

### Snakeskins and Signposts

by Sher Vadinska

Copyright 2012 Sher Vadinska  
Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be resold or given away to others. If you'd like to share this book with another person please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

### CONTENTS

BURR

ELBOWS OFF THE TABLE

WHAT IF?

TWO WOOL SWEATERS

PEDAL, CHEW, PEDAL, CHEW

FFFFFDT

DOWNHILL ALL DAY

BOLTS

NACHES FOOD BOX

KEEPING HALF AN EAR OUT

BIG BONES AND THE GOLF-COURSE PAVILION

STALKER LADY

HEAVENLY WY'EAST

TREE FAIRIES AND THE ROOSTER

NAKED FIELD NYMPHS

TO SIT AND FERMENT

CESIUM RAIN

LIFE ON A BIKE

NINE HUNDRED CHANNELS IN GOVERNMENT CAMP

SQUIRREL TURD

ONLY THIRTEEN MILES

GOLDILOCKS

IF SASQUATCH LIVES

ALI'S SIBERIAN BRIDE

ALL-WEATHER WOOL

BURL

CRIME SCENES

JO'S WIFE, COWGIRLS, AND GLUTTONY AT THE LAKE

DEAD INDIAN ROAD

INDIAN MARY, SUNSHINE SALLY, AND THE VENDING-MACHINE TECHNICIAN

INTENTIONAL COB AND THE WITCH'S TEACUP

THUMBS

S-CURVE

DOORKNOB HOLES AND THE TINY BUBBLE

UP SNOWY MOUNTAIN IN THE CHERUB'S SEDAN

SNAKESKINS AND SIGNPOSTS

FAIR GAME

FRAYING SHIFTER CABLE AND THE SALMON COUNTER

HOP HEAVY AT PAPA'S

LAUGHING BUDDHA AND THE IMITATION WOOD

UP WITH MOM

FORGOTTEN CURDS AND MAKING OUR WAY UP THE COAST

COUNTING STARS AND THE TWO-CHORD POLKA

A SWEDE, A GERMAN, AND A COUGAR WALK INTO A LODGE...

NIGHT MODE

LAST FLAT TIRE

PLEASE PASS THE DECEPTION

DISMOUNT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

END NOTES

If you're going to ride,  
ride like the wind,  
wild and free,  
whipping and lashing,  
swirling,  
whirling,  
rustling leaves,  
caressing the tips of grasses.

As if on a magic carpet,  
like the wind,  
ride,  
through valleys,  
over passes,  
beneath feathered wings,  
between evergreen needles, and  
the fingers of  
your  
own  
hand.

Wild and free,  
ride because you can.

*****

BURR

"Are you taking a gun?" my friend asked.

Had my last swig of beer not already been in a free fall inches from my gut, it would have spewed out my mouth, across the table, and onto her salad as I imagined myself climbing up a mountain pass with the butt of a revolver sticking out the back pocket of my neon-green biking vest. I couldn't think of a better way to cultivate kindness from strangers: "Uh, excuse me, sir, but would you mind giving me a lift off this cold, wet mountain? My bike seems to have fallen apart. Oh, don't mind my .38 Special."

"Seriously?" I replied, seeing in her face she was absolutely serious. Then it hit me. She worked in law enforcement. She lived in a world where rape and murder weren't just part of a plot to keep entertainment-seekers on the edges of their seats. Real people suffered real trauma, real pain. Perhaps skewed in the other direction, my world of middle-aged musicians revolved around a harmless tonic of good friends, laughter, and a couple of hours in a spotlight. To us, trauma was when a guitar slipped out of tune, a speaker blew, or one of us went to the bridge instead of the chorus, causing a disjointed scramble to find each other before the song derailed off the stage and slammed into the innocent audience. But even on our worst nights on stage, no one left the club in a body bag.

Surprisingly, my well-meaning friend would not be the only one, at the table or on the planet, who'd worry about me on my three-month solo adventure during which I'd camp most nights in a tent that apparently had a sign on it that read, "Helpless woman inside." Honestly, I was more afraid of being wet and cold than I was of being raped or murdered.

I thanked them all for planting their seeds of fear into my imagination and assured them I would be okay. But who could blame them? It thrived everywhere. This noxious fear. It seemed to me that no one, myself included, could get through a single day without stepping in it, inhaling it, or brushing up against it. And it stuck like a burr. It was a wonder anyone mustered up the courage to get out of bed in the morning. Life was risky business.

The truth was, for being fairly intelligent people, my friends actually did _not_ know where the monsters and all the things that could go wrong lived. Along mountain rivers? Behind the rotten stump of an old-growth tree? In a secluded campsite? On the passenger-side mirror of an old pickup truck? Unfortunately, I didn't know either. Maybe a small dose of fear was healthy. I hoped it was, anyway, the same way I hoped breathing car exhaust all day was healthy. It seemed unavoidable.

*****

ELBOWS OFF THE TABLE

I felt caged. Fenced in. Of course I did. All my life I'd felt a rope around my neck, a bit in my mouth. Even before I could walk, let alone ride a bike, I squirmed and wriggled out of my mother's arms just to explore the kitchen floor. As soon as I could walk and was allowed to follow my big brother into the woods behind the house, I discovered my wild animal and the joy that came from roaming free among the trees, critters, and creeks, lifting up rocks and poking sticks in the sloppy mud. That was it. I was hooked. I wasn't ever going inside again. I would not be tamed. And then Mom called us in for dinner where I had to chew with my mouth closed and keep my elbows off the table.

Four decades later, nothing had changed, except that I now knew my cages intimately and had sufficiently learned the benefits of _some_ kinds of self-taming, especially the ones that helped me to generally get along in the world. Frankly, I was glad to no longer be inclined to throw the wrong clothes in a backpack, write a note and slam a door, or to shove a chair under a desk, grab my coat and keys, and tell my boss to get his own coffee. That sort of breaking-free never _did_ go over so well. Everyone likes a free spirit. But an angry free spirit? Not so much. Now, finally, I had the necessary self-restraint to wait until the time was right, to cool off, and to leave with a smile on my face. In fact, I became so patient with my leaving that it ended up feeling more like going. And going felt better. There was a future in going. It was a lighter load. Leaving made me feel guilty and as if I were tripping down the basement steps. Going felt graceful.

Yet, even when I thought I was ready, I couldn't go. I got held up trying to justify my reasons for going, for wanting to go outside and play. Maybe deep down I knew there was chance that this might be the time I wouldn't come back in. Or, that if I did, not just my elbows but my heels and toes would grace the tabletop as well in an inappropriate tap dance against the grain. Fortunately, I soon realized that it wasn't my parents', or anyone else's, table in my kitchen, but my very own. I didn't need or care anymore about reasons. Freedom needed no good reason, no apology. All I had to do was push the cage door open. I'd deal with my fears when they showed their faces.

So I got out my maps.

Of course I'd go by bicycle. I loved being on a bike almost as much as being on a horse. The wind and rain in my face and the ground moving fast beneath me made me feel wild. My legs in perfect rhythm, pumping up and down, feet spinning round and round, felt like a smooth canter along a soft, grassy farm road between fields of alfalfa—sweet, humid air going straight to my head. I melded with my bike and my bike with the road. We worked together. I provided the energy and my bike hauled me up the hill. And like my childhood horse, Shalamarshane, it took me just about anywhere I wanted to go as long as there was some semblance of a path. Hang camping gear and food over the bike's rear and I had the ultimate freedom machine.

*****

WHAT IF?

The adventure I finally settled on would take me from one of my favorite breakfast places in Bellingham, Diamond Jim's in the Fountain District, to Fairhaven to pick up my friend, Alan, who would ride with me for the first four days. Together we'd go down Chuckanut Drive, over Washington Pass, and down the east side of the Cascade Mountain Range to Cashmere. Then on my own, I'd head over Blewett Pass back to the west side of the Cascades, on down past Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, cross into Oregon and past Mount Hood, into the Willamette National Forest, the Deschutes National Forest, to Crater Lake, through the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, and then west over the Coast Range to the Pacific Ocean, back east to Eugene, where I'd meet my mom for a six-day road trip after which I'd ride back to the coast, up and around the Olympic Peninsula, through the San Juan Islands, and finally, back to Bellingham to celebrate with friends at one of my favorite breweries, Boundary Bay. On one of my maps, it looked to be a two-foot oval. On another, it was no bigger than a dog collar. Nothing to it.

I planned to be fully self-contained for the three-month journey with a twenty dollar per day budget. I'd camp almost every night. I'd work on two different farms to rest and to fuel up on fresh vegetables and interesting people. I'd also meet up with two Bellingham friends to hike and get a taste of home.

To save the money I needed for the trip and to pay ahead on my bills, I gave up my apartment seven months prior to my leaving, crammed my possessions into a two-hundred square foot storage unit, and slept on a cot in the back room of a friend's resale clothing store. During the day when the store was open, I spent long mornings writing in a favorite café or went on a training ride out in the county or down to Blanchard Mountain, typically in the rain. In the afternoons and evenings, I mustered up just enough patience and focus to teach my guitar students one more tired four-chord classic-rock song. At night I returned to the store to dehydrate food, play music, or write yet another list of what still needed to be done or acquired. There seemed to be no end to planning. I had to laugh at myself when friends would ask how it was going and I heard myself say the same thing I'd said the week before. "Still planning." In fact, the serious planning, upgraded daydreaming, the kind that kept me up late staring at the ceiling and that squeezed into all of my conversations, took twice as long as the trip. And without any real mountains to climb, or hunger to satisfy, or flat tires to repair, it was, indeed, half the fun.

