My update was cut short yesterday by a run-in with a kamikaze plate that sent me to the ER for five stitches in my left pinky finger.

Will I still be able to play ukulele? I asked the doctor in woozy voice.

Can you feel this? he asked me as he pinched the tip of my tiny pinky finger.

Yes.

Then you will be fine.

Ok, I said, and I leaned back against the cold, solid fabric of the examining room chair and closed my eyes.

As my mind and body were ramped up by blood and the adrenalin required for surviving crisis, Malcolm was continuing his own journey west, which began with silos as dawn.

I am heading west, saying goodbye to Canton, NY, where Will really does live. I did not know that fresh waters gave up mist in the morning. Looks like the sea smoke that we see on the harbors in Maine.

Here is the house where Will Foote lives in upstate New York. Will gave me his bed for the night, because he was going to be working on a paper. The bed is a bunk bed but there is no bunk on top. Instead, there is a hammock which was tempting. However, Will said that someone else had slept in a hammock, rolled out, and broken his collarbone. So I slept below in the normal bed without incident.

Rolling out of Canton, New York at dawn. Mist above the river and fields. I had stopped on the side of the road to take this photograph and a compact red car coming in the opposite direction stopped across from me. a lady with strawberry blonde hair rolled down her window and asked whether I was okay and whether I needed help.

I sent my own update and photograph prior to the plate incident of 2015.

Rich says hi! He says, “Willie Nelson says hi.”

So each mile brings Malcolm closer to the desert. Though still shaky in my own skin, I am grateful for the reports.