Day 6. March 20. Doe Bay

Day 6. Friday March 20. Last day of Hikeathon. Doe Bay 

14.03 mi, 2618 ft ascent

6-DAY HIKEATHON TOTAL: 100.39 mi, 16,916 ascent. 

Dear Trail Friends,

I am writing this first entry at 9:30am sitting in the sun resting at Doe Bay. I always learn a lot from these hikeathons - from the time immersed in the natural world, walking and reverie and from pushing myself to the edge of what I am capable of physically (and probably mentally and emotionally as well). I can seldom put what I have learned into words. 

Today as I walked - slowly, in reverie, anticipating this and other rest stops - I reflected that I have learned how it feels to err in the direction of pushing myself too hard. Letting the number of miles get a little too sacred. It is clear to me I am better off with fewer miles per day and a gentler pace and more rest. I have let the 100 mile definition of a hikeathon become too important to me. The real meaning of the hikeathon is long periods of immersion in nature - yes, with a slight edge of pushing myself to my personal limits -  but it also very much about ease, rest, respect for and listening to my feet and all of my body. This kind of balance (between pushing myself and listening to myself) is not easy to find - and like all balance I learn it through the ongoing dance of  balance lost and balance found. 

Photo 1 shows you where I am sitting as I write - or rather the view from where I am sitting. If you look closely you might see the great blue heron and his reflection near the rocks just beyond the spit of land. You can also see the morning sun and it’s reflection. 

I have been walking and thinking about the whole hikeathon and things I wished I could have shared with you. I thought about Peter being comfortable walking off trail, able to spot the easier routes and to orient himself by landmarks he notices and remembers and I assume with that intuitive sense of direction,that innate inner compass, that some people seem to have and that others of us lack. It reminds me of perfect pitch and how some people have it and others of us don’t. It strikes me that Peter has lived his life off-trail, inventing a way of life and work and community - where I have desperately needed socially defined roles (like therapist) which no matter how much I rebelled against them (or just walked in the wrong direction by accident) provided me with sign posts and a clearly marked trail - or rather I hoped they would and expected them to. I was radically disappointed when for example in the middle of a therapy session I realized there was no clear trail forward. I had a love/hate relationship with “evidence-based therapy” because I so wanted the certainty of a trail and I so didnot believe that a individual’s unique path through life could be discovered by the crude generalizations of social science statistical research. Sometimes I knew my job was simply to “see my clients beautiful” - and I know at times I succeeded. Indeed, I am grateful to therapy because it’s illusion of a marked trail and certainty helped me feel safe enough to see the beauty in people. It’s so easy -I think as I walk - to see beauty in wilderness but in the human world with its human dangers and complexities I so rarely relax this deeply and feel safe enough to see all the beauty. I so admire people like my friend Jerry (who died last year) who could meet a stranger on an airplane and make a lifelong friend. My friend Chris S. (who has agreed to let me interview him for a paper for the IFPE’s - International Forum of Psychonalytic Education’s - 2020 Conference with the theme of Vision) is similar to Jerry in his open hearted welcoming of strangers. I am hoping when I interview him on his relationship to vision (both his learning to “see beyond” his life-long intense chronic pain, and his being a nearly blind photographer of dancers and the beauty of their movement) to learn about what makes it possible for him to open his heart and see so much beauty in people. 

My fingers are getting cold and it’s time to walk though of course I have more I want to say. It’s interesting how my greed plays out in wanting to walk too much and blog too much. I know the walk is trying to teach me less is more. So just one more photo - of the morning light in the woods - photo 2.  I wish you could be here walking with me, and able to feel the calm of the woods and the slowly changing morning light. I wish I could walk with you and see your beauty as easily as I see the beauty of sunlight in the woods. 

Now I am home. Today’s walk, and the whole hikeathon, is over. Today was beautiful. I only hiked 14 miles so I could meander when I wished and run down hill when I wished and rest when my feet asked me to. I think this is a lesson for me that may help with this frightening and interesting time we are living in. So many people are suggesting that the halting of business as usual is an opportunity to slow down and catch up with ourselves and our lives. Even in retirement I find ways to drive myself harder than is sometimes good for me. This walk reminded me of that. 

