores pass by. That stretch of the walk felt long and difficult. I was also hungry, tired, and constantly thirsty (and sipping water) at this point. The hills are long and rolling out there, and it seemed to take forever to travel from 204th to 144th. Still, I was moving at the rhythm of my own body. The sun shone down and warmed my face and arms. The walking created a sort of internal rhythm that was like a mantra and brought me a kind of peace which was the complete opposite of the pain that I was feeling simultaneously. I saw one group of three teenagers on bikes in the distance, and there was one young man who walked by me, which seemed miraculous at the time - that there would be somebody out there besides me. I smiled and said hello as we passed, but he kept his eyes steadfastly trained on the ground. I would guess that my windblown, sunburned, limping, long-haired, back pack carrying appearance may have prompted that reaction from him. It really is an inhospitable stretch of road for anyone not in a car. You feel completely the outlier in that place.
Just as I turned onto 144th Street Doug suddenly appeared from behind and joined me. We started north up a long hill and began a quiet conversation. It was a great relief to get off of Maple and onto the significantly more quiet side street. This would be one of two stretches on this day that Doug would walk with me. At that point I was on mile seventeen and everything was aching. I had pushed for a good pace on Maple and now that we had turned off I slowed down a bit to try to save some energy for the final section of the day. The sun was already starting to head down the arc of the late afternoon sky. There was still around ten miles left in the day. It was very good to have the company.
As we came to the top of that first big hill we could see houses spreading out for miles in every direction. I had seen the same thing for mile after mile after mile throughout the entire day. I was just amazed by the sheer numbers of houses, and more going up each dy. The one thing that I had not noticed anywhere for the entire day was any public transportation. No transit centers anywhere.
After about a mile we dropped down a hill and cut into Standing Bear Lake Park. This is a beautiful lake with walking/biking paths around it and thickly forested places. It was such a lovely change to suddenly come upon a place designed for humans to interact with nature, or at least move through it. Walking along the top of the dam provided a beautiful view and Tim met us on the other side with camera in hand.
North of the park we connected up with Military Road, which is like a mini highway, again, with no sidewalks, and is bounded by farmland with subdivisions mixed in. Doug went up ahead to our ending destination at Cunningham Lake and Tim stayed with me and shot more footage. Tim would run back and forth, stepping out into the road walking backwards until I had to tell him that a car was coming and even then he would shoot for an extra few seconds, counting, I guess, upon the the speeding drivers to know that we are working on a project here so please cut us a break and slow down and don’t kill him. Soon we broke off onto Ida Street (with sidewalks) and headed up a long hill which was lined by the fences of backyards. It was so interesting to see what each family or individual had done with their back yards. Some people clearly used theirs quite heavily and some, it seemed, never stepped foot in them. Some people had created little sculptural gardens or shrines to Big Red. One house had planted several rows of grapes, creating a mini vineyard.
At this point my struggle to hide my pain from the others began to fail. The blistering on my feet had begun to become so painful that I began to try to walk without putting too much weight on the balls of my feet, which gave me a vague bow legged rodeo cowboy sort of walk. The sun was going down now and there was still four to five miles left to go so I knew stopping and trying to reset moleskin was not a good idea. We kept pushing on until we made it out onto Blair High Road (Hwy 133). This is four lane divided highway with a decent size shoulder for us to walk on and the sun disappeared as we turned onto it. The temperature had been slowly dropping from the earlier 60’s headed quickly toward a low in the low 40’s. Each mile now felt like five. When we finally turned onto County Road 17, the last road we had to travel on that night, I had walked about twenty-five miles and was beginning to feel slightly weak/sick with all the muscles in my body aching. Doug joined us there. He walked with me while Tim drove ahead in a car and kept shooting footage even though it was now full on night. Doug has a quiet presence that is filled with an open endedness that has a kind of deep compassion in it. We slowly climbed the hills on 17 and talked quietly. I think he asked once if I wanted to just ride the last few miles, but we were on a roll, a slow roll but a roll and I wanted to stick to my goal of walking the entire way. On either side were farms now with scattered stands of woods. Up ahead and to the south a little in the distance were the red flashing lights of the four TV towers at 72nd Street. We kept those as a marker of where we were headed. When we started up the first hill on 17 they seemed impossibly far away.
