I’m fascinated by the first entries in Paul Salopek’s Walk Out of Eden, his seven year project to travel by foot from Africa’s rift valley to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. In one of his recent posts we discovered that African nomads, who live lives very different from our own, are increasingly reliant on their cell phones.  One catch is the absence of an electric grid for re-charging, so services are springing up to provide desert plug-ins.

Let that be a lesson for the American luddite who has every new tool at his disposal but refuses to use them. You may see computers and smart phones as meaningless and inauthentic, but nomadic Ethiopian shepherds are using digital technology to stay current on the price of goats. They’re also walking great distances in light, inexpensive plastic sandals – to such an extent that the footwear has been memorialized by a public sculpture in Eritrea.

While the nomads are leaping forward technologically, Salopek is turning back time when it comes to modes of travel, abandoning modern conveyances for the most basic transport of all. It’s an attention-getting move to decide to take a long walk in the modern western world.  

It got my attention, anyway.

Taking a Big Walk is still an eye-opener here in the “developed” west – as surprising in our culture as it would be to the nomads if one of their own loaded his goats into the back of a Hummer and drove off into the sunset.  A remarkably long list of people have trekked across the USA to lose weight, change their attitude, honor a friend or relative, or raise money for a cause.

If you are thinking of doing the same thing, there is plenty of advice available. But it appears the stakes are rising.

When I was still a teenager, Dan Walker walked almost 1,200 miles across Illinois and wound up winning the state’s top political office. I think people were impressed that he managed to actually set a goal and accomplish  it – a rare feat in some political circles.   Walker later became one of Illinois’ imprisoned Governors – not a great distinction but I suppose he can take some pride in the knowledge that his jail-able offenses were committed AFTER he was in office.  Apparently on his long walk one thing he did NOT think about was whether or not there’s a significant difference between a federal law and a banking regulation.

Regardless, you have to respect the magnitude of the walk.

It would be hard to match the outsized significance of Salopek’s pilgrimage, but if you had the time, the stamina and the shoes for it, where would you take your 1,500 go 3,000 mile walk?

Today’s post comes from Trail Baboon’s Living and Loving correspondent B. Marty Barry.

I just want to take a moment here to congratulate everyone who hates hates hates hates winter. You know who you are – you’re the person who sees the months of November through March as a miserable ordeal that must be endured.

I’ve been having some extra sessions lately with my clients who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, so I’m more-than-usually attuned to the plight of the light-starved and warmth-hungry among us. The cold, the ice, the darkness, the Super Bowl – all of it is an affront to your senses.

Here’s the good news. You’ve almost cleared January!

January is the worst month of the year by far. All of January’s excitement happens at the beginning and then it’s dreary and painful and endless. January is ten times longer and fifty times nastier than any other month.

If the months of the year were all assigned a planet, January would be Jupiter. Big and cold, heavy with gravity and gas, marred by an unsightly blot that turns out to be a permanent storm. Blah! No wonder people find it oppressive.

Well all that awfulness is about to come to an end – tomorrow is the first of February! February is a giddy sprint by comparison – it’s groundhogs, hearts, presidents and kaput. Blink and it’s over. Then we’re into March, the leprechauns come out, and suddenly the end is in sight.

So smile because it’s January 31st! The end is nigh. It’s true we still have to endure the Super Bowl, but by Monday afternoon that will be forgotten and then it’s clear sailing! Before you know it we’ll have April flowers, May showers, June blooms, July fireworks, August fairs, September leaves …

But I’m getting too far ahead of myself. My message today is to enjoy this moment and smile, even if it happens to be horribly, perversely cold! And if you can’t smile, that’s OK too. Maybe your face is frozen. Maybe you’ve discovered that buying more assault weapons doesn’t perk you up the way you hoped it would. I’m not here to judge or to impose anything on you – I just want to cheer you to the furthest extent that you can be cheered, and not a single smile more.

But if you’re having trouble coping, think about Jim Nabors. He just got married to the love of his life and he’s 82! Doesn’t that warm your heart? His too-long wait for a change in status has finally come to an end. He also lives in Hawaii, but try not to think about that part of it. But if you do anyway and you’re still sad, remember that you’re not a failure. Your seasonal malaise may be justified but it doesn’t define you.

