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Taking
a
long hike:
Sometimes
you gotta get away from it all
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"We felt a little like Christopher Columbus must
have felt when he sailed around the world."
Later, when it was all over, I would blame the bottle
of Thunderbird for getting me into such a big mess.
It was the spring of my freshman year here. We were
passing around a jug of wine, philosophizing and debating such monumental topics
as whether your toilet paper should be rolled under or over, or which was more
comfortable -- boxers or briefs.
We later took our lengthy discussion outside, down
Lincoln Highway and out along the railroad tracks through the barren fields
beyond NIU and DeKalb. Where you can stand alone, miles away from anything or
anyone, and hear nothing but the still of the night, the chirp of the crickets
... and the roar of an oncoming train.
We didn't return home until six or seven o'clock in the
morning, legs aching, heads throbbing and big grins on our faces, like we just
won the Nobel Prize. We must have walked ten or twelve miles that night, and to
this day we still argue we could have gone further ... if we could have been
assured of returning in time for Monday morning class.
It was my friend Chris Tso who proposed another hike. A
real hike. An adventure for two bumbling, lackadaisical college freshmen with
too much time on their hands. We decided to walk home.
"Home" in this case was Lake Zurich, where I
was raised and went to high school. It's in the Northwest suburban area,
anywhere from fifty to sixty miles away from DeKalb. This is a long way to
drive, let alone walk.
Plus we didn't know if we'd have to camp out overnight
in Farmer John's field on Route 72, or get a room in some dirtbag motel or just
go straight through until morning.
We didn't know if some psycho would pull up behind us
as we walked and rob us, or hit us or kill us. We didn't know if we'd bring
enough food, or have enough money to get food, or to even find a place to get
food. A lot of the hike was in between corn fields, and there aren't a whole lot
of 7-11 stores on the way.
There were a lot of reasons not to go ahead with the
hike, and all of them were good, sensible, logical ones.
But you don't stay at NIU for very long without
discarding quite a bit of common sense.
Also, we felt a little like Christopher Columbus must
have felt when he sailed around the world. People were calling us crazy, telling
us we'd never make it and we'd show up in Police Beat as two missing students.
People were laying odds on us making it and betting sizable amounts of money
whether we'd call back for a ride crying and whining about it being too far,
that we couldn't make it, it was too long.
But we did make it. It took us a day and a half to walk
the 53 miles there, and we had to stay at a fleabag motel after all. We got
stopped by police at least three times.
Sometimes, they stopped us because they were looking
for someone else, like the ones that asked us if we knew anything about a
boosted car (our backpacks, sunburned foreheads and beat-up shoes must not have
tipped them off).
Sometimes they stopped us to give us a ride, like the
cop that drove us to the motel, recommending it because of its working shower
and toilet.
But in all cases, they were pretty supportive.
Unlike others, might I add. This is the part in telling
the story where someone looks at me aghast and calls me an idiot. They don't see
any point to a hike like that -- they say it's dumb, they say I had too much
free time on my hands (au contraire -- I had two exams to study for, which I
still passed, thank you very much).
All of these are legitimate arguments. There's no moral
to this story, and I highly doubt anyone is going to strike out on their own
walk to the suburbs, or Chicago, or even Sycamore. But it was an adventure
nonetheless.
Yes, damn it, an adventure. You don't walk such a
distance and not risk your neck, not in this lifetime. And as far as it being
boring, let me tell you, it was anything but. We were out on the open road, away
from people, classes, telephones, TVs and deadlines. We were cut off from
civilization, and this is something I highly recommend. You don't have to do
what we did to cut yourself off. Camping and fishing trips are more sane
alternatives.
But for those that were dropped on their heads as
children, of which a fair number can be found on this campus, it's the way to
go. Just don't forget the Thunderbird.
As you can probably imagine, this column caused much controversy among the cultured, learned, scholarly students of Northern Illinois University. Well... maybe cultured, learned, and scholarly is a bit exaggerated. Okay, it's incredibly exaggerated. But nevertheless, NIU students still had something to say about it.
Copyright 2001 Tso Long Productions ©
