America from the slow lane: By wagon

Lee the Horse Logger likes to say that what we all need most is to slow down. What he did, though, was to get up and go. Have you heard of Lee? He's made national and even world news for inching across America at 3 miles an hour in a horse-drawn covered wagon. A doctorate-dropout-turned-rancher, Lee Crafton started his pioneer odyssey three years ago. The family ranch in Montana was sold out from under him, so he took $75 and a couple of log-pulling horses and set off to see America. He has rolled and bumped to the East Coast and back, plus down to the Southwest. This modern-day Thoreau plans to clip-clop into Seattle within a month. What folks like about him is his utter lack of agenda. "I'm not here to raise money or your consciousness. I'm not protesting or trying to convert you. I've got no message whatsoever," he said by phone recently from Mead, Wash. But what grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me was the part of his story that isn't an old-time curio. It's the reason he hit the road. He's got cancer. Rather, he had cancer. Lymphoma, with a growing tumor in his neck...read more