A season among the heathen

Upstate resident Alastair McCandless, 37, is the subject of a current Greenville Journal about his walk across America.

Inspired by a friend who was wounded in Iraq, McCandless decided to walk across America and raise money along the way for the Wounded Warrior Project.

The project took ten months over two years: he walked 4116 miles from Greenville to Omaha between April and September 2011, came home for the winter, then picked up in Omaha this past April. He finished at Point Reyes, California October 13.

For his pains- and they were many- McCandless raised $13,500.

That's about $3.27 a mile.

"I was a bit of an oddity," McCandless confessed to The Journal. But he added, "I was surprised by how many people will welcome you into their homes. People will help you out and be willing to trust you. It made me feel good about people."

But only up to a point. Based on a sampling of his blog entries, McCandless' tolerance for people, places and things- if it existed before he set out- was stretched pretty thin by his odyssey:

San Francisco, October 15, 2012:

The Chinese don't sleep in since they have a world to conquer, so I moseyed over to their little town.  Lanterns hung above the streets as if in preparation for a parade, but a multitude of dragons never materialized.  I trod quietly by storefronts decorated with Oriental characters, wondering at the mystery of what lay behind the doors.  I never gathered the courage to venture inside, the sidewalk carrying me inexorably onward like a river.  Only food could have pushed me ashore and the restaurants were not yet open either....

Father Juniper Serra established the Mision de San Francisco Asis here in 1776, although the first actual building was not completed until fifteen years later.  A larger church was constructed next door in 1918.
The mission remains a major center of Papist sentiment to this day.  

Leaving the holy I went amongst the sinners in the Castro section of San Francisco.  This district is home to thousands of gays, lesbians, transgenders, bisexuals, and trisexuals.  Maybe you knew the city has a large gay population, but what caused the same sex loving masses to flock here?

Even before "In the Navy" was written, an extensive segment of that branch of our armed forces was infested with man love.  When during World War II the military decided to expose and expel these deviants, many of them were off-loaded in San Francisco.  Once outed, the ex-soldiers were frightened to return to their small communities in Minnesota, Texas, North Carolina, etc.  They opted to stay where they were and start a new life free from prejudice.

Castro became the unofficial capital of rainbow and fairy land in the late 60s, just as nearby Haight Ashbury was being overrun by the hippie hordes.  Artists, musicians, and homosexuals alike were drawn by the low real estate prices in the wake of white flight.  They created vibrant communities which still flourish today. My only quibble with the Haight is the preponderance of head shops.

...I had a disappointing lunch at one of the restaurants in the Haight.  Mea culpa, I should have figured the standards would be low. People with the munchies are not exactly what one would call a discerning clientele.

October 12, 2012

Mark met us a quarter of an hour later with a story of his own.  He had been driving around the San Rafael area, killing time while Colin and I forged up the coast.  While stopped at a red light he ran into this man:

Mark had wanted to give the man money to reward his creativity, even though, as Chris Rock says, "a homeless man with a funny sign hasn't been homeless very long."  I countered with a different version of events.  Consider this:  an illiterate homeless man unknowingly approaches a smart ass and asks him if he would write him a sign.  Ah, the possibilities of such a blank canvas...       

October 10, 2012:

Litter can tell you a lot about a place.  Discarded Sierra Nevadas and Haagen Dazs wrappers indicated Berkeley was slightly more upscale than the average American city.  A return to Bud Light and used condoms let me know I was entering Oakland.

... I spent the night at Fort Mason, where Hosteling International gives the less than wealthy traveler a chance to stay in the heart of downtown San Francisco.  Mason has had many uses over its 150 year history, defending the city from possible attack, hosting exhibits for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and operating as a storage facility and staging area during World War II.  Now the Fort is stuck with me and a gaggle of smelly Europeans as house guests.  Oh how the mighty have fallen down, cracked their head on the sidewalk, and bled out. 

September 30, 2012:

For those like myself who believe in the greatness of our nation, the American River is a bit of a disappointment....

 I ended the day's portion of my own lengthy jaunt at the Holiday Inn.  Manager Tami went above the call of duty, comping the room, my dinner, and making a generous donation to the Wounded Warrior Project.  The American River may have been a bit drab, but Americans are pretty bad ass.  I ain't queer* or nothin' but I think they are way cooler than unicorns.

*He is indeed quite queer - Editor

September 24, 2012:

...I also had a humorous run-in with an ignorant local.  Late in the morning I walked past a woman and her two dogs.  They sat next to a shopping cart full of either her possessions or valuables she was selling.  I waved hello and thought no more of her.  

One hundred yards beyond her a silver-haired patrician stopped in his car and asked me, "Are those your bags?"  Since I was only carrying one I wittily asked him to clarify by mumbling, "Huh?"  He queried further, providing the necessary transparency to his thought process, "Isn't that your friend over there?" pointing at the woman with the shopping cart.  I closed our dialogue with another long-winded response, "No."  

The man thought me a drifter.  I wish I was still pushing B.J., that would have blown his small mind like a "Hobo With a Shotgun."

September 13, 2012:

 

 I took a short break from the trail to take a side trip with Dad to the nearby Hickison Petroglyphs. I had great expectations after having seen the well-maintained Native American art at Capitol Reef. The Hickison pictures were indecipherable, the surface upon which they were etched had crumbled and eroded. Tourists had worsened the situation by covering the petroglyphs with their own graffiti.

To understand what we were seeing we were forced to take the word of archaeologists, who make up more B.S. than any other field outside of theoretical physics. They suggested that most of the art was drawn yearly by tribal shamans in an effort to insure a successful hunting season. All non-hunting images were supposed to symbolize either boobs or vaginas, a prehistoric version of Playboy I suppose. It all looked like gobbledygook to me...