Mike Zorr stopped in at Einstein s Bagels last week for coffee. He had been visiting family in Virginia and was on his way back home to the Keys, where he lives on a sailboat named Kittens.
He had hitched most of the way, both ways.
He was filthy, his fingers covered in a scrim of oil and dirt, his long yellow beard matted and dusty. He carried a sleeping roll and two pairs of pants, two sweaters and a tarp.
He sat at a table in the bagel shop cradling a coffee and telling tales about himself: He was an Army Ranger in Vietnam.
He was once locked up for beating a man. He was friends with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin when he was just a kid. He has walked across the country six times.
In July, his mother called him and said she wanted to see him. So Zorr, 59, set out, hitching the scenic route to Roanoke, Va., by crossing South Florida s Alligator Alley.
Four lanes, he says. When I first came down here, it was a dirt road.
He headed north up Interstate 75.
When he couldn t get a ride, he walked. At night, he slept a few feet off the highway, under cover of trees.
He saw armadillos, chipmunks and deer.
He saw a bobcat attack a Doberman. The bobcat won.
In Georgia he stopped off to see some of his relatives.
He hadn t told anyone he was coming.
It s more fun that way, if they don t get to see you for years and years and then one day, bang! you re there.
His relatives have houses, steady jobs. He knows they don t like the way he lives, drifting.
They all want me to live with them, to have their lifestyle and their way of life.
But I m used to being myself.
To Zorr, places like Roanoke, like Brandon, are just places to pass through. To him, what s real is the sailboat dock, the scruff at the side of the road, the underpass.
He kept going, up to Roanoke, to see his 84-year-old mother, Margaret. She s used to his ways, and says he s hitched since he was a teenager.
Oh, honey, he s been doing that for years, she said last week.
He s what you call a wanderer.
Zorr would advise young people not to try to travel this way: It s dangerous. You have to know what you re doing.
He has two pieces of advice. First: Remember this as long as you live, he says. Do not walk in the water at night on the beach.
That s when sharks feed.
Second: Always be aware of what s behind you. You never know when something will come up on you.
His mother worries about him, out amid all the meanness of the world, the alligators and snakes.
If you ever run into him again, she says, tell him to look up his nephew in Pensacola.
Last week, Zorr stayed at Einstein s for a while, drinking his coffee while background music played and customers streamed past him, ordering their muffins and bagels.
Then he hefted his pack and got back on the road.
S.I.
News RSS