Riv's 2015 PCT, Day 21, July 16

Day 21, Thursday, July 16. From PCT mi 1672.71, elev. 6059, walked 16.84 mi to  PCT mi 1689.56,  elev. 6237, 
- total up/down  +3067ft/-2927. 

Dear Trail Friends,

Last night's cowboy camping adventure turned out slightly differently than I planned. I found that the wind was howling - and cold - and I simply could not get warm and comfortable enough to settle down and fall asleep. Around 10:20pm (very late for a gal who normally falls asleep shortly after sunset) I put on my headlamp and set up my tent. (That was a first -- setting up my tent in the dark. It actually went quite well). I felt snug and warm in the tent and fell right to sleep, though I did wake up as I usually do around 4, ate breakfast in the tent and slowly gathered myself together, starting hiking around 5:30am. 

It was a terrible morning. More of these elevation sickness symptoms that make me totally miserable -- they kick in when I hike up into elevations I haven't yet adapted to. The high of today's hike was probably about 6800. 

I continued puzzled and concerned -- altitude symptoms in the past haven't kicked in until 8000 or 9000 ft, and I do not recall anything this miserable. I have honestly been a little worried this might be an early sign of a developing heart problem. (As Chris will tell you, I am rather gifted at imagining catastrophes). I was very relieved when I came up with an alternate hypothesis--in the past I have taken iron supplements whenever I hiked high elevations (to help my body make the extra red blood cells needed to capture the scarce oxygen). I had some stomach upset and switched to a natural supplement. I suspect it was fine for keeping my blood count up at sea level, but not enough for higher elevations. I am excited about ordering iron supplements and testing out my theory. 

Photo 1. Just appreciating the designs of nature again. They are so amazing  

Photo 2. I cannot skip another view of the tree tops while lying on the ground with my feet raised. The design of the trees against the blue sky, the shifting early morning light, the birds hopping from branch to branch, so at home up there. And all my miserable symptoms of weakness and fatigue and hurting everywhere and feeling all doom and gloom disappear with my feet on the air and my head and back on the ground. Upside down is a good thing. 

Photo 3.  had picked the foreground mountain for Bonnie's wave today, but then photo 4. happened...

Photo 4. Can you believe Mt Shasta has managed to reappear AGAIN? I believe that mountain is stalking me. Anyway, what a wave Shasta would be to ride. So there she is Bonnie, your wave of the day. Isn't she lovely?

Photo 5. I can never resist photographing these. Again, the beauty of nature's design. And don't neglect to appreciate the little bug plodding around in all this beauty. 

Photo 6.  So I crossed into Oregon today, just before I camped. I intended to make it a short day, but I got excited about crossing the border -- and about the fact that the cell coverage report suggests there may be coverage just 4 miles north of here. I must say, with no coverage since the day I left Dunsmuir (that would be Day 8, Fri. July 3), I have never known AT&T to be so consistent and predictable. You know how it will jump from 3 bars to one to none in the space of a few minutes? Well, for the past two weeks every time I turn off "airplane mode" it says "searching" for exactly 10 seconds, and then says "no service." Who is this new AT&T? And if it actually goes back to coverage, will my phone and I be able to adapt or will it be like adjusting to rapid changes in elevation?

I reflected a lot today on my various unfinished projects -- the graduate degrees not completed, the books not written or revised. I also thought of relationships unhealed and unresolved. AND I thought of the areas of life where I feel a satisfying sense of completion -- with my dogs who I felt I loved well until they died including being with them as a loving presence when they died, two clients who I came to love deeply (one at the very beginning of my career, one after I retired) who allowed me to be present as a loving presence when they died, my ongoing relationship with Chris -- an ongoing "project" but one I never gave up on, the whole process of retiring as a therapist and saying goodbye and facing the painful (yet affirming) truth that I was leaving a hole in some peoples' lives. The two poetry books I self published. 

I reflected on the notion of life integration as the task of this stage of life -- and began to look at my unfinished projects differently. What if I thought of them as Barbara thinks of the trail -- that it doesn't matter how many miles I walk or whether I finish, it's being out here having the experience. I reflected on the rich experiences I had in each of my unfinished degree programs and with each unfinished book. It was an interesting shift. "Yeah but" I said to myself "with an attitude like that, who would ever finish anything?" And then I reminded myself that at this stage in my life there is no way I am going to finish those long ago dreams. Why not learn to cherish the incomplete experience?

And thinking that completeness is such a longing, and in some ways even when we seem to achieve it such an illusion, I still found myself realizing that I want to finish the PCT. I value BOTH the experience AND the accomplishment. 