It was also a far cry from rocket science or brain surgery or any other adage that would adequately express the seeming simplicity of planning what appeared to be a glorified bike ride and camping trip. But still, I had to be mindful of several very important things—weight, nutrition/calories, weather, and the less precise what-ifs. I was pleasantly consumed by thinking through all of these categories, especially the what-ifs. What if I ripped a hole in my tent? Better take a needle and thread. What if the tube of glue in my tire patch kit dried up? Better take two patch kits. What if the rain cover for my helmet leaked and my wool hat under my helmet got wet? I better take two wool hats—one for going over the wintry passes and the other for sleeping. What if I developed a bladder infection? I better take cranberry tea bags and vitamin C. What if I dropped my cell phone in a river and then had an emergency? I better take two cell phones. What if an opportunist with a weapon crossed my path and demanded all of my money? I better hide my cash in the folds of my maps _and_ have two wallets, one real and one fake. The list went on and on, as was the nature of what-ifs in the imaginative mind. At some point, I simply had to stop and consider bringing a rabbit's foot.

Regarding the weather was easy. I had to be prepared for every kind. After all, I was in the Pacific Northwest and I was leaving at the end of May. Except for the times I'd be on the eastern side of the Cascades, I could very well experience cold rain until mid-June and then a warmish rain until mid-July. As luck would have it, I did not. In fact, I only rode in the rain a few times, mostly over passes, and I never had to set up my tent in a hurry to escape a drenching. Probably the funniest exchange I'd have on the trip with half a dozen people went the same every time. "Boy, it sure is a gorgeous sunny day!" I'd remark. And he or she would reply, "Yeah, it didn't get nice until last week." Right up until the last leg of the journey, somewhere between Joyce and Port Angeles, someone spoke those exact words. Apparently, I had followed the sunshine the whole way.

Having healthy food to eat that would give me the energy I needed—as many as six-thousand calories per day—was also extremely important, especially for me. I had been born a big eater and had a slight but noticeable food anxiety. Every time I left the house, I worried about getting hungry and not having anything to eat while I was out. So I thought about this one a lot. It also wasn't a good idea to try to climb a mountain with shaky legs or a foggy brain. Considering my twenty dollar per day allotment, which was intended for a campsite or a bike tube or a treat after a long, hard day, I'd decided to carry all of my own food. This meant I'd have to stop every five or ten days at some pre-designated post office, oft times no bigger than a cupboard, to pick up a prepacked box of food successfully sent to me as "general delivery" by my reliable friend, Robin, I hoped.

The overall weight of my load perhaps trumped all considerations: the what-ifs and weather and even my food choices. I also found it to be the most exhilarating part of the planning. To me, simplifying life was an art and I loved the rush of creativity when pondering all the different ways to minimize, shed, shave, pare, strip, basically anything that revealed the bare bones, the core. The heart. In the case of this adventure, I had endless opportunities to practice this art as my forty-five-pound load, like the paint dots of pointillism, became a vessel of 720 ounces to be sliced and diced, especially as my departure drew near and I still hadn't put in a fifty-mile ride with, or without, my cargo. And interestingly, the more I thought of my needs in terms of weight, the less I needed.

So I made Crock-Pots of beans and rice and then sucked out all the moisture in my dehydrator. Then I made hard-boiled eggs, mashed them up, and sucked all the moisture out of them, too. I did the same with apples and pears. All sorts of vegetables became delectable snacks: daikon radishes, sweet potatoes, zucchini. I turned bunches of chard and kale into a powder that gave my dry hummus mix a nutritional boost. The easiest and best-tasting dehydrated food I prepared was bread. I used one of those seed breads that are chock full of flavor and nutrition. Without the moisture, it became a just-out-the-oven fresh, crunchy, crouton-cracker hybrid. I rounded out my menu with granola, energy bars, hot chocolate, and yerbe mate tea (because it weighed less than coffee and of course I could give up my rich, dark roast for three months for the sake of a lighter load).

I knew somewhere in our universe existed a lighter sleeping bag and tent and stove than I owned, but in general I was confident there was nothing more I could do to lighten my load. And then I sat on the edge of my cot the night before I was to leave, staring at the pile of possessions I was to haul two thousand miles up and over many mountains. I freaked. I looked in every compartment of every bag. I waited for a flash of genius. "Of course!" I thought as I spied my toothbrush through a clear plastic bag. Well pleased with myself for having had such a grand idea, I dug it out, held it with both hands, and snapped off the handle. This led to other thoughts of handles, which prompted me to call my friend, Anne. "Would you bring a handsaw to breakfast tomorrow so I can cut off the handle of my hairbrush?" I asked. Amazingly, without a poke or laugh, she simply said, "Okay. So how's it going?" The next morning, Anne would show up to breakfast with a handsaw in her backpack, but by the time I would remember I'd even had such a brilliant idea—picture-posing time—I would feel a tad ridiculous and decide that if I did find myself halfway up a mountain and feeling the weight of my hairbrush zapping all of my energy, I would just eat another handful of fruit and nuts.

I couldn't have been more ready.

*****

TWO WOOL SWEATERS

What a scene after breakfast at Diamond Jim's. Anne, Robin, Adam, and Mary stood in a half circle around me and my bike that leaned against the cinderblock wall along the edge of the parking lot. Adrenaline-crazed and over-caffeinated, I rifled through my neatly packed panniers, holding up various items, as Robin said, "Yes. No. Yes. No." Apparently, I _was_ able to pare down even more. The sight of my bulging rig leaning against the wall had prompted the last-minute repack. Of course I didn't need the case for my camera, just the camera. Nor one hundred feet of string. Nor did I need two wool sweaters (I hoped), nor a plastic flask of bentonite clay. I wasn't even sure that ingesting the thick, grey liquid would help absorb any of the car exhaust. I never did have time to research that. So out it all went into a pile of erroneous adventuring items in the back of Robin's car. I was grateful to have such a friend—someone who knew my frenzies well and loved me anyway. Without a fuss, she would simply take my pile of extras home with her, box them up, and store them in a corner of her room next to my guitars until I returned to reclaim them.

By the time I'd finished stuffing everything back into my panniers and strapping my sleeping bag and pad back down, the drizzle had stopped. Robin took pictures. I absorbed my friends' smiling faces as I hugged each of them good-bye. They wished me well as the moment swelled like a balloon. I put my right foot on the pedal, said goodbye, and off I went. Left onto Meridian and right onto Broadway, I floated higher and higher.

I planned to make a quick stop at Boulevard Park for a last farewell with its peaceful view of the bay stretching out to Lummi Island, and behind that, Orcas Island, both standing firm like sentinels. But Alan had called. He still hadn't left his office. Or packed. So, now needing to kill some time, I sat on the bench and watched the people walk by with their dogs and kids and friends. I took some pictures and tried to wait. I must have given off some energy that this was a special moment because a stranger stopped and asked if I wanted him to take a picture of me and my bike in front of the bay. I did. So he took it. I thanked him, put my helmet back on, and checked my clock. I figured if I rode slowly enough, Alan would be packed and ready by the time I got to his house. Plus, there were a couple of steep hills and I had no idea how slow, or fast, I would be.

Alan had been a guitar student of mine, as was his son. He'd often show up to his lesson with his road bike hanging off the back of his white camper-van. As was true with many of my adult students, his lessons were a mix of music-making and talking. I wasn't sure why they paid me good money to talk about work and family and health problems, but they did. I often tried to steer them back to the chord progression at hand, but to no avail. And, as was true for all of my students, eventually the end to the lessons presented itself and that was that. A life-long athlete who had nearly used up his allotted steps by age fifty-two, Alan was to have hip-replacement surgery, which would make practicing nearly impossible, and without time to practice what good were lessons? For the next couple of years I would occasionally run into Alan downtown or on a popular biking route around Lake Samish. One of these times, I mentioned that I was thinking about going on a long bike tour. Without ever having giving it a thought until that moment, I blurted out, "Why don't you ride part of it with me?" His face lit up, and I could tell I'd just planted a seed in him. Strangely, my saying this also committed myself to the idea even more.

By the time I got to Alan's street, I'd gotten used to the load and was sure I could handle the weight and, hopefully, not be left in Alan's dust. I didn't want to have to push too hard just to keep up, especially the first four days. When I walked into his living room and saw the piles of gear and food next to half-stuffed panniers on his living room floor, I wasn't as worried. The poor guy hadn't developed a taste for dehydrated food and so would be carrying tubs of peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of bread, and enough macaroni and cheese to feed a kindergarten class for a school year. For the next hour he buzzed in and out the room, adding more to the piles. Revved up and ready to peel out of town, we chattered on and laughed a lot. Finally, he pumped up his tires, strapped everything down on his front and back racks, and hugged and kissed his wife good-bye. Off we rode down Chuckanut Drive.

We would have easily maintained a ten and a half mile-per-hour average if we hadn't ridden twenty-five miles on the gravel rail trail from Sedro Woolley to Rasar State Park. But it sure was beautiful. The trail led us through the backyards of little homesteads where white goats and horses grazed between farm equipment. For a long stretch we rode next to the rippled Skagit River, and then veered away through alder trees and wetland already thick with skunk cabbage. We found the perfect campsite tucked way back in the woods with no other campers in sight. In fact, we could have been the only ones there. Considering that road crews had just finished plowing through the seventy feet of snow on Washington Pass the week before, I wondered if we would be the only campers for a while.

