I find myself thinking (even dreaming) about this walk--probably as an escape from the mounds of grading before me this weekend. While I am excited about the story to be experienced and told, right now I'm most anticipating "just walking." College professors like me only "work" eight months but in reality I simply cram 11 months of labor into those eight months. Right now I am looking forward to "nothing." That is, I am wanting to just walk for 12 hours a day thinking about nothing whatsoever except the next step I need to take, or blisters on my feet, or thiking about the fact that I'm thirsty, or noting the heat of the sun or the coming rain--simple things that humans have thought about for thousands of years.

Sometimes people ask why I do trekking. Thay assume "You must really get a lot of ideas while walking, right?" Actually, no. Mostly I think about nothing at all. I "fast" thinking, and talking, and (usually) even writing--on wilderness trips I don't even take a pen and paper. I look forward most to rebooting my mind...doing a "disk defrag" of my mind—clearing out half-thought thoughts, deleting wasteful thinking, opening up fresh disk space of the mind. That is what I yearn for right now in the midst of the final flurry of grading and exams.

This walk will be different. I am writing on it (thus this blog) but I’ll be tracing the steps of other walkers—almost a thousand Indians forced to leave Indiana so we could plant our own corn and soybeans. It is a sad tale yet a story of great hope and love at the same time. So, while I’ll be emptying out my mind of the usual things, I’ll be filling it with different stuff. I want to feel the pain of the two million footsteps those Indians took to get to their new land in Kansas. And I want to feel their remorse and despair…but also their hope and happiness too.

And I especially want to feel what the white folk who conducted this removal felt. They are not all bad men—indeed one of them is a hero of sorts—a guy stuck with doing a bad thing the best way possible. And I especially want to feel what the young priest who went along felt. This trip for me is not so much a trip of the mind, but one of the heart.

The sooner I start the better. Which means I need to go pack…at least I should go pack.