Dispatch #9
Friday, August 30
On the Road from Westby to Rice Lake, Wisconsin

No cycling today. The trip's too long, the deadlines too close, since we need to be in Whitehall for a video taping at 11, and then in Rice Lake by 4 for other media considerations. Susan's driving the RV (entitled by others, not myself) "Wally's Wagon."

The day is supernally clear, cloudless, a high scrubbed blue. It would have been wonderful for bicycling; I miss both the exercise and the adventure, but tomorrow a short ride will be shared with folks from Chetek into their town and the site of the rally, and on Sunday I'll cycle some 70 to 60 miles to a spot near the Twin Cities, and the next day into vast municipality.

Thanne left early this morning, driving home to Valparaiso alone. It is, isn't it, the condition of love that we worry more for the other than for ourselves. I take to state highways on two wheels down a narrow shoulder fearlessly, while I sit now and pray that Thanne meets no harm going home in a full sized car. Loving sharpens my fear of losing, and genuine laughter always whispers to my deeper soul of laughter's end and quietude.

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How dear to me are those many expressions of friendship and thanksgiving we are receiving on the way. Last evening our rally was held in Davidson Park--outdoors in Westby. There were more than two hundred people present and fed. And when I stepped up to elderly people sitting around a picnic table and introduced myself, eyes lit with gladness and friendship and familiarity: "Oh, you are him!" And then the thanks that comes from my dear white-heads is more valuable than money, for I reckon how many years' experience, suffering, pleasure, wisdom enlarges that thanks. I believe that what I receive from a solemn grandfather and a bright-eyed grandmother is as wood is to veneer; Brittany Spears gets veneer; her thanksgivings are by every human measure shallow and short-lived. Mine have lived long and learned to distinguish goodness from glibness.

Therefore the relationships which I am discovering now--but which have existed long before my knowing them--are transfiguring this journey of mine into a treasure hunt, something profoundly comforting.

"When I was in college," a young man, tall as a flagpole, both a husband and a father, spoke softly to me, "the religion of the place ... well, we were different. I couldn't get along with it. But your books," he said, "the stories, their vision of the faith, kept faith in me." This young man, pushing a baby in its carriage, is also a pastor now.

But when I write and when I record the programs for Lutheran Vespers, I am in small spaces uninhabited by any save myself. I send out my thought to the unseen, and I live in hope, therefore, but not in sight.

And thus the dearness of traveling among, talking among, walking and living among these people at their own levels: a circle is closed. A relationship has suddenly had the lights turned on, and lo: we have been shaking hands all along.

Yes, those of you who are following these dispatches, those to whom I am yet to come: bring your books and I will sign them with pleasure; for if you've read what I will sign, my signature is but a greeting and a warm farewell, for we have been friends, after all, long before I knew you.

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And finally today (in this chit-chatting dispatch) I must thank Jeffery Levandoski, bicycle mechanic at Buck's Bicycle Shop in Valparaiso. My Trek 520 (a touring bike called Bontrager, but in my experience rechristened the Bone Breaker) is performing with marvelous ease. Jeffery taught me as much as I could absorb about the bike, and encouraged me through my training, and fiddled with adjustments absolutely every time I came for help, all with a soft-spoken kindness, his advice never wry or smiling at my ignorance, but always given as thoughtful suggestions over which I, surely, could make my own decisions. And I learned. And I feel re-assured, for he said I could call him from the road if I need further advice.

Well, it's like having a counselor and a coach beside me, however far I travel away.

Community need not be defined by geography, but by the spirit of things!

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And that, finally, is what this dispatch is about after all: thanksgivings for givings, which is the very nexus of friendship and the crossings of community.

Dick Whittington and his cat: they went to London to make their fortune.

I and my Bone Breaker, on the other hand: we are going to a hundred lesser cities to touch the fortunes we already have.

Mine is the richer trip by far.

Walt