Not in my eyes, anyway. Because although I’ve never met you, I care about you very, very, very much.

Your friend and (I hope) confidant,
B. Marty Barry

What makes you happy when you know it’s finally over?

Today’s post comes from perpetual sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Hey, Mr. C.,

I was just about to ask you an important question about girls, but as soon as I started to write it I realized that you don’t know the answer. Not that you’re not old enough to have wisdom and all, because I’m pretty sure you are! But all the old dudes I’ve talked to about this kind of thing are pretty sure they know less about girls than they used to, which I think is totally weird.

How can you live such a long time and get dumber as you go? That doesn’t make any sense.

But then I read a newspaper article about this study that says your brain changes when you get older, and old brains have a harder time getting good sleep than young brains do. And it’s when you’re sleeping really good and deep that the stuff you just learned makes its move to transfer over just-found-out-about-it mode to long term memory! So if you can’t get what they call long wave sleep, it’s harder to learn anything new!

So now it kinda makes sense that you’re so clueless about a lot of new things, and haven’t really picked up any fresh insights since, say, 1975.

But don’t get me wrong. I still respect you for your wisdom and experience and all. I just have a better understanding of why you don’t know anything. So I’m forwarding you a link to the article. Take a look at it! Read it a couple of times for all the good it will do you.

One thing in there that sounds kind of cool – the idea of using electrodes pasted to the scalp to simulate the right brain waves to get the best kind of sleep. How long will it be before you older guys are plugging yourselves in at night, just like a cell phone or a Chevy Volt?

And since I know you’re going to ask anyway, the question I had about girls is why does my girlfriend get mad if I start to fall asleep while she’s talking to me? It’s not like I can help it. But to smooth things over, I told her it’s because I’m trying to commit what she’s saying to long term memory as soon as I hear it. I don’t get it, though. That argument just makes her madder. It’s like she doesn’t believe in science!

Your pal,
Bubby

I think Bubby has been a High School sophomore for so long, he’s the closest thing we have to a teenager/old man hybrid. Still, the most surprising thing in this message is that he thinks he has a girlfriend! I can only assume she comes from the same place as the one that beguiled that Notre Dame football player – Fantasyland. Although she sees through his sad explanation just as clearly as a real person would, so who knows?

What’s your most effective memory-keeping technique?

Today’s post comes from Bart, the bear who found a smart phone in the woods.

Hey,

Bart here. Just having an awake moment during my hibernation and thought I’d check to see if anybody texted me. Nobody did! Is it because you know I’ve already settled down for my long winters’ nap, or is it because we’re not really friends anymore?

Just wonderin’. That’s the sort of question that can keep you awake for hours when you know you’re supposed to be sleeping. Lucky I have lots of weeks left before it’s time to get up.

Ever just lie there awake in the middle of the night when it’s super cold out? That’s when it’s great to have a really solid den, which I’ve got this year. It’s in a gully with a fresh fallen tree on the one side and a kind of a hill on the other side, so we’re out of the wind and there’s lots of leaves and stuff. Really nice for hunkerin’ down.

Only thing missing is snow. I mean, LOTS of snow.

Snow is an insulator, but most people just think of it as super cold stuff. It’s not! There’s lots of stuff that’s colder than snow. Tonight, it’s the air and everything it touches.

Anyway, I’ve got that really happy feeling you get when you’ve got all your leaves and pine needles packed around you to make a nice cozy bed and your hair is dry and you’ve had something to eat but the place isn’t a mess it’s just warm and it smells like bears and you know you don’t have to go out!

I’ve got a few more months of torpor ahead of me so I think I’m going to nod off again. But if you’re about to send me a text, don’t stop just ’cause I’ll be sleeping. I have a bunch of these random half-awake times, and I need something to read.

Or ask me a question, even if it’s that one that everybody asks about hibernation and whether or not we have to go to the bathroom and if so how do we do it? But I’ll tell you right now, the answer is awesome, and it won’t make you feel any better about your situation.

Not only is hibernation the huge nap you want but will never have, it’s also more slimming than all the exercise you could possibly do in five months – and I sleep through it all!

I love being a bear!
Bart

How long could you stay in bed, if there was no reason to get out?