I am pleased as I can be to cross the border to Oregon. I have now hiked almost all of the 1689.5 miles from the Mexican border to this one. (I still have 157 miles between Quincy and Burney Falls to do this fall or next year). It is something I didn't know I was capable of til I did it. I thought of that too: I don't think I was capable of taking those rough drafts and reworking them to the point that they could become novels of interest and value to others. But the truth is, do any of us know what we are capable of until we do it?

Thanks for sharing my walk and reflections. It was again gorgeous country and by afternoon that elevation sickness misery was gone and I was having a grand time. Funny the things I come to love. Like sitting at a quiet stream scooping water to filter. Such a feeling of quiet and being present. Really enjoyed that today, at the last water stop before the border. 

Love and happy trails. 

Riv's 2015 PTC, Day 20, July 15

Day 20, Wednesday, July 15. From campsite at PCT mile 1657.65, elev. 3600,  walked 15.06 mi to PCT mi 1672.71, elev. 6059. - total up/down: +4660/-2210ft.

Dear Trail Friends, 

I am sitting on a rock looking over a sea of mountains. I find this area I've been hiking exceptionally beautiful. Today has been very clear and a very comfortable temperature, not too hot, not too cold. I decided it's time to "cowboy camp" (without a tent) something I used to do often but have entirely given up since falling so in love with my new tent (bought for my Sept 2014 hike around Rainier). 

I think I feel very safe and secure in the tent, which is nice, but it also "protects" me from the amazing experience of sleeping under the stars and waking at intervals to see the Big Dipper moving across the sky. I have to nudge myself (gently) to do this, but I think I will be glad I did. 

Today's highlight, a first I think for me and the PCT: I left the trail - not because I took a wrong turn, not to follow a spur trail to water, not to go down to town to resupply -- simply because something beautiful beckoned me. I saw this pond full of lily pads and I wanted to be in there in the midst of all that beauty. 

Photo 1: the lily pad pond from the trail. There was a trail toward the lake but it petered out and disappeared. I was concerned about finding my way back, but it didn't stop me. I found my way to the pond, stripped off my clothes, waded in. I was approaching the middle and it was nowhere near as high as my waist, and the mud which actually felt lovely and squishy also gave me the feeling I might sink down down down and disappear forever. Moreover there was no possibility of swimming -- I would have been entangled like Gulliver by the Lilliputians in all those lily pad stems. So I splashed myself all over, got out, dressed and (not without some adventure) found my way back to the trail, utterly delighted with my excursion. 

Photo 2: lily pad pond up close. Really beautiful to wade into. If it were swimable, if there were campsites nearby, I would have taken a spontaneous zero day here. I am pleased to see Barbara's influence on me -- her complete unconcern about how much of the trail she completes, her choice to go slower than she needs to in order to savor and enjoy. It's kind of fun to see we do that for each other, even in small ways. When I ordered the combo hamburger (hamburger with salad) yesterday, she hadn't noticed it as a possibility and changed her order. and when I ordered blue cheese dressing, she changed her dressing order. I will see her again at Callahans (near Ashland) our next resupply. We are both treating ourselves to rooms and made a date for dinner July 21. They have a deck where dogs are allowed to stay with their owners at dinner. 

Photo 3. Beautiful mountain-waves. I think I'd pick the closest one on the right for Bonnie's "Wave of the Day."

Photo 4. My tent collapsed and ready to be folded up -- predawn light in last nights beautiful tent site. I so enjoyed during the night looking down at the lights of Seiad Valley (and thinking how odd that I had just been there, and now was so far away. ) and looking up at the stars. But of the inspiration for cowboy camping tonight. Which leads us to...

Photo 5. My air mattress and sleeping bag spread out on my ground cloth ready for my first cowboy camping in more than a year. 

Too tired to write much now. I do want to tell you that my reveries have been a lot on the subject of completions --and unfinished dreams and projects. I've been thinking about why finishing the PCT is so important to me -- and this year if I can for fear I won't come back next to complete it. This led to reflection on the many unfinished dreams in my life (I dropped out of graduate school FOUR times, a doctoral program at U of Wisconsin in math, the doctoral program in molecular biology at MIT, a masters in electrical engineering at San Diego State Univ, and another in Creative Writing. And the books: two novels that never got past a first draft, another just a fragment, a book about therapists and former clients who marry for which I conducted and transcribed extensive interviews, but which never got written). I think I feel sadness and guilt, almost as if they were children I had aborted or abandoned. So that helps explain the push to finish things. But I also remember, in that first summer NSF-sponsored math project how I organized a group to study the Incompleteness Theorem and how I was fascinating by the way in which we humans (with our drive to abstraction and quantification) try to create an illusion of a completeness that is actually logically impossible. Even then I was intrigued by and attracted to incompleteness. And I have loved the idea that my final section might be the part of Northern CA I missed because of the flu: Quincy to Burney Falls, which includes Belden, the official halfway point for the PCT. the notion of ending in the middle seemed to speak to the same impossibility of completion/completeness as Godel's theorem. 

