Day 11, July 24 - Part 2

Continued from Day 11, Part 1

I walked north along highway 89 searching for a place where cars could pull over (they were zooming by, and there was no shoulder). I was getting pretty discouraged. Then around 

7:40 am I found a little bit of a place where a car could pull off, and a place to stand where I could be seen from a distance, and the first car to come along pulled over. 

Then began one of the great adventures of the whole section hike. Armand, survivor of MS and Hurricane Katrina, massage therapist (who has gone to South Africa to offer therapeutic massage to people with AIDS), a man who lost his home, all his belongings and his entire community in the hurricane, was an amazing human to encounter. He was Italian, highly voluble, talked with both hands and turned his face toward me (and away from the road) often, as he talked (so I felt a wee bit nervous about our safety on the road.) His secrets to living with disaster seem to be service and humor. He doesn't go anywhere without round red clown noses, and showed me several pictures of himself with friends in clown noses. He even gave me a clown nose. 

 He showed me pictures of his South African trip, and of the hurricane destruction. His entire community was destroyed except for his neighbor's toilet. He showed me a photo of himself sitting on the toilet. On the back of the photo he had written "so happy I could just shit." Photo 7 is a photo of his photo - Armand enthroned on his neighbor's toilet where everything around him has been destroyed. 

 

 

Photo 8 shows Armand at the steering wheel driving and talking with both hands gesturing in the air. 

 

Armand kept saying over and over that life is an adventure. He made it clear how he transformed disasters into opportunities. So I think this is partly the universe telling me that this is the "take home" lesson from this section  of the hike. 

Armand dropped me off at the exit for Mt Shasta, where Chris' longtime friend Pam from Seattle ( who had also lived in Mt Shasta) picked me up. Pam is staying with her even longer-time friend Katie (they met at Willamette College in Oregon) and her partner Micah, at an amazing family "cabin" that includes a rebuilt old train station and a sod bale house (Katie's father was an architect and the whole family worked on bringing his designs into reality. This is a totally amazing place to visit at any time, and especially when coming off the trail. 

Photo 9 shows the ladder to the loft in the redesigned train station. Katie's father once told one of his daughters' boyfriends that the hardest thing about building the ladder was bending the wood. 

 

 

Photo 10 shows Mt Shasta through the picture window of the main cabin (right beside the sod bale house on this amazing family property, where I will stay tonight and Chris will join me tomorrow) and photo 11 shows the old Railway Express Agency sign (over the door) -- just in case any of us can't quite believe this is an old condemned railroad station that Katie's architect father had moved here, to restore and renovate and refurbish. 

 

 

 

POOP REPORT. A day free of seepage. We went out to dinner at a truly fine restaurant in nearby Dunsmuir that belongs to friends of Katie, Micah, and Pam. Delicious food and a wonderful small town atmosphere. (The people at the adjoining table both knew Katie from her nursery.m business. One was the librarian and Katie organizes the garden tour as a fundraiser for the library.  They all knew our waitress's parents and remembered her as a young girl. ) I followed my new tradition of eating whatever I damn well please. I think the fear of food, the avoidance, the attempts to figure out and control were doing me more harm than good. The new relaxed life "outside the law" allows me to enjoy food and eating and sure makes it easier to share food with others (and we did share almost everything we ordered. And I ate it all - gluten, dairy, whatever. ) 🎉😊

So let me end this section of my 2016 blog (I will be back in August for the final section from Stevens Pass to Manning Park in Canada) with another one of the silly but endearing jokes that a hiker offered at the register at Wild Bird Cache (the trail magic oasis just 7 miles before Burney Falls where they asked hikers to sign and write a joke). 

Question:  What did one butt cheek say to the other butt cheek?

Answer: If we stick together, we can stop all this crap. 

Thanks for sticking with me all this way on the trail. 

Happy adventures in your life. This ends the journal/blog for the July section.