In a sea of giant, bright green ferns, we set up our tents, a ritual I knew would be done by rote by the end of the summer. The late-afternoon sun busted through the canopy of trees causing shadows and bright spots to mix with all the different textures of bark and leaves, of needles, moss and stone. With the contents of both our loads strewn across the picnic table and benches, we found our stoves and began making dinner. Despite the simplicity of camp food, it always seemed to require extra attention to prepare it as I could never quite remember where I'd packed everything I needed. Dinner was good. Rice and beans. Not because it was particularly tasty, but because I was hungry. Alan seemed to enjoy his dinner as well, his arms wrapped around a pot of macaroni and cheese until it was gone.

We both had barely rinsed out our pots when our tired bodies overcame us. With a chill in the night air and forty-eight miles in my legs, the idea of crawling into my cozy sleeping bag had never felt so appealing. Once in and settled, I lay there a while, staring at the ceiling of my tent. Then its walls. It sure was small. I couldn't sit up in it. If it did end up raining the whole time, it occurred to me, my sanity could be at stake. With a gentle breeze whirring through the trees, thoughts and good feelings from the day lulled me into a deep, restful sleep.

*****

PEDAL, CHEW, PEDAL, CHEW

Two handfuls of dehydrated egg pellets wasn't exactly the heartiest breakfast I could have had, but it gave me the energy to get out of the campground. Alan's pot of oatmeal got him a few hundred feet further. Three hills later, out came the dried fruit. Another hill. Mixed nuts. And that was how we got to Colonial Creek five hours later. Pedaled some. Chewed some. As we climbed, layers of tremendous jagged peaks came into view. Snow hung on pine branches and blanketed distant slopes. Clouds swirled, some white, some grey, leaving just enough patches of blue sky to call it a sunny day in the Northwest. After what felt like eons of rain the past eight months in Bellingham, sunshine, even if it was just in patches, and even if I was still wearing my wool hat on this first day of June, meant summer was almost here.

Considering most of the ride was uphill and the last nine miles were the steepest, I was surprised we averaged almost ten miles per hour. That felt like a reasonable pace to me. But I still wasn't sure about Rainy Pass and Washington Pass the next day. I knew I'd make it to the top because I was stubborn enough. But whether or not I'd injure myself doing it was a different thing.

*****

FFFFFDT

After pedaling uphill all day, slightly faster than a spooked caterpillar, we rolled across the center line at the crest of the mountain and took pictures of ourselves under the sign sticking out of seven feet of snow that read "Washington Pass Elevation 5,477." Though it wasn't raining, we put on our rain gear, hats and gloves. From that elevation, the ride down would be cold in just shorts and a vest. Alan went first. The sky was turbulent but I could still see for miles to the north and east. I quickly picked up speed, breaking only for corners or when I heard a vehicle approaching from behind. Thirty. Thirty-five. Thirty-eight. Tears streamed out of the corners of my eyes. The loose end of the chin strap on my helmet slapped against my ear. My bike felt sturdy and smooth like a big sedan flying down a newly paved highway. I did it. For so many years I'd wanted to go on an adventure like this. For so many months I'd planned and prepared. All at once I started laughing and crying at the same time. Walls of snow and rock whizzed by. I really did it. And then...THWAP! My back tire. I looked down. Sure enough. Flat. Alan was a blue speck ahead of me. I stopped and yelled his name over and over. Finally, he heard me and came pedaling back up. Poor guy. He was probably in the middle of his own wow-moment.

High on adrenaline and pressured by the dark clouds moving towards us, we fumbled through the tire change. My spare tube was one that had already been patched once and the valve seemed screwy, needing to be held just so. And my pump was finicky, too. Alan's pump worked but was at the bottom of his bag. Considering the storm clouds were heading right for us, he ripped open a package of carbon dioxide and pushed the end onto the valve. FFFFFDT. Done. Wow. I wanted some of those. He held up the back end of the bike as I held the derailleur forward with one hand while trying to get the chain onto the cassette with the other. Finally, we got it, put my panniers back on, and headed down the mountain.

In fact, we went down for the next fifteen miles all the way to Mazama, where, lo and behold, a bike shop appeared on the side of the road. The owner was just about to lock the door when he saw us pull in. Perfect timing. I got a new tube and replaced Alan's cartridge and we were off again with our sights on Winthrop, a relaxing thirteen miles down.

So quickly the landscape changed. The western side of the Cascades was wet and thick with evergreens. The eastern side was dry and more sparse. In a matter of an hour, we went from spring to summer. And I went from not knowing to knowing: I could do this.

*****

DOWNHILL ALL DAY

It didn't matter that Alan still had to pack up his tent and stove. I had to wait for the Winthrop post office to open anyway to retrieve my first food box. I didn't know what to expect of my first climb up a mountain pass so I'd started out with only three days worth of food. I rode up the gradual gravel slope to the campground office, stuck my head in the door, and asked where the post office was. The burly man smiled and pointed to the building next to the campground entrance, saying, "Right there."

"Really?" I said in disbelief and then thought, "First the bike shop and now this." I thanked him and headed up the driveway. Outside the plate glass wall, I only had to wait a few minutes before a middle-aged man in a blue postal shirt opened the front door. I followed him inside as he flipped on light switches. By the time I described my food box and got out half my name, he nodded and said he'd been waiting for me and was hoping I'd show today as it was the last day he could hold my box. After he explained why, he disappeared into the back room. This was the first time I'd shipped anything to myself as "general delivery" and apparently I hadn't understood all the rules. I did now and immediately texted Robin to tell her to hold off sending the rest of my food boxes until right before I needed them. The clerk reappeared carrying the white box and set it down on the counter. My own handwriting never looked so good. Box number one. Just as planned. I wouldn't starve after all. I carried all 160 ounces out the door, sliced it open, and transferred five days of nutritional calories into my back pannier. Alan rode up minutes later.

According to my map, we would be going, essentially, downhill the rest of the day, which, just as a thought, was pleasant. And, as we discovered after our first speedy ten miles, we'd also be blessed with a tailwind. A bright hot sun was the icing on this sweet day before us. Sometime during the next piece-of-cake ten miles, Alan's blood-sugar level must have shot up into that part of the brain used for thinking like a normal person and sending him into a euphoric state of delusion because he suggested we put in one hundred miles by day's end. "What?" I yelled up to him, hoping I'd heard him wrong.

"We can do a hundred. How far have you ever biked?" he asked.

"Maybe sixty-five. But I wasn't carrying a load. _And,_ " I stressed, "I was something like twenty-six!"

A sucker for a challenge, it took me about five seconds to slip into my own euphoric determination. "Okay. Let's do it!"

I bolted ahead into the lead. We flew like the wind for the next couple of hours through beautiful countryside along the Methow River. I had no doubt we could it. We just needed to stay hydrated and fueled up.

Our first fueling came when we saw a hand-painted sign for fresh organic produce. It wasn't quite a restaurant but wasn't just a farm stand either. It was part of an orchard. They made soups and sandwiches, pies and muffins. Glass jars of local preserves and honey lined a few shelves, and nature photographs and greeting cards by local artists were displayed in a wire stand. I bought one to send to my mom for her birthday. Alan and I sat at the faded wooden picnic table outside in the shade at the edge of a field of cherry trees and ate. I had my own granola and dried fruit and one of their muffins. Alan had one of everything in the glass case, on the counter above the glass case, on the shelf, and in the refrigerator. Two dogs joined us. One kept his distance and the other one kept her two paws on the bench next to Alan, charming her way under his arm into tongue-distance from his face. He couldn't resist, giving in to a dog kiss on the chin.

Re-energized, we climbed back onto our saddles and slipped into our smooth, fast groove. Almost at the fifty-mile mark, my legs still felt strong. And it was a good thing. We rode into Peteros and turned onto Route 97 South along the Columbia River. Alan said something about having some vague memory about there being a possible shift in the wind sometime in the afternoon along this stretch of the Columbia. His memory had obviously been diluted over the years because somewhere near Azwell or Lake Chelan, we ran headfirst into a relentless wall of wind that tried to push us back to Bellingham. At one point we were essentially on the level, but could only go just over four miles per hour.

After fifteen miles of battling, Alan started to fade fast. He popped energy bars like I popped zinc lozenges when I thought I might be getting sick. And whenever I asked if he was ready for me to take the lead, he welcomed it, whereas before he had said he was fine. For some reason I still felt strong. Maybe I was too focused on the goal to notice my legs had fallen off. I was also trying to keep Alan moving because I knew how much he wanted and had to put in a long day. As it turned out, he had to get back to work and hadn't exactly planned enough time to complete the loop he needed to in order to do that. Or, maybe I had spent a lot more time drafting off him than I'd thought. It didn't matter. Eventually, I, too, would fade.

By the time we pulled into a convenience store in Entiat, I was starting to wobble. I ate every snack I had in my handlebar bag and then guzzled down a sports drink I'd bought inside. Alan and I sat near our bikes and stared into the barren valley. We didn't talk much. We both knew we had more than thirty miles to go and the wind seemed to have no intention of shifting. He looked my way and gave a nod. "Ready?"

"Yup." We eased ourselves back on our bikes and the road. With our shoulders down like two offensive linemen, we pushed on. Little by little, we prevailed.

Had I not run over a fishing lure, maybe we could have mustered up the will to keep prevailing, but we quickly deflated along with my tire. We stared at it for a long few seconds, sighed, and dug into what had to be done. Panniers off. Wheel off. Levers. Tube. Carbon dioxide. Wheel on. Panniers on. As easy as it was, it left us with three calories between us, which lasted us just another few miles before throwing in the towel.

