Dear Trail Friends,
I got up early as usual and headed north on the trail at first light, about 5:45am.
But before I go further on today's hike I want to tell you about the sweet man and boy I camped nearby yesterday. I had noticed as I arrived that there were a lot of campsites, but most were both in direct sun (and I was really suffering from the heat)and far from the stream. So, having spotted a tent on the far side of the stream, I walked across the log bridge to see if there was anything over there.
I found a small place I could squeeze in my tent but it would be very close to where a man and two boys were already camped. I asked the man if he minded my camping so close, and he was very welcoming and gracious.
Later after I wrote my blog I went out of my tent ( mostly to pee - but also to thank my neighbor again - his tent really was just a few feet away) and we began to talk.
He immediately offered me some Indian flat bread and said he had meant to offer to share their dinner but thought I was asleep and did not want to disturb me. He was very appreciative of my hiking the PCT. He introduced himself, John McCollum (my understanding is that originally the McCollums and the Malcolms were a single clan so that would make us distant cousins), and his grandson, Qwyn. His other grandson Sawyer was lying in his tent, feeling sick, so they would be curtailing their hike and heading home.
John spoke of taking his grandsons camping and hiking many times over the years and how it was similar and also different from taking his own children hiking as a young father. We discovered we were the same age and shared our experience of the 60s idealism, how he and his wife moved to Canada in part because they opposed the Vietnam war (even though at the last minute he got some special deferment, that seemed like a cop-out to him.) How pure we were then. We both reflected on how the 60s shaped our lives, and our gratitude for having experienced those times and wish to understand their impact on us more deeply. There was a sense of kinship from having been touched by that era. I spoke of my involvement with SDS. We spoke about experimenting with drugs.
Qwyn who will begin high school this fall was very present and engaged. He talked about the fun he had that day making up pranks to play on people. He went walking down the trail pretending he was hiking the whole pct alone just to see how people would react. Then bored with that he went up to people and asked "Have you seen a bear?" and then after they responded he would add "Because I've lost mine." He discovered clay at the river bank and spent happy hours kneading, molding it, smoothing it on his hands. The way, grandfather John pointed out, people have clay baths at spas.
When I took their photo (ohoto 1) they insisted their friend be included ( the one with the snout, leg, eyebrows and mane, at least if you're willing to look with as playful an imagination as theirs).
It is amazing the people one meets on the trail.
In my early morning hike to the High Bridge ranger station and shuttle pick up point, I was soon overtaken by two women I had played leapfrog with yesterday. They would pass me, I would pass them. Basically we were walking at the same pace though they were a bit faster on average but a little slower uphill (one had asthma, it turns out). Yesterday I had followed them awhile and fallen into such an easy and oddly comforting and companionable shared rhythm that it occurred to me maybe there was a reason not everyone wants to hike solo. I also thought of my brother in law Gerd talking about how much easier it is to bicycle in someone's "wake" - I don't think that's the right word but you get the picture. They block or part the impact of the wind so you cycle with less resistance. It felt - though wind was a non-issue - as if their presence parted the waters of the unknown future, the "whatever" that lies ahead. I felt confident falling into rhythm with them and moving forward.
By this morning we began to feel like old trail friends. It turned out the older of the two, Beekeeper, lives in Redding, and is a trail angel in the very area I hiked in July. The younger,Goosebumps, had gotten sick on the trail and been unable to eat for days so they were aborting their hike and hiking out.
I am falling asleep. Better continue this tomorrow, don't you think?
Now it is 5am Friday Aug 19, and I am at Stehekin Valley Ranch, a 45 minute shuttle ride from Stehekin. I came here because the Lodge at Stehekin (where I have a reservation tomorrow night) had no rooms for tonight, but the ranch had a cabin available. It came with three meals (and the ranch food. Was highly rated in my guidebook) so it seemed more interesting than camping.
I have just spent an hour here in my cabin trying to upload my blog (when I signed into the wifi it said it was unable to upload photos, but I thought maybe at 4am when no one else would be using it, it would be harmless to try. It probably was harmless but also completely futile. )
So let me just conclude with photo 2 that shows CJ and Jolly Rancher and Goose bumps and Beekeeper at the picnic table where we all waited for the shuttle. Oh - and photo 3 shows the rushing river below the high bridge that evidentally gives High Bridge its name. It was just a wee bit scary holding my iPhone over the edge of the bridge to take the photo. I couldn't help thinking that if I dropped my phone now it would be gone forever.
The highlights of yesterday were pretty much people related. I treated myself to a massage here at the Ranch, and found it deeply restoring and relaxing. I enjoyed my conversation with the young woman massage therapist Celina almost as much as the massage. Celina and her husband
Floyd ( the chef responsible for a delicious soup I enjoyed at lunch) are both writers and adventurers. They travel to different seasonal tourist areas (or cruises) where they combine earning a living with discovering and exploring new places.
There is a real joy in slipping into a groove and discovering an ease and flow and soul-depth in conversation with a stranger. This used to be common for me as a college student but as I aged it grew increasingly rare. Now on the PCT I find it common again.
