I am sitting, hunched over and exhausted, at a long, caramel, varnished, mess-hall style, Lincoln Log table, sipping a warm cup of coffee mixed with hot cocoa. A squall just broke in the sky outdoors and the dozen or so elderly women who had been lazing about, gossipping, all together busy in some communal act out on the porch came indoors and recommenced their shared toil. Inside, they each found a spot and settled in, perched up on a bench seat, strategically facing one across the aisle from her confidante or perhaps a whole gaggle of conversation partners. In front of each one stands the centerpiece of individual activity, the machine silently humming, subtly holding the group together here today: a perfect looking, quaint, olde-time spinning wheel.
It turns out that this is a spin-in, and this is the Spinning Rendezvous 2005 here at the Stehekin Valley Ranch, right here out in the middle of the North Cascades National Park.
The room is the tall open mess hall, its full trunk, wooden beams exposed, wide windows looking out over a great pasture, and further the great dark wall of Douglas Firs, and deep down, the hidden, endless PCT wherefrom we emerged just an hour ago. It is cozy and warm in the room. An open fireplace hearth is keeping hot a white tin kettle of muddy coffee and a red one of tea water. The floor is strewn with wood chips and leads into the open kitchen where dinner is being prepared.
Dinner is why we are here. No bobbins of yarn for us to spool in Stehekin. No scarves will we weave this day.
We plodded -- nay, trudged -- in off the PCT about an hour ago. We had hoped to hitch a ride into Stehekin from the High Bridge campsite trailhead but to our dismay found that the road had been washed out about two miles down river in towards town. So we had no choice but to walk. And this is where we ended up.
Eliza felt awful all day. Thankfully, we made it through the night without a visit from our neighborhood black bear and our meager food cache remained wholly intact. We even slept pretty soundly, considering the obnoxious slope we ended up pitching our little yellow dwelling onto last night in the dark. All this good fortune notwithstanding, Eliza got up feeling pooped. She seems to have come down with a head cold or some other sinus respiratory type thing. We had the impression going into the day that it would be a simple, easy, short one -- a quick 16 after a rock solid 28 yesterday. It turned into a whole day affair though, and with Eliza feeling under the weather, every step seemed to drag. I felt sorry that we may have been pushing ourselves too hard these past few days. To finish this trail by mid-October it is what we need to do, however . . .
We traversed up and down the steep canyon walls of two river valleys all day long today, slowly descending down off the mountainous highlands where we've been traveling thusfar and entering the dank, lush undercover of the valley bottoms.
The low country of the Pacific Northwest, with its heavy, robust scents, its thick, richly organic, padded duff soil, and its layered, luminescent, lush flora -- it brings me back in mind to the time I spent in Oregon over the past two years. The plants and trees comprising the private inner confines of the grand ancient Cedar, the stately Douglas Fir and the well-lit, sweeping Maple forests -- the Oregon Grape, the beautiful, prehistoric Bracken Fern, the delicate Trillium, the sensual, fierce Tiger Lillies, the Soloman's Seal and Horse Tail and Waterleaf -- there is a city-full of memories which rush through me as I pass through this verdant, lush jungle of life. There is just so much of it up here, so much life, so much living coming straight up from the dark heavy moist soil. The two years I spent in Portland, particularly the last six months which were spent working with a team doing restoration work and trail building feel like only yesterday here. It is a complex, almost sad set of feelings -- thick and moist like the world here, tucked in underneath these clouds. All the time spent walking and thinking, endlessly thinking, it is easy to indulge in reminiscence, just let it flow and feel its way through. The day becomes a waking dream.
***
Dinner is over now and the rain seems to have passed, at least for the time being. We'll settle up and catch the school bus shuttle into town.
***
It has started raining again. There is a free campsite right across the road from Lake Chelan here. We sat out on the porch at the little store here and had a couple of beers with two hikers (not of the "through-hike" variety, refreshingly) who we met on the shuttle coming from dinner. They are from Oregon and will be taking a ferry to Chelan, 50 miles down the deep, glacier-carved lake tomorrow and hitch-hiking home. What a life, I think. I look forward to coming back to this part of the country to live some day. It feels very right to me here.
***
It's been a very long day, but I am invigorated by the newness and peculiarities of the town here. These stops are so essential to a sound mind when spending so much time on the trail.
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