The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAI T SBURG - I was behind the counter at the Coppei Coffee shop last week when he walked in. He donned a well-worn canvas hat, a big backpack and two sticks that looked like ski poles. With all that gear on, the diminutive elderly man stepped right up to the cash register and made his inquiry.

He had heard someone at or near the coffee shop or the Times had rooms to rent and, having just walked from Dayton that morning, he was ready for some rest.

It so happened I just set up the first two guest rooms at the new Seven Porches guest house, our home at 329 Main Street, the historic 1912 Stimmel house we bought from Denise and Andy Winnett three years ago.

I described the rooms to him, gave him the rate and he handed me his credit card. Then, I started asking him questions. After all, this smiley bearded septuagenarian who wandered into town on foot out seemingly out of nowhere was more than intriguing to this journalist.

What was more, he was my first official guest at Sev- en Porches and I had to learn a thing or two about him. By the way, we chose the name Seven Porches for the guest house because the Winnetts told us that one time, the old Stimmel home is believed to have had that many porches and/or balconies.

We can count at least half of those: the sprawling porch that looks out on Main Street diagonally across from the Bruce Mansion, the balcony off the master bedroom upstairs, the back porch-turned sun room and the former balcony above the front porch.

I walked my guest over to the house around midday to get him set up in his room and asked if I could have some time with him in the evening as I knew he was planning to get up bright and early to walk to Dixie and, after that, Walla Walla, and then on to the Oregon coast.

Yes, Jim Bragg walked every summer day, every summer mile across the country, I learned that evening.

At age 70, the retired Wisconsin dairy farmer was in his third year of making his way from coast to coast from Cape Henlopen in Delaware to Astoria, Ore.

Why?

"Cuz I can do it," he told me. "Once I start something I'd like to finish it."

I spent an hour and a half interviewing Bragg. By the time we were done, I almost felt I had made the journey with him on the American Discovery Trail and his own detour north through the Pacifi c Northwest.

Bragg had no particular hiking or walking background when he made his first 480-mile leg in the summer of 2008 and got as far as New Philadelphia, Ohio.

Alone on a 160-acre, 40- head dairy farm in Abbotsford, Wisconsin, after his wife passed away and after he sold the farm land to an Amish family, Bragg was looking around for a challenge and was inspired by a Wisconsin woman who walked across the country with her daughter earlier in the decade.

"I was impressed with how normal they seemed and how much they encouraged me to try it," he said. "So that first summer I set an unwritten goal that I would try it for two weeks and see what happens. Well, I just kept going."

Only a stress fracture in his foot forced him to hang up his walking shoes that year, but he hit the trail again the following summer, covering the 750-mile distance from New Philadelphia to Ames, Iowa, and in the summer of 2010, he went even further: 1,000 miles from Ames to Bozeman, Mont., where he started out this year for his remaining 800-mile leg to Astoria.

"It's a beautiful country," he said, with a gleam in his eye like that of a child who has just seen a butterfly for the first time. "The size is impressive. The scale and immensity are breathtaking. But the most inspirational part of the trip is the people you meet."

At Least 2,334 Miles

A number of Americans and foreigners have walked across the United States. The shortest distance from San Diego to Jacksonville, Florida, is 2,334 miles. At an average human walking speed of 5 miles per hour, the journey would take two months if the hiker puts in 12 hours of hoofing time per day.

Among the better known coast-to-coast pedestrians are Peter Jenkins, the writer who described his journey in Walk Across America (a book Bragg read with great interest), and Helga Estby, a Norwegian-born woman from Spokane, who walked from Spokane to New York City with her 18-year-old daughter Clara in 1896 to win a $10,000 prize that would save her farm.

When she arrived in New York, the sponsor of the prize said she had missed the deadline. On her return, she found two of her children had died of diphtheria in her absence. Estby, who was unable to save her family farm at Mica Creek, was considered a deserter by much of her Norwegian American community. She later became a suffragist and wrote down her story.

Most cross-country walkers were in their 20s, 30s and 40s when they made the journey of a million plus steps, but Bragg is by no means the oldest.

Doris Haddock, also known as "Granny D," an activist, secretary and shoe factory worker, was 89 when she set out from Pasadena, Calif., to Washington, D.C., averaging 10 miles per day. The journey that took her 400 days to complete in 1999 was designed to draw attention to campaign finance reform.

A number of cross-country walks, like Haddock's, were launched for a cause. Bob Wieland, a Vietnam veteran who lost his legs to a mortar mine in 1969, "ran" across the country on his hands, taking three years, eight months and six days to raise money for fellow Vietnam veterans.

