October 20, filling in the gaps

And time flies by … The days of hiking have abruptly turned into days of sitting and resting, eating, wandering, wondering, etc. As we found ourselves off the trail, we found that most of the things that had made up our days for so long had, quite simply, changed. In conversation, at all hours, in our minds, the main concern each day was no longer when we might finish or how far to go today, but where we might lay our heads for a few days at a time, which highway we should take, and (gulp) in which direction? And, slowly, so subtly and slowly, the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to more and all of a sudden here we are settling down again back into the hustle bustle of a sedentary life away from the wild of the woods. We came down off the trail, thumbed it back on down the road, headed south, then west, then north, slept on back porches and in guest bedrooms, in hotels and sprawled out secretly on damp, city beaches. Days to weeks and ultimately we made it back to a place called home.

October has really been a blessed month for Eliza and me. The transition from hiking to resting to vacationing to traveling and back to working (on getting work, in my case) again has been nothing but fun. A seamless flow. No Break.

Currently, Eliza and I are working on resettling in the Bay Area (in California). She’s already started a new job at East Bay Habitat for Humanity as their Volunteer Department Manager. She rented a studio in downtown Oakland. I hear it’s just perfect, but I’ve yet to lay eyes on it myself. She worked hard and saw maybe a hundred places before snatching this one up. It is in a nice neighborhood, close to Lake Merritt, within walking distance to work, conveniently close to public transportation and shops, has hardwoods, gas stove, etc…

I am currently back in New York, spending a little time with my brother, sister-in-law, nephews, planning on taking a couple of weeks to see the folks, catch up with my sister and her husband in Ithaca, aunt and uncle upstate. After the hike, I had thought about possibly continuing to travel some on my own. A trip to Portland seemed appropriate, perhaps a jaunt down to LA where I had been making tentative plans with an old college friend to work on some recording. But, then, arriving in El Cerrito last week (we spent the week with Eliza’s former housemate/landlord, Jan Schilling in the east bay), the drive to keep moving had completely evaporated. I was where I wanted to be and the only obvious thing to do was to start in on job hunting and apartment searching, make appointments and stay busy, ride the buses, see the streets, walk to avenues, meet prospective employers and neighbors. Every day for over a week, Eliza and I both set out from El Cerrito on buses, bikes, BART, together and apart, to search and meet and do all that we felt we could do in a day. It was good and busy and we both feel accomplished about things. The trail is in us in all of this. We are motivated to make the most of every day. Taking care of logistics, arranging schedules and time, getting things done—it all comes as second nature now. I think that I learned what it means to be goal oriented out there this summer. I can feel it as a sort of guiding sense now, an underlying focus and confidence that no matter what the hurtle, it is passable, it is temporary, it is nothing but time.

I wish now that I had kept on writing when we stopped hiking three weeks ago, instead of letting that part of my routine change as well. I wish, too, that I could have been taking pictures of all the places we stopped and saw, all the streets we wandered and the strangers we met along the way (my camera was dead and my memory cards full).

We stayed in Lone Pine with Pygmy and Mini-me for two nights. They were the hikers who decided along the way to stop and set up shop there in eastern CA. They have a little, dingy, dark, cozy apartment around the corner from the main drag where they were kind enough to let us lay our packs down and sleep the days and the end of the hard trail away after we left the hotel room at the Best Western that had been given to us on the evening of our finish. I recall that we felt somewhat bored and strangely fatigued during our stay in Lone Pine. Our hosts were most gracious and ended up inviting some other hikers who passed through town while we were there to come back and stay as well. We met Smack and Love Barge and a couple of other guys who were out to meet up with some other through hikers down in Kennedy Meadows. We had known the two girls’ names from the registers we had been signing in on for the past three or four months but had never once met either of them. It came as a pleasant and interesting surprise that they had both heard of us as well. Smack had hiked with Scrubs and Tomato up in Washington and recalled that Scrubs spoke of us frequently and with great affection. He apparently promoted this journal with enthusiasm as well. And both Love Barge and Smack knew right away who Koala was. It had apparently become a well known tale up and down the length of the pct. My dear Eliza was the girl who lost her shorts to the mighty Napeequa. We all shared stories and cooked a dinner together and later that night Pygmy and Mini-me led us through a series of invigorating Wing Chung postures. Pygmy put us all to sleep as the night wore on with tales of his past lives, of the days when he was a skid row tough guy in San Francisco and carried two pistols and wore a foot-tall, stiff Mohawk on his head, and his youth in a family of multi-millionare, made for TV product salespeople, and of his grandfather’s life as a Philipino man who changed his name to Sanchez (?) and moved to Tennessee, pretending to be a Mexican entertainer, to avoid persecution as an Asian during the second World War. It was all very interesting, but I was pooped. The next morning after coffee and pancakes, Eliza and I hoisted our packs once again and hit the road for Kernville, thumbs up, faces grinning.

