Day 6. (Last day). Wed. Dec. 18. Crossings

Day 6 (last day). Wed. Dec. 18. Hiked 14.9 mi, ascent 2540 ft 

Total for hikeathon: Hiked 103.72 mi 10,537.39 ft ascent. 

Today I hiked up from Cascade Falls on Mt Pickett Trail and sashayed back and forth between it and the Southeast Boundary Trail on the various connector trails. Also crossed the park boundary at the Winter Falls Lane trail to tour the grounds of Doe Bay Resort/Retreat. 

Dear Trail Friends,

I am sitting in our Orcas Island home and although it is a full hour befor sunset the sky is darkening and the winter lights I put up are comforting. Chris is home and my “crossing” from my solitude and my hiking-blogging “trance” into the ordinary “self state”/trance of our relationship was not as difficult as I anticipated. Rather it felt like slipping into a deep silence between us (she has mostly been napping, I have mostly been doing pre-blogging “housekeeping” with the email list, calculating mileage, etc). A silence not so unlike the silences I cherish in Quaker Meeting and on the trail. The kind that lets your lungs relax and fill up and then let go with a deep sigh. A “yes, here I am, this is home” feeling. Just as I write it, I feel it again. So something is working. 

I hiked in darkness again for the first two hours, and thought a lot about the crossing from darkness into light, which came just as I was crossing from the preserved wilderness of the park into the “real world” of houses and Doe Bay Resort. This first glimpse of both daylight and Doe Bay represents both crossings. 

Before that I took quite a few photos as the darkness waned. One in particular is of a house (cabin? Shack? Shed?) near the boundary trail. It is old and dilapidated and totally covered with a big plastic tarp. Whenever I pass it, it seems more dilapidated. I wonder at times whether it violates codes, whether it is a fire or health hazard. At other times I wonder about the way we humans try to control and legislate everything, and rob one another of the freedom to live individual lives and choose our own risks. I understand the more crowded we become the more we affect one another, and so are obliged to monitor and enforce standards. But part of me understands and empathizes with those who so resent government control and intrusion into the private realm (the resentment that seems to me to be one of the forces tearing our country apart.) This first photo is the plastic-wrapped hut or house in the predawn light. I liked how in the dark it had a kind of beauty. 

Later, when I was walking on Winter Falls Road, I came across a “stop work” sign. I thought of people I have known (not myself of course) who have built secretly and not complied with code and how horrified they would have been to come home to a sign like this. It again made me think of the rage dividing this country. Here’s the sign. 

As I entered Doe Bay I had an immediate sense of a place that was loved and cared for. I could almost feel a hum of energetic enterprise even though there seemed to be very few of any guests, just as at Rosario Resort yesterday. But I was struck with the contrast. For me at least, a sad feeling hung over Rosario. The old structures, in need of so much attention and continual renovation, seemed neglected. The mood of the place seemed sad. I don’t know but I susoect Doe Bay is a small business and locally owned, while Rosario belongs to a big corporation and employs a lot of temporary college students from abroad who are probably given inadequate housing and exploited. I even think I heard of a drug death in their housing, and have heard that the foreign student workers work multiple jobs there and in town to try to make the money they need for their education. This is mostly just gossip, not something I am informed about. I am grateful someone is keeping the great old Moran Mansion and Rosario Resort running at all - the overhead must be sky high. There are no easy answers. But the love and energy and passion that seems to hum around Doe Bay sure felt like it was missing there. 

Hard to know if photos can help communicate the “good vibes” at Doe Bay. It was barely 8am and a woman stepped out of the store, wished me good morning, and said “I have coffee if you need it.” I had drink a hot cup of green tea before I started and carried another cold half liter in a bottle in my backpack so I didn’t need it. But I loved that she reached out like that. 

I loved walking by the garden and hen house and seeing how well-tended they were. I loved the beautifully painted van (with a Virginia plate - a guest? A staff member?), and the children’s playground. The place just seemed to hum with a kind of contentment, hard work, loving stewardship. Here’s a collage of images. 