It is getting chilly. Time to tuck in and sleep under the stars. Happy trails. 

Riv's 2015 PCT, Day 19, July 14

Day 19, Tuesday, July 14. From campsite at PCT mile 1646.91, elev. 1704 ft, to resupply (pick up box, shower, laundry, etc.) in Seiad Valley at PCT mile 1653.43, elev. 1373, to campsite at PCT mile 1657.65, elev. 3600. 

Dear Trail Team,

Photo 1:  I am sitting near my tent watching the sunset over the mountains and over the forest of dead, blackened trees in this burn area. Last year this area was closed because of the fire (which is why I hiked in Washington and Oregon last September instead). 

Today I learned more about fire damage. The PCT crosses and re-crosses the Grider Creek ( which seems more like a river to me) five times. Three of these crossings required fording the creek. Daunting for me because I did not have the balance to hop from rock to rock -- both their spacing and their jagged shapes concerned me, as well as the Rapids, I felt a fall could result in serious injury. Finally I realized that I could find a relatively shallow area with relatively less rapids and just slosh through. Wet shoes, socks, and pant legs were not a serious concern comparatively -- and I was relieved and delighted that I could find secure footing (the river was opaque due to being so muddy and silty, so I couldn't see whether the footing would be treacherous or not. I got some pretty big adrenaline surges trying to figure out how to manage those crossings. In one case a bridge had burned, in another case it had been washed out. After a fire, erosion and mudslides become serious concerns. In fact the Grider Creek campground had been severely damaged because of that kind of flooding just a couple weeks ago. So the effects of the fire go beyond what I realized. It is interesting to sit here surrounded by all these dead trees. 

Excuse me. We are just interrupted when I realized how dark it was getting and moved to the tent ( only to discover the tent stakes and guy linear needed some adjusting. A thru hiker (trail name Little Brown) asked me last night (three of us, Barbara with her dog Angel and Little Brown and I were all camped at Grider Creek campground and sitting at a picnic table (what a treat) eating our various dinners) how I set up my tent when I could not use my stakes ( meaning when the ground was so rocky you couldn't use stakes).  I said I'd never been in that situation but that I would wrap the guy lines around rocks. And lo and behold, tonight I found myself in exactly that situation. I think my pitch will hold but it's a good thing it isn't windy (especially since I'm not even supposed to be here among all these dead trees in the wind, let alone camping, because dead trees have a habit of toppling. Another of the long term effects of fire. 

I got up early this morning and left the campground in the predawn dark while the others were sleeping. 

Photo 2:  the view as I walked early this morning. I do love watching the world light up just at the cusp between night and day. 

Photo 3: I stopped to rest with my feet up, lying on my back. About that time Little Brown, who didn't start til 5:30, but is a much faster hiker than i am, passed me. When he bent over to talk with me (since I was lying on the ground) I thought he looked like a woods elf. 

I got to Seiad Valley about 8am. This area is seriously depressed economically -- it's livelihood came from mining and logging that I think has been halted because of environmental protection laws. The owner of the RV park where I received my resupply box, took a shower, and did my laundry told me that the Democrats in the state legislature wanted to destroy the rural economy. They knew the whole environmental thing wasn't real, but they wanted to force people out of rural areas where they could grow their own food and be independent, into the city where they could be controlled. He was a nice, kind man named Bruce. 

We had a lovely grassy area with chairs and shady trees just for hikers to hang out. The dryer was broken but there was a line to hang clothes on. There was a surge board to recharge my iPhone and battery backup. The town pretty much consists of the RV park, post office, store and cafe. 

Barbara and her dog Angel arrived late morning and we went and had breakfast at the cafe ( run by two sisters who grew up in Ojai). I bought some shoe goo at the store to see if I can get these shoes to hold together til their replacements arrive at the next resupply. Also to see if it might work to reattach the Velcro that was peeling off, that is used to attach gaiters, which o find are quite useful on days I wear shorts. 

Then Barbara and I went back to the cafe (knowing it closed at 2, and there was no place to get dinner) and had hamburgers and salad. I was surprised and delighted they had gluten free buns.