Paul Ranney, in an incredible gesture of kindness, had secured a campsite at Cunningham Lake and had called us to let us know that he was there with a fire going and food ready to throw on the fire. After what seemed like several hours we finally turned into the southern end of the park. Tim joined us on foot and the three of us began to walk, in pitch darkness, on a dirt path around the south eastern point of the lake to get to the camp grounds. This was mile twenty seven. Each step on the uneven ground made my feet bleed a little and my back threatened to give out. I began telling dirty jokes to counteract the strain of the situation and Tim and Doug jumped into the game. Finally, we made it back out of the woods and onto the camp site road and slowly made our way down to the camp sites. At the bathroom Tim needed to stop. As Doug and I stood there I began to feel nauseous and thought I might become sick. When we finally pulled up into the camp site there was Paul and his good friend Murph, sitting in chairs around a roaring fire. They had extra chairs, a complete meal ready to go, and a tent the size of a garage set up with a bed already set up for me inside. The kindness of this gesture was overwhelming and felt life saving to me. If I had had to try to find and set up a camp site in the freezing air on the edge of sickness it would have been a very rough night. Without the company and help of everyone that day I never would have been able to make it.
I sat down by the fire in a daze, warmed my frozen hands and ate what little I could with my nausea still plaguing me. Then I begged forgiveness for needing to retire early. Paul walked me to the bathrooms as I was a little wobbly by that point. My feet felt shredded. Inside someone was taking a shower and the warmth of the steam filled room felt so good. Across the campsite, down by the lake, a large group of young men had a 48 inch T.V. set up outside and were watching a football game and drunkenly screaming. Later they started to jump into the lake - a bold move as it was now in the mid thirties and the air was bitingly cold. I struggled to remove my shoes and clothes and slip on long underwear as my body shook in the cold. I decided not to take off my socks and look at my feet. There would be time for all that in the morning. Then I put all my clothes back on including my fleece jacket, scarf and thick wool winter hat, slipped painfully inside my sleeping bag and pulled the thick Mexican blanket that Paul had brought over my body and head. I had very serious concerns about if tomorrow would even be a possibility, but I decided not to think about it at all until I woke tomorrow. Before long I drifted into a deep sleep.
Day Three
There is a collection of poems that is titled “The Soul is Here for its Own Joy.” I always loved that title (and collection). It reminds me that the wildness inside me that doesn’t fit in well to my plans nor the structure of society is really that soulful place. That pain, loneliness and sadness, are as much a natural outgrowth of life as anything else. That the wild river running through my heart and mind belong there and to try to dam them up for whatever purpose is fatal.
The morning of the third day was freezing. I woke to the sounds of someone coughing and choking on vomit. I was in a large tent with a nylon dividing wall zipped up the middle to create two rooms. I was in one and Paul was in the other. I listened for a moment or two feeling quite panicked that Paul was somehow chocking on his own vomit. Just as I was about to call out I heard Paul’s voice call out to his dog. I was very concerned about Paul’s dog but quite relieved that I was not going to be performing mouth to mouth on an unconscious, vomit covered Paul. It was clear from this auspicious beginning that today would be a day of extremes. Paul and his dog left the tent and I lay there under my blanket and let the conscious world slowly start to sink into my mind and body.
