Another day, another walk, and who knows what else.  Peter looked down at his worn and muddied hiking boots, and wondered how many steps he had taken in them.  He surveyed the diversity of the footwear of those who walked beside him.

Several pairs of tennis shoes.   A pair of  army looking boots.  A bright blue pair of crocs.  One girl was even wearing flip-flops with little daisies ornamenting her painted and muddy toenails.   Some of these people were obviously rookies, but if they stayed, they’d learn soon enough.    He and many others had forsaken fashion long ago.

He looked at his boots again.  How long had it been since she gave them to him?  Must have been a few years ago.  The boots were really holding up well considering.  How long had he been traveling with her?  He really didn’t even know. A long time.  A moment.  It didn’t really matter.  Since he started walking with her, he was always and only here.  Just here.  As the unlikely band of sojourners marched through the mud, he remembered that first day.

He could almost hear the frustrated voice of his boss again; the laughter of his co-workers.

“What do you mean you quit?  For that girl?”

That girl.

He remembered the amused bewilderment that etched itself onto the face of his childhood friend as he explained to him that it really wasn’t a joke.

Peter tried to remember what he had felt at the time.  Had he even considered the matter?  He certainly hadn’t weighed the pros and cons, sought advice from others, or even slept on the matter.

He thought of her again, and remembered why he hadn’t needed to sleep on it.  As soon as he met her, the choice had been made.  Anything.  Anywhere.

The word beautiful is thrown around a lot.  But not all beauty is equal.  There’s the paper bag floating in the wind beautiful and then there’s the sun rising over the Swiss Alps kind of beautiful, but then there was Zoe.

So when Zoe said to him, “follow me”, there was nothing to do but to follow her.  When someone looks into the perfect and shocking blue of Zoe’s eyes, one does not worry about such trifling matters as one’s career.   For Peter, just a glance from Zoe made things like food and shelter fade into afterthoughts.

He had just met her.  She had said, “follow me.”  He said “ok.”

She had started walking.  He followed her.  And they walked.  They walked for a long time.

On that first walk, they just walked out of town in silence.  They walked until Peter had no idea where they were anymore.  He hadn’t even seen any people in what seemed like hours.  On the side of the road, Peter noticed what looked like an old apple orchard.  It appeared as though the orchard had been abandoned years ago. There a few old rotten apples scattered among the overgrown weeds, dead grass and stray highway litter that made up the ground of what once must have been a lovely orchard.   Many of the trees were also dead now, and nothing in the orchard seemed to be growing any apples worth eating.  Zoe apparently had noticed the orchard as well, as she had started walking off of the pavement into the tall grass of the ditch.

Peter followed her as she began pacing around the orchard.  She seemed to just be taking it all in.  The rot.  The entropy.  The carelessness.  It was as though all that was wrong with the world was present in that orchard, and it broke Peter’s heart to watch her face as she took it in.  Tears began to flow down her cheeks.

She reached into a small bag she had been carrying and pulled out two large plastic garbage bags.  Apparently she had known they would be coming here.  She handed one bag to Peter, and she bent down and picked up one of the old rotten apples and threw it in the bag.  Peter joined her as they started picking up the rubbish scattered throughout the orchard.  Then Peter noticed something strange.  No, strange isn’t the right word.  What he was seeing seemed to be some sort of magic trick or miracle.

As Zoe’s tears ran down her cheeks and wet the dry, dead soil, the ground seemed to change.  He stared in bewilderment as dead brown grass suddenly became green, as the cold light grey bark of the apple trees began to blush with life again right before his eyes. His mouth hung open as old crackly and twisted branches began to sprout leaves, and then somehow there were apples where he hadn’t seen them before, big shiny red apples that looked like they belonged in one of those plastic fruit displays rather than in an old forgotten apple orchard.

But as strange as this all was, it somehow made sense.  If you knew Zoe, you would understand.  Everything about her was somehow both other-worldly but at the same time so incredibly earthy in the best sense of the word.  She was the newness of Spring.  She was the beauty of music.  She was the passion of lovers and the companionship of best friends.  She was life.

Why wouldn’t her tears heal the ground?