So when my feet asked me to rest sooner than I had planned - when we spotted a tree with a flat place to lie beside it that was also in the sun (even flat places are rare on the trails here where so much of the terrain is steeply sloped) and I started to walk right by, my feet asked me to stop and I did. It felt so good to sit down in the sun, take off my compression socks and my liner socks and my outer socks, rub aloe Vera gel and pain cream into my bare feet and massage them and thank them for all their hard work (they told me yesterday how much it means to them to be appreciated and not have their efforts taken for granted) and then to lie on my back and scoot my butt up close to a tree and relax. Totally. Just breathing and feeling my bare heels and my legs against the tree, my back resting on the earth, my eyes gazing up at the branches and their complex angles - I truly felt I was resting in the arms of the great design. (Photo 3)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. My walk today (photo 4) began at Cascade Falls, followed the trail along Cascade Creek up to Mountain Lake, then Southeast Boundary Trail to the trail to Winter Falls Lane (except I missed it, went to far, had to hike back a half mile, then missed it again and had to hike back the other way - you get the picture of why I don’t attempt off-trail bushwhacking when I manage to get lost on clear well-marked trails that I have hiked many times). 

I hiked down to Winter Falls Lane then road-walked to Doe Bay Resort and Retreat. I have fallen a little in love with Doe Bay since walking around it’s grounds on all my hikeathons. There is a playfulness and whimsical quality - a sign that says “Falling Tree” beside a learning tree held up by other trees, two side by side yurts named Yang Yurt and Yin Yurt, a post with signs pointing to destinations near and far (photo 5). 

Every time I see the tree house I dream of having a little late-marriage honeymoon where we spend a couple nights there and eat at the cafe and walk on the little beach. Here’s the tree house (photo 6). 

I walked down to the little cove and also to a rocky shore, both near where the heron was in the first photo. Photo 7 is looking back at that first test stop from the rocky shore. 

So I paid my respects to the spirits of the shore on the east side of the island and it was supposed to give me an amazing feeling of having saluted the shore spirits in all four directions and I liked doing it but I wasn’t it a very prayerful mood today. I just felt immersed in the beauty, present and held, and maybe that in itself is a prayer. For you and for me and for all of us and our world. 

After I got back in Southeast Boundary Trail I took a little detour to a viewpoint - which was beautiful by the way - but I’ve seen so many beautiful views on this walk - these days of really exceptional weather, day after day with clear blue skies and brilliant spring sunshine - that what caught my eye was a pair of trees standing side by side, one dead, one alive. Somehow that seemed related to this prayer walk and all the world is facing right now. Here they are in photo 8. 

They look almost as if they are dance partners, don’t you think?

I skipped my plan hike down to Eagle Creek because I had enough miles to complete the hikeathon (that sacred - or OCD - number 100) and I was concerned about some stresses Chris was facing with teaching via Zoom from home. 

As I was walking back along Cascade Creek listening to the music of flowing water, I remembered a folk music concert (I think it was folk music - I don’t know all the write nanes for different kinds of traditional music) where the singer/songwriter talked about singers who seem to capture the sound of a place. He mentioned someone (I’ve forgotten his name) who sang the Midwest and a woman who was moving back to the Midwest and playing his songs all the way saying that this singer had sung her home for 1000 miles. And I kept hearing in my mind the phrase “the creek is singing me home.”  Home being in this case the end of the hikeathon, the return to my physical home, all of that, but also the condition of being at home - in my own uncomfortable skin, in our world so filled with uncertainty, in our imperfect human communities small and large. So I’d like to end this blog with the creek singing us, singing you and me, singing all of us - home. 

Okay. Bedtime. Thank you for walking with me. May we all be held in the hands and gaze of the great music and the great dance and the great design. May we all recognize ourselves and each other as each a small part of the larger design - and also as a musician, and a dancer, and a designer of that great thing of which we are each just a very very small part. Okay - if I’m talking grandiose nonsense please excuse me - and just let the creek sing us home. 

