10.29.2007

one more letter

I've been working on a short letter to give a feel for the second half of our walk, to send to our church back at Plow Creek farm. Here's the beginning of it:

We were just about to lay down for the night, on the concrete under a church's picnic shelter, a dry and quiet place to sleep before the long stretch tomorrow. There was twenty-six miles of road ahead with no towns, further than we could walk in a day. I was a little nervous about it. That's when the police car pulled up, its headlights trained on us.

We approached the car as the officer got out. Initial pleasantries were exchanged. As I began to explain about our walk, the officer asked Heather to take her hand out of her pocket—he was keeping an eye on our hands—and then asked if we had any identification. But his questions became less suspicious the more he heard. And after a few minutes he was trying to think of how to help us. He couldn't leave us at the church since someone had called to have us removed, but he saw that we were no threat. So he offered to drive us to a sheltered place twelve miles down the road.

We climbed into the caged back seat, where the door handles don't work, and set off into the night. The officer asked us more questions and we talked about our visits with people and how God had taken care of us and the retreat work we were planning to do when we finished the walk. The police radio squawked. A cheerleader had apparently fainted at the high school football game. "Cheerleader down," we joked, "repeat, we have a cheerleader down!"...


The whole letter is available here. The letter I wrote for the first half of the walk is available here.