Then a bit more resupply chores and Barbara and Angel and I climbed down to the creek (same creek: Grider) which passes under a bridge on the Main Street. We intended to both get beer (she did but I got distracted by a pint of Haagen das ice cream which I completely finished with a little help from my friend Angel the dog. I liked sitting in the shade under the bridge. Barbara thought drinking beer under a bridge had a bit too many associations. I didn't have any problem eating coffee ice cream under a bridge. When you practice sugar abstinence you forget how good certain things taste. There are moments when I suspect this whole hike is just an excuse to get to eat sugar and chocolate and drink coffee again. 

There is a cricket strumming away on his musical instrument of a body just outside my tent. First I ever recall hearing on the PCT. A sound I dearly love. 

Photo 4. I decided to hike out of Seiad this afternoon instead of tomorrow morning, because I've been having problems adjusting to rapid elevation change I thought it would be good to hike part way of, sleep, let my body recalibrate and hike the rest in the morning. One goes from about 1300 ft to almost 6000 in about 8 miles. For me quite strenuous. I think it was s good decision, if only to be serenaded by this fiddler-cricket here in the dark among the blackened trees. I can see the lights down in Seiad Valley from my tent. And I can see a few stars, though it's a bit cloudy. In this photo I've just started my hike up and there are a lot of dark rain clouds in the sky. Looks like rain is likely. (Just realized I forgot to update my weather report when I had wifi. Not the only thing I forgot. I even made myself a checklist and still forgot. ) 

So I picked this nice wave of mountains as Bonnie's Wave of the day, and there's that rain cloud she's bringing to protect her hiker sister River from wildfires. 

Photo 5. I just like the curve of this dead tree and how it "talks" to the mountains and the clouds and the still living trees. There is so much to see on this walk. 

Photo 6. Nature is so full of amazing designs. I love having the time and quiet to really look. That reminds me of yesterday's fortune cookie: "someone is interested in you. Keep your eyes open." I was thinking that when I was younger "interested" would have meant in a rather stereotypical romantic way. Now it means in a way that I have the gift of sparking someone's curiosity, desire to explore the unknown. That I am like the trail for someone. And I realized what an honor and responsibility it is to awaken the sense of interest in people. I like the fortune's advice "keep your eyes open. " I like the idea of seeing the impact I might have on others when I might chance to be like the trail for them -- and not to mess it up if I can help it. 

Maybe part of this pilgrimage is about learning to really look at people the way I look at the natural world. Wouldn't THAT be wonderful. 

Okay I think we're done for today. Tomorrow I will be hiking toward Ashland. I'll be staying outside Ashland at Callahans Lodge and will for sure take a zero day, maybe even two. My old friend from San Diego  days --now more than 20 years ago --Judith Cope will come have dinner with me. And Barbara expects to arrive a day after I do, and we plan to have dinner ( I guess they have some outdoor tables where dogs are allowed). Barbara is a good influence on me. She is not in a hurry. She doesn't care how much of the trail she hikes. She just wants to be out there in the beauty and enjoy. She chooses to hike slowly, to do only 10 to 15 miles a day. She loves to camp at 4 or 5 and sit around camp reading. I think I could learn a lot from that. 

It's getting cold. Time to tuck into my sleeping bag and say goodnight. Thank you again. I am beginning to feel as if I have recovered the key to the writing room. I think it is a faith, or at least a good, that someone is interested. And keeping my eyes open to that possibility. Wish I knew how to post a voice memo. I would send the sound of this cricket. 

Bye for now. 

Riv's 2015 PCT, Day 18, July 13

Day 18, Monday, July 13. From PCT mile 1629.96, elev. 6783, walked 16.92 mi to PCT mi 1646.91, elev. 1704 ft - total up/down: +1832/ -6944ft.

Dear Trail Friends,

Whether you are here or not, gathered in a warm protective circle of interest and support around this blog as you used to be around the trail emails, I need to continue to imagine you here and and come ong you to warm my hands and heart. Others need a campfire to feel at ease. I need the light and warmth of your presence -- of our connection through photos and language and story. 

Last night as I approached my tent site I realized that I was not so afraid that other hikers would get there first and my site would be gone. (Of course to be fair, no thru hikers passed me yesterday, only a church group of 6 hikers who I seemed ultimately to have left behind, a couple who had met thru hiking in 2012 and we're now weekend hiking with their big white dog --great pyrennes, I think is the breed -- after they passed I wish I had told the dog I had once hiked over "his" mountains, and a solo woman hiker out for a few days heading south. ) instead if I were really honest I hoped that another hiker would be there, a woman solo hiker around my age, someone with whom I might feel a deep kinship. 