Hope to see you on the trail sometime soon. 

Day 5. March 19. Rest

Day 5. Thursday March 19. Rest and a short walk with Chris around Cascade Lake and to and around the grounds of Rosario resort. 

4.09mi. 456 ft ascent. 

Dear Trail Friends,

My feet didn’t hurt nearly as badly yesterday when I rested a lot and rubbed them with pain cream and aloe gel and did my inverted pose with my feet up on the ar and my butt and kegs leaning against a tree. But thru were clearly letting me know that 20 miles a day is too much. Especially because I hike so slowly it meant I wasn’t getting the rest I need - and the rest incidentally that is one of the things I love most on a long hike. It is always wise to listen to my feet. And here in their honor is a photo I should have included in the hike for yesterday’s blog, of my bare inverted feet just before beginning the Obstruction Point hike. Oh wait I can’t put that in now or it will be the featured photo for this post. But come to think of it I don’t have a photo I want to feature for today so why not?

Note the elegant diy blister bandages using pink athletic tape (stretches and flexes and sticks for days). 

As we started our walk I pointed out ripples of light from the lake reflected on a tree trunk. Could not get this on a photo so had to learn how to upload a video to YouTube so I could get it on this post. (It’s only 4 seconds - just watch the light moving down the tree trunks). Here goes:

Chris was delighted that I noticed and I was delighted that she was as moved by the ripples as I was. A few moments later I pointed out new leaves bursting out, then she showed me some others.  All this may seem very ordinary but I felt as if I was feeling the magic - that I usually only experience on solo hikes - as a shared adventure. I had the sense of a moment between us bursting into life like those little green budding leaves. A “here we are” moment like my “here I am” moments alone in the trail. 

That’s enough for today. Thank you for walking with me and praying with me. Greetings, gratitude, blessings - and goodnight. Tomorrow we will finish the hikeathon with some abbreviated version of what are usually two hikes (titles water and boundary crossings). The only thing I am sure of is that we are going to Doe Bay. 

Day 4. March 18. Bouquet of Trails

Day 4 Wednesday March 18. A bouquet of trails. 

Eastsound village. 7.48 mi. 269 ft ascent 

Killebrew Lake. 5.26mi. 590 ft ascent 

Deer Harbor (Estuary aka Frank Richardson Preserve and Shoreline Preserve). 5.19mi. 252 ft ascent. 

Obstruction Pass state Park. 1.86mi 294 ascent

Coho Preserve. .87 mi. 160 ascent. 

Days total: 20.66 mi. 1565 ft ascent. 

Dear Trail Friends

Here we are again. May this blog as well as the walk be a prayer for our world and all beings. As I began yesterday’s (Wednesday’s) walk I was praying for all the endangered species (including our own) that we be held in the loving hands, seen with the loving eyes of the great music and the great dance. It occurs to me as I write that we all could be like abandoned gold mines and broken branches - all the species and the earth as we knew it - all of us cut off before our full leafing and flowering. 

Grief about our own and each other’s personal mortality - even when death comes much too soon (I think of my niece who died in young adulthood, and the many children who die even younger) - personal grief seems different from grief for our whole species, or for the earth as we have known it. There is a solace in knowing that we die and those we love die but there is a future for a larger “us” that we identify with, and are part of, that endures.  I guess part of my prayer is to free myself from the obligation to save and protect what I cannot save and protect - and to place myself in the hands of a larger “us” that will go on being, and dancing - even when our species and the earth/wilderness/Nature as we have known it becomes an abandoned gold mine or a broken branch. 

Yadda yadda yadda. 

I began the Eastsound village hike (the first of the “bouquet” of 5 hikes all over the island) at 6am on the little hike from Crescent Beach to Mt Baker Road, then walked through Buck Park into town and back then to North Beach and back to East Sound and around the public part of Madrona point back to Crescent Beach.  I was aware of the crescent moon and how it changed in the changing morning light. (Photo 1 composite) I especially liked seeing it behind the “Wildlife Cycles” sign at the bicycle store as I thought of all the wild cycles - sunrise, sunset, seasons, moon phases, tides - that I feel so close to when I pray and hike. 