As a child I had always felt the strangeness and danger of new situations, i.e. - We’re going to be left with strangers at a place called “school”? I know no one here. What will happen? Will you, my parents ever return to claim me again? Who is in charge? Will I be fed? Will I be hurt? Who are these other kids? Why are you leaving me in a strange land of people with whom I have no connection? Leave me sitting on the shore of a lake and I was fine, but leave me in a strange group of people and I became a nervous wreck. Perhaps this is why I felt some kind of strange energy that allowed me to rise on that bitingly cold morning on day three and very gingerly slip on my shoes and attempt to slowly stand up in the tent. I had walked forty severn miles in the last two days. Every muscle in my body felt the exhaustion and strain of the effort. Slipping on my shoes sent electric shock waves of pain up from my feet into my whole body. “I am not going to make it anywhere today” was the first thought and then I shoved that down and took my first few steps to try to exit the tent and make my way to the bathroom. My body crouched over with the pain from my feet and I stepped as if I was a ninety eight year old man walking on a field of sharp glass. When I emerged from the tent Paul and his dog were gone and Murph was standing by the fire and building it up with small pieces of wood. We said good morning and although he saw my poor condition he did not give away any concern, for which I am deeply grateful to him. He was giving me the room that I needed to see on my own if this final day might be possible. I limped to the bathroom. After peeing in the urinal I went into the one stall to take care of a very specific travel problem to walking long distances. The stall was filthy. Piss and shit splattered on the rim of the toilet. I think some vomit, most likely from the young partying guys last night on the floor. No toilet paper except that which was on the floor, wet and covered in muck. The walls were painted that institutional yellow and there was only fluorescent light and a bit of small sunlight from a tiny window covered with wire mesh and a heavy layer of dirt. This was a lovely vision to start the day. Nevertheless, I needed to be here, with my sheets of toilet paper that I had brought with me in my pack. The reason was not what you would first guess - to take a morning crap. No. Yesterday (day two), about halfway through the walk, I had begun to feel a burning sensation between my ass cheeks from all of the sweat and walking that I had been doing. It built in intensity during the day until it became one of the key players in the little symphony of pains that I was experiencing on the walk. I folded the toilet paper, dropped my pants and long johns, bent over and wet the paper in what I hoped was clean water, and wiped in between my ass. It stung like the dickens, but I did this several times over. I then took some arnica cream from my pocket, spread it on a fresh fold of tissue and wiped in between my ass. It’s lots of details to write about, but don’t they say god is in the details? So, the start of the day involved vomit, extreme pain and wiping a burning ass clean. I came out of the stall and there was an elderly man wearing just a pair of old pants and an old, stained muscle tee. He was shaving at the mirror - the sinks as dirty as the stall had been. Steam was rising from the water. He moved over to the other sink and said, “There’s hot water there. There you go.” and I said thank you, but I’m good. I washed my hands and brushed my teeth, amazed at this elderly man standing in next to nothing in the thirty four degree air and shaving. Not that this was this man’s situation, but camp grounds are becoming more and more places where people who are without homes are surviving while looking for work. I saw it all over as I camped through the west this summer. A sign of the times. The growing population of people who are living in poverty.
As I hobbled back to the campsite I realized I was in bad shape. Back at the tent I swallowed a pain killer and hoped for the best. Aside from my feet my body was very depleted. I had not been able to eat much because of the slight nausea and my muscles and bones were weak. I slowly packed up for the day, took off my long underwear, and hobbled out to the fire. Before long Jaim, Tim and Doug arrived. The campsite was still fairly quiet and Tim shot some footage of me preparing for the day. The first order of business was to assess my feet. As I peeled off my socks the pain was sharp. The next step would not be fun. I had to peel off the mole skin from yesterday. I could see that it had slid down the sole of my foot at some point and so the edge of the mole skin had actually been cutting into the area on the balls of my feet that was blistering. As I pulled the moleskin away, the adhesive pulled on the blisters and pain shot into my stomach. Doug had brought some scissors and I cut two new pads of mole skin, making them much longer so that they would hopefully not slide away today. Looking at the blisters I could see that they had to popped or I would not be able to walk. The only pointy object that we could find was a wooden toothpick from Paul’s truck so that was what would have to do. As I dug deep into the rubbery thick skin Tim aimed the camera at my feet. Orange liquid ran from the wounds and, quite oddly, it was a relief to see it. Tim was ecstatic at the gruesome shot he got. I loved that. Jaim had brought some special juice for me to give me strength. I drank some of that and after a bit of talk and preparations and some deep hugs of thanks to Paul and Murph, I started off on the road back out of the campsite. Before I had hardly gotten out of the campsites Angie Heim texted me and said that she was just outside the park and waiting to join me. I hobbled along in the early morning sunshine with Tim filming me from a car moving just ahead. The pain pills had kicked in and now that I was moving at a regular pace the pain was tolerable. The woods along the road were beautiful and I began to feel, for the first time, some hope for the possibility of making the day.
