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The People We Meet

Man In Oregon Carrying Cross To Missoula

By Joseph Friedrichs, 8-10-08

As you read this, there’s a young man who is carrying a large, wooden cross toward Missoula. Today, he’s likely somewhere near Bend, wondering if he should cut east to Burns or head north toward Hood River and up to Walla Walla, as I suggested he should do.

This young man’s name is Jake, and he is what he described himself to be as a “traveling believer.”

Jake’s lugging this cross on a small wheel to Missoula because “God provides for you when you’re on foot.”

I asked Jake if it was possible that he was carrying this cross to Missoula because it gives people a reason to approach him, and when in available situations provide him with food.

Jake didn’t go for the notion.

This guy Jake, and others like him, have been traveling for years. Keep in mind that I’m not suggesting there isn’t a God. Likewise, I’m not suggesting there is one. What I attempted to reason with Jake is that by walking around with his cross he gives people a reason to feed him food while they discuss theories they already believe in. There’s no originality to Jake’s plan other than to eat other people’s food and whatever else they might happen to offer, I said.

“I’m a traveling believer,” he said again.

We were 10 miles from Crater Lake when this discussion took place. There was a red bag containing water and other sources of survival in that small satchel. Jake said he had cut countless holes in the cross to lessen the load he was hauling.

“Some people think they are bullet holes,” Jake told me.

I had no more reason to be there than he did. Why is anybody anywhere, I asked him? Jake then pulled out his Bible and said the following: “Hopefully some people’s religious beliefs will be shattered because I have a green bible instead of a black bible.”

When I asked Jake what Joseph Smith, or Muhammad, or even Gandhi would have to say about carrying a cross from Crater Lake to Missoula would be he muttered about “false prophets.”

I stepped away from the situation. I had my own problems, including a drive to Ashland to visit my 21-year-old ex-girlfriend.

As we pulled away I saw Jake trudging up that steep incline of Highway 138 in some of the West’s most pristine country. He was looking for food. He had a cross and he was looking for food. And that was that. 

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