Whenever I walk this loop I am moved that I get to walk along the island’s shorelines both in the north (North Beach) and in the south (shoreline park and Crescent Beach) in a single walk. There is something magical and awesome about the place where land and ocean water meet anyway - but to be able to step on two “opposite” shores in one walk seems truly amazing to me. Then during Wednesday’s hike I realized that I walk on four shorelines - North, South, West and East - on this hike.  North and South on the Eastsound village walk, West in Deer Harbor, and East at Obstruction Pass. I guess it’s time to show you a map if the island and my walks. Photo 2. I am embarrassed to say as I assembled the map (apologies for the gold arrow that shows my location - my home here - couldn’t figure out how to get the map without it) I realized that Obstruction Pass is not in the East at all but the far south. Oh well I imagined I was saluting the four corners of the island’s shorelines in one day and it gave me a thrill. And tomorrow Friday I will make a point of including Doe Bay in my hike do I willing will pay my respects to the East shore too. In the photo you see the Eastsound village walk, where I started, in the center. In the west ring of the island, the East part, is the Killebrew Lake walk, my second. Further west is Deer Harbor and way over on East side of the island is Obstruction Pass at the southern tip and Coho preserve slightly north. 

I’m getting tired and may not get to write much more. I do want to tell you about Killebrew Lake. As I was finishing my walk around lake I was thinking about Peter Downing and wondering where the other hikes (other than the lake loop) might be, hiked that he always talks about showing me but we’ve never gotten around to making it happen. Then there was Peter walking toward me! He had seen my car parked at the lake and come to show me a couple of the hikes he loves. 

The first was more bushwhacking than trail following - though not any bushes to whack but plenty of logs and branches to stumble along. Because my sense of direction is so bad I tend to stay on trails (even so I often go in the wrong direction) but with Peter to follow, it was great fun. Later he explained - and I realized - we had been hiking up the water shed and I almost believed I could hike it again without getting lost. Peter notices things I don’t always notice and I love that. He doesn’t just notice the giant boulders but observes that they must have tumbled down the steep cliff edge and bounced over and across a ditch. He notices the stream that goes underground and then springs up again further down the water shed (except in very wet years). He notices the debris that mark where the flood waters passed. He points out a cedar tree with the center of the trunk hollowed long ago by a fire and finds a walkable off-trail path we can take so I can stand in the middle. He notices a tree that is the perfect circumference to hug, another tree gnawed by beavers to fall but held up by neighboring trees, a trunk that curves itself into a chaise for sitting at the side of the lake. Walking behind Orter was a real adventure and the place came even more fully to life in his presence. Oh! And an antique rusted car covered by a collection of trees falling from different directions on top of it. Let’s make that photo 3. 

And I absolutely have to show you the cedar that I stood inside - photo 4 the tree, photo 5 the inside (with the shadow of my hat - and a deer skull - inside it). 

There is so much I want to show you. But I am tired and it is late and if there is one simple truth my body and especially my feet have been trying to teach me it is that less is more. 

I so want to show you where water touches land at each of the shorelines I visited. I want to show you the magic and beauty of each of the places I walked. It’s so hard to settle for an imperfect and incomplete blog post. Yet another branch broken off before the leaves opened, goldmine abandoned without any gold. 

But I will close with a photo from Deer Harbor of daffodils near the water. It fits with the theme of spring and also of places where land and water meet. 

I keep going through the photos saying just one more, just one more... but it’s time to let go. It was a beautiful day on so many beautiful parts of this beautiful island that help me to know that we are all a part of a really beautiful dance that moves to a really beautiful music, part of a beautiful accidental design that in some way makes it possible for me to say and even believe - in the midst of this pandemic and plummeting financial markets - that everything is going to be alright. Even if everything is not alright, it’s going to be alright. 

Day 3. March 17. Turtleback.

Day 3. Tuesday March 17. Turtleback Mountain. 

18.5 miles. 3707 ascent. 

Dear Trail Friends

The short answer is no: My sore feet did not keep me hiking Tuesday or Wednesday. 

