MAY 23

This brilliant Colorado morning I walk with a man from Boulder. Franklin Folsom is a gentleman and scholar, the oldest person on this March and one of its great leaders. He is my kind of leftist - a Marxist! - and the author of fifty or sixty books. We discuss American-Soviet friendship for a time. But when I learn that Franklin was at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, I get all excited: "Where you there at the same time as my very favorite Shakespeare critic, Harold C. Goddard?" Yes, Franklin says he knew Goddard! Wow! I feel I am practically walking next to the man who knew Samuel Johnson or A.C. Bradley!

MAY 25

Rest Day at a big field beside a river near Lawson, Colorado. But Beatrice and Benedict walk today anyway; we hoof it to the next settlement up the road. Well, the walk is longer than we anticipate, and so we hitch a couple of rides. But we don't want to walk all day anyway; we're in a hurry to get to Idaho Springs. We hear tell there's a hot spring in town! Yes, it is a darling little old western town and it DOES have... We dump all our dirty clothes together into one big machine. After wash/and/dry we find a resort called Indian Springs.

We've been walking three whole months now - fifteen or twenty miles most days. We're blistered and bone-weary. But here's the cure for what ails us. Here's a long tunnel dug into a mountain - a cavern of boiling water and steam. Here are three pools of mineral water: hot, hotter, hottest. How long can one sit in water 112 degrees? But we find our way to an enormous indoor garden of tall trees and luscious plants. In its midst is a pool with water just right; it's comfortable enough to sit and soak and talk for hours. The time, the place, the long and remarkable journey we're on seem to call for philosophy. And so I regale Beatrice with the best philosophy I know - the truth and beauty of dialectical materialism.

We get a ride back to camp from some friendly local guys, and we babble 'bout the Peace March to them until they deliver us to our pastel forest of little dome tents - just when everyone is lining up for supper! In the evening poetry circle I read four of the letters from the Cupertino high school students. Another dream of a day.

MAY 26

A twenty-mile walk from Lawson to the Chief Hosa Campground west of Denver. At the lodge across from camp Guy Colwell manages to set up a slide show of his work. Beatrice and Benedict sit side by side in the dark and oh how we get turned on by Guy's erotic art! Nice and cozy in our tent tonight.

MAY 27

Another rest day. But that only means no walking. There's always work needs doing. I clean a dozen nasty porta-potties, then accompany Beatrice the mail lady into the big city of Denver. At the massive main post office we pick up five very heavy sacks of mail.


MAY 28

Yesterday two of us drove into Denver; today all of us walk toward that towering city. But not all the way. After eleven miles we stop at a place called Red Rocks. A picturesque spot, a park of sorts. But soon as we arrive it rains. It rains long and hard. Our dirt campground is all water and mud, but still it rains. Pete Seeger is here to sing but it rains harder than ever. And yet what a time in that town hall tent - what warmth! Pete Seeger is the greatest guy. And the most modest!