Angie joined me as we turned out onto Rainwood Road. Angie’s energy was like a lush autumn wind blowing in through the windows of my exhaustion and we started into a lovely conversation. I cannot convey how much this helped to forget the pain, or at least push it into the background a little. As we headed away from the park, crossing over 72nd Street on Rainwood, we entered a section of land that contained rolling, wooded hills that are comparable to any lush wooded land in the world. We both marveled at the beauty of this land as the morning sun lifted its way up across the land. Omaha is truly a place of vast diversity in so many ways and I would learn this profoundly as this day progressed. The landscape reminded me of the countrysides of Van Gogh or even of the land that I had seen on train rides through the eastern regions of France. Angie spoke of how she connected to the idea community with this project, her desire to give energy to that part of her life, and her hope that others would also grow toward strengthening community, too.
Once we left Rainwood and made our way onto McKinley Street the landscape and environment changed from the deep, beautiful rolling hills to a bit more industrial - from two lane back country to four lane divided once we crossed under 680 with its gargantuan bridge structure. Slowly we made our way down to the river, detouring briefly to walk through the Farmers Market at the Old Mill Museum in Florence. It was so strange to suddenly see so many people moving through the social world. I had been fairly isolated from people for days now. It felt nice to see it, to pass through it, and to keep moving back into the zen like zone of walking and talking. Angie stayed with me long beyond when she had thought she would turn back. It was a great kindness on her part. When we approached a large hill would sort of wince with concern. We talked and talked with our conversation roaming across all areas of life and as easily covering philosophical perspectives as which aches and pains our bodies were feeling. Once we made it to the river we had the great joy of jumping on the walking/biking trail beneath OPPD’s plants. Tim and Beth and their dog Gozer joined us there and we all made our way along the river. The trail was heavily wooded and gave marvelous views of the water. It wasn’t until a little after we made it to the river that I realized that it was actually a big milestone in my journey that I had made it back down to the river after three days of walking.
Before long Tim, Beth and Gozer headed back to their car and Angie and I continued onward past all of the city utilities that line the northern river. Interestingly, there was another sanitation plant processing more poop from the residents of the northern half of the city - just like the one I had seen on the southern edge of the river two days earlier. Then we came across the power plant and were both completely blown away by the size of the mountains of coal that are piled up outside the plant waiting to be burned. I wondered how quickly we would burn through those giant mountains: a season, a month, a week? As we walked past we saw a little league baseball field right at the base of the gates. It made me a bit uneasy to think of kids spending large amounts of time so close to the toxicity of the coal and the plant. The breadth of the utilities gathered on this northern edge of the city is pretty profound. It gives one pause to walk past all of them, water, sewage, power, and see their size and the amount of energy that they take and give.
Shortly after we passed the coal plant the path turned east and shot straight down to the river. By this time Angie and I had walked about eight miles. My pain was staying at a steady level that seemed manageable as long as we did not stop walking. Angie had started to experience some aches too and we made our way out into one of the most strange cityscapes I have experienced in Omaha as the walking path came right up on top of the levee along the river and headed south. West of the levee is a flatland that must have been river flood plain before the levee and dam systems came in. Now it is a little industrial universe unto itself. There are giant warehouses from different eras and in so many different styles of construction, but many of them seem to be ancient and half tumbling to the ground, but still somehow in use. Because it was Sunday we didn’t see a single soul in all of these industrial places that spread out almost as far as the eye could see. There’s a lonely desolation to this type of landscape. Meanwhile, on the river side of the path, were docks with rusted, crumbling equipment like old steam shovels and augers from the 1930’s that were slowly sinking into the river. As we walked along this area I don’t think we saw another human being the whole way. This was the peak of the day too, so the sun was hitting us hard and we shared a single bottle of water to try to slake the thirst that gripped us both. I had a few energy bars and we ate those to stave of the hunger of walking for the entire first half of the day without cease. Time began to stretch out here. My pain began to slowly rise like a tide and along with thirst and hunger a slight disorientation began to take hold. There are stretches of the river here where you can look downstream as far as the eye can see and not spot any buildings of signs of humanity so my mind began to wander back to the days when Lewis and Clark rowed past here. Could it have looked that different to them then what we seeing today? A strange sort of time travel began to seep into my weakened mind - jumping from the present where I could see the distant skyline of downtown in the southwest, to the fifties industries in the north that were lined up along the river, to the ghost structures of the 1930’s, like metal giants rusting away into memories, to the beginning of the century over 200 years ago to the southward bending river, where men paddled by in canoes and looked up at the two strange people from the future walking along the bank of the river.
