Day 4. Mon. Dec. 16. A Bouquet of Hikes.

Monday, Dec. 16, Day 4.  Five hikes:

Eastsound Village: 7.35 mi, 187 ft ascent

Killebrew Lake: 1.8 mi, 110 ft ascent

Deer Harbor (Deer Harbor Shore, Frank Richardson Wildfowl Preserve): 5 mi, 265 ft ascent

Obstruction Pass: 2 mi, 254 ft ascent

Coho Preserve: 1 mi, 171 ft ascent

Total: 17.15 mi, 987 ft ascent

Dear Trail Friends,

Even though there was less mileage and way less climbing, today took more time (because of driving all over the island) and was particularly exhausting. I think beginning hikes takes a lot of energy for me. Once I’ve begun there’s a momentum that carries me. I had to begin and begin and begin today. By the last two hikes of the day I could barely muster the startup energy. 

In fact I drove right by the entrance to the Coho Preserve and had to turn around and come back. I was thinking of my friend Mary who used to live near the Preserve and who has moved to Bend Oregon where she is near her son’s family. I was thinking about how I enjoy helping her with her taxes, how we would have to file an Oregon state return this year, wondering if I would enjoy helping other people with taxes. I am always looking for ways I can provide service to others  that also bring me joy. Then I realized it was like driving people around. I used to get joy from picking up Mary and bring her to our Quaker meeting. So I volunteered to provide rides for people. But it didn’t really bring me joy. I realized - light bulb - it isn’t the service I provide, its the relationship. It’s serving someone I love. Then I realized I’d missed the turn for my hike. 

I bring this up because so much of the day was about the many memories of my 25 years living on Orcas (and three prior to that of owning a home and visiting) that were stirred up as I walked and drove around so much of the island. This was particularly true of the first hike around the village of Eastsound, much of it in darkness. I walked past Orcas Center and remembered being in the play Trojan Women in 1994, going to Chamber Music Festival concerts every year, and the t-shirt Jim Bredouw (he was acting director of the center then) gave me there of a woman carrying pink roses in her backpack, with words “And she lived happily ever after.” I walked past the medical center and remembered being there to respond to a mental health emergency. Walking by the Catholic Church I remembered  chamber music seminars held there. Passing the fire station I remembered giving blood. As I walked by the school and through the grounds I remembered many other walks through there, but also being an aide in a junior high math class when I first moved here, being a volunteer poetry teacher in a kindergarten and first grade class, attending a Christian Science service held in the school library (my first year I visited all the churches on the island). The more I walked the more memories came as if they were embedded both in the place and my body, and in the relationship between body and place. I began to reflect on how deeply Orcas has become my home. I have lived here longer than any other place, I thought. (Actually as I do the math now I realize I was a little off,  San Diego where I spent 8 years as a child and much later 18 as an adult  is still ahead by one year). I thought of Wendell Berry’s novels that so celebrate the relationship between people and community and place. 

The memories came back in a special way - more like the memories Proust describes as arising through the senses, the taste of madelines being the famous example. I realized that memories were wafting up from my physical experience of moving through place. It was as if I were walking through the memory. I wasn’t thinking it, I was held in it, submerged in it, moving through it. 

This made me realize that Orcas is more my home than I have acknowledged. So many important friends and family in my life live elsewhere. And yet the friendships, even the casual acquaintances (I think of my meeting with Dee on the trail yesterday), are rooted in place, in our shared love for and history in this place. 

I only took one photo that whole first hike - it was dark and memories are hard to photograph. I was on the pier in Eastsound looking back at the village (memories of hikes to Indian Island - you can sort of see it on the left in the photo, at least if you know it is there  - when the tide is low, of poetry readings at the bookstore, of walking the labyrinth beside the Episcopal church, of attending mass at the episcopal church after we walked the Camino and crying every time I received communion) and I liked it that the sign on the dock agreed with me that it was winter. (To my great relief, the public bathroom was open at 7:45am even though the posted winter hours began at 8am, a disconfirmation that it was winter that I happily forgave because of an urgent need to poop - this is always an issue on the trail and on all-day hikes and I had toilet paper and doggy poop bags with me just in case, but really there was no place I could have used them in the middle of town. I wanted it to be winter but not nearly as badly as I wanted to poop.)

My next hike was at Killebrew Lake, way over on the east wing of the island where Chris’s son Peter lives. As I drove there I thought of how Peter camped there when he first visited Orcas, fell in love, made an offer on a house very nearby. I remembered how I slipped and fell in the mud (in my wool business suit) on the way up the slope to his house on my first visit to Orcas in December 1990 when we made the offer on the house that would become our home. As I walked around Killebrew I thought it was a sacred place in a way, it had called Peter to Orcas and so, indirectly, had called Chris and me. I thought of my walk around it as a walking prayer of gratitude. So here are two pictures of the sacred place that made possible so many rich memories (embedded in this place) that visited me today. 

Thank you so so much for walking with me. I cannot tell you how much your presence here enriches the journey. I hope it is helpful to you too. 

My next hike was in Deer Harbor - also on the East wing of the island but very far from Peter and Lake Killebrew. On the drive there I pass the turn for the woman who used to cut my hair, drive by the house of Peter’s best friend (with an old Mini Cooper sitting on top of the roof - and lots of other unique things stirring memories of when Peter worked with him to build a carriage for his wedding),by the home of my friends Peter and Mary Ann (so many memories of my friendship with Peter, of his wife Babs who had dementia, of Mary Ann who cared so playfully and lovingly for Babs, and then let herself fall in love with Peter after Babs had died), the home of Tony who used to garden for us (memories of conversations with him, his tall shy posture, his hands, his gentleness with plants), by the Westsound marina and community center (memories of sailing with friends, of a bar mitzvah, a Unitarian service, a wedding ,,,,). 