Photo 1. Morning light over the mountain as I begin my hike about 6am. 

Photo 2. My morning walk was a meditation on my niece Angel and an imaginary conversation in which she told me what it was like to be her: to be ripped at age 2 away from the family, race, culture, socioeconomic place she was born to and to find herself placed in a family, however loved but with love contaminated by guilt and benevolence, forever the outsider, the "dark criminal" as she put it, who would never belong to the family. She accused me, she expressed hatred -- yet the conversation was so alive. I have no idea if any of this bears any resemblance  to the actual Angel's actual experience, but it sure jerked me wide awake to what her experience might have been. And I felt in touch with her as a real person (I know I know it was "only" imagination) in a way I rarely had in our actual meetings). I was listening, it felt as if she was speaking her truth. I walked around a corner and there was a tent and a dog named Angel came bounding up to greet me, joy of life exuding from every leap and wriggle. The dog's person, Barbara, is a retired 69 year old former English professor at Auburn College. She is thru hiking in one year but in her own relaxed way. She carries books (she had just finished two and offered me one-/a Sue Grafton mystery and a book of literary fiction. ) she hikes 10-15 miles a day. She skips the areas (like Yosemite) where dogs aren't allowed, or those like Hat Creek Rim which might be unhealthily hot for Angel. She'll be out for five months. She doesn't really care how much she accomplished. Just being here, that's what it's all about. A similar attitude toward her career. "I chose it because I love books. It was a good job."

Photo 3. The trail lost in a profusion of flowers. There are worse fates than being lost in flowers. 

Photo 4. Bonnie's wave today: let her (let us) ride on a wave of flowers (as much a reminder of transience for me as a butterfly is). I believe this is a variety of what we call "Ocean Spray" at home ( or is it "Sea Foam"? ). So it seems like a natural flower to serve as a wave one can ride. 

Another thing about last night. I realized I'd gotten in the habit of closing the fly of my tent: fear of rain mostly but also of everything out there in the night. I reminded myself that the makers recommend keeping it open -- it occurred to me there would be more air passing through, less condensation. It had been a long time since I had laid there and gazed at the stars through the trees. It occurs to me that closing up one's tent, or over planning and controlling one's hike, fosters an attitude of fear, just as I found in my younger lesbian days that hiding, in and of itself, fosters shame.  

Now it is 6:15 pm and I am sitting at a real live picnic table at Grider Creek Campground in (I think) Klamath National Forest. I am eating my supper (my usual dried black beans with spices and coconut milk, sweet potatoes, peas, red peppers -- to which I added some freeze-dried peas, carrots, corn and jalapeños, which definitely livened my soup up a bit!). I am tired and hungry. Both today and yesterday I hiked more than I am used to (almost 19 miles yesterday counting my "detour" and almost 17 today.). Despite plenty of rest stops ( and lying back with my feet up, which I love, and I barely resisted including another photo looking up at the trees.  I was lying back listening to the movement of the nearby stream where I had collected water, watching the clouds move, and then a jet came through leaving two parallel contrails behind. Gradually they merged, faded, blurred. I thought about the difference between falling water, drifting clouds and the straight thrust of that jet. It reminded me of me when I get into rush-rush-rush mode. ) what happened to that sentence? Despite rest stops, I am truly exhausted. And famished. I had two extra trail bars and I just ate both of them with my dinner. 

So no energy for stories but here are the photos. (I'm trying to cut back on the number of photos because uploading them may be tough. Guru Bobaroo showed me how to make the photos big but admitted he never tried uploading more than three at a time. So we will see -- next time I have coverage--how it goes when I try to upload these last few blogs. 

Photo 5. Madrona trees -- first I've seen on this section hike. Also saw horsetail ferns. Remind me of Orcas -- and the whole aspect of this pilgrimage that is about walking between the first landscape I loved (the mountains and deserts around San Diego, the canyons in San Diego) and the my adult love for Orcas and the Pacific Northwest. I really have the sense as the Oregon border approaches (I will cross it this week) that I am walking from California to Washington, my footsteps bringing these two landscapes into connection. 

Photo 6. I passed these two young men on the trail. One of them handed me a fortune cookie. The other looked at me and said "Don't I know you from somewhere?" It turned out his parents were meeting him last fall when he was section hiking Washington and I met them and we waited for him and they gave me a ride to town -- though on the way we stopped to look at the salmon leaping upstream. It was really fun to meet him again. They are from Australia (the parents originally from the U.S. but found more forestry opportunities there and ended up really liking the people and culture: unpretentious and open. 