As Peter walked down the muddy road, he remembered those early days with a pang of sentimentality.  It was all so new and mysterious and exciting.  Peter never knew what was coming next.  A forsaken apple orchard, a maximum-security prison, an urban free clinic, a creepy old mental institution.  Zoe seemed to like going places that nobody else likes to go.

They would walk.  They would stop now and then to eat or sleep or work.  Peter didn’t really know how they were surviving.  They didn’t have money, but somehow they always had exactly what they needed.  He never had to worry about where they would sleep that night, or what was for lunch.  When he was with Zoe, it just all seemed to work out.  He never had to ask her where they were going or what the plan was.  Where she walked, he walked.  Where she stopped, he stopped. It was as simple as that.

Things were a little more complicated now.  Over the years, there had been many others that had joined Zoe in her work, and Peter had become a leader of sorts in the group.

As they walked, Peter couldn’t help but overhear a conversation that was happening right behind him.

The voice of a young man complained, “Well, my parents are like zo-ite freaks.  They actually worked for Constance for awhile.”

A young girl responded, “Oh my God, my mom would break down at least once a week and basically beg me to just take the pledge.”

Peter felt a pang in his chest as he thought of Constance.  She had been part of Zoe’s group for a little while.  She had originally been quite a gift to the group with her magnetic personality and hard work.  She had initially been drawn to Zoe because of the beauty of the group’s work, but Constance always had a desire for the spotlight.  She liked being the center of attention.  So when the news cameras started showing up to the work sites, Zoe would always decline interview or even disappear from the group entirely, but Constance was always right there to give them exactly what they wanted.  It hadn’t taken long for the media to notice this little wandering group that seemed to exist for no reason except making the world a better place.  The work they did was so pure.  So odd.  So wonderful.  They had found an interesting story.

Peter thought of his initial confusion in those early days in why Zoe would just disappear like that.  They were trying to do good in the world, why not just tell others about it?  After all, maybe the exposure could help them get more resources and a larger work force to help.

He remembered the look in Zoe’s eyes.  “Peter, it is with you that I will do my work.  Others are certainly welcome to share in my work with you, but we can’t let others sully or change what we are doing. It’s too important.”

Peter still didn’t understand.  Why would the cameras change what they were doing?

As those initial weeks and months rolled by, and the crowds got bigger.  The reporters started coming in greater number and frequency, and Constance was sure to always talk to every single one of them.

In fact, she barely seemed to actually be helping in the work anymore.  She did a lot of being seen and heard, but always managed to get through the day without smearing her makeup too much.

Constance continued to do more and more interviews, get more and more accolades from the press, and began to recruit more people to join their group.  After awhile, she barely even seemed to notice Zoe anymore.  But she certainly recognized the potential positive pr that would come her way by participating in Zoe’s work.

Soon the reporters stopped even asking about Zoe.  The media had actually started referring to their group as the “Zo-ites” because of many of the workers passion for the “Zoe lifestyle”, but it was Constance who was the passionate spokesperson who was really responsible for the great success of the Zo-ites.  It was her picture on the articles.  By making the work of a couple of straggling hobos more public, Constance was able to organize the inception of a non-profit organization and raise large sums of money from donors.   Soon the Zo-ites didn’t have to worry about things like where they were going to stay that night.

One night while Peter was sleeping, he woke to the sound of his name.  It was Zoe.  How he loved the sound of that voice.  It was a shame how quiet of a girl Zoe was, he had thought.  That voice.

She was standing in the hall and whispering his name into the dark room of the youth hostel they had been staying in.

“Peter?”

“Peter, wake up.”

“Hey Zoe, what’s the matter?” he asked sleepily, his brain still trying to catch up with his open eyes.

“Follow me.”

He’d heard that before.

“Ok, one second.”

Her silhouette disappeared from the light of the partially opened doorway.

He got up and threw on a pair of jeans, grabbed his bag and walked out of the crowded, snoring room.

He followed her as they left the hostel, and then the town.

Peter was surprised to see Constance on the news the next week.  She was talking about the new direction for the organization.  While they had started as a grassroots organization with her and her friend Zoe, who had taught her a new and better way to live, it was time to take things to the next level.  They wanted to change the world, so they needed to organize.  Constance was going to start a non-profit organization to embody the ideals that Zoe had taught her.  Curiously, she had said nothing about the sudden absence of Zoe in their group.

