I’m gonna try to write and put out pieces of my own story in a somewhat chronological order. It’s difficult because memory is a tricky thing, and I’ve been writing about my travels as they come back to me. It seems a good point to start off though is right after Grand Junction, since most of you coming here will probably have heard my Otherworld podcast episodes about my harrowing time spent in Grand Junction (Chicken Whackers episode 1&2).
I know speak for at least myself when I say that we weren’t very comfortable until we got far away from Grand Junction. Before Grand Junction, we had come from a small town in Colorado called Paonia. Paonia was a wonderful little town sitting on the Gunnison river. It was small but still had a bustling downtown scene with bars and music. There were a lot of old hippies there.
The last time I was in Paonia I had run into an ex-traveler named Jerome. He had immediately offered to take me to his farm to hang out, and already had two other travelers with them. It was nighttime and I was downtown alone with no plans when he offered, so I said fuck yeah. I soon realized that one of the travelers sitting in the back of his pick-up truck was someone I had met very briefly at a truck stop in Texas. Paonia was like that, you’d run into travelers of all kinds, people that you might have met on the other side of the country.
Jerome used to travel and play accordion in a traveler band, I can’t remember their name. His grandmother had died and left him a considerable sum of money. She was the only person in his family that was really kind to him. He took that money and bought a beautiful piece of land outside Paonia, up on a hill with a view of the mountains all around.
He bought a large yurt and threw it on the property to live inside, and had chicken coop he built and a large greenhouse. Before the whole Chicken Whacker debacle, this was where Grant, Chandra, and I spent our time before hitting the road.
Paonia also had community meals on sundays on a large farm that brought together dozens of people from the community. The food was free and there was plenty of room to sit around at tables on the huge veranda of the farmhouse as children ran around playing, chased by dogs.
Out in the field in front turkeys and chickens freely roamed. I was immediately struck by how strong of a community this small town was. It was obvious that everyone cared about each other, and bonds were strong between neighbors. There were no petty squabbles to speak of.
I often think of my travels as a kind of searching, because I really was out there looking for something, even if I frequently lost sight of that. In this town I felt like I had found a piece of what I was out there looking for. The love of a community of people coming together to make sure everyone was okay, and everyone was fed. I really believe that true change in this country can only come from bonds like this, from local communities that stay close. It’s communities like these that can live outside the bounds of the government and infrastructure somewhat, and in my most idyllic anarchist mind, our country would consist of communities like this one all over the place. Just people who lived close and looked after one another.
So when Grant and I had suffered the trauma of Grand Junction, Paonia seemed like the place to go to catch our bearings. We no longer cared if we were back tracking, we didn’t give a fuck about not heading west any longer, we just wanted to feel safe, and Paonia offered that feeling.
We hitched rides until we made it back to Paonia. It was the evening time. We went to where I camped when I wasn’t staying at Jerome’s. It was a little river park just outside of the downtown. We walked along the river until we could find a place to lay out our things in the tall grass, tucked away with a couple trees over us to offer shade in the early morning. The Gunnison river gurgled just feet away from us, and Skinny happily lapped up water from its flow.
Finally, we could breathe. We were somewhere where we felt safe camping outside. Before this, we had spent a night in the town of Delta, closer to Grand Junction. We had found a similar place to camp next to the river. But there were still mutters of the chicken whackers here. We ran into one homeless man who told us stories.
[TRIGGER WARNING: SA/VIOLENCE] This man was very interesting, he was homeless but he immediately struck me as someone who was very intelligent. He had a certain sparkle to his eyes. We mentioned briefly what had happened to us in Grand Junction, and the chicken whackers.
“They’re evil,” he told us, “what they do is get people by themselves, and they murder them while raping them in the ass. They want their victims to be the most terrified when they kill them.” We stared at him. It was along the same line as things we had heard before, but this was worse.
“They’re shape-shifters,” he told us. He went on to tell us a story about a homeless friend he had who had been picked up by a local priest. He told us that the priest had taken him to a field in the middle of nowhere and strangled him to death.
We talked more to him and we went on to say how he had done battle with the chicken whackers. He talked about some ceremony he had performed and suddenly started speaking in a Native American dialect. We didn’t know what to think of this man, but I didn’t get the sense that he was delusional.
It was hot that day, and we found a patch of woods by the river to camp. We were tired. On our way into the woods, a man in a full black trench-coat passed us on his way out. I had seen him once earlier, and we had locked eyes. I didn’t like him, and I couldn’t imagine how he could wear that black trench-coat in this terrible heat.
Later, while napping by that river in Delta, I was snapped awake by Skinny barking. I went from a deep sleep to immediately hopping upright, it was like my body moved without thinking. And there he was, the man in the black trench coat. He had clearly been walking a line through the tall grass straight towards us, because when I hopped up I saw him change direction. Thank god for Skinny.
So this next night, we were glad to be in Paonia. I didn’t feel the need to be on as high of an alert. Laying there in the grass, I felt like we were two soldiers after some battle, finally able to get some rest.
Grant lay not far from me. We reached out and held each other’s hands. The darkness in myself, and the darkness all around us, it didn’t feel too scary there, holding hands with Grant. I knew then that no matter what was out there, what demons were chasing us, or what darkness might lay ahead, I had Grant. We had each other. And maybe I had finally found something else that I was searching for, something I didn’t even know I needed until now.
“I love you,” I told him.
“I love you too,” he said.