During this stretch trail angels offered us kindness in a variety of ways; our response varied as well. On the first day we stopped at a store in a small hamlet and asked the proprietor if he had a bathroom we could use. Roger Huron overheard us and said he thought he knew a bathroom nearby we could use. We followed him into an alleyway, up an enclosed stairway and into a sparse corridor with a seemingly private bathroom. Roger left out details of why he would know about and have access to this bathroom, which gave me an uneasy feeling. I decided to use the bathroom at the same time as Cindy to be on the safe side.
Roger offered to buy us coffee after our bathroom break but I declined, partly because the short winter day was getting on, partly because of my uneasy feeling. The conversation we had with Roger should have dispelled those feelings. In his youth he hitchhiked to Alaska with his fiddle, performing for the locals he met along the way. Obviously, we reminded him of these glory days and he wanted to relive them with us. I later received a comment on my blog from someone who knew Roger, confirming his status as a nice guy and an accomplished bluegrass musician.
Later in the week we declined a kind offer of food by two women we met at a convenience store after we had crossed into Ohio. Linda did treat us to hot chocolate while Roseanna bought a lottery ticket with the number 264, the number of days we had been hiking up until then, but we declined on their offer to load us up with more food. We had received so many offers of food during the course of our journey, I can say that kindness cured me of gluttony. Yet I remain haunted by the lonely expression on Roger’s countenance when we declined his offer. Sometimes the kindest thing to do is to accept someone’s kindness.
The day after we met Roger we received kindness by a trick played on us before by trail angels. We met and chatted with a 911 dispatch worker named Jared. When I declined his offer for a donation, he then offered for us to exchange cards. Instead of his card he snuck a twenty in my hand before I realized the deception.
That same day a more unusual act of kindness benefited us. A snowstorm, the gentle and beautiful kind rather than a raging blizzard, accompanied us throughout the day. We came to an intersection where the turn our route requested appeared more like a private road. A short distance away Laughery Creek flowed across the road, appearing more like a river. We decided not to take the route less traveled.
Shortly after we headed on our new route a salt of the earth farmer named Gene pulled up to us in his truck, wondering why two people were hiking back roads in the middle of a snowstorm. In my response I confessed we were on our current route to avoid a “river” crossing of Laughery Creek. He informed us that we would find the same conditions up ahead as well, then continued on while I dealt with some damage control in regards to Cindy.
Cindy’s initial apprehension of the cold during our journey had been appeased by a relatively warm winter, part of the reason she had been in high spirits as we hiked into February. Yet the warmer winter also brought a wetter winter, with the rivers and streams we encountered often at flood levels. Jim Shaner, an ADT hiker before us, crossed Laughery Creek without getting his feet wet. We faced getting wet up to our thighs or higher in the midst of a snowstorm; this alarmed Cindy.
In her precognitive decline days this would have been no big deal for Cindy the Expedition Woman: “Mind over matter!” she might have declared, despite her abhorrence of the cold. However, I can tell you now that the earliest signs of dementia are not memory loss, but how people react differently to stress in their lives. Cindy first ignored stressful situations as I looked back on her overall decline. Then she went the opposite way and became fatalistic over them; she was in her fatalistic mode of handling stress as we hiked towards Laughery Creek. I spent the time continually trying to partly reassure Cindy and partly establish that we had no choice.
Except we did have a choice once we reached Laughery Creek. Gene was there waiting to ferry us across the creek in his truck. He had to have waited at least twenty minutes for us to get there but that did not matter. This simple act of kindness from a salt of the earth farmer outshone in our minds some of the more magnanimous acts benefiting us during our journey.
Overall, we were notably ecumenical with the churches that hosted us with their kindness. We stayed with the UCC the most often, in large part because of the serendipitous encounter with Missouri conference minister Jeff Whitman. Methodists came in a close second. Baptists, Assembly of God, Presbyterians and Episcopalians hosted us as well. Apparently we now walked through Lutheran country, as they became our hosts both before and after our snow day, with a couple more churches passed by in between.
