Three old codgers
Were feeling kind of rough
When one of them said
We need to show we're still tough.
We can sit here for months
Dwelling on all our complexes
Or we can get off our duffs
And do a walk across Texas.
Walk across Texas.
With its wonderful sights.
Walk across Texas.
With its beautiful nights.

Texas's majestic sites have always beckoned to me. I spent my childhood in the far regions of West Texas that have won a variety of descriptions, few of which are complimentary when it comes to commenting on the countryside. Those often sarcastic jibes never bothered me because I loved that area and its awesome sunrises and sunsets and the invigorating wild smells of the outdoors that reminded me of a person who has done a hard day's work and taken a bath using a thick bar of old time Lava soap to clean his skin and hidden crevices.

Another reason the arid desert landscape probably did not bother me lay in the fact that I frequently had my head buried inside a book. I learned how to read before the first grade and, as a result, I was one of the most frequent customers of the libraries in Kermit, Midland, and Odessa, towns in which I spent my childhood. I loved reading about people making long walks in Scotland and England. I can remember a book telling about the main character packing a backpack with the barest essentials and heading off for an extended adventure that would lead him through the countryside looking for the solution of some great problem.

Somewhere in that part of my life, I began thinking how great it would be to pack some meat and cheese and perhaps my mother's wonderful brownies and walk across Texas and experience some of its great adventures. I filed that idea in the back of my head for years. Then one day I mentioned it to Sharon Cox, who at that time was assistant state editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. I expected that I would get the same negative response I had gotten before when asked if I had any great ideas for stories and I would say, "I think it would be neat to do a walk across Texas and write about the characters I will meet." Sharon, a person who seemed stuffed to overflowing with enthusiasm, surprised me when she said, "Write me an outline of where you want to walk and what kind of stories you think you will find." I did and two months later, my friend Doc Keen and I walked 350 miles across the western regions of the Star-Telegram circulation area. The response was so good that we made a second 350-mile stroll the next year.

After my retirement in 2000, I became friends with Eddie Lane of Granbury, who loves Texas and its outdoor delights as deeply as I do. We made a rather extended venture of following the Brazos River and looking at each one of the river's sixty-two bridges that resulted in my book, Bridges Over the Brazos. We told folks that we drove approximately 4,000 miles looking at the bridges. We were questioned about this since the river is only 900 miles long. Our standard answer to this question became "We got lost a lot." But, the real truth was, Eddie and I both indulged ourselves royally while looking at the bridges and deliberately took many wrong turns that we knew would not lead to a bridge but to some delightful spot of interest hidden along Texas backroads.

One night while we were camped at Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park, we had a good campfire going and we began talking about what our next adventure might be. Eddie had wanted to drive the roads that lead from El Paso along the Rio Grande to the Gulf Coast. That sounded fine. But, before the bridge trips were completed, the border became a rather hostile place with immigration and drug problems, not exactly the kind of place that two old codgers should be found camping. I kicked at the logs on the campfire and sparks flew into the air like a busted bottle rocket.

"Eddie, why don't we walk across Texas or at least a part of it? We could camp out along the way and I would write about the people we meet and work in some of the history of the area through which we are walking," I said.

Eddie got up and put another log on the fire. He looked at the stars smiling at us like a busted bucket of neon bulbs. "I think that would be a great idea," he said.

We went to TCU Press with the thought. They thought it was a novel idea and urged us to proceed. I thought that the fact that I am sixty-nine and Eddie is seventy-seven added to the interest of the book. In writing the manuscript, I would show people that there is no reason for people, regardless of their age, to sit on their duffs at home and become couch potatoes. They can and should get out and do something. I would augment that by writing something about myself that I seldom mention. I am an insulin-dependent diabetic and have been since I was twelve. Dealing with that has never held me back. During my professional writing career I made a fourteen-day canoe trip down the lower canyons of the Rio Grande. I have gotten up at midnight and driven two hundred miles to write news stories about a major airplane crash. I completed the two 350-mile walks. Eddie is another good example of not letting age or some of life's maladies keep you parked on an overstuffed easy chair. He has had one severe cardiac episode. Yet, he has canoed hundreds of miles on the Brazos and other Texas rivers. He has taken his grandson on an extended hiking and backpacking trip down the Grand Canyon.

Eddie's love of the outdoors came early in his life. He recalled being reared in Toledo. "I really didn't do any camping then. But, we went to vacant lots and played all kinds of sports, and just being outdoors became very special to me," he said. It was also in Toledo that Eddie developed a life-long love for fishing. He still has the first rod and reel and tackle box that he bought when he was eight years old. He used it for hours in a tiny pool called Heckie's Pond. "For bait we would walk in the shallow water for a few minutes. When we walked out there would always be a few small leeches attached to our legs. We'd pull those off and use them for bait," he said.

So began our plans for our great adventure. We considered several routes including following Interstate 20 from Fort Worth to El Paso. But, that route, as well as several others, would involve walking along highways that are thick with traffic. We studied our maps and finally decided on a route that would follow Highway 70 from north of Perryton in the Texas Panhandle south to Highway 180 and then back to our hometown of Granbury, a distance of 450 miles. We liked this route because the traffic is not particularly dense and the highways have well maintained shoulders on which we would be walking. Both of us are walkers, having about a three-mile-a-day average. So we knew that we would have to increase our mileage considerably to hit a fifteen-mile-per-day average that would lead us home in thirty days. Unfortunately, our training began in what became a record-setting heat wave that blistered our state. I admit that, during many of those days when the temperature boiled past 100, I wondered just what in the hell I was doing out walking an hour and a half in preparation for a 450-mile hike.

Some people offered discouraging remarks to us when they heard about what we were contemplating. But, we kept on training. We also began looking for a third person to go with us. We found that person almost by accident early one morning when Eddie and I were giving a speech about the book...