If you’ve driven or walked along Cole Street since late January, you may have noticed a new face on the sidewalk. It’s a bearded face, but one belonging to a young man on a long journey. He carries a sign that reads:
“Cancer walk. San Jose to Canada. Anything helps.”
Cory McManus, 20, has been in Enumclaw for more than two weeks, a brief layover on a hike north that has already taken four and a half months.
McManus was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer more than a year ago. He hasn’t undergone treatment, partially because he can’t afford it, and partially because of the devastating effects of radiation treatment. He watched a close friend die from the weakness brought on by his treatment, he said.
“That date has come and gone, and I’m still alive,” McManus said. “(What inspired me was) God, pretty much. It sounds kind of radical, but I was taking care of my grandmother, who was also sick, and after she died I felt like God was pulling me to take this trip. I went to Whistler a long time ago on a trip. I thought it would be a good place to go.”
So he walked, and walked, and continues to walk. When he doesn’t walk, he sleeps on benches and under bus shelters—backpack twisted around his leg to avoid thieves, he said. When there’s no place to sleep, he doesn’t. There are times when he has gone three days with no sleep.
“Sometimes it can be scary, especially at night,” he said. “But I know God is looking out for me.”
McManus is used to walking from when he was a member of the Army reserves, he said. But his current trek has given him a brisk pace of seven to eight minutes a mile, and he’s lost almost 30 pounds since beginning.
When he runs out of money for food, he stops in towns to panhandle for money. He’s been in Enumclaw for two weeks, staying with friends in a house for a change, and is close enough to the cash amount he needs to head back onto the road by Feb. 8.
“I’ve met some nice people here in Enumclaw,” he said. “I think I’d like to move here.”
After McManus completes his journey to Whistler, he said he plans to begin a second journey from Seattle to New York.