Before the snow day we stayed in the home of Pastor Ralph and Sue Camden. The heartwarming tale from this stay was how the congregation assisted their pastor during a time of illness. Also noteworthy was Ralph’s John Deere tractor collection, located in the room where we spent the night.
In contrast to this quaint stay, we spent the night in a school classroom associated with the St. John Lutheran Church of Aurora. Ky scouted and secured both of these Lutheran connections for us; in the case of Aurora we did not meet a pastor or church elder. However, the school hosted a basketball game for their sixth graders that evening and the coach warmly invited us to attend.
Wintry cold joined us again on our last day of hiking in Indiana, with the high temperature in the teens. Mile for mile we witnessed the most acts of kindness and community building in this state, which made our last lunch break in Indiana particularly fitting. We noticed activity going on at the First Baptist Church in Greendale; to get out of the cold we entered the building and asked if we could eat our lunch inside. We discovered a youth basketball tournament occurring and we intended to be inconspicuous, but word got out about us quickly.
Pastor Steve Fagersburg and wife Marcia came to meet us. In keeping with our mission’s theme, Steve informed us about his friend Ed Casheen and a movement called Hate Busters. Hate Busters did things like pledge money on behalf of “haters” to the cause they hated, with instructions for a thank you note to be sent. Their targets included Westboro Baptist Church, the church we learned was running a money-making First Amendment scam from lawyer Reid Nelson in Kansas. Marcia left during our chat and came back with a bag full of food to take with us. Maybe kindness had not entirely cured us of gluttony.
Ky again resourcefully scouted, arranged and provided transportation to our last overnight stay in Indiana, this time at the United Methodist Church in Lawrenceburg. Ky made the arrangement with the church council and we did not meet the church’s pastor as we settled into a classroom for the night. The next morning Pastor Bob Cannon received a big surprise when he entered his church early in the morning, as the council had not informed him of guests.
After the initial shock of seeing us, Pastor Bob followed the lead of many before him and was delighted to share his church’s humanitarian involvements. One thing in the works for the church was acquiring a neighboring property to be used as housing for vagabonds passing through. I imagine we would have qualified.
Soon after entering Ohio we crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky on Anderson’s Ferry, one of three water crossings along the ADT route that officially could not be done on foot. We were in Kentucky long enough to encounter Rodney and Tara, a young couple who had seen the Evansville coverage of us, then crossed over the Ohio River again on the Roebling Suspension Bridge into Cincinnati.
Ky picked us up on the Cincinnati side of the bridge to bring us to the Convent of the Transfiguration, a connection made while we stayed with Pastors Cynthia and Nancy at the Emmaus Order of Pilgrims in Mt. Vernon, Indiana (where we first heard tornado sirens). Here we would spend the next five nights and four days while I gave presentations and we took care of a few errands.
There are three categories of women at the Convent. In addition to the Sisters were the Oblates who lived “off campus.” They had yearly vows similar to the Sisters but had one foot in the “real world.” The Postulants were Sisters in training. One Postulant, Nike Spillson, had an appointment with a foot doctor and insisted I come with her to get my left foot checked. Dr. David Zink concluded the problem was due to over pronation and recommended an arch support. The doc was an amiable man who would not charge us for the visit. Well, that did not sit well with Nike, who wanted to pay for us; she paid for my arch supports instead.
During meal times at the convent we each had our own napkin and ring holder with our name. For silent meals the napkins were placed in advance where we were to sit at a table. This occurred at breakfast and lunch. The silence was broken by prayers before and after, along with the ringing of bells by the Sisters heading up each table. At lunch one Sister read a thought-provoking passage while all others listened. The suppers we attended involved the same bell ringing and prayers, but we grabbed our own napkins and determined where we would sit and talk with others.
Staying in one place the whole time made this less hectic than our four day stay in Kansas City, particularly considering that the convent was a sanctuary for peace and tranquility. Their motto was “Simplicity, Kindness, Joy,” which they manifested in their daily lives. Rather than a romantic night out in the big city for Valentine’s Day, we spent the two days leading up to that romantic holiday mainly resting at the convent in peaceful observance of their motto and in reflection of all the ways our journey lived up to a lifestyle of simplicity, kindness and joy.