Eighty-eight total miles was certainly respectable, and to my amazement we even managed to average twelve miles per hour. I fell into a different kind of euphoria as I lay in my sleeping bag—a mix of extreme physical exhaustion and the satisfaction of putting forth a good effort.

*****

BOLTS

Four days into it. Two flats. These were not good numbers. Although Alan assured me that this was not necessarily how things would go. He said one time he'd had two flats in one day but had also gone a year without one. "You could very easily go the rest of the summer without another one," he comforted me. I held on to his words and repeated them like a mantra every time I rode through scattered debris. And there was a _lot_ of debris. And strangely, the most common form of debris in almost every shoulder on every road, not including gravel, bark, and carpets of glittering glass shards, was, yes, the common bolt. All sizes of bolts. Rusty ones, Shiny ones. Not nails or screws (there was only one of each of those and I found them). But bolts. It was a mystery that kept me quite entertained, offering comic relief as I'd wrestle my handlebars in a headwind going up a mountain pass in a cold rain with frozen fingers and a wet head. Then, lying there smack in the middle of the shoulder would be another bolt. How do you lose a bolt while driving down the road? Why aren't there piles of vehicles off to the side every three miles that simply fell apart because their bolts jiggled out of their nuts?

There were other items, too, that caused me to make up stories as to how they'd gotten there. That fishing lure—fisherman had a bad day on the river and decided to snag some roadkill. A complete ratchet set—husband and wife drove home from a Christmas party where the husband got two ratchet sets from both of her brothers, again, and he chucked one out the window in disgust when she said what she always said that "It's the thought that counts, Harold." Clothing of all kinds...tee shirts, shorts, socks, sweatshirts—a gang of middle-school kids in the back of a pickup truck were playing strip poker and the driver, somebody's older brother, swerved to miss a big-ass bolt bolting across the road and the kid with the pair of threes lost his grip and literally, his shirt. And that lonely shoe, of which there were many—a brother teased his sister on a hot day in the back of an old station wagon with a broken air-conditioner and she took off her shoe, bonked him on the head with it, and it accidentally flew out the window. And then, there was one item, near the end of my adventure, that inspired a novel in my head. The right hand of a glove—a cobalt blue, stiff-like-a-hand-was-in-it, industrial-strength rubber glove...

See, I had been walking along the Bogachiel River, just south of Forks on the Olympic Peninsula, after I'd set up camp. There were actually more rocks than water, a wide stretch of them. They were smooth and sun-bleached and reminded me of a Zen garden. I took picture after picture, wanting to capture the imprisoned motion trying, without much luck, to express itself. I walked for at least a mile downriver toward the ocean. I zigzagged. I roamed. I looked down and up and over. And then, there it was. The _left_ hand of a cobalt blue, stiff-like-a-hand-was-in-it, industrial-strength rubber glove. It seemed strange to me that it would be there. It seemed like the kind of glove one would wear to protect herself from something toxic. But there was nothing toxic-looking along this serene river. I thought nothing of it really, until...well...the next day, pedaling along looking out for bolts.

What were the chances of that? Of coming across two gloves on different days, that seemingly belonged together but had been separated by at least several miles of forest? And why did they both catch my eye? This was how my entire adventure continued, day after day. One thing seen flowed into one thing thought, which flowed into one thing heard, which flowed into an epic story being told for the very first time on a 360-degree screen all around me. This was what adventure was about.

*****

NACHES FOOD BOX

I had no intention of riding to Naches until the next day. But, despite the heat, I was feeling strong. Plus, none of the campgrounds along the Yakima Canyon seemed to have potable water. I thought this was odd. Maybe the water table was too deep to drill a well. Maybe water was scarce and they preferred people to bring their own. Maybe they saw me coming and ripped out all the wells so as to deter me from riding this way again. I wasn't about to filter water out of the Yakima River. No sign or person told me not to. My ick-detector did. It was too big with too many little creeks upriver flowing into it. Creeks that ran through pastureland where cattle and horses defecated and alongside fields of crops where fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and all other kinds of chemical killers and life-enhancers had been sprayed. Run off was inevitable. And what if my filter faltered? It was still fairly new, but I didn't need little microorganisms partying in my gut and loosing their cookies in the middle of the night. By the last campground, I'd gulped down my last four drops of water. I rode down the dusty road with the optimism of a banana slug crossing a highway. Fortunately, an older woman sitting next to her RV _did_ have a case of the pure stuff in BPA-laced plastic bottles in her trunk. She kindly gave me two. I figured it would at least get me to the outskirts of Yakima where I remembered someone telling me there was a KOA nearby, which I was sure had to have water.

Back on the road, with the intense sun bouncing off the asphalt and sending my thermometer up to 101 degrees, I pedaled just a few more miles and then suddenly remembered I had a box of food waiting for me in Naches. My next thought was that this was Saturday. The post office would be closed the next day. I was only fourteen miles away. I checked the time. Then my map. I quickly calculated, which may not have been the best way to calculate after five biased downhill hours in the brain-baking sun with little water, whether or not I could get to the post office before it closed without even knowing when exactly it closed. _Of course_ I could. I had a goal.

In a gust of second wind, I flew by Yakima and Selah. Thirsty, but not tired, I climbed steep, short hills through tidy neighborhoods with manicured front lawns under fans of water arcing over brown patches of grass. Chickens scratched in backyards. Taking note of all the sprinklers and getting thirstier, I couldn't help myself as I turned a corner and saw yet another hill. I jumped off my bike, leaned it against a stop sign, reached into someone's yard with my water bottles and filled them up at the mouth of the sprinkler. I poured one bottle over my head, drank the other one, and then filled them up again. I said my thanks to the unaware owner and jumped back on my bike.

I soon got into a more rural area where rows of cherry trees flowed down the hills, butting up against the road. In one valley I saw tiny white boxes just twenty yards or so off the road in a field. I couldn't imagine what they were. As I got closer, I began to imagine what they were and what I was in for. A little sign next to the field read, "So-and-So's Bee Farm." The farmer's name just didn't stick as I had a tingling feeling the cloud in front of me wasn't dust. Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten. I took a deep breath and closed my mouth and eyes. The poor little guys bounced off my helmet like popping corn in a movie theater lobby. I exited the scene before I needed another breath, which was a good thing because I'd started climbing up another hill and needed another breath. Up and up I went. At the top of the hill I got this marvelous idea to look at my map again. I sank into reality seeing that it was uphill the rest of the way. There was no way I was going to average fourteen miles per hour, which is what I'd calculated I'd have to do to get to the post office in time, whatever that time was.

Without a Plan B, I just kept going and figured it would work itself out. When I rolled into Naches, I didn't even bother to find the post office as it was already past six o'clock. With a sore butt and without a campsite for another twelve miles, I had no hesitation about getting a room at the old Naches Inn. And a room I got.

The very last room. The last one in the hotel and the last one in town. The honeymoon suite for seventy-five dollars, no tax, which was a deal 'cause the fast-talking business woman usually got one hundred ten dollars for it, and if I needed anything I should just let her know and there was live music across the street at nine and breakfast in the morning at her restaurant next door. And, she was sorry it was on the second floor, but if I wanted help getting my gear and bike up the steps, she'd find her son. Or, I could stay on the couch in the back of the restaurant like Paul Allen had when they didn't have a room. Of course, they felt embarrassed the next day when they'd found out who he was. To avoid my own embarrassing moment, I kept squeezing at my memory trying to remember who he was because obviously it was supposed to be common knowledge. Then I remembered. (You know, the guy that helped start that extremely successful software company.)

If it hadn't have been for the four-post king-sized bed, the plastic plants, the quarter-inch thick layer of dust on every horizontal surface, and the twenty-seven square miles of mirrors in the bathroom/jet-tub arena, I would have felt bad about having to spend a night in a hotel, especially on day six. But it was so hilarious. I couldn't wait to call my mom and tell her how this wilderness living was rough. So I settled in. I plugged in all of my electronic devices, rinsed out my shorts, texted a few friends, took a shower, turned on the television, and ate a can of salmon and some dehydrated bread for dinner. Pure luxury.

After dinner, I ventured through the sliding glass door onto the veranda to get a view of the street life on a Saturday night in this three-street town. Lined with windows on this south wall, it was the perfect place to grow tropical fruit. With peeling paint, a defunct folding chair in the corner, and an empty ashtray on the sill, even the plastic plants were wilting. I opened a window and looked up and down the street. Several parked cars, a couple of motorcycles and a few pedestrians. Had the vehicles been horses attached to buggies, I would have sworn it was 1877.

Sure enough, just like the woman had said, there was a saloon—I mean, bar—across the street. I had to go. To kill an hour until the music started, I lay on the bed and flipped through news channels to see if I'd missed the start of a new war, some natural disaster, or a stock-market crash. Apparently not. A few more cars pulled up in front of the bar so I brushed my hair and put on my going-out shoes, which happened to also be my biking shoes, running shoes, hiking boots, and gardening shoes. I was almost giddy. I was going out.

When I walked into the bar everyone's head turned at the same time toward the door. It had nothing to do with it being me who walked in, what I was wearing, or that I looked like an alien or something. They did that every time the door opened. They just looked at me a little longer than the others, presumably because they'd never seen me before or perhaps they were mesmerized by my all-purpose shoes. I inspected the room and the available seating, hoping to find a place where I might have privacy to write, not stick out, and be able to see the band. I perched myself on a stool at the empty side of the bar with a post between me and the stage. Though I wasn't able to see the bass player, I had a good view of the rest of the band, the people on the other side of the bar, and the tables of groupies behind them. The bartender, a middle-aged woman with a blonde-highlighted mullet, came over. "Whatkin I getcha, honey?" she asked.

