We opted out of joining our hosts at an out-of-town raft guide party last night -- although bands and kegs are hard for me to turn down -- and hit the floor early (after watching half of Dune) in anticipation of the long climb out of Ashland today. The second night of sleeping indoors is always the one that really gets you on these days off. Sleep -- hard, solid sleep -- seeps through to the deepest of tensions tucked away between the spinal discs, separates the stinging soles of the feet from the aching, brittle bones. Going down was easy last night; getting up was a drag.
This morning, after hauling myself into a cool shower, I enjoyed another couple cups of coffee across the street at the Roasters and read a decent chunk of Annie Dillard's rambling memoir. I have been enjoying her writing but I think that I will abandon her before long for something a bit more compelling, something to keep me awake at night. Nick offered to lend me "The Long Walk", a true story of a band of POWs who escape a Siberian prison camp during WWII and trek across the Gobi Desert and over the Himalayas into India. It makes our hike sound like child's play . . .
Nick and Christina were still asleep when we set out down the road this morning. We hadn't the heart to wake them on their day off. They were great hosts, so kind to offer us space and comfort in their home even while they were busy at work for the whole day.
The hitch out of Ashland took a little while but was no real problem. The weather today is surprisingly, mercifully, mild. We stood, thumbs extended, content to just stand for as long as need be. We munched on the lusciously ripe Himalayan Blackberries from their monsterous, thorned dragon vein arms which mound up on the roadside, as they do near most roadways here in the Willamette corridor in western Oregon.
Returning to the trail feels good. We passed another familiar section of trail -- probably the last until we hit our old tracks near Lone Pine in October -- on the wildflower-strewn steep meadows of Mt. Ashland. I had walked a short four-mile stretch a couple of years ago with Jacob and his parents and we sat for a picnic together to celebrate his father, Renato's, birthday.
Meadow Mary has been by again. She had left the familiar bag of apples and a register. More Northbounders had been through. Her dog, Sam, had unfortunately passed away in the woods just a few days ago. She wrote of the ordeal in the log. One Gallon, a veteran hiker with double Triple Crown credentials had arrived afterwards and dug a grave for Sam's body.
The two waves are now passing one another, it seems. The flip-floppers and the diehard NoBo-ers, those that wouldn't give up and went straight through the 500+ miles of snow in central CA to do this hike the way they always thought it should be done, finally coming together again!
So far, we've seen about ten that have come through all of Cailfornia. In the register today we see that Zip and Patch passed by while we were in Ashland. Another, "Whatever," we see on the trail this morning. He was kind enough to give us his maps for this section south to Seiad Valey, CA, where our maps await along with plentiful food boxes.
No comments:
Post a Comment