I could feel Angie’s strain now as well as my own and so it was wonderful when Jaim texted that she was by the airport and looking for us with lunch. We finally met up on a strangely empty Ida Street service road and ended up just sitting down on a blanket on the wide sidewalk to take a break and eat. Sitting and standing was, at this point, a difficult and slightly risky proposition. All my muscles were completely depleted and the chance of pulling a muscle or throwing my back out was very great in these rickety negotiations. We sat on the pavement for a short while and I ate part of a sandwich and drank water and we talked about this and that. There was still about ten miles left to walk and before long I realized that I needed to rise and continue on or I may not be able to do so. Angie would leave me now and get a ride back to her car with Jaim. I rose and gave as strong of a hug of thanks and love to Angie and Jaim as I could and set off down Ida toward the airport, trying to limp as little as possible while they were watching. It wasn’t long before I reached Lindberg Plaza, the road that goes around the backside of the airport. It’s a long curved road, maybe four to five miles worth, and it has almost no traffic on it. There is no landscaping, no trees, no sidewalks - just the levee hill rising up on one side and a barbed wire fence on the other. For some reason that Sunday there were relatively few planes, too. It was a long, long lonely stretch on that day when exhaustion and pain had completely overtaken me. As I walked along my only company were the birds that dove in and out through the air around me as if it was a game they were playing, and the crickets that were calling to each other occasionally. The sun was coming down hard and I was sweating through my shirt. Anyone who did drive by was heading to the private jet airport on the backside of the airport. They almost all drove in SUV’s and I smiled and waved to each and every one that passed trying to radiate as much love as I was feeling. As I walked around that road the combined elements of being so alone and in such a weakened state created a situation where I began to feel time slipping away and a euphoria began to creep in. I began to sing little melodies out loud to myself as each new step added to the ten thousand others that I had taken in the days before and the sky opened up its vaults to my eyes as it had done on some several other occasions. To experience this place where the illusion of time drops away from the world and how you perceive it is to eat a kind of soulful nourishment that will give sustenance for seasons to come. So the sun beat down on me and I limped my way around the eternal airport road. I have not been more happy in all of my life.
Eventually I came back around to the other side of the airport and began receiving texts from Doug and Tim. They were waiting for me in Freedom Park and I was going to try to follow the river as closely as I could to get down to them. I ended turning down a side road called North 25th Street East and then onto a short dead end called Avenue J. These roads lead me right up to the gates of the prison which was surrounded by two story tall multiple fences topped with huge spooling circles of razor wire. In my altered state I walked right up to the front gate and took a few photos, disregarding the no trespassing signs which threatened arrest, and then I headed out onto the field grass behind the prison toward the levee. I saw the men in the yard slowly walking back and forth. I waved to them and one man waved back. I found it so interesting that the homeless shelter was so near to the prison. Perhaps men would just go from one facility to the other in an unending cycle. Unbelievably, no guards or police came running out or called for me to stop and so I very painfully climbed the hill up to the top of the levee. Up on the levee I saw old Freedom Park stretched out below me. The giant old Navy ships and submarine. The old out buildings - all abandoned now. I climbed down the levee and snuck through a hole in the gate. As I walked by the old military vessels I thought about how much giant machinery of death we have built over our short history as a country. More perhaps than any other country in the history of the world. I made my way slowly south along the river and ended up climbing up on a giant sandbar that had a marina and cove to my right, the river to my left and downtown laid out before me, shimmering in the distance. Tim texted and said that the police looking around suspiciously and that I needed to turn back rather than get arrested. I knew that if I tried to go back past the prison I would surely be arrested there, not to mention I didn’t have the energy to go back that far. I began to become confused and feel despair from my weakness and exhaustion and so I simply sat down ontop of this giant desert like sand dune and looked out across the water and over the trees at the skyline of the city. Where was I? Where was this place with this giant sand dune? Was I still in Omaha? Was I about to be arrested at the end of this journey? I could not seem to gather my thoughts, but I had so little energy left that I knew that I just had to move - so I rose and began to move forward. I snaked my way through some woods and over twisted rotting docks and past abandoned boats and finally came to a dirt access road. I followed this road thinking I would just tell the police that I got turned around and was leaving the no trespassing area now. After some time I came out to the end of the dirt road and into the part of Freedom Park that was still open and legal and there were Tim and Doug and David. I was strange and wonderful and sad all at once to have found them after so many hours on my own in such a surreal, ecstatic place.