"What kind of beer do you have?" I asked, already knowing what kinds of beer they had from all of the neon signs in the windows and on the walls. She rattled off those three or four popular brands of beer that sound like one long compound word, conjures up skinny-necked bottles dressed in red, white, and blue labels, and makes me want to eat salty, crunchy snacks while watching football. Had I not just unexpectedly spent seventy-five dollars on a honeymoon suite, I would have ordered a scotch or vodka, or, heck, anything that would have given me the sensation of having a drink.

The first one went down like that bottle of water I'd had at that watering hole in some stranger's front yard. I got out my journal and pen and ignored the people across the bar watching me get out my journal and pen while chugging my beer. Across from me, there were two pairs of two women and three guys, two sitting and another one standing. Most of the women were all dolled up in frilly blouses, high boots or heels, and dangling earrings. I guessed it was their big night out. Most of the men either wore jeans and a tee shirt or jeans and a dress shirt, and, to my delight, a cowboy hat.

One of the cowboys across from me had bright blue eyes under the brim of his black felt hat and a long white-grey mustache that wrapped around his mouth like a horseshoe frown. But he wasn't frowning. He wore a black sleeveless tee shirt and had an eye that shot at me from time to time as he talked with his friend. Though I had showered, brushed my hair, and put on my going-out shoes, I knew I hadn't quite dolled myself up like the other women and instantly became hyper-aware of my baggy cargo pants, fleece top, and unadorned ear lobes. Perhaps it was just that I was sitting alone. _That_ could send a message, intended or not. I ordered another beer and turned my attention toward the band that had just started to play. I'd had plenty of adventure for one day. I certainly didn't need to have an uncomfortable conversation with an attractive cowboy about how I was just riding through town, yes alone, and staying at the hotel across the street...and I wasn't really giving you a look, I was just admiring your hat and mustache. I resolved that as much as I wanted to stay and write, I didn't really want another beer or another classic-rock classic. I closed my journal, left a tip, and went back to my suite.

The next morning, over double-strength, hotel coffee-bag coffee, I refigured my budget. With the hotel and the beers and the bike tube and carbon dioxide cartridges I'd gotten in Ellensburg, I was $102 in the red. I decided I could easily make that up by getting to Cold Creek Farm a day early and by camping in national forests for free whenever possible. What a relief when the numbers work out.

I took my time getting out of the room as I only had twelve miles to go before I'd set up camp, wait out the postal day of rest, and then come back into town Monday morning to pick up my food box. I sure hoped it was there. I ate some oatmeal, dried my shorts with the hairdryer, put lotion on my slightly burned shoulders, watched the stock market go up and down, texted some friends, and cleaned my bike chain. When I did finally leave, I wished I'd only had one beer the night before so I could have justified shelling out five dollars for a muffin and real coffee at the cute café at the end of the street.

Only five or so miles just north of where the Naches River and the Tieton River meet, I came upon what appeared to be a popular fishing spot. Trucks and old cars had been crammed into the dirt pull-off-turned-parking lot. Dads and kids dotted the riverbank while grandparents and moms sat in folding chairs next to their respective vehicles. I stopped to investigate the scene, as I thought I'd seen a sign that said camping was allowed, which surprised me. I walked along the edge of the lot and found a path that led into the thin woods along the river. Fire rings appeared every so often confirming the sign, but I wasn't so thrilled. Barely out of town, hardly off the road, and in more of a thicket than woods, it seemed like the kind of place young people would come to drink with their friends instead of going to the place they'd told their parents they were going. I had no desire to be invaded late at night by a group of young people experimenting with alcohol and marijuana for the first time. I couldn't decide. It _was_ indeed a free site. I walked the area for a long time, looking for a patch of dense brush where I might be able to hide my tent, while studying the sandy path to get a sense of its use. I saw some boot prints here and there, and in one area, tire tracks from an off-road vehicle of some kind. The free part and the close proximity to town part pulled on me. I sat next to the stream and nibbled on a few handfuls of dried apples.

I couldn't do it and I didn't have a good reason. I stood up, slipped the baggy of apples back into my handlebar bag, pushed my bike back down the path to the fishing fest, and continued riding on Route 12 along the Tieton River. It flowed at a good clip on my left. Bushy trees somehow grew from this parched land. Exposed rock walls hugged the right edge of the road, leaving me a narrow path but shielding me from the wind. In light traffic, seven miles went quickly to where a brown sign with a teepee on it settled me. Then a dirt road came into view, and another sign: "Bear Creek." This would be one of many creeks called Bear Creek. In fact, I think all of the creeks I crossed, slept next to, or drank from bore the name Bear Creek. Well, maybe not all of them.

I walked my bike two hundred yards up the dirt forest road that followed the noisy creek and set up my tent just over a sparsely wooded ridge about one hundred feet off the road. Rounded grey boulders the size of harbor seals protruded out of the ground. The ridge was the perfect blind. If someone did drive past, he'd never see me. This was the first time I felt as though I was "in the woods." Not the wilderness, but definitely out in the woods where no one had seen me enter and where no one on the planet knew I was (well, except the phone company). I felt myself instantly adapt to this sort-of-wild place. I became hyper-aware. I noticed sounds and smells I wouldn't have normally noticed. I saw scat on rocks and tried to guess from what animal it came. I felt changes in the wind on my skin and wondered if a front might be moving in. When I ate my lunch next to the creek, I caught myself looking over my shoulder. What or whom I'd expected to see, I didn't know. My animal self was just kicking in. Fear. Not exactly human fear—the kind of fear we "civilized" are used to, anyway, like losing a job, having our house flooded, getting sick. This was primal. The fear of having to physically fight for my life against a mother bear protecting her cubs or a cougar that considered me an easy meal. Or, yes, the fear of a rattlesnake bite, which wouldn't kill me as long as I could afford the $25,000 anti-venom. On the other hand, I suppose fear was fear and always boils down to the fear of pain or the fear of death. Whether it's death by bear, cougar or snake, dehydration, hypothermia, starvation, or death by cancer, car accident, or sociopath, we can't help but to constantly monitor the possible threats around us. It's in our DNA. We've been programmed to survive. Maybe fear is good. As long as it's tempered by a clear head. But how the heck does a person get a clear head with wild fear rattling her brains?

Because it was still early, I scrambled up a steep hill over black boulders and sat for a while under a circle of small trees. Wild daisies grew in clumps here and there and a sweet scent blew in the breeze. When a dark cloud moved in from the northwest, I scurried back down to get dinner out of the way just in case a storm was moving in. On my way down I found the sun-bleached bones of a deer lying at the base of a tree. Its skull was still attached to a chain of vertebrae, and several leg bones lay nearby. Without a real reason, the way a kid might do, I gathered up what I could fit in my backpack and later displayed them at the base of the tree next to my tent. The temperature dropped a few degrees, but it never did rain. After dinner, before the sun had even set, I crawled into my tent, read, and soon fell asleep for the night...a long, busy night.

*****

KEEPING HALF AN EAR OUT

I slipped into sleep and then dreamland while keeping half an ear out for animal sounds. I was awakened at one point by what I thought was a bugling elk, but I fell back asleep before I knew for sure. Then in a dream, a bull elk, lugging a huge rack of knobby antlers on its head that looked like two upside-down claw hands, came to my tent. It rubbed against the side of it. My dog from years past, Jaco, was by my side. I felt protective of him. I said to the elk, "You won't hurt my dog," and I fought him off. I grabbed his neck and head. I knew if I could get a hold of his antlers I could control him better, but he bit me. So I grabbed his mouth. The bite didn't hurt. I had such a rush of adrenaline throughout my body and thought how it actually felt good, this fear. I barely woke up and then slipped back. Again, I was in my tent. Suddenly, a group of tiny female beings, not more than six inches tall, flew by my tent, all in formation. Fast. They didn't fly like birds, but as if they were on vehicles. Sort of like modern broomsticks. Then their leader appeared and I asked her what she was. I told her I was human. Unimpressed, she wrinkled her face and turned up her nose. She said she was something that sounded like "Azuki." She seemed to be on a mission and didn't have time to waste talking to me.

*****

BIG BONES AND  
THE GOLF-COURSE PAVILION

While sitting on a flat-topped boulder next to Bear Creek and drinking hot tea that rose up out of my mug in a swirl of steam, I planned my day. I decided not to go back to Naches and then over White Pass all in one day. Though the first dozen backtracked miles would be pleasantly downhill, it would have become a thirty-five-mile, uphill battle to the top of the pass and then another fifteen miles down to the first campground at a reasonable (not too cold) elevation. I also decided to hide my load in the brush, except for the one pannier I'd need for my food shipment, since I'd be coming back the same way in a couple hours.

From a few different spots near my stash, I checked to see if it was, in fact, hidden from view. Satisfied, I pushed my bike down the dirt road, as its blanket of large stones made it nearly impossible to ride. That was when I learned that this particular Bear Creek had been misnamed. It should have been called Rattle Snake Creek. As I passed by a clump of small trees surrounded by high grass, much like the place I'd just hidden my gear, the serpent informed me that I had infringed upon its territory. Though I didn't speak snake-language, its message was undisputedly clear. Had I known there was a rattlesnake in the grass near the creek near my tent at the base of the foothill I climbed and sat upon, I would not have camped there. In fact, had I known I'd be riding and camping in rattlesnake country at all, I may have instead gone on a bike adventure in Houston or Los Angeles. Not really, but certainly I would have carried a grass-poking, snake-stabbing walking stick as I roamed.

