Walking past the quaint, red brick buildings of downtown Morganton, North Carolina, we took in wafts of cherry blossoms on the soft evening breeze. On our way out of town, a truck pulled over and a man named Steve waved us over to his truck.
“Man, you guys are fast! Took me 20 minutes to find you.”
There were only a handful of streets in the town, and he was driving a motor vehicle, so we found that impressive. Steve looked to be about 60 years old and told us he used to drive long-haul trucks for a living. By the pace of his speech, it seemed he was making up for all that lost conversation time on the road.
He asked what we’re doing (we’re rafting to the Atlantic), then said he would give us a ride and knows where the river is — that it’s up by “Lenoir,” (pronounced “luh-nore”).
Steve called his friend, who is a pastor, and the pastor confirmed that there might be a river up near Lenoir. Steve asked the pastor to bless us, so we all bowed our heads in the parking lot, as Steve put the phone on speaker and held it above us:
“Dear Lord, please watch over Steve and his friends — even though they just met — and bless them on their journey and bring them safety. Amen.”
Steve made room in his truck, which was packed with seemingly random objects. As he moved things around, he enthusiastically offered them to us one-by-one:
“You guys want this knife? Y’all got protection? What about a walking stick — you want this golf putter? Here, try the putter out. Works great as a walking stick,” he said, handing it to me. “Okay, we got some wine here — you guys like wine? Gatorade … want a Gatorade?”
“Yeah, actually. I’d love a Gatorade. Thanks.”
“Alright! Here you go then. What else? I’ve got a ton of stuff back here. Well, we can figure that out later,” he said as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, Nick and I said we were trying to get to the Henry Fork River and head towards Charlotte. Steve said he’d take us to Lenoir (we had realized by now that we didn’t really want to go to Lenoir, but he was the one driving).
I said, “So if we just take a left here and go south on Route 18, it should take us to the river.”
Steve laughed wryly. “See, the thing about 18, is that it’s all sorts of broken-up. No one really knows where it goes.”
I was looking at Google maps (and I did know where it went), but Steve was so convincing that I started thinking Google was mistaken.
As we drove north (not south), I said, “it kind of looks like we’re headed north.”
Steve responded, “Well, actually, we’re really going sideways.”
I tilted my head as I looked at my phone, and sort of agreed.
“See, the thing about Lenoir,” continued Steve, “is that most people don’t really know which way to get there. But I’ll take you guys right on up, get you set by the river.”
Nick and I realized that we were about to be taken significantly out of our way, and there was nothing we could (or wanted to) do about it. During the course of our travels we make so many decisions, that we are more than happy to let someone else decide what we’re doing. So we laughed and settled in for the drive to wherever (but most likely Lenoir).
Steve started talking about hitchhiking, and his days of traveling around, and started referring to the three of us as “we.”
As he accelerated into the north, he said “Lenoir’s a bit farther away than other places, but that’s no problem. Time’s not really an issue for us.”
He pulled off the highway at a boat landing on a lake (the same lake we had been portaging to avoid), pointed under a bridge, and said, “look there, you even got a perfect place to sleep,” and we did sleep there.
As we unloaded our gear, Steve rummaged through the cab of the truck: “How about hats? You guys got hats? I got a ton of these things at Walmart — real cheap — here, take one, take one!”
“I’d take a hat,” Nick said, and put on a wide-brimmed sunhat.
As he started to drive away, Steve pointed to the stagnant lake water and cheerily said, “Well, looks like you’ll be launching right there in the morning,” and drove off into the night, leaving us under a bridge with our rafts, 15 miles away from the river.
• Logan Miller grew up in Juneau. In 2015, he and fellow Juneauite Nick Rutecki began walking around America with backpacks and no plans. Read more at www.thewalkingtrip.com.
Logan Miller standing outside.