I think of the bronze-colored deciduous ferns that I have been thinking of sac”ghost ferns” when I see them on this hikeathon - reminding me of people who died this year and how present their “ghosts” (the memories, the sound of their voice, their gestures, facial expressions) are among us. All these memories are like ghost ferns all over the island. Not sure I saw any today but here are some from Friday. 

Anyway - I was struck as I started my Deer Harbor walk by this tree - a living tree wrapped around a dead part of itself. Reminded me of all these thoughts about aging and winter and trees growing out of stumps. Oh let’s forget that - the photo doesn’t convey the feeling. Moving right along ... I fell in love with these winter trees with gold and red branches. They were colorful like autumn trees but no leaves. They were quite wonderful and a way of thinking about loss and winter - I mean color even after there are no more leaves. Like sunset color after the sun is gone. Speaking of which ... but wait, here’s a collage - the bottom photo is from the back of the preserve looking across the wetlands and I zoomed the camera and the focus got all blurry but I liked the blur of it. The top is from the front of the preserve, looking straight at them. 

About the sun and it’s absence. All clouds today, no sun. Clouds and rain predicted for the rest of my hike and after that for the rest of the week. But as I hiked I thought about how moved and excited I was by the sunlight yesterday. When I lived in San Diego sunlight was so everyday it was easy to take it for granted. It was beautiful, sure, but sort of ho hum. Then I moved to Orcas. Sunlight was scarce and I would really see it and cherish it and feel it in my heart. I had more relationship with the light because it wasn’t so available. I think that relates to winter and to the losses that come with age. It relates to what Freud said in his transience essay about transience being scarcity in time, and scarcity making things more precious. 

One of the things I love about today’s hike is seeing things from different angles. In the walk around the village of Eastsound, I look at East Sound (the inlet of water)  from all different angles. As I drive around the island I see Mt Constitution (yesterday’s hike) and Turtleback Mountain (Friday’s). Here is a view of Turtlehead and Turtleback from today’s hike in Deer Harbor. 

As I drove from Deer Harbor all the way across the island to Obstruction Pass, I drove through Crow Valley, farmland I had gazed down on through the mist from Ships Peak on Turtleback. It’s really quite magical - the sense of place - and being able to move around and through it. 

My favorite photo from Obstruction Pass is this closeup of a Madrona tree. (I also had an encounter with a young couple from Portland who asked if I knew anything about the trees - I said “very little, but ask me anyway.” It turned out they had fallen in love with the Madronas and wanted to know their names. ) so I’m collating it with other Madrona photos from there. 

I was kind of tired and didn’t want to bother walking on the beach and then I thought about you. What if you can’t get to a beach and might really want to? So I walked on the beach especially to take you with me. So you need to imagine the pebble beach and how it gives under your feet and the sound of walking in all these little pebbles. And the cold air making your nostrils feel cold in this really wonderful way and the sound of the very slight waves lapping the pebble beach. Very soft lapping sound. Here are the pictures but it is your job to imagine the sound. 

You might like to imagine the sloshy sound too of water coming into a mini rock cove like this one. 

Hey we are almost done except I forgot to tell you about the goats and the boats and the Tibetan flags - on the walk from the Frank Richardson Preserve in Deer Harbor to the shoreline preserve - I walked by this boat yard and was suddenly walking through the memory of there being a goat in the boat yard - or vice versa) and wondering if there were still a goat there and one appeared. Somehow the combo - goats, boats and prayer flags - seemed so quintessentially Orcas. 

Then I found myself remembering a couple I counseled who had a goat, and another who didn’t, and another ... and it came back to me hoe much I loved them and learned from them and hoping I was helpful to them and gratitude to this island for the amazing people I got to meet in the strange and intimate little world of therapy. 

The coho preserve trail is a small walk beside beautiful water falls that make at least in my hands terrible photos. They don’t begin to suggest the speed, the white water rush, the sound of water really racing - it’s a very different sound from a stream and a few gentle falls. It’s like the difference between all-out sexual frenzy and foreplay, or calm disagreement and total rage. My photos get an F minus. Except I might give an F plus to an accidental photo, one of those touching the button by mistake while I myself am moving. It reminds me a little of an expressionist painting trying to convey the sound of white water. 

And now of course I want to tell you about our Quaker meeting contemplation on the topic “speed” and tell you all about going 85 in a 65 mile zone in Shasta and the amazing officer who wrote me a ticket and changed forever (well, for the rest of my life - my version of forever), I suspect, my relationship with law enforcement and authority - this young light-skinned African American - I have the eeerie feeling I’ve already told you this story but you know I have memory issues so you can’t expect me to remember what I have and haven’t told you. How much I respected him, how free of ego and power tripping he was - how angry he was at me for risking my own and others lives. “Why are you in such a hurry to get there?” he asked me. I keep asking myself that. What is the big attraction of speed? The illusion of power, control, confidence - youth? The thrill and sensual joy of whirling around those curves in the road? “You can’t see what’s ahead on those curves - what if people had to stop because of something in the road? You wouldn’t be able to stop” he said. I find myself whispering to myself to slow down, that I can’t see what’s ahead on those curves. Not just on the road but metaphorically in all of life. 

Not that I’m criticizing the white water for racing along. For everything there is a season. 

It’s well past time I headed for bed. Thank you so much for walking with me. Even more about water tomorrow as we hike around and along the lakes and streams in the park.