Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

It was in the early afternoon on a sunny day in Southern Virginia. I was walking through a construction area on Route 11. There were flagmen and the usual slow downs and stops in traffic. That is quite annoying while walking. A regular flow of traffic is much more relaxing.

I thought I had passed the through the construction area with its accompanying slow down of cars when I noticed a vehicle approaching me. It too slowed as it approached me. I couldn’t see anyone in the vehicle as the sun turned its windshield into an opaque sheet of bright glare. Just as the vehicle passed me I heard what sounded like a voice blurting something from the lowered passenger window. I couldn’t understand the blurb and quickly forgot about it as I continued to walk.

A moment later the same vehicle drove in my direction, pulled alongside me, and the passenger started talking to me across the driver. I looked over to see a friend talking to me; it was Jim and his wife Nadine. He had been following my walk on my blog. They had been to Tennessee for a week visiting relatives and were on their back to Northern Virginia.

They drove up a few yards to a place where they could pull off the road. The two of them stepped out of the car and spoke with me a few moments. My wife Karen came walking to us from the south (she had parked the car and was walking back towards me – yet another story of logistics).

The four of us spoke for maybe five minutes and took a couple of photos standing next to a barbed wire fence looking at a pasture of cows. They uncomfortably returned to their car and drove north. I mean, they were really uncomfortable about driving away with my wife and I standing on the side of the road. You don’t just drive off leaving people on the side of the road, do you? Then again, you don’t often run into a friend who is taking a walk down an 1,100-mile route.

I cannot express how much of an emotional lift it was to meet a friend out in the middle of no where on the road. Jim and Nadine went to the trouble of exiting the interstate and driving up a slow road on the chance of meeting us. This was one of the highlights of the entire trip for me.