April, or A Shortcut To Mushrooms

Somewhere near Lame Deer

The end of April finds me close to Lame Deer, Montana, well into Eastern Montana, and yet still quite far from leaving the state, because Montana, let me say one more time, is very big. Once I pass through Wyoming, I resolve to stop posting pictures of wide open spaces and to stop writing about barely-populated places, but for now, here we are. Lame Deer has a population over 2,000, but it is another census-designated place, something less than a town.

About those mushrooms: I found another morel today, and I have now found nine in total in the woods near my house. Arlo and I walk by those woods every morning, and most days this week I walked into the woods and did some looking. Morel mushrooms are a family tradition that stretches back all the way to Ohio almost 60 years ago - back at least as far as I can remember. We stopped hunting for them when we moved to California, until someone found a place in the Sierra foothills where they grow, and the family started taking a weekend each year to camp and hunt for mushrooms. I have not been on that camping trip for the last 24 years, I think, and had only found one morel in Washington in my 27 years here until this year. As long as I live in this house though, and as long as they don't cut the forest down, I have a place to look now.

For the month of April, I walked 10,000 steps every day but one, a day when I walked 9,700 steps and forgot to walk the extra three minutes to finish it off. In four months, I have missed 10,000 steps four times.

More importantly, I averaged over 12,000 steps per day for the month. This is because of that walk Arlo and I take each morning that takes us next to the woods - I feel good most mornings, and the weather keeps getting warmer (still mostly 50s), so I walk extra. It's a nice walk on a gravel and dirt path under some power lines, and not many people walk there, and Arlo and I like it.

At the end of February, I was just on pace at 10,000 steps per day to that point. Now, I am 120,000 steps, or twelve days, ahead of the pace and thinking about how quickly I can get this done.

A Jigsaw Puzzle

 I started blogging about walking across the United States by comparing it to assembling a big jigsaw puzzle: you make a little progress day after day, and even though the change from day to day may not look like much, you get the thing done eventually.

I do a big puzzle every year, and this year it was the one pictured here - 5,000 pieces, objects in the solar system and beyond - and as you can see it is now finished. Sometimes it takes me as much as eight months to finish one, but this one was not especially difficult. It has a lot of color, and it also has quite a bit of writing. There were a few solid blue or mostly black areas, but overall it was not bad.

Also, this was the first time I can remember that I got significant help. My brother was here for just three days, but we spent hours working on it, and we added maybe 1,000 pieces between us. So I am done early this year. I have worked into October before.

Going back to my walking, I have been at it almost seven months now, and I am 30 percent done. This walk is more like an 18,000-piece puzzle, which, such things exist, but they require a very big table, and I don't have that sort of space. My 5,000 pieces take up almost all of my assembly space.

This week I have walked a lot like I am supposed to, and my walking led me to finding three morel mushrooms this weekend, which is very cool. Also this week I was walking past a neighbor's house when she needed help picking up some spilled groceries, so I did a good deed and rescued as much of her food as I could.

I am now at Dunmore, Montana, and tomorrow I will reach Crow Agency, close to the Little Bighorn National Monument. After that, the Montana places showing on Google Maps (at a zoom level where I can see them all) are:

• Busby, population 745
• Muddy, population 617
• Lame Deer, population 2,042
• Ashland, population 464
• Epsie. Google Earth photos suggest a population of maybe 5 to 10 people.
• Broadus, population 518.

So mostly a nice, quiet walk undisturbed by any large pockets of people. It's going well.

Past The Big City of Billings, Montana

As I previewed last week, my route took me right through Billings, Montana this week, on Thursday actually. By now I am at least 15 miles out of town, near a place called Badbaby Coulee, which is...a valley with an interesting name. I have posted some pictures of the wilderness, so a city makes a nice change.

Billings is in fact the largest city in Montana by a good measure, with nearly 110,000 residents, which makes it less than half the size of Fremont, the 16th largest city in California. In fact, California has 62 towns with more people than Billings, but you can see that Billings is an actual city with big buildings and stoplights and, as promised, sidewalks.

I am still sort of, roughly, following I-90, which I crossed in Billings and will cross again soon. We won't really leave it behind until South Dakota. If I had taken a car instead of walking, I would have followed a similar route and arrived in Billings after two days, and in Rapid City, South Dakota on day three, which means my walking is about 1/100th as fast as driving. Five miles per day versus 500, so that's about right.

My new streak is thirteen days over 10,000 steps per day. Only missed four days out of 107 this year.
 

1,000 Miles

And that's a lot.

I usually post on Sundays, but I hit 1,000 miles, or 2,000,000 steps, on Monday (today), so I held off this week's post until I hit that mark. Today is day 193, so I got there seven days early.

 Comanche, Montana is an unincorporated community (Montana teaches you an impressive range of descriptions for barely-there places), population 26, that is 997 miles from Cape Flattery, Washington, so I passed through today. When I looked up images of Comanche Montana, I got pages of pictures of this tow-behind pop-up tent. Comanche is the brand, and Montana is the model, so this is like a Toyota Tundra, except it's a Comanche Montana. Price is about $10,000. Nice.

I may not have mentioned yet that, somewhere along the line, I noticed that my phone keeps track of mileage as well as steps, and it credits me with more mileage than I credit myself with my 2,000-steps-per-mile calculation. For example, in March I recorded 364,000 steps, or 182 miles. My phone says I walked almost 188 miles. So if I switched to using my phone for mileage, I could magically jump across several miles of Montana and be a little farther along. I will not do that. I'll stick to my methodology and get my seven million steps in, if the fates allow, but if I do something like this again, I'm using the extra miles my phone wants to give me.

Four days from now, I will pass right through downtown Billings (and yes, Billings is big enough to have a downtown with streets and probably even sidewalks), and then on to the lonely walk between Billings and Broadus, with place names like Crow Agency, Muddy, and Lame Deer. I look forward to finding pictures to represent those places.

I broke my streak of 10,000-step days last Monday. I got more than 9,700 steps but forgot to walk a few more minutes to get the last few. My new streak is seven days. I have only missed four days this year.

One thousand miles is only two-sevenths of the way to Miami. Still, it's one thousand miles of walking. Imagine.

Ryegate, Montana

I have made it to Ryegate, Montana, which, unlike some of the other places I have visited recently is an actual town, although with a population of only 223 people. I searched the Internet for pictures of Ryegate and, finding nothing of particular interest, decided on this drawing. I would fall over backward if I stood like that, but the picture gives one a sense of forward motion, which works for me.

The drawing is by the cartoonist R. Crumb. I watched a documentary about him once. It has been a while, but I remember that he is a strange guy, has a big collection of records of old music and a disdain for most of modern life. Also, one of the females interviewed - his first wife? - says he has an unusually large penis. It is an odd documentary.

Here is my roadmap through the rest of Montana: I have already walked more than 950 miles, so I should hit 1,000 miles in eight or nine days. Billings is another 19 miles down the road, four more days, so should be there around mid-month. 175 miles after Billings is Broadus, the last decent-sized town in Montana. That should take just over 30 days, so maybe May 17-ish. Then it's 57 miles to Alzada, Montana and two more miles from there to the Wyoming border - 11 days. So Wyoming about the end of May.

When I crossed into Montana from Idaho, I was in the mountains, with elevations of nearby towns over 5,000 feet. Before I got to Helena, I crossed the continental divide, but Helena, Ryegate, Billings, and Broadus are all at elevations over 3,000 feet, and Alzada is 2,800 feet. My point is that all of Montana is mountains, which is I suppose why not many people live there.

At least I am going downhill now.