Now Monday, Naches bustled. Sort of. The post office parking lot had a few cars in it, anyway. The pickup went smoothly. I was now a pro. I'd never worry again, at least about the competency of the United States Postal Service or Robin's memory. Back up Route 12, I rode with ten new pounds of dehydrated rice and beans, eggs, hummus, bread, couscous, chard, kale, fruit, and tea (not coffee). Without the weight of my full load and because I'd seen the scenery before, the gradual climb back to Bear Creek went quickly.

After I retrieved my gear from under the serpent-infested bushes, I rode only ten more miles to yet another idyllic campsite in an empty campground. But this time, instead of a creek rightly named or not, I chose a site on the bank of the rushing Tieton River under tall pines without a bush or clump of grass within twenty-five feet to toy with my slithering imagination. Before I set up my tent, I took a short walk through the campground. Almost right away, my eyes caught another bunch of bones. These came from the jaw of something big, maybe an elk or a cow. My first thought was "horse," but why would a horse die out here? Horses died in fenced pastures or barns these days. Eight huge molars remained intact. I gathered up the bones—I didn't know why—and piled them at the base of one of the trees next to my tent like I'd done with the deer skull and vertebrae the day before. I set the femur on the picnic table to carve later on.

It was still early in the day, so after lunch I stripped down to my underwear, shaved my legs, and sunbathed on the picnic table for an hour or so. Like my newfound bone-collecting hobby, I didn't know why I shaved my legs. I'd planned on going wild. It wasn't like a few hairs would slow me down or that I had a job interview the next morning. I just felt like shaving. Smooth skin felt good on the palms of my hands. When I finished, I rubbed on some of the flax oil I'd brought to drink and stretched out on the hard wooden table. I lay there on my back like a lizard. After a long, rainy winter in Bellingham, the penetrating sun reached into my depths, warming the dampness at my marrow into a fog of steam that rose up from my limp body. Not really the fog part. It just felt that way. When the sun lost its heat, I put my clothes back on and scavenged the half-burned firewood from the other campsites, thinking it would be nice to have a fire myself that night. I dumped a bag of rice and beans into a pot of water to soak, opened my knife, and began to carve the bone. I had no particular thing in mind for it. I just enjoyed making the long shaft smoother and the ends sharper. Thin brownish patches of dried flesh peeled off easily under a gentle blade, cleaning the shaft to pure white. It brought my mind into another place, removed from itself, which gave me the space to daydream.

For me, daydreaming was more like time travel. Sure, occasionally I used it to ponder the present moment; in this one perhaps I could have wondered about the strength of bone or the beauty of a sharp blade. But mostly, I used daydreaming to revisit the past, remembering the time I put a chisel through my hand when carving a block of wood in my grandfather's shop and not wanting to run upstairs to tell my mom as the blood poured out because I didn't want to be a baby, or visiting, "creating" some would say, the future. Thoughts had power, after all, as past sages and present physicists told us. The future was mine, so I liked to believe. In this moment, sitting on top of this picnic table next to the Tieton River, I imagined what it might feel like to fall in love again, but like never before.

My fire started easily and burned hot with such dry wood. It only took two pages of paper that I tore out of my journal, a few handfuls of twigs and pinecones, and one flame from my lighter. It would be one of only three fires I'd stare into during the entire trip and the only one I'd enjoy alone. The temperature dropped quickly and I crept closer to the flames. My back took the brunt of the cold night. Had I been with a friend or a lover, talking and toasting marshmallows, I would have huddled around that fire all night until the logs were just a bed of bright orange coals. But I wasn't, and I was tired. It took several trips to the river with my pot to drown it out completely. With the wind picking up, I wanted to be sure a spark wouldn't drift onto the forest floor and ignite a disaster.

Morning came, as it usually did, with pre-dawn bird songs followed by a glowing horizon and the smell of feet—my feet. Why the tent maker put the ever-important vestibule, where shoes are shielded from rain, next to the camper's head, I was not sure. Before unzipping the door, crawling out and finding my balance to pee, I lay there reviewing my dreams and stating my intentions for the day. Safe travel and being at the right place in the right time doing the right thing. I didn't know what I meant by right, but so far it seemed to be working.

There was a chill in the wind as I drank my tea and waited for my apples to rehydrate before making oatmeal. It occurred to me that I hadn't been getting enough fats in my diet, which was a thought I don't think I'd ever had in my entire life. Hopefully I'd pass a store soon, where I could get some yogurt or cheese. Excited to get up and over the next mountain, I ate my breakfast with one hand while packing up camp with the other.

Right from the start, I fought a headwind and it didn't let up the entire day. At one point, while it was still sunny and my mood upbeat, I actually got blown off the road by a gust of wind that hit me like a ram in rut. Fortunately, a patch of weeds, as opposed to the bottom of a cliff, caught my fall. What I ever did to the mountain, I didn't know, but it was as if I had wronged it in the worst way. To add to the challenge, the shoulder was a rabbit trail and there must have been a sale on Douglas fir that day because the logging trucks were chugging by one right after the next, unable or unwilling to negotiate space. Even with my red flashing tail light and my neon-green vest, they sped past me as if I were invisible.

The closer I got to the top, 4,500 feet, the thicker the grey clouds became. After a short sprint through a tunnel where there was no shoulder at all, I followed the edge of Rimrock Lake where, still, the wind persisted. I stopped to put on my rain gear, gloves, and hat, as I could see what I was in for. A swarm of dark clouds twisted inside out just beyond the crest. Even if it wasn't actually going to rain, it was going to be mighty cold once I got to the top and headed down the other side. Finally at the top, an empty ski lift climbed a steep slope still covered with deep, heavy snow. A stream of water poured out from under the thick, dirty white wall onto the asphalt. A few sturdy buildings stood strangely out of place on this wild mountain, including a convenience store with one gas pump outside. Suddenly, the thought of hot coffee consumed me. I pulled into the lot where one car sat parked off to the side. At first I thought the place was closed, but I found the door to be open and saw a woman wearing a hairnet standing behind the counter. Instantly thrilled by the opportunity to thaw out, I pulled off my gloves, glanced around the room for the coffee pot, and noticed that I wasn't the only person seeking refuge. A tall blond man dressed in cycling clothes sitting at a corner table stared at me as he shoved half the length of a hot dog into his mouth. I stared back. I poured my coffee and sat at a table in the opposite corner, savoring every hot, bitter sip. By the time I swallowed the last drop, my fingers had warmed up to the point where I knew I had some. I got up from the table, deposited my cup in the trash can and walked toward Big Blondie unable to avert my eyes from his extraordinarily tight lycra pants that he had apparently put on when he was fourteen and was now unable to peel off his massive quadriceps. He stopped me with a long list of questions in an accent that even I could figure out. British. From where to where? How far? How long? How cold? How steep? I answered and asked the same things of him while simultaneously analyzing his stiff posture and bulging eyes. Turned out he'd flown into Seattle (from Australia, of course) and was also riding a big loop, only slightly more southerly into California. His body language softened ever so slightly so that I was pretty sure he wasn't an alien visiting Earth for the first time or having a flashback from a middle-school dance. I nodded and said, "Cool," and offered a few more touring-related comments. He just nodded. It was as if I'd stumped him, or the sawed-off shotgun under his shirt was pinching the skin in his armpit. Or maybe his hotdog had lodged halfway down his throat, or I had a glob of snot on my upper lip. It was a strange moment. It was as if he and I and the woman manning the hot-dog-roller-cooking thing at the top of this mountain in the wilderness were the only three people alive and Earth had become a David Lynch movie. "Well, safe travels," I said, and walked out the door.

Even going downhill I had a headwind. Few things were more depressing (on this particular day) than a six-percent downhill grade and barely hitting fifteen miles per hour, a non-reward for having conquered the mountain. I waved to Mount Rainier as I crawled by, gripping my handlebars with my frozen fingers. By the time I got to Packwood, it had started to rain. Sixteen wet miles further, as I entered Randle, I began to pray for a cheap motel. I calculated all sorts of ways I could make up the difference. I even decided it would be okay if I got home a few days early. After all, no one was forcing me to stick to my preplanned set of days on the road. And then the guilt seeped in under my collar. One of the reasons for this trip was to toughen up, to set up camp in the rain, to be a little cold. Uncomfortable. So I stopped at the first motel I came to. Sixty dollars, tax included. Not terrible. But something told me to keep going. I got to the center of town and saw the post office. Perfect. I pulled in to mail a letter to a friend I'd written the night before as a woman coming out smiled at me. I smiled back. Recognizing my small window of an opportunity for guidance, I abruptly asked her if there was another motel in town besides the one up the road. She said yes and pointed westward, while also intimating with her crooked mouth that it may not be the nicest of places. So I asked her about campgrounds. She suggested I check out the RV park just up the road. "Oh right," I said. "I remember seeing a sign for that a ways back." She added that it was _very_ nice. Off I went to the Randle RV Park and Golf Resort, one quarter of a mile up the road next to the Cowlitz River. It was now pouring, but I was hopeful, in a cold, tired sort of way.

A beautiful green manicured lawn stretched out in front of a sea of McRVs. I rode to the dark office and knocked anyway. I was just about to ride away when an old man in a cardigan sweater and slippers came out of his RV next to the office and asked if I needed any help. I said I was just wondering if they had any tent sites. He said no, but I could probably stay down at their summer kitchen under the pavilion. I liked the sound of the word "pavilion" as it implied "roof." I said, "Really? But shouldn't I ask someone in charge?"