The long answer is that a dinner date with friends Bea and Cindy (not to be constrained by nationality or season, we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with Bea’s traditional sauerbraten  - practically a week in preparation and totally delicious) kept me from blogging Tuesday evening. Then I returned from my hike so utterly exhausted Wednesday/yesterday that i couldn’t blog. So I decided to take a rest day today - and finish the hike Friday. (My commitment for Friday, like so many future plans, was cancelled. It feels as if the future, as something plan-able and foreseeable, has been cancelled. It is strange walking around without a set of future plans and expectations. They definitely create a room with a view in the dimension of time. Strange to have the shade pulled down on that view I am grown so accustomed too. )

Meanwhile, here I am. That feeling of being present in one moment, in one place, that I so cherish on the trail. I may not be able to quite feel it - but I do hope to conjure the memory with my words. It is late Thursday morning and I am beginning to write my belated blogs. 

I drove over to the north entrance to Turtleback preserve in the predawn dark and started walking at 6:40am. The moon, now a crescent, was shining through the trees as I left the parking lot. I can feel my chest relax and my mind settle into a still quiet feeling just in response to the simple act of writing that sentence. It’s as if I am back there, beginning the day again. 

As I walked the sun began to rise and the dawn colors appeared between trees. I remembered another hikeathon - I must have started earlier that time - when I reached Turtlehead just at sunrise and I could see the dawn colors on one side of the sky and the moon setting on another. This time sunset was pretty much over when I arrived at Turtlehead  (1005 ft) but in that magical moment when I reached the top and the view spread open before me, I had a strong bodily response to the tenderness of the new morning light touching the water and the islands. It came in the form of a musical memory, Stevie Wonder singing Isn’t She Lovely, the song he wrote celebrating his first child’s birth. I wanted to hear it and was surprised it wasn’t in my music collection on my iPhone. But I found it YouTube, played it on speaker phone, and danced to it up there on that knoll that at that moment felt like the top of the world, celebrating the birth of the new day. (Photo 1)

I’m not sure how much more I want to write though it was a beautiful hike and a beautiful day but in some ways I want to let that dance and that music be the days blog. 

As I danced I sensed myself - a small part of the great music-dance-design that makes the earth and sun move. Stevie Wonder sang “I never thought through love/ We’d be making one as lovely as she/But isn’t she lovely made from love?”  There I was - dancing my part of  the love that gave birth to that lovely new day. 

As I went on hiking I was struck several times by the beauty of dead trees, and the love I felt for them. I compared it to the way I imagine god/wilderness loving me - indifferent to my life or death, or preferences. It helped me imagine indifferent love as a way of accepting the loved one’s own being, its destiny. Not needing to fix it or rescue it. Letting it be. 

Photo 2 is a collage of lovely dead trees. (Or  deciduous trees I mistook for dead?)

Not much later I was walking along and looked up at the morning light on the trees and saw my first budding green leaves of the spring (photo 3). 

Of course after that I realized they were all around me. So little of the hike thus far had been about spring - it was more ice, cold, wind - and now I realized the song was about spring too and the rebirth of the seasonal cycles. I started seeing little green leaves everywhere and then I noticed them on “windblow” - a branch torn loose from its tree and beginning the process of dying. (Photo 4). 

This broken dying branch with its budding green leaves reminded me of the abandoned gold mine. All the hard hopeful physical labor poured into a dream that never came true. The gold never found. I thought of the life energy poured into all those tiny green leaves that will never fully come to life. I liked thinking that the great dance, the great music, views the broken branch with the same dispassionate love with which it views the branch that goes on living. Broken branches or dreams, successes or failures are all the same in its eyes (as I imagine it) - all part of the great design. I find this very consoling as I reflect on my life and the immense amounts of energy I poured into dreams that never came to full fruition - whether political dreams, having children, or my many unfinished writing projects. I feel a deep peace just as I did on the trail when I paused to photograph and honor the broken branch and so to honor the unfinished fragments of my own life. And let me consciously expand that to include the broken parts of others’ lives and the lives that end prematurely and all the gifts and talents that go enexoressed and unrealized. Maybe this is part of my prayer as I walk - may all of us broken ones with our broken dreams be seen (and see ourselves) with love. With a song of celebration: Isn’t She Lovely?

