Dear Trail Friends,
Today was a lovely hike, much of it level. Even the climb was mostly a gentle slope on a soft dirt trail. Beautiful woods, and the day not too hot, not too cold.
Photo 1. I like the way this tree is slowly growing around and over the PCT marker. It gives me the feeling that the wilderness -- the wild natural order of things -- quietly and persistently heals around human intrusion.
Photo 2. This little tree seems to me to express more eloquently than words are able to how each individual life finds its own unique shape, with turns and twists that make up the story of that life and that somehow create balance and harmony.
Photo 3. Coming up to a pass and seeing this lake -- don't even know what the lake's name is -- and having that discovery experience (that was difficult for me to have at Crater Lake.). Speaking of discovery, I forgot to tell you about a young man thru hiker I met. We were sitting side by side on the floor in the Mazuma store, recharging our iPhones and connecting with wifi. He happened to mention having been a math major and I said I was a math major too. I told him I had started grad work at a very good grad school in math (U of Wisc Madison) but that I saw the difference between my plodding logic and the students who could "see" where they were going. He asked if I had seen the bench at Burney Falls with the quote from Poincare: "It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. ". We were amused that we had both taken a photo of that bench. It seems interesting to have that quote from the very first hour of my hike echoed now -- perhaps it too is part of what my pilgrimage is about?
Photo 4. Just for fun -- the bench from Burney Falls, taken June 26, Day 1.
Photo 5. Lying in my inverted position, feeling the earth under my back, looking into the sky--and having given myself permission to not worry about my iPhone battery, just enjoy and see what happens, listening to music in this case John Denver songs Here Comes the Sun accompanied by YoYo Ma on the cello.
Photo 6. Bonnie's wave of the day. Can't you just see the molten flow lines of the lava in the hardened rock. Really makes me want to learn some geology.
Photo 7. I was pretty tired when I came to the water source (17 miles from where I slept, 27 miles from the last water source, which caused me to carry way too much weight in water yesterday on the rim hike and may have been a factor in the lack of passion in my response to the beauty. ) I didn't do everything I'd hoped to, but did resolutely rinse out my bandanna-substitute (an ultralight towel) and two pairs of socks, one liner pair and one regular hiking socks pair. So I squeeze everything out a few times in a nice deep pool, lay the wet socks on a small rock, and wring out the towel/bandanna and drape it on a little fir tree. I go back and there are only two socks left on the rock. The little creek has kidnapped my socks. I walk downstream but see no hint of them, then finally find my missing liner sock submerged in a pool under a boulder. I search all along the stream for my missing hiker sock. It could not have gone far. It's too big. It would have gotten stuck somewhere. I get a stick to reach under the boulder and search by feel where I can't see. Then when I return with my stick, there the sock is. It's hard to see in the photo. It's a grayish U-shape at the bottom of the falls, to the right of and above the reddish rock, slightly under the Boulder. At the top of the falls you can see the rock --the farthest back of the three -- I had placed it on. I am convinced some river goddess or nymph snatched it as a prank. I don't see how the stream itself could have reached up to the rock and gotten it.
I'm in my tent and it's now very dark and time to go to sleep. Thanks as always for walking with me in imagination and making it possible for me to experience the joy of hiking alone without being completely overcome with loneliness.
Until tomorrow.
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