Photo 7. There is no excuse for including this photo. My absolute (though totally arbitrary limit) is supposed to be 6. You've already seen one photo taken lying on my back (with feet elevated) and in a way if you've seen one you've seen them all. But these may be my favorite moments of the day. Such stillness settles into my body and mind and heart. My back pressed into the earth. My heart and lungs and brain seem to find special rest pressed into the earth, and my feet reaching up toward the sky. I know the photo can't share that deep rest with you but I can't help wanting to try. 

That said, I'm almost ready to crawl into my tent and go to bed. Tomorrow it's an easy 6 miles into Seiad Valley (my next resupply town -- very very small town) where I will pick up my box, shower, do laundry and either spend the night at the RV camp's paid campground, or head out for 4 or 6 miles in the cool of late afternoon/evening and camp on the trail. I slightly favor the latter because I've seen how hard it is for me to adjust to fast elevation gains. And the trail from Seiad Valley gains 4000 feet in the first eight miles. I seem to adjust to elevation best in my sleep, my body seems to recalibrate. So, we shall see. I hope you made it to the blog and I thank you as always for your interest and support. 

I forgot to tell you what my fortune cookie said; "Someone is interested in you. Keep your eyes open." Maybe the fortune is about the lost key to my writing room. Someone -- the readers who support me --IS interested. I just need to keep walking and keep my eyes open to who is with me. 

Goodbye for now. 

Riv's 2015 PCT, Day 17, July 12

Day 17, Sunday, July 12, from Pct Mile 1612.58, elev. 6478. to PCT mile 1629.96, elev. 6783, walked - walked 17.18 mi (plus 1.75 with ~+800/-800 up/down, due to early morning wrong turn!) - total up/down (not counting my little "detour") +3478/-3814ft.

Dear Trail Friends

The day began badly with a wrong turn first thing in the morning, a long steep descent of almost s mile and then climbing back again. I forgot my rule to always check gps when I pass a crossroads, no matter how clearly marked I think it is. I have an uncanny ability to choose the wrong direction. In this case, the sign said PCT with an arrow to the left, and something creek, with an arrow to the right. But in the early morning light these signs with the arrows and letters carved into the wood are fairly subtle. I only saw the arrow to the right and just assumed the PCT and creek were in the same direction. On the way back I saw a lovely light blue bird from a distance, and decided that if I got to see it up close it would be worth the entire detour. I didn't though. 😟

I've been asking for dreams to continue to deepen my understanding of this as pilgrimage. In particular I've been asking the dream-maker if my imagined conversation with her was a good fit or needed correcting, and just for more connection with her in relation to the trail as pilgrimage. I woke with two fragments of a fading dream: I'm with a man and just realizing how very much in love with him I am feeling and what a special wonderful feeling it is. He says "I love you too. " I protest that I hadn't said anything. He says " I knew what you were thinking. ". The other fragment is about losing the key (one of those card-keys you get at motels). 

The first scene associated to my imaginary conversation with the dream-maker in which she clearly loved Mary a lot but was not nearly as fond of River. "I love you too" meaning both "I love you as you also love me" and " I love you also, in addition to Mary." I took this as a response to my request to correct or clarify anything I got wrong in the imagined conversation. As I walked today, I thought of the "in love" feeling and how often I feel it in relation to what I see and experience on the trail, both the natural world and the people. And how my connection with the world of dreams and imagination -- though an inner not outer world, has that same quality of "in love." I liked that the figure was male instead of female as I imagined. That seemed playful on the part of the dream-maker, and a reminder that he-she-it is a mysterious "other."  It also reminds me of a young person I met on the trail. This young person had to my sensibility the voice and bearing of a female, but the beard of a male. (He did not seem at all like a gay man.) I speculated he might be a trans-man, and then wondered if I wrote about it (and attitudes about gender and transgender and how profoundly they have changed in my lifetime, and reflecting on what did it mean to be female when I was, like this young man, just coming of age, and what does it mean now?) if I would somehow be violating his privacy. Then I thought that I might be projecting shame and hiding from an earlier generation on someone who might feel entirely differently. But it did bring up a vague discomfort with the switch from email to blog. The email felt like a cozy space where I could talk with intimate and supportive friends. When I think of the blog, it feels more exposed and public, I don't feel secure my email readers will be willing to move into this new setting. 