Slow Foot Movement

Bragg and his late wife, who passed seven years ago, raised five children on their dairy farm. They lived a fairly "unplugged" life without much television. Instead, the household played lots of board games, read books and engaged in long drawn-out conversations around the dinner table, in the living room or on the front porch.

"We used to always say 'we're a rich family - we just don't have a lot of money,' " Bragg said.

All the kids did well in life, with two getting doctoral degrees. Bragg has continued his unplugged life style on the road. He walks without music, radio or telephone. He takes notes instead of reading books. The first year, he had the equivalent of 100 typewritten pages, the second year 200 and so on.

That's not to say he didn't read a ton before he left. Aside from Jenkins' travel account, he read Bill Bryson's "Walk In The Woods," John Steinbeck's "Travels With Charlie," "Blue Highways" by William Least Heat Moon, and James Herriot's "All Creatures Great And Small."

I recommended " Undaunted Courage," Stephen Ambrose's book about the Lewis & Clark expedition. He tucked that one away for after his return home. While he's making trails, Bragg is too busy having his own adventures.

He takes it all in: the Civil War history in the many towns he passed through on the East Coast, the conversations with farmers in the Midwest, the rides he got on a large Indian reservation in the west, the legacy of Lewis and Clark, whose footsteps he more or less followed through the Touchet Valley.

Walking, he said, allows him a much more intimate connection with the landscape, the history and the people than driving would or even bicycling might, though he has made many a friend among cyclists crossing the country.

"A place is no longer a name, but something I've experienced," he said. "What I'm doing isn't practical. It takes lots of time and money. But it's very memorable."

Bragg particularly enjoys "talking shop" with farmers he meets. He once rode a train at an elevator complex. Another local resident gave him a tour of a veterinary clinic. In the Touchet Valley, he marveled at the wheat crop and wondered in amazement how steep the cutting pitch gets.

In the Skyrockets north of Prescott, I shared, someone told me it can go as high as 45 degrees. His jaw dropped.

Shabby Shoes

After he asked me about the maximum angle of a combine, I asked him about his shoes. How many had he gone through this year?

"Four pairs so far," he said, looking down on the light sports boots he was wearing. "These are starting to look shabby."

Bragg isn't trying to set a record going cross country. He walks about 10 miles per day, mostly in the morning before it gets too hot and will take rides if he's offered one, which happens regularly.

He camps when he can, but likes the occasional bed to sleep in as well. He spends a lot of time in local libraries to learn about local history and catch up on emails. After I showed him his room at the house, he walked down to the Weller Library and spent the afternoon there.

Reactions to his expedition have been mixed along the way. Many people he meets think it's cool he's covering the mythical distance. Some even suggest they'd do it themselves if they had the time.

Others scratch their heads, wondering why in the heck someone would do it. Most folks question him about his health and safety.

"What kind of gun do you carry?" they typically ask. Ironically, he sometimes gets that kind of question from a lone woman who has just picked him up, taking a perfect stranger in her car.

But Bragg has never felt threatened on his journey. Well, there was that one dog.

He was a bit nervous crossing a large uninhabited portion of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Two hundred miles from Rollings to Dubois with only one town in between.

He was curious just how welcome he'd be only to discover he got more offers of water, food and rides than anywhere he'd been before.

One Shoshone Indian, who gave him a ride in his pickup truck, took one look at Bragg's bold hatless head and jokingly put him right at ease: "You don't have to worry about crossing the reservation," he told the walking man riding shotgun. "You're not worth scalping."

Ed Lawrence (left) raises a glass to Bill Payne during Payne's 90th birthday party at the jimgermanbar in Waitsburg last month. The community has a growing number of 90-year-old plus residents: Bette Chase, Jane Butler, Ivan Keve and Payne, just to name a few.

Bragg speculates that it helps being old and short, the least threatening among human features. I reckoned his fuzzy face, soft eyes and ready smile were equally disarming.

"I've experienced so many random acts of kindness," he said, giving just one local example of a traveler who paid for his meal at Betty's Diner. "The trust of people is amazing."

Needless to say my overnight guest said he takes his trip one step at a time.

"Not every day is good, but every day has good in it," he cited as one of his two mantras. The other goes like this: "If it is to be, it's up to me. "

After breakfast at the coffee shop, he did leave bright and early. The eastern sun poured onto Preston Avenue at a low angle when I took his late-summer photograph navigating the crosswalk. That was Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, when I went to pick up the newspapers from Walla Walla, I saw him again, walking along Highway 12 near the Wilbur Ave. exit.

What had I been worried about? He was doing just fine.