A young woman was dozing by the side of the Boston Post Road at the intersection of Liberty Street Monday afternoon with a backpack for a pillow and her black lab by her side for comfort and security.
She looked like she could be somebody's daughter, sleeping so peacefully, but it was an odd place to sleep, next to such a busy road. I stopped to see if she was OK and, when a leaf I stepped on crackled, her dog started barking in alarm. The woman quickly woke, wide eyed and startled. She pulled her dog to her and quieted her. We talked, and this is what she told me...
Amanda Miller, 27, says she and her dog Jasmine started this journey in Maine. They walked and hitchhiked the whole way, with a stop over in New Hampshire to visit friends. Amanda said she used to live in Colorado, but ran into some legal trouble there. As soon as she cleared that up three years ago, she hit the road and has been traveling ever since, she said, walking and hitch hiking and scrambling to make ends meet.
She said she had good luck finding rides, through Boston, where she found a ride all the way to Old Saybrook. Since then, she's been walking — about four days of walking to Madison.
After crossing over the town line from Clinton, she went a little further and then, exhausted, took shelter and fell asleep on a small island of soft grass under some tall trees at Liberty Street and Boston Post Road. Anyone who knows Madison, and particularly that part of town, knows it is one of the most affluent sections in one of Connecticut's most affluent towns.
"I was having pretty good luck finding rides until I hit Connecticut," she said. "What is it? Does everyone think they have too much money here to give someone a ride?" She said it gently and with a smile.
She said she hoped to make it to the library, just a little ways up the post road, before the rain started to fall. From there her plans were to make it to a truck stop where she likely would have better luck picking up a ride.
From there? Perhaps to Ohio to stay with an uncle or Tennessee to meet her boyfriend. "Me and him and Tennessee," she said.
She asked for a ride and I told her I could not give her one, because I was doing a story on her. Or was it just that I was worried that I had too much to lose by offering a stranger a ride and, never having hitchhiked before, was having a hard time imagining myself in her shoes?
We said our goodbyes, traded phone numbers and I said I was looking forward to hearing how her story ended. With that, she picked up her backpack, took Jasmine by her leash and, on the narrow shoulder of the Boston Post Road in Madison with cars whizzing by, made her way towards the library as rain started to fall.
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