Which leads to the second image, the lost key to a room. My first association was to Bobaroo, my blog guru whose off-trail name is Zimmerman (I had asked for his address so I could send a thank you note when I finish the trail). Zimmerman, he said, was German for room, so it probably meant carpenter or room-builder. Room also associated to Virginia Woolf and A Room of One's Own--which took me in quite a different direction, thinking about not having a space anymore fully my own, designed and shaped by my choices and taste, like my office was. And yet feeling sad when I go to the office, in a way it feels so empty, it once held so much love. And it reminded me of the casket without a body and I thought that Mary is not the only dead self I need to honor and mourn. There is also my therapist self. 

But the stronger association for me at this moment is with my writing room. The email container, the presence of email readers I could feel cheering me on and genuinely interested in my story -- now with the blog I feel out there alone. Uncertain if anyone is listening -- or imagining someone stumbling on the blog and being critical of it because it is "all about River" and not enough about the trail. 

So I think the lost key is the lost trust and expectancy that the moment I start to write I am surrounded by a circle of trail Angels, listeners, supporters, witnesses-- generous with their blessing. Wish I could just go to the motel office and ask that nice Indian woman (from the motel in Dunsmuir, my most recent experience with one of those card-keys) if she would make me a new card-key. 

Meanwhile, even though I feel a bit exposed and lonely and insure that the connection between me and my trail angel readers will carry over from email to blog, still I plan to keep writing. I suppose that is part of what pilgrimage is: you lose faith, you keep walking. You lose the trail, you keep walking. 

Photo 1. Morning light as I begin my hike just before my wrong turn. 

Photo 2. This butterfly stood perfectly still as I brought my iPhone very close. Then I said "thank you" and she flew away. Later on I saw a monarch and later a second monarch. My first monarchs ever on the PCT. right after I wrote yesterday about my childhood memory of carrying the newly emerged butterfly outside perched on my finger and watching it fly away. That image has always been emblematic of transience for me. Love is honoring beauty enough to let it be free. So is the dream-maker orchestrating the images in the outer world as well as the inner world?

Photo 3. Storm clouds. Again today the weather kept switching dramatically between bright almost hot sun and blue sky and vast very dark clouds, cold winds, sense of imminent rain. All day long I was either taking my rain gear off or putting it on or thinking about whether I should be taking it off or putting it on. It started to rain seriously once and I stopped and put my extra, serious rain gear on. Then of course it stopped. 

Photo 4. So my feet decided that in this weather they do not especially want to be dipped in an ice cold stream for 10 seconds, or taken out of their shoes and socks to be dried and "aired."  Now they want me to lie on my back with my legs against a tree and give them five minutes elevated above my heart. They really really love that. But what surprised me was I loved it too. There I was lying on my back, my legs leaning against a tree, my gaze straight up. This is what I saw that I wouldn't have seen if my feet hadn't insisted on special treatment ( which they more than deserve -- it is no small miracle that they are willing and able to go all these miles, after all the problems they've had. I really do appreciate them a lot. ). By the way, I passed my first 200 miles in this particular hike today. That's 20% of the total if I really get to walk all the way to the Canada border, which I am hoping. (That would make my hike almost exactly 1000 miles, and I would have finished the entire 2650 trail from Mexico to Canada except the short 157 mile section between Quincy and Burney Falls I had to skip when I got the flu. )

Photo 5. I'm the walrus. 

Photo 6. Tree, flowers, mountain, trail. 

Photo 7. Bonnie's Wave. By the way, Bonnie's tumor has shrunk 85%, a great blessing. Thanks for your prayers, keep them coming. 

Thank you -- if anyone is "there" in this new strange blog space--thank you so much for walking with me. The thought of losing the magic of the emails makes me appreciate even more all you and our connection means to me. 

Riv's 2015 PCT, Day 16, July 11

Day 16, Saturday, July 11, walked 15.32 mi from PCT mi 1597.25 (Sawyers Bar Rd access to Etna) to Pct Mile 1612.58, elev. 6478. - total up/down: +3206/-2707ft

Dear Trail Companions,

I want to welcome you to the blog site and thank you for making your way through whatever challenges you might have met on what is for many of us a strenuous "high tech" trail in getting here. 

Okay that's done. Now it's time for "poor me." I begin this entry with great difficulty as I sit here at my lunch rest stop, primarily because I have already written two long (probably nearly an hour each!) entries at previous rest stops. But after the last I mentioned not to close the note or put the computer to sleep and somehow the entire entry got deleted while the iPhone was in my pocket. 

And of course the writing I lost was like the fish that got away: such amazing deep moving writing. I have never written and you have never read anything quite as wonderful. And of course given my memory or lack thereof, no chance of recreating it. Which I could not do anyway with integrity since so much of it is written from the present moment about being present -- it's not like one can recreate that. 