I noticed on the Turtleback Walk - such a beautiful day in such a beautiful place - how often the moments that woke me up to the “Here I am” feeling - of realizing I was in the presence and included in what I am calling God - were moments of high contrast between opposites. Night and day, life and death, beginning and ending, light and shadow. 

Two such scenes of contrasting light and shadow - where I just gasped as I lay eyes on them - are in photos 5 and 6. 

I also love the play of light on the shining surfaces of leaves (sometimes the light seems to dance on leaves almost as much as on water) as in photo 7. 

I’m ready for this blog to be done. But there are a couple more things I want to mention. There is another stone circle beside Ships Peak in the Turtleback preserve. Nobody has ever told me it is an authentic stone circle built by native people, but it feels holy to me. I walked around quickly addressing the spirits/musicians/dancers/designers of each of the four directiobs just saying “Greetings. Gratitude. Blessings.” I thought of how East can mean sunrise and morning, and spring - new beginnings. How south can mean midday and summer and warmth.  How west can mean sunset and fall and endings. How north can mean winter and hardship and night and darkness. I also prayed to the underworld (thinking of worms and roots and gophers, as well as the spirits of lava and volcanic eruption and seismic shifts) and the upper world (thinking of sky and clouds and wind, and of planets and stars and galaxies in their huge beautiful spiraling dances). I had just seen a vulture (sky dancers, my friend Laura used to call them) riding the thermals, it spread-open wings utterly motionless. Photo 8 is the stone circle. 

I noticed I was gentler with myself about appropriating the spiritual ideas and sacred site of native peoples. Reparation I decided I’d a political issue and I hope someday it will be addressed. But in the realm of spirit we are all part of the great dance and design, all related to the massacred and massacre-er. And it feels to me as I approach this time of change and uncertainty and unknown, as our whole world does, it is such a kindness to connect with whatever offers itself as a sacred presence to which or through which I can pray. I guess I offered myself and my ancestors some forgiveness for our part in the whole beautiful tragedy of the human world. 

One more small note. I found myself happily violating many of the rules I have created for myself for hikeathons - returning I skipped a part of the trail and my goal in curating these hikes has been to include as many trails as possible - but this funny 5-day hike I decided is just for me, not for my dream that others may follow these hikes and find similar healing (a dream that may well turn out to be yet another abandoned gold mine or broken branch). But I noticed that the 100 miles was still sacred to me. I laughed at myself as I thought about alternate courses and tried to reach exactly 18 miles (I hiked two miles extra, actually almost three, because I realized it would be impossible first to put together a 20 mile hike of the Turtleback trails and second to complete it in time for my dinner date). What amuses me was the attachment to the number in this case 100. It reminds me of the little girl who fell in love with mathematics because it was invisible and perfect. Because there was no uncertainty. Things were right and wrong and they could be proved. Some people think that is true of science but when I studied science I found it far too approximate. Once you start mucking around with the actual world, and this is even more true in social science, you lose the pristine perfection of numbers. When I imagine the great music and dance though I imagine an order beyond logic and human thought that embraces the whole contradictory business of being alive and dying, living and hating, longing for peace and making war, being greedy and wanting justice. And so on and on. 

Enough my friend. Thank you for walking with me all this way. I’ll be back with day 4 later today. Happy (and healthy) trails until then.

Ps. Oops I forgot to include the track of my hike. Basically north entrance to Turtleback to each of the overlooks then to Turtlehead then Raven ridge trail and back to west side of loop trail and to ships peak. Down main trail to southern entrance then back lost oaks trail to ships peak then down lost oaks trail and back up on morning ridge trail. 

Day 2. March 16. Mountain.

Day 2. Monday, March 16. 

20.16 miles. 3793 ft ascent. 

Dear Trail Friends,

Thank you so much for the caring and encouraging responses to yeaterday’s post. Today is tougher. Basically I had a grumpy day and my feet really hurt. Since getting home I’ve had a great Epsom salt bath and am hoping to continue the hikeathon but while I was hiking my last six miles today I pretty much thought I had overdone and it was all over. 

