Herman Huerta stands in front of his wagon that is his transportation and shelter near Edwards off of U.S. 80 Monday. With him is one of his traveling companions, German shepherd Tasha.(Jon Giffin The Vicksburg Post)

[9/28/04]Herman Huerta said he feels fortunate. He cashed out of his BMW and abandoned his New Jersey home and big-city routine just days ahead of 9-11 and has been traveling since.

In fact, he said, it was about a week before the World Trade Center towers fell in New York City that Huerta had interviewed for a job in a building near one of them.

“I probably would’ve been part of the rubble,” he said of the destruction caused by terrorist hijackers who flew planes into the buildings and created what is now known as ground zero.

“I didn’t take it because the money wasn’t right,” Huerta said of the job. “I guess it just wasn’t my time to go.”

While he was thinking about leaving his career and selling his Bergen County, N.J., home to travel, he also considered doing so by other modes of travel, he said.

He rejected exploring the seas, coasts and islands by sailboat because the vastness of the water made him “feel this little,” he said.

And after settling on a cross-country trip, he also decided against riding a motorcycle, he said.

“Time and speed are not my goal,” he said. “My main goal is to enjoy everything I see” and to do everything he does “without any stress.”

So Huerta decided on an older, slower mode. He set out with three pack horses and two dogs.

Eight states, a covered wagon he built himself and more than three years later he crossed the U.S. 80 Big Black River bridge Monday, headed toward New Mexico with a plan to write a book he said he’ll dedicate to the people he’s met along the way.

His book will be called either “New-Age Nomad” or “Marginal Nomad,” Huerta said.

“It will be an adventure book because my life right now is literally an adventure,” he said.

Huerta said he’s taking his time on his journey and is enjoying his closeness to nature and the fact that “everything changes every day.”

Huerta was born in Argentina, the son of European-born parents who lived just outside the capital city of Buenos Aires. He had a pony as a child and said he “has always just loved animals, all kinds of animals.”

Once a regular jet traveler for his career as a graphic designer for corporate customers, Huerta continues to create art that he sells. Now, though, he makes leatherwork and carvings out of objects he finds along the way, occasionally selling them to some of the many people with whom he crosses paths.

Huerta built his wagon using tools he borrowed from a man in Tennessee with whom he stayed for a couple of months, he said. He’s driven it across the deep South, traveling through Georgia and Alabama before reaching his campsite for Monday night, off U.S. 80 beside the Big Black River in Warren County.

He’d stopped to water his horses at the Hinds County home of Ameristar Casino general manager Ray Neilsen, whose offer of a stay tonight at the casino’s Vicksburg hotel he thought he’d probably accept.

“There are a lot of good Americans in the South,” Huerta said, adding that the South has “a reputation for hospitality, and I have experienced that myself, personally.”

Out of desire to help and just plain curiosity, people have flocked to meet him along his trip, he said. “The ones that cross my path, they’re really cool,” he said.

On Monday Huerta’s wagon was being pulled by his horses Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, while his third horse, Billy the Kid, trailed behind carrying a pack. His German shepherd, Tasha, and “little rat dog,” Lolita, rode shotgun.

He also carries a rifle for protection of himself and his animals from other people and animals, and for hunting, he said. He’s only had to use it a few times, though, he said once to fend off a coyote and once to fire a warning shot over “four guys who were drunk or drugged-up” and came looking for trouble when he was camped in Pennsylvania.

Though Huerta remains as flexible as possible, making plans as he goes, he thinks he’ll probably end up in an artists’ colony in New Mexico.

“I won’t stop till I get my book done,” he said. “After that, I’ll decide what to do next.

“Right now, I’ve got a lot of spirit. And that and common sense will take you anywhere.”