Day 20, May 31st

6:00am and time to get going. How do I describe this high desert country? It is so green now, grass and bush, so healthy of an appearance. The time will come when the sun and lack of rain will show them as brown, brittle and tortured. There are puddles now but that too will change in another month or two and the earth shall be cracked where the puddles were and hoping for any moisture at all.

Shadows play across the valley floor, some of hill and some of cloud. It is beautiful now with a hawk or two floating above. By the time it dies I shall be elsewhere. It seems to be enjoying life while it has it.

When you start a journey, you really have no idea what it's all about. As I look out over this valley, it becomes more of a surety to me that this is not about whether I am David or Don Quixote or whether I am "a muppet or a man." Those were shallow prideful thoughts. This journey is about you and all the other people I meet or read my messages and what they choose to do about me (help or not help), or because of the messages choose to help their neighbor or not. I consider it a privilege to put one foot in front of another bringing my condition and these messages to whomever will consider and respond.

There are a lot of wonderful people along my path. I have much joy on a daily basis. 

Remember the movie "Princess Bride?" Remember the man in black? I was pushing a long hill and I stopped to look back. There was something there. Something in the road that wasn't a car and as I watched it seemed to be gaining. So I pushed ahead to see if I could get to the top before it caught me. Whenever I looked back it seemed closer. Perhaps a struggling cyclist. I beat it to the top (cliff with rope). It wasn't the man in black. It was a sign on a tall post.

Hop-a-long and me saw a "tree of anguish." The gnarled trunk that bespoke of a life of struggle. Hop-a-long quit complaining about our present difficulties.

As the sun was going down I came to a little rest area. Met a young lady riding her bike from Montana to Moab, Utah. I cooked her some chicken and rice on my little stove. It was good to have someone to visit with. There was no overnight camping, so after she left I pushed on for a couple of hours in the dark. I think I saw a sign that said, "Mt. Everest 5 miles ahead." Found a place to get off the road and got to bed about 11:30pm. Saw a prong horned antelope today.