At one point during the hike I remembered feeling the same way on one of my long distance backpacking trip. I was exhausted, I hurt, and I was wondering what the hell I was doing this for. But I knew then, and I knew today. Sometimes I just have to keep walking through the pain and discouragement so that I will be here, waiting, when the “here I am” feeling comes - and all of a sudden I see and feel the miracle of all the beauty around me and of being present in it, and having that kind of beauty inside me. That kind of happiness is worth waiting for. Photo 1 is looking back at the light in the trees as I climbed up the mountain from Mountsin Lake. I was miserable and exhausted and hiking so slow I didn’t think I would ever get to the top. Then I looked down behind me at the light on the trees. 

The hike started out suspiciously. There was the half moon floating in the predawn night sky and heading up the mountain with a headlamp. This is the hike where I take all the different paths up the mountain (I forgot to give you the track of yesterday’s hike where I went around the perimeter of the oark and took a couple excursions beyond oark boundaries). So photos 2 and 3 are today’s and yesterday’s hikes. 

Anyway I stopped as I always do on hikeathon a to visit the abandoned gold mine. I am amazed when I walk through it and imagine the hard labor of opening up several long tunnels in the rock, probably using only a pick axe. I think about the man doing the work and his dream of finding gold. I have learned that no gold was ever found on any of the claims on Mt Constitution but I would love to learn the story of the man or men who dug out this mine. As I walked today I thought about dreams and the hard work that goes into them and how sometimes they are like this abandoned gold mine. I thought of my 20-something dream of a socialist revolution that would cure the world forever of greed and injustice and war. I thought of my dream of having a child. It’s interesting to consider the abandoned or failed dreams as just as much part of the larger music, the grand design, the great dance - as the dreams that “come true.”

Photo 4 is looking out at the world from inside the gold mine. 

My second little excursion was to the stone circle that I understand is a Native American worship site. I prayed  and called out to the spirits of each of the directions: Spirits of the East, musicians, dancers, designers of beauty of the East and dawn and beginnings, greetings and gratitude and blessings. I ask for your blessing and your love and acceptance. Please help me to be aware of your presence in the world and within me too. 

I stood in each of the corners and prayed and was moved by connecting the spirits of the directions in the stone circle with my idea of god as the great music/dance/design. But then I was tired and grumpy so my self-critical thoughts jumped up and started having a party. Look at you, they said, you are copying native peoples religion. Isn’t it enough that your ancestors massacred them and stole their land and tried to destroy their way of life?

This went on and on until I no longer felt worthy to pray at all. I tried praying for help to feel worthy to pray but then the self critical voices reminded me that my experience of the big music and dance and design was that it loved me but was utterly indifferent to whether I lived or died, and also to my ideas about moral goodness. So here I was praying for help feeling worthy (also for help past my greed, to sense and serve the greater good - I was praying for that for our leaders too) and my self-critical voices start pointing out the contradictions in my theology and I’m getting grumpier and grumpier. And my feet are starting to hurt. 

Meanwhike I thought the sun would be out today - which it was, beautifully - but there was still a fierce cold wind toward the top of the mountain that made me regret not bringing my balaclava. I kept looking at the ice sculptures in streams and at the edge of the lake and they made me think of the ice queen fairy tale and the little boy with a splinter of glass from a certain evil mirror in his eye that meant he could not see anything or anyone with love. That’s a little how I felt today. I identified with that little boy. Although secretly I did love all the ice designs. 

In spite of my horrid mood, it was a beautiful day. I don’t believe I have ever seen Mt Baker and the Two Sisters more clearly and crisply -and I could even make out the ghostly presence of Mt Ranier in the distance. 

I hope to hike tomorrow but the final decision will have to be made by my feet. I like to think that today my feet were making a walking prayer even while my brain got all befuddled. 

I can’t imagine that it’s any pleasanter for you to walk with me today than it was for me to be walking. So I thank you even more than usual for staying with me. I understand why you do it - for the same reason I do - we never know when when of those open-hearted moments will happen and we want to be here if it does. 

