“Choices,” Jerry said. “If I could give you one piece of advice to impress upon your students it would be that: the importance of making good choices. If you don’t make good choices in your life, and make bad choices instead, then someone else will be making your choices for you.”
I had a big choice of my own to make this morning. I felt physically fine, but I’d slept poorly, and the opening leg of the walk was another highway stretch. I sat in Henryville, leaning against the side of the IGA grocery as I worked through a couple cups of yogurt, and stared at the gps. It was tempting me. The plan, according to the ADT, was to backtrack to the Clark Forest trailhead and then to follow an extended trail walk for something like the next 16 miles. Given how salty I’ve been about the incessant pavement, I should have been stoked for this plan.
But I kept staring at the gps. And the gps made it clear–I could follow a minor paved track directly to a later portion of the trail, not just trimming a mile or two, but potentially cutting the distance in half. This wasn’t a shortcut; it was a warp zone.
The break dragged on. Have you ever made a choice that made you really like yourself and hate yourself at the same time? I headed to the trail. The bulk of the walk followed the Knobstone Trail, Indiana’s longest hiking trail. Soon after joining it, I found a cooler left by friends of the trail, well stocked with water. After a solid ascent–probably the toughest climb I’ve had on the ADT–I found another cooler, this one filled with snacks. And I mean, filled. I carried on with a granola bar and bags of goldfish and cheez-its. This made me hate myself a little less.
But then I really got in the flow. After all of the pavement, my body felt incredibly awkward and stilted through the initial miles; my feet had forgotten how to bend in any way other than the same, consistent manner required by flat pavement. Loosened up, they gained speed and confidence; allowed to climb up and trot down, they devoured the trail with enthusiasm. In the meantime, hours passed without the sound of a car, without the sight of a house; I only saw five other hikers over the course of the entire trail.
And I felt good. Really good.
Soon after completing the KT, I arrived at Jerry’s house. His two dogs came flying at me, all teeth and slobber, and he narrowly called them off before the moment of impact. Ice broken, I asked for water, and he invited me into his “office”–a couple of lounge chairs in the middle of his yard. He brought me a large glass of orange juice along with a couple bottles of water for the road. And then we talked. Well, Jerry talked; I sometimes tried to interject a word or two, and that was all it took to launch him forward.
Jerry is another retired veteran. He told me about his family–his uncle in Portland, his youngest son in Denver (who bought a gold mine at auction), about his grandkids (who love the large treehouse he built right behind me). He talked about how he bulldozed out the old plants outside his house in order to plant blueberries, and how he also grows flowers to make leis, in keeping with his Hawaaian heritage. He told me about the vegetables that he cultivates in his garden. Suddenly, Muammar Gaddafi barged into the conversation. I don’t know how the former Libyan ruler interrupted things, but Jerry was observing that the Arab world is overrun with chaos. “If the Bible is going to come out as foretold, we need to have one world government, and right now it’s only the Arabs that have this chaos. We never should have gotten rid of Gaddafi. He brought control through force to Libya and that’s what’s needed.” Really, I asked, there’s only chaos in the Arab world? “Well, and with some Filipino Muslims as well.”
We pivoted back to domestic concerns. It was at this point that Jerry latched onto my identity as a teacher, exhorting me to teach every student about the importance of choices. As willing as Jerry was to share everything–family stories, deeply held beliefs, ice-cold orange juice–there was something deeper here that he was withholding, a personal event at a pivotal moment that he carries intently to this day. I didn’t ask; that felt intrusive. In hindsight, though, I found myself wondering if he was cracking the door open in the hope that I’d push through.
“Remember,” Jerry yelled at me as I walked away, down the road towards Bennettsville. “Choices. It’s all about choices.”
Technical Notes
- The turn-by-turn notes indicate a market/gas station of some sort, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe it’s closer to I-65?
- Given that, I detoured to Henryville, which has a couple of supermarkets and a restaurant. Really easy to pop in and back to the Clark forest
- It’s safe to cut the extended description of the detour under H20330 related to the 2012 tornado. The trail is open and fine. (That was a mighty tempting shortcut possibility, though)
- Would it be worth shifting the route so that it actually passes Deam Lake? Probably just adding unnecessary miles, but it seems like a shame to be so close and yet to never see it in any detail
- I got thrown off from the route a little bit before H30020. I feel pretty sure that I was following the KT waymarks, as I had for the preceding miles, but I didn’t intersect Wilson Switch Rd until much farther to the west. I can see on the gps where I should have turned, but this was definitely a left turn, instead of just continuing intuitively along the trail (in my view!)
- If I didn’t have gps with me, I would have gotten into some trouble with the TBTs entering Bennettsville. There’s a point at which Bennettsville Rd, right before it intersects IN 60, makes a 90-degree turn to the left. The next instruction in the TBT is to turn right off of Bennettsville onto IN 60. Not catching that Bennettsville Rd turned there, I was inclined to continue a few feet further to IN 60 and turn right, which would have been a real bummer. I’d suggest adding a waypoint for Turn Left to remain on Bennettsville Rd to make that clearer
- Bennettsville has both a Dollar General and a Marathon gas station with cheap pizza/fried chicken inside
