This has easily been the most emotionally trying of any task that I have completed to date.

Usually I pick a task that I find appealing and or amusing, and when I finish, there is some sense of gratification and closure. But the more I contemplated this task (both during and after it's completion) the less it even felt like a task.

Initially I was pumped for this task. I've always been an athletic person and I thought that this would be a great way to get out of the house and have a little adventure during a spell of excessive free time, and for a while it felt great. I walked a familiar route from my house in Lake Oswego OR, into downtown Portland. The course went from south to north traveling directly alongside of what was once a trolley railroad, as well as the Willamette River.


During my travel upstream, I felt great. A sense of accomplishment overcame me. That I was walking a path not intended for pedestrians made me feel that I was breaking the barriers that people have forced upon themselves.

By walking the distance without the aid of an automobile, I had overcome our over-glorified reliance that our society has on cars.

I was also overcome with a new appreciation for everything around me. I was walking on a road that I had driven down hundreds of times, but all of a sudden I saw things that I had never noticed before. I saw the gaps in the trees where you can see the beautiful view of the river, only a hundred meters to the west.

I saw neighborhood-less houses that I never knew existed.

I knew course well from within the confines of a car or a bus, but I had never really experienced it and it wasn't until that walk that everything there felt real. That will always be an advantage in walking. You simply notice more when you aren't moving so fast. When you have the time to stop and stare at something and really see it instead of just glancing past it.

Once I got into the city, I abandoned my original plan to visit all of the public art on display in West Portland. Partly because it would have added another 5 miles to my overall course; partly because even with a map of their locations I was still unable to locate even the first few statues; but partly because I realized that searching for only "public art" would deter me from discovering the lesser apreciated, but still beautiful aspects of the city. So instead I wandered. I went past parks that I had loved as a child, I passed stores that I love today, and I took pictures of what interested me.

It's amazing, which things interested me.

While the 'art' was truly elegant and beautiful



I found that most everything in the city could be defined as art. From the parking garages

to advertisments

to bus stops


As for the people who I crossed paths with, my reactions were about the same. I passed families on their way to brunch. I passed college students trying to make some extra money by pulling two person carriages behind their bikes and offering tourists rides. I passes some very large black men dealing drugs in China Town. I passed almost every type of person imaginable.


I began to understand more and more how both the 'public art' and the 'art of the public' were such imperative aspects of life in Portland.


7 miles later, it was time for me to bid Portland farewell, and to begin the 9 mile journey home. Ironically, the trip down-stream was exponentially more difficult. The light overcast from the morning and early afternoon had dissipated, exposing a brutal sun. My feet hurt and I could feel blisters forming on my heels. My legs felt like lead, which only exaggerated the aching in my pulverized knees. The accomplishment that I had felt 5 hours earlier had degenerated into a feeling of inadequacy as I marched the road that took me close to three hours to walk, but which a car could travel in about 20 minutes. Even though my bag weighed less then 10 pounds and only got lighter as I ate and drank my supplies, my shoulder began to feel a sharp, cramp like, twinge and I gradually slumped further and further as my back tired and began to throb. I stopped taking pictures. I stopped caring. All I wanted to do was go home and sit in an air-conditioned building watching T.V. and eating cookies. All that I had been excited to escape at 8 am that morning, was just about the only thing that inspired me to keep walking back.

Upon arriving home, there was no gratification, there was no explosion of fulfillment or satisfaction. No narrator in my mind going: "Yeah! Damn straight I just walked the equivalent of a marathon!" I just walked into my house and went into my room to drop off my bag.
"Where have you been all day?" my dad asked.
"I walked 25 miles" I said.
"For Real?" my sister asked.
"Yea" I responded walking past them and into the kitchen.
"...Like, just for shits and giggles?" She asked incredulously.
"Something like that." I said, passing them again with a giant container of ice.
"What are you doing now?" my dad asked, a little in shock.
"Ice bath."

I still don't know how to feel about this task (perhaps that’s why it's taken close to a month for me to write it all up). I walked 25 miles. That's fucking amazing. I also couldn't straighten my legs all the way for 3 days. I found a new love and faith in my city, and me feet are still kinda messed up from the blisters and calluses. I look back on that day and I don't know it I should love it or if I should hate it. But I guess some of the best lessons come from things that you never fully understand.