So...let us just let it go. The image reminds me of one of my earliest memories of a monarch butterfly we had "raised" in a cardboard shoe box with a gauze cover placed on our piano. When it grew from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly, I was permitted to let it step onto my five year old finger and ferry it carefully outside and stand and watch it while it took wing for the first time, and disappeared. 

I usually present photos in the order I took them but it makes beautiful sense to begin with;

Photo 1: I wish I could give you the actual experience. You turn a corner and you are in the midst of dozens of butterflies floating in the air and lighting everywhere. Only -- our theme of transience again -- they won't gather and stay together in one place long enough for a photo to memorialize them. As the "herd" of hikers approaches, I wish I could experience them with the same sense of wonder and transience as I experience this flock of butterflies. 

Photo 2. Me at my first breakfast-rest stop just one mile into the hike. I was weak and tired and hungry (had skipped dinner because I ate so much in the afternoon: an avocado and grapefruit salad (I ate the whole thing -- a big avo and big pink grapefruit), and a Mountain High scrambled egg and bacon breakfast (it was in the hiker box and I was curious whether it would work stove free and whether it might be an option if I do more hiking than planned and can't dehydrate my own food. It actually rehydrated beautifully, taste and texture were excellent. Only I felt almost sick after eating it, as if some additive or seasoning really upset my stomach and my whole system. In fact I had stomach pain for the first hour or so of the walk and I suspected it was the cause, so I guess I won't be using Mountain High meals. )

As you can see it was very thick mist, no distance views. But beautiful in the way mist is. While I was writing the lost most beautiful blog in the world (sob) a hummingbird came whirring out of the fog and hung suspended in the air a few feet from my face as if we were gazing at one another. Then she whirred away and vanished into the mist. 

Photo 3: the morning mist cleared and all day the weather moved back and forth between sun and blue skies and very dark clouds and damp air and cold wind. Predictions of rain varied from 40 to 60 % both for today and tonight. I put my warm jacket and rain gear on any number of times, and took them off again. I love this kind of view of mountains and trees. I love the shades of green. 

Photo 4. The mountain on the left seemed to me to have a fluidity, as did the contours of green in front of it. So I picked it for Bonnie's Wave. There were lots of candidates for Bonnie's Rain Cloud, but I didn't get a photo. 

Photo 5. Dead tree with moss--and those fluid patterns in the growth of the wood I so love 

Photo 6. A splash of color from the wild flowers. Reminds me what an amazing thing color is. In the MIT days, part of the qualifying exam (for the PhD I never finished) was to get to know an area of research and make a presentation. Mine was on the evolution of color -- studying the early single cell organisms that used a variety of colors to capture and use solar energy; they came before the "discovery" of green and photosynthesis. I still think color is a kind of miracle -- its existence, and our ability to perceive it and be moved by it. 

That's all for now -- except one thought from the list blog that lingers in my mind. As the hikers I had become acquainted with in Etna whizzed by me early this morning (and I was slower than usual, feeling at first not quite well, partly I think getting used to the altitude after two nights in Etna at around 3000 ft coming back to over 6000. It takes my body awhile to adjust. I was remembering as they passed a poem I wrote about the racehorse Ruffian who died racing. Her jockey I recall said she loved to run and to win. She was if I remember right an undefeated filly and they matched her against the champion colt and as she ran her leg broke and she just kept running. They had to kill her. In the poem I imagine Ruffian not dying but living a long quiet life. These lines kept repeating in my mind (describing her life)

It is not mostly racing,

Though that rare wild flute fire

Does still blow through.

Mostly you live quietly here

Where one careful footstep

Follows another. 

I think she died around the time Mary died and they were identified in my mind. When I was at MIT, my drugs of choice were coffee, sugar snd chocolate. I drank 10 to 15 cups of coffee in those long often 12 or 14 hour days in the lab, and would go down to the vending machines in the basement, hiding the multiple candy bars I had bought lest anyone witness my level of addiction. I think those drugs fed the drive. I gave them up after Mary died, but I have been using them on the trail where they seem to energize me without doing harm (though when I'm off the trail I find I have to give them up again. ) I think they help me remember Mary, when I feel that urge to keep up with ( and secretly, of course, to surpass and outdistance the other hikers). 

Right now it is cold and windy and I am in my tent. For the first time this hike I zipped my sleeping bag up, using it as a mummy bag instead of a quilt. I also have my fingerless (merino-possum, I love them) gloves on and my little down puffy jacket and my balaclava and wool cap.