The last phase of the walk became a bit swallowed up with photos and filming. I needed to give into this for these good folks who had helped me so immensely and certainly their artistry and efforts deserved as much attention as any other aspect of the walk. Finally, I ended up making it back to the top of Gene Leahy Mall where we had started three days ago. It was, of course, anti climatic so thank goodness we had all planned to go to La Buvette to celebrate the whole undertaking.
I walked there.
We celebrated in proper style. Three weeks later I would finally pull off the remaining skin flaps from the blisters that had set to my feet. Time quickly restored itself in my life, but I am in love with this place we call home in a whole new deep and complex way, and I know again about the illusion of time.
I have said it already throughout, but the real heart of the project were the people who gave of their time, energy, artistry and hearts to help make this all happen. I am so deeply in their debt. What a gift they gave me.
Get out and go for a day long walk across some new part of the city. You will not regret it.
Here is a short poem from the final day of the experience:
The crickets whispered to me
all the way around the airport.
Green confessions in the burning sun
as I sucked the last drops
of the water from a bottle.
Walking by the prison
I saw a dead bird
hanging upside down
fifteen feet in the air,
caught by its feet
in the razor wire.
Then I closed my eyes and saw it
cutting through the orange light
at the end of the day.
Just across the street from these
whirling galaxies of wire
is the homeless shelter.
Groups of men wander
slowly back and forth in the sun
in both of these places.
I limp slowly by and wave
then climb up onto the levee.
A little further down the river
there are large rolling sand dunes
and abandoned ships.
As if I had wandered
into a child’s story book.
I sit on an empty dune
and watch the skyline of the city
shimmer in the distance.
“Not much time here”
is all I can think.
So little time here like this.
Tim sends a text through.
The police are circling the area.
No doubt called by the prison guards.
I am dazed and in no man’s land, literally.
I slowly push myself back onto my feet.
Is there any tenderness
riding secretly
along these lightning ridges of pain?
Some hidden door of time
has opened itself up.
There is a blue valley
that stretches out there.
Here is a link to the FaceBook page where updates will be happening.
Here is a link to the route.
What are the smells, the sights, the sounds of this place where we live?
What does it feel like to connect our bodies with our home?
What is this landscape that we call Omaha?
The Omaha Walk is a trek around the perimeter of the city.
Beginning on Friday September 21st at 9 AM
from Central Park Mall in front of the Main Library (heading south)
and ending, if all goes well, in the same place on Sunday September 23rd
The walk will be done carrying most everything needed and sleeping in friendly, welcoming people's yards or fields (I hope, I hope).
Omaha Artists Tim Guthrie, Doug Hayko, and Jaim Hackbart will be taking part, curating, and helping sustain life during the walk and video documenting and posting portions of the journey.
Could it become a yearly journey? Who knows . . .
The map.
Here is a link to the route.
This is the approximate route for the walk. I say approximate for two reasons: 1. Because I was working with city maps that are difficult to read and translate so I will be walking as close to the entire perimeter as possible while staying on streets for most of the way and skipping some insane tiny islands that seem to have some unknown and obscure logic as to why they are part of the city - #2 there are some areas along the river that I might not be able to get through, and perhaps the police will not allow me to walk on some roads or in some areas. We'll see what happens. The route is just about 70 miles. I will be starting downtown at the Main Library and heading south. There will be regular updates as to where I am on the walk and please feel free to come out and join me for some exercise.
There will be updates every few hours during the walk as to where we are at the moment. People are welcome to join anywhere along the way for as much or as little of the walk as they would like.
Check back here for further details.
Contact: [email protected] with any questions or comments.