It wasn’t too long after that Constance had announced her plans to run for governor.  She had become a celebrity of sorts, and she was finally ready to make her big move into more political influence.

Months went by, and Peter and Zoe continued their work.  Sometimes people would see them and join them in the work.  Zoe always welcomed them gladly into what she was doing. But they remained fairly unrecognized by the rest of the world or the media.  They were changing the world, but they were doing it one apple orchard at a time.

The Zo-ites however had become even more prominent.  Governor Constance was a celebrity, and there were rumors of plans to run for president.  The organization had quickly become a worldwide phenomenon.  Constance had hired some of the best marketing minds in the world, and a grassroots organization had quickly turned into a movement.

They had started a very popular clothing line, and the Zo-ites were soon a household name.  It was suddenly very “in” to be a Zo-ite.  Books were written. They held massive recruiting rallies led by popular bands and motivational speakers as they amassed a membership list of millions of people.  These members were tasked to bring in as many new recruits as possible, and were rewarded by the organization with public recognition, and even money.

The Zo-ites seemed to have it all.  They had political power, social influence, money, and popularity.

“But they don’t have Zoe.” thought Peter.

For awhile, Peter had wondered why Zoe had separated from the Zo-ites.  They had so much more money.  So many more followers.  But after awhile, Peter began to understand.  The Zo-ites really had changed.  The power had corrupted them.  He had heard stories that he could hardly believe.  Stories of greed, manipulation, and even violence.  What was once a group of friends giving their lives to something greater than themselves had somehow become a political monster that seemed to exist simply for its own advancement.

Zoe had seen the danger of this immediately.  This is why they had to leave.  The path that Zoe was headed down was not the same one that those who had claimed her name wanted.  Constance wanted recognition.  She wanted power.  She had it now.

So while they held their huge festivals and rallies to spread the name of Zoe, Zoe and Peter read stories to children in cancer wards.  While the Zo-ites made millions of dollars and built giant cultural centers and statues of Constance doing things like planting trees, Zoe and Peter planted trees.  While the Zo-ites organized into a powerful political party, Zoe, with nothing but a backpack on her shoulders, wandered dusty streets with a handful of travelers who needed a shower, but everywhere they went, the earth was healing under their feet.   One child.  One mural.  One garden.  Sure they were small, but they really were changing the world.

Most of the travelers that walked by Peter’s side now were people that Zoe had helped in some way.  They were there for the same reason Peter was.  Zoe.

But now and then, others would just join because they saw what they were doing and just liked it.  Zoe wasn’t the kind of girl that you would call an attention seeker.  So sometimes people would be working with Zoe and her followers and not even know Zoe’s name.

So as Peter walked along the muddy road with the hundreds of rag tag Zoe followers, he couldn’t help but smile at the irony.  This was the group that really should be called the “Zo-ites”, but some of them probably hadn’t even connected the dots that this was the Zoe that the Zo-ites talked about.  The group that claimed to be Zoe’s, however, hadn’t even realized that they actually were working against Zoe sometimes.

The Zo-ites touted a message of reconciliation and hope, but showed obvious disdain for people who didn’t want to join their movement.  If you weren’t for the Zo-ites, you were against them.  They spoke about making the world better, but they didn’t actually seem to be doing anything anymore but trying to become bigger.   They spoke about helping the environment, but were probably doing more damage than good.

The angry voice of the young man shook Peter back into the present.

“Well, I don’t remember what exactly the pledge says, but it has something to do with asking some old dead hippy lady into your life or something.”  the young man fumed.

“Yeah, Zoe right?  She apparently was Constance’s best friend or something.  I guess she is the one who taught Constance about their way of life.”  The girl replied.

Apparently neither of these young people knew that the real Zoe walked a few yards ahead of them.

“Yeah, that’s the one.   It’s all b.s. if you ask me.  They talk about this lofty lifestyle of love and harmony and all of that, but all they do is think that they are better than everybody else.  If I ever become one of those Zoe freaks, please shoot me.”

Peter looked over at Zoe when the young man said that and they exchanged a silent smile.