At dinner tonight for instance I had a hard time deciding what I wanted. I chatted with a man and woman about how hard it is to make choices after being on the trail where my food is all packed up and there are no choices. I get dazzled by all the possibilities. After dinner they invited me to join them for dessert. We talked awhile about my hike, and then we talked about their heroic treks through the medical system - he with two failed knee surgeries finding a surgeon that could correct them and now able to ski and hike again, she with a large (metastatic) sarcoma removed from I think it was her arm and later a nodule from her lung and so far (7 years with no recurrence) beating the doctors' grim odds against her survival. We talked about how people quite without realizing it subtly blame a person with cancer (to protect against the fear of their own vulnerability). It was an intimate conversation and sense of contact with strangers.
Which reminds me of John again from the campsite by the stream (and the 60s). He got involved with transcendental meditation in the 60s and has stayed with it ever since. At one point in the conversation he simply gazed silently into my eyes. I felt discomfort at the way I felt naked - no words to hide behind - as our eyes met. And safe enough to tell him I admired his ability to share that kind of gaze, but that it scares me a little. Another nice thing about John. He and his wife hiked and kayaked together (had done so through the San Juan Islands, including Orcas) but she now had arthritis too bad to join the outdoor adventures. But she sent him off with her blessing, planning and preparing the camping food in a way that made her a vicarious participant as well as contributor.
Sorry not to have photos of the massage therapist or the folks I talked to at dinner. And most sorry not to have a photo of the tiny 5 year old ballerina I met in the shared women's shower and sink area when she and I and her mother were all brushing our teeth. She was studying all kinds of dance but she said her favorite was Spanish, as she spun into a bit of a samba or tango. She told me it is hard to curtsey without a skirt, then showed me how one has to lift one's invisible skirt to make it work. She and her mother both curtseyed, lifting invisible skirts. Mom said the little girl was having such a good time talking to all the people staying here at the ranch. I asked how long they had been here. "Since Sunday" Mom said. "It feels like forever" the little girl said. Mom said she worries sometimes whether the little girl talks too much (and bothers people). I told her I doubt it. She is pure magic, smiles, dancing through life with such ease and joy.
I have been imagining, while walking the trail, two very young and innocent and vulnerable parts of me - faith and hope, but I have called them Esperita and Fidelita -- that I had locked away and imprisoned inside to protect them from the pain and disappointment of the world. When I practice walking without my habitual head-down slump, learning to, as my body-worker Rick says, "lead with my chest," then that open, uplifted chest allows these two little girls to dance out in front of me on the trail and lead me forward into the unknown. My young friend with the toothbrush (her toothbrush by the way has blinking lights and a suction cup at the bottom and seems like it could almost dance itself) - this 5 year old whose name I never learned and whose photo I forgot to take - with her Spanish dancing and curtseying and playfulness - seemed like a perfect role model for those newly released parts of myself.
I walked back to my cabin in the dark and turned in for the night. Today I will eat breakfast, load up my backpack and ride the shuttle back to Stehekin. It is true that if I did not have a reservation at the lodge I would undoubtedly leave on my hike today. I feel a little restless and eager to be back on the trail. On the other hand there is a slim chance their wifi may be good enough to upload my blog. That would be a delight.
Later: at breakfast this morning I managed to lift the giant coffee pot (feels heavier than my backpack) that sits beside the fireplace in the dining room here at the ranch with its long tables where the guests - which tend to include families and the very old and the very young - meet and mingle informally. Photo 4 shows me with the coffee pot. Good thing I've been building muscle I think.
I also got a photo of my delightful massage therapist Celina and her husband Floyd the chef.
Floyd sings in the kitchen as he cooks and when he makes special orders he calls out the names of the lucky beneficiaries in his gorgeous baritone voice. Photo 5.
And I got a picture of the young dancer and her mother in photo 6. Their smiles are right up there with mountains, trees, wild flowers, and stars as things that can brighten and illuminate a moment into full-blown being.
I have reserved (and paid for) a room at the Lodge back in Stehekin ( the Ranch where I stayed last night is nearly an hour bus ride away, as is the trail head), but if I hadn't I sure would be ready to be back on the trail. There's a restless itchy confused feeling. What am I doing? The trail provides a sense of work and purpose - most of us humans do seem to need that - and once I have rested I don't know what to do with myself. I don't seem to have libido for exploring the "sights" around town or taking diversionary hikes. I just want to get on with the real thing (the one true religion?) of my big hike. I wonder how this relates to how it will be to live the end of this hike ( and the end of the way it has provided a major distraction from the fact of retirement.). I suspect I will be wrestling a lot with this - "why am I here? Where am I going? What am I doing? What is my purpose here? " feeling. So maybe just maybe it's a good idea to embrace it now. Part of my brain wanting to find a way to wiggle out of my reservation (it's full, it's a weekend. There are plenty of people who really want a reservation...maybe I can find someone ... Maybe better as one of the instructors in my masters program used to say to "lean into the discomfort." Think of it as a tough hill I need to climb into the unknown. Let hope and faith dance ahead and lead me into all this restlessness and not knowing.
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