To sum up today it got so hot that I started chaffing so I went commando under my kilt and then as I was desperate for shade I sat under a pine tree not thinking about the bed of needles. Learned a new lesson. Still I made good progress left philomath and said goodbye to the cascades.
The road is like a reckoning. It settles accounts.
It doesn’t suffer fools and you have no hope of making it if your motives are in the wrong place.
A few weeks back I was walking south of kalama WA. It was a crappy day & had took ill the day prior & wasn’t feeling any better.
Even still I had the firmest intention of making 25 miles that day but as I left the town a damnable bird jumped right out in front of me. Clearly he/she was injured & I almost walked right by thinking I don’t have time for this.
But I couldn’t leave an injured little feller on the side of the road either. The host family I was staying with helped me get the dove to the Portland Audubon society & I just got off the phone with them & he’s/she’s doing okay.
They’re administering antibiotics. I gave them what cash I had in my pocket and thanked them. I think it’s time for us to name him/her.
Even though I lost 17 miles I have to make up, ‘damn’ dove just doesn’t do justice.
Tomorrow I’ll close the distance to Corvallis Oregon and begin to bestride Highway 20.
This is significant in several ways. First of all, we’ll lose the Cascade Mountains, our long spanning and looming friend to our left since the Canadian border and replace it with the Coastal Range we’ll have to cross over to get to 101.
Hwy 20 is the last remaining inland road and the bridge to the Pacific Coast highway (PCH), our home for the next four months.
Second I’ve scouted it twice and without question it’s unfit and unsafe for Hudson & Indiana so I must go it alone. Some of our new Oregon friends will look after the boys til Thursday. Still even solo it represents significant risk. The mountainous region I’ll have to walk mostly at night when traffic iss lighter and my line of sight is farther.
Add to that cell service is poor and there aren’t any c-stores or restaurants for most of the 55 miles. I’m paring my pack weight down to the absolute essentials. Will try to post updates here… See you on the other side
We all try to live life large. But sometimes it’s just larger than us.
I can count on one hand my true heroes in film and Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of them.
Damnit man. I always thought at that table you and I would sit.
An artist incomparable. An actor to end all actors. And an inspiration to all those independent spirits.
.JPG)
A few funny things happened this weekend.
I bear Malcolm’s ashes on my right hand now as my necklace broke this weekend on his anniversary.
And then inexplicably, my laptop played Bob Marley when it was closed and shut down.
I do not presume to understand the cosmic implications of anything I do. I miss Malcolm. There’s nothing more to me than that.
.JPG)
Mebbe I should’ve chosen a different day to start training other than arctic type temperatures.
Mebbe I shouldn’t have chosen to train in a skirt.
Mebbe I shouldn’t be smoking a cigar and swilling a bottle of wine while doing push ups on the jetties of Long Island Sound.
Mebbe I shouldn’t walk the length of the Pacific seaboard.
But I will.
I’ve learned a lot about myself this past year and if I had to sum it up, heralding in the new year, it’d be ‘What’s my value?” It’s a great question, actually. Probably, the question.
Tho my moobs ain’t that bad either
I’ve pitched a tent in so many places I couldn’t recount them all. But everytime it was just before night fall because we didn’t want anyone to know we were there since we were literally trespassing on either private or public land either of which could end us up in the pokey or at the business end of a shotgun.
Once I got the boys in and fed it was quiet time… No barking, no talking, & definitely no lights. So I would lie in silence, motionless for hours at a time. The goodnights were when I was so tired from the days walk i fell asleep swiftly, the tough ones were when my body ached too much to slumber.
I think about that tonite on my 2nd night of fasting and that it probably was the vast repertoire of music in my head that kept me at peace. tonite I’m listening to Bach prelude in G.
I’m grateful that ginger loaned me her iPhone power booster so I can journal about this adventure as I won’t have much time to after its completion next Thursday.
Today was productive – I read through chapter 7 of small animal clinical oncology, came up w some new product concepts for chef big dog, started the process of prioritizing my 2014, and then i sat by the riverside basking in the fleeting warmth, shed a few layers & wrote poetry for the first time in years. It was a good day…
Back to Bach and sleep soon I hope as the third day is when the hunger pangs crescendo