We stayed in Kernville with Harry and Melanie, a kind couple on the verge of retirement, who we had met while northbounding in June and who invited us to stop back in after we completed our journey. So that’s what we did. They were very busy wrapping things up with their work (they work together from home as a sales duo in the seed supply business in the flower growing market) while we were there so Eliza and I pretty much did our own thing. We wandered around town, and hiked on a dusty southern CA horse trail near a creek and worked out on the equipment in their gym (!). We ate meals together, which Melanie cooked, and spent early evenings chatting about the news and local lore and our plans.

After two days super low key, we headed out to the coast and ended up staying with Harry and Melanie another two days at their summer cottage in Cayucas, just north of Morro Bay and south of Big Sur. We had an awesome time out there, did a bunch of beautiful walks on the coast, skipping down sand dunes, exploring the beautiful tide pools, sifting through the fog. I even got a chance to take a quick dip in the bitter cold Pacific waters.

We bid Harry and Melanie farewell at the Big Sur Jade Festival on Saturday after stopping to gape and gawk at the platoons of Sea Lions camped out on the shoreline by the highway. By the end of the day we found ourselves walking the streets of downtown Monterrey. We had a difficult time finding a place to camp and finally were fortunate enough to meet a couple of young guys who offered us a space on their back patio to pitch our tent. So, after a round of beers at one of the many local British pubs we headed up to their place and pitched our tent and slept wonderfully under the warm, opaque city glow in the sky.

In Monterrey the next day we wandered the streets all morning, walked with the tourists on Cannery row and checked out the other notable Steinbeck sites, watched SCUBA divers slip into the bay by a city park at a beach. At midday we checked ourselves into the movies and stayed for a double feature. Later we were back on the highway hitching north towards Santa Cruz. Our second ride was with a computer tech guy from San Jose who had been down in the Monterrey area sky diving. We had a nice time chatting with him and he agreed to go a little out of his way to get us down into Santa Cruz where we could enjoy the town before darkness hit and find a good place to camp. His name was Ken. He was 30 years old and he had recently been divorced from his wife. He had a 4 year old daughter living in a small town up in the mountains. As we drove around town looking for a place to hop out, he surprised us by offering our of nowhere to treat us to dinner at some seafood Italian place we were in front of. He insisted. We couldn’t refuse. So we sat and ate a nice meal at this upscale Italian place and once again couldn’t believe our good fortune. A lot of good folks out there.

That night we slept on the beach. It was gorgeous and the sea so powerful.

The next day after sitting through what I thought to be an absolutely ridiculous Bollywood flick at the Pacific Rim film festival and grabbing some cheap Mexican grub, we hit the road for the last time. We cut it close and just barely made it San Jose by dark from where we caught a bus to Fremont, where we got on BART and headed up towards El Cerrito. At 10:30 pm we sat chatting with Jan at Denny’s over burgers and pancakes. It was a sweet welcome home.


I am back in New York now. Trying to fill in the gaps. Eliza started her new job yesterday. I’ve got one at an outdoor store waiting for me after the first week of November when I head back out West.