Dear Trail Friends
I am sitting in my tent at 6pm and it looks like this will be a cold and windy night. It also may rain.
I had a wonderful day but when I arrived at the campsite I was stunned to see a half dozen tents and quite a few people. I had met almost no hikers on the trail since leaving Cutthroat Pass 4 1/2 miles back. This dramatic change made me realize Cutthroat Pass must be a very popular day hiking destination, being 5 miles from the Rainy Pass trailhead parking lot on Highway 20. So most of the hikers I had been seeing were day hikers. (Said of course without the sanctimonious sneer that suggests that I, a section hiker, am a real hiker, and you, a mere day hiker, are barely worthy to kiss the ground under my feet. The kind of attitude I sometimes feel the one year thru-hikers have toward section hikers like me. )
Several very friendly and helpful people at the campground approached me - one pointed out a good flat site for a tent. Another later on helpfully handed me a rock when I was pounding in my tent stakes (and had left my hammer rock out of reach). And much later one offered me food (crackers) which, despite the "just say yes" trail philosophy I value, I had to decline, feeling a little nausea (probably from the elevation) and definitely not wanting to add uneaten crackers to the trash I have to hike to Canada.
I got up at dawn this morning and managed (eventually) to untie my food bag and also untie my cord from the helpful hiker's food bag (he had suggested that instead of anchoring the cord we just use his food bag to counter balance the weight of mine. It worked ok - sort of - we had to pull his very low so I could tie it ( and untie it this morning) but he didn't seem to mind because his is an Ursak (a bag designed to be bear-proof. These bags are a little controversial, but my scientist brother-in-law Gerd found the evidence convincing enough to buy one. )
I was only hanging my bag because I like to follow the rules in national parks - and because I heard a rumor that there was a momma bear and two cubs going after human food, who had possibly even entered a tent. I hope not. Once bears get habituated to human food they are dangerous and have to be killed. The Austrian hiker was hanging his to have it be out of reach of rodents.
My first breakfast break was at a trailhead parking lot on route 20 (but still south of Rainy Pass). I actually thought it was Rainy Pass and was all set to title photo 1 "moon-set at Rainy Pass." It's a lovely moment even if it's not Rainy Pass.
In the course of the morning I crossed several one-log bridges, but all on the wide side, and most with a flattened or cross-grained slashed surface to help with footing. Still I was proud of myself. Photo 2 is a "I am proud of River for walking across this log bridge" photo.
Photo 3 is my first glimpse of the kind of mountain views I will see in this hike. A lot of people have been telling me it is a truly spectacular section and I was afraid of the "San Chapelle" effect. The first time I went to the famous chapel in Paris we were in line with about a thousand other tourists winding up a narrow staircase and a man in front of me kept going on and on to the women with him "when you first see this, when you step into the room, you just won't believe how beautiful it is. It's going to take your breath away." And on and on. When I stepped into the room it seemed pretty disappointing. Somehow the words, the hype, the prescription of what I would/should be feeling actually got in the way of discovering the beauty in front of me. Years later we went to a concert there and then just sitting listening to music and letting my eyes wander, I did discover how beautiful it was. But the good news is, no such effect here. It was "wow" and gasps and that "here I am" feeling all day long.
One fun part of the day was that my friend Chuckles Rocketship (who is ahead of me on the trail - hiking faster and more miles in a day) kept telling people about me so people would come around the curve and say "Are you River?" I suspect him of deliberately turning me into a minor trail celebrity to tease me about how taken I am with Billy Goat as a trail celebrity.
Photo 4 shows my second rest stop beside a little waterfall. A lot of the rocks here are peach and pink, reminding me of the rocks in the high desert of California where I started this hike four years ago.
I spent a good part of the morning in reverie more or less on the theme of telling my PCT hiker self "I love you" (as suggested in the dream I had Friday in Stehekin.). It took me a long time (years) to realize and accept that the person I become on the trail doesn't come home with me. She is much less a blamer, much more confident and optimistic, able to accept pain and adversity without ever having them eclipse happiness, gifted at loving the world around her, her life, other people.
(Well...she isn't exactly perfect - like right now she has in earplugs and is avoiding all contact with this really nice group of northern Washington PCT members camped here in order to work on trail maintenance.)
But by and large she is exactly who I wish I could be. (Oh my god, the PCT volunteers are making a fire. I thought that was way too dangerous this time of year. I've just been walking through smoke from a fire south of here. Yes and I was about to tell you how non-judgemental this PCT self is. But she's human. Imperfect. But wonderful. ) And I am aware how lucky I have been to discover her again over these four years and how unlikely it is that, if and when I try to hike the PCT again, the self I discover will be her. She is part of the newness, the never-before-known quality of the whole experience. So I talked to her a lot about what I love about her.
Brr. Big cold gusts whipped up and blew right through my tent. Wondering if I might want both flies closed because of the wind. That would require going outside and reconfiguring the tent. It's always a trick to get it to work with both flies. A good reason not to do it I think. Except that it will be way harder to do in the dark in gusting wind if it becomes necessary - and it could. Hmmm.
See - that's what I love about her. "I'll just do it" she said. And she did.
I also love the way the parts of her body talk to her. Like the feet at the last rest stop today saying they needed a dip in the icy creek. Her saying she was too tired and besides it was starting to get windy and cold. The feet saying they weren't asking just for the fun of it, it was what they needed, just like spending time in inverted pose, to keep on doing their job, to be a sustainable resource. So she just said okay and sat down and took off her gaiters and two layers of socks and her shoes, and soaked those feet in the ice cold stream? and dried them with her bandanna, and put back on the sock liners, socks, shoes, gaiters.
Then the feet tell her that it's good for her head also to be dipped in cold water. Well, that little creek had a little pool about 2 ft in diameter and 4" deep - it wasn't as if she could dive in. But the feet suggested she wet her bandanna and wipe down her head, neck and face with the ice cold bandanna. And she did.
That's what I love about her. She just does stuff. Not like my real world self who is always discovering reasons why she can't.
After the bandanna to the head episode, I (yes I know it's confusing that sometimes I call the trail self I and sometimes she. Sorry about that. ) anyway after the icy bandanna to the head episode she/I thought of the expressions "having a cool head" and being "hot-headed." I never really looked at those metaphors concretely before. I could feel how icing down my face head and neck steadied and calmed me.
Okay. Photos 5 and 6 are examples of how beautiful this place is. But I wish you could be here to feel and experience the spaciousness. It definitely does not translate into two dimensions.
In this last one, photo 6, there appeared to be a lot of snow on the large mountain in the distance. Either my eyes tricked me or the iPhone missed the best part.
To be continued in Day 10, August 21, part 2
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