I suppose my crossing between the wilderness preserve (which paradoxically is itself a “managed” wilderness protected by governmental entities) and civilization inevitably involved both the bright side (human creativity, passion, devotion) and the dark side (control, the rage that engenders, political polarization, war) of our collective nature. And thinking of Rosario Resort and the sense of sadness, overwork and neglect suggests what an immense job it is to tend the values of civilization, and how we as a species are not always up to it. Or I as a member of our species am not. So nice to cross back into the wilderness and rest from the conflicts and contradictions of civilized life. 

As I climbed the steep access trail back up to Southeast Boundary Trail, I could see, despite the totally cloudy sky, a tiny bit of sky and color at the horizon. “It’s 10 am,” I said to myself,” and the sky still thinks it is sunrise!”

But I forgot to tell you! As I was walking along the road coming down from the trail I heard and then saw a lovely waterfall. I’ve never seen that waterfall before, I thought —and then - duh - I remembered that this was Winter Falls Lane! So I had great fun ducking and picking my way through the brush to get close enough to show you this photo. 

The dark part of the hike was the most terrifying so far. I could have chosen to walk Mt Pickett Trail first - it’s an old service road, wide and fairly easy footing. But I really wanted to hike in the other direction (it meant not duplicating trails I’d already hiked in the same direction and it meant getting to Doe Bay while I was fresh and seeing it in the morning light). But I knew it might be scary. It’s a steep narrow trail. I didn’t know how easily I would get lost and how terrifying to be lost and retrace my steps once, twice - to find the gps not able to give enough detail to help - to think about really getting lost, being stuck there lost until daylight, or even after daylight. This sounds crazy I know but the terror was also exciting. And when I found my way at last each time by retracing my steps again - and again - I was left feeling stronger and more confident. I often feel lost in real life and the trail is not nearly as tangible or easily found. This experience left me feeling more trust in myself and the trail. Even in darkness, it can be found. And it’s alright to be lost for awhile. 

What can I share from the lovely daylit hike back? On the return trip, the fun of seeing my footprints sloshing through mud, so impossible to see in the dark, so easily stepped around in the light. Delighting in the shape of a tree, in a scene I titled “the art of brokenness,” in the many shades of green,  the winter trees decked with moss? (Lichen? Whatever that pale gray green stuff is that is lovely though I think it kills trees), and in  a really tiny baby tree growing from a stump. 

Or a dead tree that reminded me somehow of a woman with a dancer’s body expressing - love maybe, or grief - and thinking that the woodpeckers still visited it so that even dead it was still a part of the community. 

Of course I couldn’t meditate on crossings and winter and not think about that final crossing, but I really gave it less attention than you might expect. Or at least than I might expect. 

I had fun with the crossings that involved meeting a former self - a glimpse of sunrise rock where I hiked on Day 1 walking the boundary trails and a sense of looking at my self up there then and being looked at. 

There’s a smooth rocky area at the top of the hill, just to the left of a tall tree, maybe a third of the way from the left. And I’m up there, even though we can’t see me. 

I walked by the little bridge where the trail from the falls heads up following along Cascade Creek. Yesterday I climbed a bit below that bridge to try to get you a photo of the way Hidden Falls was flinging it’s spray into the air with such fervor and joy. And there I am - my self then - by the bridge, waving at us, even though we can’t see her. This sense of crossing paths with past selves was one of my favorite parts of the meditation on crossing. 

But, as you know, we are coming to the end not only of today’s hike but of the whole hikeathon. However reluctant, I have to let you - and this experience - go. 

But before we face that crossing, one last fun thing (Green Bird is approving how much fun I am having today, nodding his green tuft approvingly) - I want to show you an overview of the hikeathon. 

Day 1, Boundary, is blue (unfortunately you can’t see it where others overlap it, but it goes all the way around). Day 2,Turtleback, is green on the west wing. Day 3, Mountain, is red. Day 4, Bouquet, is purple and there’s a little of it in the middle and at the ends of both East and west wings. Day 5, water, is yellow. Day 6, crossing, is black. 

Thanks so so much for walking with me. Your presence makes this reflective time possible (and fun!) and I thank you with all my heart. 

The next blog - unless I do a sprlng hikeathon, which could happen - will begin late April or early May or whenever it is that we head for Turkey and Chris’s lecture tour of the classical sites there. I hope you will want to join me. Until then, happy trails. And happy solstice in three days when the darkness begins to wane...