Ch. 25
By n' by, I stood a-ponderin' the map by the chain-link fence and a beautiful little rock flower. After too many minutes of this, I started looking up the off-ramp I was about to walk beside. There were no cops around. I put the map away, twirled the pack up onto my shoulders, and started walking.
T'was a beautiful spring day ~ but, before long, I was walking beside a freeway. There were lots of pine trees around, but who needs a bunch of cars & trucks bahroooooooming by inches away from your elbow? When I found a hole conveniently cut into the chainlink fence, I stepped through it.
I tramped along for a while with the fence 'tween the freeway and myself, then twirled the pack off my shoulders, dug out the map & checked it again. According to the map, this freeway was taking me back to Albuquerque. No thank you. I retraced my steps back to the hole in the chain link fence, and stood next to the freeway. Cars & trucks careened along at 70 miles-an-hour at arms distance. A gap appeared ~ again & again. Thru about the 5th fair-sized gap to come along, I juggled myself and the pack across the freeway without getting creamed ~ and crawled under another chain-link fence upon the other side of the concrete ribbon of death.
Up over a hill and thru some trees I tramped to another freeway ~ crossed that noisy son-of-a-bitch too ~ like my favorite secret agent, Mr. Lucky, would have done, that is, without getting caught or, alleluhia, creamed.
Found a little dirt trail under the trees & tramped along up to the backyards of a row of houses & kept tramping along a fair distance away from these houses so as not to disturb anybody with what seemed like a somewhat delinquent presence.
When I reached the next freeway that I had to cross, I got to use an underpass along with a new street that didn't have anything built on it yet ~ and kept going 'til I found something to sit on, like a stool-sized rock more or less, and rested for a moment.
My pack was too heavy. I was exhausted ~ and I hadn't even gotten out of Flagstaff yet...
To be continued
soon