I’m hoping for a good nights sleep, bandages on my blisters, and being able to start my hike in the morning and continue all day. Okay - great music, great dance, great design - I get that you love me but do t give a damn about my preferences - but I’m still praying to you. Hold me - hold my feet - in your hands, in your living gaze. Put the whole of me on your world wheel and squeeze me and shape me strong and beautiful enough to get up tomorrow morning and hike. And pray. And sense your presence. And believe in your presence in me. Even if I have invented a theology full of contradictions. Surely your music and your dance and your beautiful design is big enough to hold contradictions. 

Good night. 

Day 1. March 15. Boundaries

Day 1, Sunday March 15. Boundaries.

22.97 miles, 4767 ascent. 

Dear Trail Friends,

I am exhausted from today’s hike and need to get myself to bed since I plan to start early again tomorrow. I hope to do my 100 mile hikeathon in five days (instead of six) this spring so I can show up for family plans Friday and Saturday. So this will be very short. 

This hikeathon is a prayer walk. I am praying for myself and for you - for all of us - as we face the triple threats/traumas that confront us: the state of the world politically (the lack of leadership we trust in our own country and in the world); the state of the earth (the uncertain future of life on the planet for so many species, including our own); the COVID 19 pandemic (the direct threats to health and survival, and the secondary harm done by our necessary efforts to slow the spread). 

When I have the energy I pray silently. But even when I can barely put one foot in front of the other, I like to think of the walking as prayer. I am experimenting with addressing the mystery as “you.” I think of my 15 year old mystical experience in which I felt the presence of a beautiful music at the heart of the universe and experienced all movement - the stars, the planets, the earth turning, the wind, the waves, the traffic, the people moving up and down the aisles of the drugstore where I worked at the soda fountain (when I had the experience) - as a beautiful dance to that music. That experience gave me a deep faith that I am a part of something larger than myself. I also felt that sense of belonging to something larger when I hiked the PCT and other trails - I experienced the wilderness around me as something great and beautiful, and again the experience gave me a deep faith that I was part of something larger. A great beauty, a great design. Perhaps accidental but no less great for that. 

Quakers talk about  a “gathered meeting” when we sense the presence of God in our midst. I feel okay using the word God for that grand music, that grand dance, that grand design. In my prayers today, I talked to that God. 

Please take me in your hands, I said to the music and the dance of the universe and the beauty of the natural world around me. Hold me, all of me. Hold my fear and anger, my pain and sorrow. My weakness and exhaustion. My guilt and shame. Hold me in your hands and in your gaze and let me know I am loved and accepted just as I am. Hold me in your hands and gaze and give me your blessing - see me whole and flawed and bless me just as I am.  But don’t give up on me. Put me on your potters wheel, spin me around with the seasons and years, take the raw life energy of my fear and anger and all the hard stuff and punch and knead and reshape me into a beautiful vessel into which you can pour your presence. A strong vessel that can carry “that of God” within me and offer it to others. Let me carry the music, the dance, the beautiful design of nature and pass them on to others. Please hold each person in your hands and your gaze and bless them and shape them into a stronger and more beautiful vessel. 

It was 27 degrees when I set out this morning a little before 7am. And it got colder as I hiked  higher and the wind was fierce. I wore my balaclava until 1pm and my fingers were got so numb I could barely button my pants button after I peeed. Every little stream was decorated with icicles and ice sculptures (photo 1)

So as the sun got higher I felt it’s warmth and light as a physical blessing - the touch of the hands and gaze for which I was praying. I so wished I could take a photo that would convey that feeling of receiving a blessing. (Photo 2)

In the afternoon I rested for a moment near Cascade Falls. My eyes rested on the moving water, the brilliant sunlight reflected on it, and the ferns. I was very very tired and I felt such trust in the simple presence of “God.” It was such good medicine for all the fear and horror I have been feeling. (Photo 3)

Thank you for walking with me. More than ever in this time of “social distance” we need to find ways to reach out and touch each other. I am grateful for your joining me in my prayer walk. I treasure your presence.