From Staff Reports

A 19-year-old who is walking across America barefoot to raise awareness of Soles 4 Souls (http://www.soles4souls.org/), an organization devoted to sending shoes around the world to those in need, recently spent the night in Dalton on his way south.

Dashiel Alsup was encountered by a local resident close to the Rocky Face exit off I-75. On his blog site (www.asinglepebble.blogspot.com), Alsup writes about his journey, including how he made his way toward Dalton from the Chattanooga area in a Nov. 18 update:

“I made it to Dalton by late afternoon. A little car stopped alongside me as I approached town, and two ladies and a young man from a local church talked to me for a few minutes. They were out giving goody bags to ‘anybody that looks like they could use some sandwiches’ and gave me two bags full of snacks.

“I spent the night near downtown, behind a hotel.

“Yesterday I didn’t make it very far. I started early enough, but took a wrong turn, somehow, and wound up putting in eight or nine extra miles. I wound up where I wanted to be, but definitely took the scenic route, and I’m still not sure what I did wrong. I made it to Resaca for the night and slept on the porch of a local church.

“This morning a man woke me at daybreak and invited me inside the church for coffee, and I was on my way in good time.

“I’m in Calhoun now. Still on Highway 41, and should be into Atlanta within a few days.”

That is the most recent update.

Alsup relates on the blog how a dog that joined him for a stretch on his trek near Monteagle, Tenn., met an unkind fate.

“By the time I finally couldn’t help it anymore and looked back, the hill, and the sad scene, had been claimed by the fog, and I couldn’t see anything.

“That’s how it works out on the road. There is an overpowering sense that I have to keep moving, that I can’t let myself get attached — not to a place, or a person, or anything else. Florida is the pendulum that swings back and forth in my eyes, and keeps me in an almost zombie-like march.”