With a swagger his voice, he replied, "I can be in charge."

"Okaaay."

"Just follow this road to the end of the golf course and you'll see it." Before he changed his mind or the real office manager came back, I pedaled away past rows and rows of RVs with golf carts parked on rugs of artificial turf, past the grounds building to the back nine. I was shocked by my good fortune. Not only was this pavilion nestled in the woods, but it had electricity to charge my phone and camera, tables to sit at, a wood stove (which I didn't use but could have), and it was a mere fifty yards from a heated bathroom, shower, and laundry facility. Life was good in Randle on this cold, rainy evening.

Had it been August, I would have just stretched out my sleeping bag on the floor, but I needed to keep my body heat trapped around me, so I set up my tent and tied the corners to posts, as pounding stakes into the concrete slab would probably have been frowned upon, not to mention impossible to do. I was dry and warm all night, and I got to enjoy the sound of the rain pounding on the tin roof.

By morning the rain had stopped, though drenched trees continued to drip...and drip. Thick low clouds had no intention of clearing anytime soon as I pondered the day ahead of me. Right off the bat I'd have a four-hundred-foot climb for a mile, then a longer climb up to Elk Pass, and then, very likely, a chilly descent to Muddy River or Swift Creek Reservoir. It would only be forty-five miles or so, but after yesterday's adventure, even if it was sunny and calm, I was expecting to still feel sluggish.

After I finished my usual morning routine, I packed up and rode to the office to see about paying for my stay. A petite woman in a flannel shirt said she'd heard that someone had stayed back there. I told her how much I appreciated it and wondered how much she wanted.

"Oh, I don't know." She moved her computer mouse and typed something on her keyboard. "Fifteen? Ten?"

"Sure. Whatever. I'm just so glad I had a dry place to sleep."

She continued typing, sighed, and then typed some more. She asked me for my name. I told her. Her forehead wrinkled. I repeated it and started to spell it. She typed. Then sighed.

"Oh, never mind," she surrendered. "This system is a pain." She smiled and told me to have a nice trip and to "be safe."

"Really?" I thanked her and bounced out the door wondering, "Was there ever an end to the generosity?" Craving more of this friendly town, I could easily justify another cup of coffee and a light second breakfast since I hadn't spent any money on a site. (Maybe this was why I couldn't save money?) I remembered a cute little diner across the street from the post office.

I sat in a booth next to the window where I could see my bike outside. The waitress was a kick. With a big smile, she took my order and asked all about me as if I were a regular. With the real regulars, all guys, she joked around as if they were older brothers whom she adored. When a new customer walked in, she spewed out a list of breakfast foods with the last item turned upward in a question mark. If he said yes, she looked toward the kitchen and a cook would nod back. A row of older guys sat on round swivel stools at the counter. They all knew each other too. One of them asked how this other guy's leg was doing, who then went on and on about the pain and the stupid doctor and insurance companies. Another guy was still looking for work and somebody's mother was going to need some help soon. Mostly though, they talked in a flurry of one-liners that poked fun at each other and themselves as the waitress flitted around filling up coffee cups and bringing out plates of pancakes from the kitchen. I didn't need or even want more coffee, but I wanted a reason to stay and soak in all I could absorb. So when the waitress came by with the coffee pitcher, I pushed my cup toward the edge of the table and we exchanged smiles.

When I couldn't drink another drop, I paid my bill, said good-bye and walked out the door. As I stood next to my bike for a few minutes putting on my gear, one of the guys from inside came out and asked if I had time to talk about my trip. He was curious as he toured a lot throughout the Cascades on his Harley now that he was retired and wondered what it was like on a bike. We chatted for a bit and then the subject of where I was headed came up.

"Elk Pass? Oh, I think that's still closed," he said. My heart sank. "They let it melt on its own and it's still snowed over." Then one of the older guys from the counter came out. "Hey, Elk Pass is still closed, isn't it?" Harley Guy asked him. He nodded and joined our planning committee to figure out how to get me to where I needed to go in two days. The two of them threw road names back and forth with the younger of the two soon yielding to the older one's long life of driving everywhere you could from here in every direction. With a mouth of crooked, stained teeth, the old-timer told me that in ten minutes there'd be a bus stopping at the gas station across the road that would take me west to Mary's Corner where I could pick up another road that would take me to Toledo, where I would not be able to contain my desire to text Robin and say, "Holy Toledo, what a beautiful ride!" After that, it was just a matter of going south and eventually back east.

I thanked them both and hurried across the road. Sure enough, the bus pulled up ten minutes later, a short shuttle bus with a bike rack on the front. I pulled off my panniers as fast as I could, locked in my bike, and boarded the bus with all of my gear hanging from my body and shoved under my arms. I was ecstatic to have had my plans change so fast. It was one of the many thrills of a well-executed adventure. There was always a new twist coming to keep me on my toes and having to think and re-think things through. It didn't matter that I wouldn't climb Elk Pass. I was going to Mary's Corner. I took a seat in the middle and sat back for a one-dollar, fifty-mile ride.

Unfortunately, the Elk Pass route I was planning to take was a 115-mile straight shot down the western side of the Cascades. My 215-mile detour would be three straight shots. One west, one south, and one east. But, to my surprise, the roads cut through gorgeous farmland almost the entire way through Toledo and on down to Kelso. Because I knew I'd be hugging Interstate 5, I had expected to see fast-food joints, gas stations, warehouses and such, but mostly it was weathered barns, horses, hawks, and meandering creeks that delighted my senses.

Without a detailed map for that area, I relied on strangers and the sun to get me to a cheap room in a Kelso motel. There, I had a hot shower and studied my map as if it were an optical illusion, waiting for that moment when the shortest, safest route would jump out at me. It did not, but I had every reason to believe that the next day's route would make itself known.

So out the backdoor of the motel I went, past the tired, not altogether unattractive Mount Hood climbers, past the drug dealers and the Mexican laborers, and across the street to the convenience store just to see if they had any treats. Sure did. Exactly as I'd envisioned—a locally-brewed India pale ale. I went back to my room, flipped off the bottle cap, and leaned against the bed's headboard. With the cold bottle in my left hand, I flipped through television channels with my right until my eyes got heavy. After a deep sleep, I woke early, chomping at the bit for a new adventure.

*****

STALKER LADY

Kelso to Washougal was a blur. I was on a mission to get back on my cycling map. All I remember was thinking, "No, there is no end to the generosity," and "A motorcycle would be fun," halfway up a very steep, long hill that kicked my butt more than any mountain pass ever did. With the helpfulness of strangers, I kept a steady pace through beautiful rural landscape—not quite suburbia, not quite farmland. Every time I asked someone how to get to a particular road or town, they dropped what they were doing, eager to help me not just get there, but get there on the best biking roads. Following the sun and your gut is noble, but having someone actually tell you that the one road your gut likes actually sucks and is frequented by disgruntled truckers, or that the other road for which your gut has no affinity is actually quite beautiful and safe, is smarter and gets you further than nobility ever will. On a bike, it wasn't like you could just change course after seven miles when you realized the wrongness of your right turn. Well, you could. It just made dinner that much further in the future. Fortunately, everything—my gut, the sun, and road-knowledgeable strangers—was in synch. With the help of one general store owner, one construction worker whom I ambushed as he exited a port-o-potty, one drive-thru barista, and a retired guy in his front yard gathering up sticks in a pile, I found my way to Washougal before the sun set, or my butt fell off, or I died of starvation. Though it got sketchy there near the end.

I rode into town and turned up my accommodations-radar. Campground. Motel. Golf course pavilion. When I came to a red light, my intuition steered me to the right, down the hill, and over the tracks where I saw a sign for coffee and ice cream. I didn't really want either, but it was a good place to start asking questions about where I might bed down for the night and what road I should take the next day to Hood River.

"There's only one road that'll get you there," said the young man behind the counter, "and it's the most dangerous road in Washington state." Apparently, the statistics existed somewhere in a file at the Department of Motor Vehicles, but I didn't need to see them. As far as I was concerned, this young man was an authority on Route 14 (also known as the Lewis and Clark Highway) since he was a true local—born and raised in Washougal—and all true locals, wherever they lived, seemed to attract all kinds of tidbits of information about their town like metal filings to a magnet. Which is why I'm still not sure where the old J.C. Penny building used to be in Bellingham. And why I _do_ know that Frederick Leaser, from Lynnport, Pennsylvania, transported the Liberty Bell in his wagon from Philadelphia in 1777 to Allentown to keep it out of the hands of the British. Apparently, melted bells made great musket and cannonballs.

This was by no means comforting information, especially through the filter of exhaustion from a seventy-five-mile day and still without a place to sleep, but it was one of those times when you're presented with a situation and you simply rise to the occasion, face it, and feel good about it, despite your having no other choice or your other choices are too extreme. Turn around and go home? No. Go back seventy-five miles to Vancouver, find a bridge over the Columbia River, and then ride back another hundred miles to Hood River? No. Call ahead to the farm on which I'd scheduled to work for a week and tell them I wasn't coming? No. Hitch a ride with a guy in a pickup truck? Is he cute? Uh, I mean, NO. Of course I was going to risk my life on Route 14 tomorrow. It was a no-brainer. But first, I had to find a place to sleep.

