Bravo for the Brothers from Hanford!

This is a wonder idea -- to simply walk the best guess of what the route for the California High Speed Railroad might be.
Bravo for the Brothers from Hanford!
The next step is for the Valley growers, some of whom are old enough to remember other marches in past decades, to gather together with their heirs and assigns next April and hike from the Union Station in Los Angeles to San Francisco. CAll it the Ag Plutocrats' Pilgrimage against High Speed Rail.
 
 
9-19-11
Fresno Bee
Hanford brothers walk planned high-speed rail route…Tim Sheehan
http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/09/19/v-print/2545353/hanford-brothers-wal...
Driving from downtown Los Angeles through the San Joaquin Valley to San Francisco might take six to eight hours, depending on traffic, in the air-conditioned comfort of an automobile.
A proposed high-speed train would cover the distance in less than three hours.
Or you could tackle the trek on foot in the Valley's late-summer heat in about 30 days.
That is what three brothers -- and Hanford natives -- are doing as they retrace, as closely as possible, the planned route of California's proposed high-speed train system.
Travis Souza, Adam Souza and Nate Yockey set out Aug. 29 from Los Angeles' Union Station and are documenting their hiking journey with videos, photos and a Twitter stream in anticipation of a Sept. 30 presentation at a creative arts center in San Francisco.
But that's a tight schedule, and they know they've got to keep a brisk pace to make it.
For them, the undertaking is personal. They want to experience firsthand the statewide, 520-mile route that would take high-speed trains across land in Kings County that has been in their family for generations.
The brothers have dubbed the trip, "We Make the Road by Walking," borrowing the title from a book by Myles Horton.
Along the way, they're seeing the route with a perspective that isn't possible from the freeways and talking to people whose lives would be affected by the proposed route.
"One thing about the walk is that we've seen people looking in from afar on places they don't know very well and doing research at arm's length," Travis Souza said.
"This is important to understand things at a very local level, at ground level and at a walking pace, in a very experiential way."
Souza said he has noticed the differences between urban and agricultural cultures and their competing values, "and I think that gets overlooked in the process of taking positions."
"People are talking about money or air quality and all these important things, but a lot of people's positions are very much informed by their daily lives and their histories and what they value about their individual places," he said.
The brothers were all born in Hanford, where their family owns ranchland, including a walnut orchard that lies in the path of the high-speed tracks.
They were reared in Reedley before heading off to far-flung places to make their livelihoods.
Travis Souza, 33, is an artist who lives, works and studies in Glasgow, Scotland. Adam Souza, 27, and Yockey, 26, both work in video production in Portland, Ore.
The brothers walked into Fresno over the weekend. By Monday morning, they had set out from near Roeding Park, hiking through northwest Fresno along Golden State Boulevard and the Union Pacific Railroad tracks with plans to camp overnight in Madera.
Travis Souza said he came up with the idea of walking the route after their mother told them about the state's plans to build a high-speed train.
Living in the United Kingdom, where train travel is an accepted mode of transportation, Travis Souza said he initially thought it was a good idea -- before he learned the line would go through the family's ranch, leaving him uncertain.
The brothers say they're approaching the hike as neither pro- nor anti-high-speed rail.
"I'm kind of conflicted, almost like hearing different sides of the story," Yockey said.
"There are pros and cons to everything. Slowly but surely, we're just collecting information and trying to figure it out."
Adam Souza agreed. "Because the information we were getting was from our mother -- who's very protective about our land and rightfully so -- it did bring a conflicting view on how I have to approach it. But I approach every issue like that and I think that's the right way to do it."
Instead, they're treating the hike as a learning experience for themselves and the people they meet.
"I think it's nice that the walk comes before the rail," Travis Souza said. "I'd like to think it's a public service, that it creates a forum for people who meet us along the way. ... It becomes this kind of thing where people can bring information that we can put out.
"You get a personal perspective rather than just information and data about the project."
The brothers said the hike has given them a rare opportunity to work together and to rekindle their Valley roots after several years away. They were greeted Friday in Hanford by relatives and family friends at a linguica-and-beans dinner and a host of visitors who chatted with them as they walked.
"As we walked through Hanford and I think about the reception we had, and walking through Fresno, I'm rediscovering areas I've never seen or never noticed when I lived here," Adam Souza said.
"That's something about this project that's pretty amazing. When you do this at a walking pace, it is a completely different experience than when you're in a car on the highway."
And at times, it's an exhausting experience.
"Sometimes we reach these physical walls; we come to a point where the physical demands of what we're doing just hits us," Travis Souza said. "We've had a few of those."
One of those times was just last week as they made their way from Kern County into Tulare County.
"That was the day we walked 30 miles in 24 hours," Adam Souza said. "We were pretty exhausted by the time we got to Allens-worth."
 
Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
-- Chaucer, Caterbury Tales