October 19

From Pennsylvania south on my route communities, and thinly populated rural areas, support a great number of churches. I'm not keeping count, but I think I pass a church every five miles when I'm riding through farmland, and I'm talking big farms in Virginia and North Carolina, so the rural areas are not as densely populated as they are in Nova Scotia. Fundamentalist Christian, Baptist, Church of God, African Methodist Episcopal, Pentecostal, one huge place called Lives Changed by Christ. On Sunday mornings there is very little traffic, compared to the rest of the week, on these back roads: everybody is either in church or getting ready to go, and they don't have all that far to drive. And every church has a graveyard.

A couple of days ago my ride took me through Camp Lejuene, a huge Marine Corps base. I call it Death Valley: in twenty miles there were no buildings other than a few mock-ups for combat practice, and no side roads except for tanks. Lots of HMVs and APCs on the highway. The only people not in a vehicle were a group of prisoners (Marines) mowing grass. Their guard gave me a wave that did not rise above his waist.

I had ridden about 65 miles that day, when I finally got out of Death Valley My rump, knees, and feet hurt, I was hungry and I wanted a beer. The only commercial campground nearby didn't look very inviting, so after I bought a 22oz bottle of Bud at a convenience store I began looking for a place to pitch my tent. Found one not a hundred yards down the road. It was a church-like wooden structure, painted white, and in good shape, with no cars near it, and an historic marker that said something about some body's meeting place. Behind it, blending into the woods, was a cemetery with a road running through it. There were several patches of graves, each separated from the other by woods or low wild bushes, and each fenced in and well maintained. I kept going back, away from the highway, until there were no more graves and I couldn't be seen.

My tent was still wet from the dew of the morning before and I dried it as best I could by hanging it over one of the fences and meanwhile ate my cold supper, sipping beer, but saving it because I like to have some when I write my daily journal. I got the tent pitched a half hour before sunset, and when I was settling in I knocked the bottle over and spilled about a quarter of the beer. That would have been sadder if I hadn't been in a graveyard. Oscar Begay, the first Navajo I met, always poured a little of his bottle onto the ground, for the old people, the anasazi, to appease them, and made me promise to do the same.

That night, after the helicopters quit flying over the Marine base and they got through their artillery practice, and the traffic on the highway abated, and the local dogs settled down, it was very peaceful.