A crappy place to have a rest day.
An average week on the Great Peace March, the
rhythm that had been established on the West Coast and would be maintained all
the way to Chicago, New York City and then down to Washington, D.C., was for
each marcher to walk 4 days, work at their camp job for two, and we all rested
for one.
That’s the way it was supposed to happen, at any
rate.
What actually happened was that we were delayed
almost 3 weeks in Barstow, California, as the original, legal peace
march fell apart. This put us considerably behind schedule. Utah helped this
situation by unceremoniously busing us across their state and throwing us
across their border with Colorado. Fortuitous intolerance. But we were still a
week behind schedule and had a big date in Omaha on July 4th. So the
schedule was changed and we upped our daily mileage from 18 to anywhere between
20 to 25 miles.
And now we only rested every 10th
day. Our last rest day had come in Denver, our reward for making it across the
Rockies and the 12,000 foot Continental Divide. But now, 10 days and 214 miles
of marching later, we were camped alongside Interstate 80 in the panhandle of
Nebraska. Well, the locals called it the panhandle. I, for one, know the shape
of the state, and where we were could only be described as the asshole.