I got back in the saddle and turned left instead of going right—the way the latte-making, highway-death expert had pointed when I'd asked about a motel. I didn't know why. I just turned left. Maybe I wanted so badly for him to be wrong about Route 14, I presumed he was wrong about the location of a cheap motel in the town he'd known all of his life. Then I recalled the outstretched arm of the woman in the car next to me at a stoplight when I had asked her about an inexpensive motel. It was a quick exchange. The light was red. She was in the left turn lane. I was turning right toward the café. She had pointed up the hill. "Maybe there were two motels," I wondered.

I rode about a mile up a gradual slope through a residential area until I reached a much steeper ascent that seemed to transition into bigger houses on larger lots—most definitely not a place for a motel. I stopped in the shoulder. This hill before me looked like the identical twin of that steep climb I had endured out of Kelso that morning. It would be engrained in my memory for a long time. I felt no need to find out if this hill was just as steep, almost as steep, or slightly more steep. I rode back down to that same intersection at the light, turned left, and continued in my original direction along the infamous Route 14—which at this point was still the "Business Route 14" and seemingly as safe as any other road I'd been riding on for the last eleven days.

Soon out of town, I wasn't sure why I'd decided to keep riding. I knew there weren't any campgrounds ahead. Maybe I had a small hope that a new motel had been built during that day that neither red-light lady or Helpful Harry knew about yet. Then, there on the side of the road, the way a bear suddenly appears on a trail in the woods, I saw a woman standing next to a car looking at me. The closer I got the more she smiled. She looked vaguely familiar. Oh yes! The woman at the red light. "Why is she standing there and seemingly so happy to see me?" I said to myself.

"Hi there. I've been driving all over town looking for you," she nearly scolded. She continued to blurt out nervously a list of all the reasons why I should go home with her: she and her husband would cook me dinner, ask me about my travels, and put me up for the night in their spare bedroom. "My husband is an avid cyclist...we love to hear about people's adventures...I'm not really a stalker," and, what lured me the most, "grilled salmon...wine...hot shower...coffee and breakfast."

Not only did my jaw drop, it dislocated. At this point on my trip, I was already overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness that strangers had offered me at exactly the right time, and mostly without my asking. How did that happen? How did they know what I needed?

Without hesitation and before I knew her name, I accepted her offer. We laughed and introduced ourselves and she gave me directions to her house. A sentence into it I realized exactly where she was leading me. Back through that same residential area and up that hill. "But only halfway up," Dorothy assured me and then added, "Unfortunately, the driveway is steep, too. Sorry."

What a wonderful night it was. Dorothy, her husband, Jeff, and I sat on their deck while Sadie, their German short-haired pointer, coaxed one of us to throw her ball down into the yard, of which she never grew tired. Jeff cooked. Dorothy prepared the table, bubbling, as was I. She kept laughing at herself for how she "stalked" me. I kept trying to find something to bring to the table. Jeff kept an eye on the grill. They showed me a couple of bottles of wine. I didn't care which one we drank so they picked something red. Dinner was scrumptious. Salmon, veggies and corn on the cob. We laughed down two bottles of wine and talked about everything we could fit in. Motorcycles, our families, how they'd met in a grocery store. Work, politics. And my story—what I'd experienced so far, where I was headed, and who was I, anyway, to follow a crazy stalker-lady home for the promise of food? "Oh, that's nothing," I joked.

With a stressful ride ahead of me, a workday ahead of them, and a joyful evening under each of our belts, we all retired for the night, full and happy.

*****

HEAVENLY WY'EAST

If I was meant to become roadkill on Route 14, then at least I'd had a glorious last supper with Dorothy and Jeff. After a slow morning on Dorothy's east deck, where we ate thick oatmeal fortified with walnuts and raisins and each drank just one more half cup of coffee, I set my sights on Cold Creek Farm, a ninety-acre, off-grid intentional community in the foothills of Mount Hood. The promise of more beauty, more adventure, kicked me into high gear. Standing next to my loaded bike, Dorothy and I hugged good-bye. I promised to write and thanked her again. She wished me safe travels and off I went.

When I reached the edge of town, just past the pullout where Dorothy had lured me into her snare, I came to a Y. The signs almost made sense enough that I knew one way was Business Route 14 and the other way was regular-old-hell-ride Route 14. I remembered Dorothy saying that there _was_ an alternate, safer, way for at least part of the route to Hood River (so Harry was wrong?) but it was steep. "Really, really steep." It was easy to see which one was which. The steep one started off heading upwards right away and had no marked shoulder, though obviously a back road with less traffic. The other one was fairly level, and though it was a busy two-lane road, to me the shoulder appeared wide enough. I hurried across it and happily continued on my way, relieved to discover, as with many things I feared, that firsthand experience often proved the fear itself to be worse than the thing. Then, like a spooked deer, the thing jumped out in front me.

The road curved and the shoulder disappeared. Between the white line beneath my spinning tire and a nearly vertical cliff were six inches of cinders on cracked macadam. The road curved again, this time in the other direction. Then it dipped down. Curved. Back up. And then those life-saving six inches disappeared, only to be replaced by a rusty guardrail. Apparently, the cliff had become cliffier, posing a greater danger to speeding motorists, thus requiring a metal wall to scrape the paint off their car doors should they stray too close to the edge of the world. Luckily for me and not the straying motorists, the guardrail soon ended after thirty or forty feet just when the next logging truck came whizzing by. I kept going, thinking it had to improve. Nope. It didn't have to. Another truck sliced precariously deep into my personal space and it became very clear that thirty-five more miles of this was probably not in my best interest.

Without hesitation or room for disappointment, I turned around at the first break in traffic and rode back two miles to Business Route 14. Though there were no guardrails or the edge of a cliff, there was a vertical wall of unforgiving rock that seemed equally unappealing as the thing I would crash into if I had to bail, or worse, was hit. I nearly sprinted. Alas, the long, steep climb onto Business Route 14 felt amazingly relaxing. I'd do steep over death any day. When I finally got to the top I looked at my map to see if this road would take me where I needed to go—all the way to the Bridge of the Gods, which crossed over the Columbia River to Cascade Locks, where I'd be back on my cycling map and starting to salivate from the thought of a beer at my first Oregon brewpub in Hood River. Nope. In fact, my map showed that all the roads either ended or channeled me back down to Devil Drive. Harry was right. And thus was the nature of mountains. I knew there was a flow to the landscape, and if I could find it I'd reach a river. And if I found that, I'd reach a village or city—some community of fellow humans where I could rest my bones and gather myself up for the next leg. Unfortunately, these weren't the days of Lewis and Clark and the path they had forged along this river now required every ounce of one's attention be focused on the road. Until then, I'd try to ignore the inevitable and enjoy the ride.

Hours passed. Picturesque farms and suburban farmettes inspired me to stop again and again to take pictures of crooked trees, weathered fence posts in high grass, and curious livestock that gave me looks I could only interpret as, "What?" Goats and sheep. Horses. Llamas and alpacas. The expressions on their faces made me laugh. In between pastures, my mind drifted to friends back in Bellingham, what I might expect at the farm, and how wonderful it felt to be in this kind of physical shape again. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd felt this strong. My thirties? My twenties? A past lifetime?

As I was finishing lunch near an intersection, a man in a shiny black pickup truck slowed for the stop and, just to be sure, I waved him down to ask if there was a road that paralleled Route 14. "No ma'am. Both these roads go to fourteen. This one," he pointed to the left, "goes up a lot more before it goes down and this one," he pointed to the right, "goes right down to it." I thanked him, turned right, and down I glided into the gorge. I'd still have to ride about fifteen miles on Route 14, but after such a lovely morning, I was optimistic that I'd have a wider shoulder with lighter traffic. The country road continued its descent, winding left and right and then around a sharp curve. There it was: the Lewis and Clark Highway, as well as a carnival of bright orange road construction signs and barrels, earth-moving equipment, piles of stone, temporary traffic lights, and flaggers. Great. Not only was there no shoulder, there were two lanes of traffic now sharing one lane, in turns. I was glad to give all those truck drivers even more of a reason to be annoyed with me, as they would now have to sit and wait for me to pedal my butt as fast as I could down that one lane for...oh, I don't know...a mile or more. As it turned out, the truckers, being professionals, knew how to make up for lost time. By going faster later.

Unfortunately, my own personal solitary lane ended and my ride became much like it had been back near Washougal. With one exception: experience. With my life literally on the line, I realized I had to rise above my fear and use my brain. I quickly got a feel for the rhythmic flow of traffic and the regular sections of guardrail and then shoulder, guardrail, then shoulder. There were hills, but they were slight. So now, instead of just riding and praying, I pulled off the road as far as I could just before each guardrail began, where I then waited for a truck, sometimes two trucks, and then a short string of four or five cars, to pass. I then sprinted as fast as I could to the next section of shoulder. If the road was still clear, or if only one or two cars were coming, I'd keep going until I reached the next guardrail. If another truck was coming I'd pull over and wait. Usually, I could make it to the start of the next guardrail before another truck came. I was soon able to sense when a truck was due so I'd pull off and wait for it, especially if I could see a guardrail up ahead. I did this dance for the next dozen miles until I reached the safety of the Bridge of the Gods. And what a miraculous bridge it was.

Now a man-made cantilever bridge spanning almost 1,900 feet and 135 feet above the water, it used to be a natural bridge after half of Table Mountain and Greenleaf Peak slid down on itself in some earthshaking event, damming up the Columbia three hundred to one thousand years ago (no one seems to be able to really pinpoint the exact time). At some point, the river pushed through the natural bridge, creating a torrent of cascading water, which was the reason Lewis and Clark named the nearby mountain range the Cascades. The name of the bridge came from a native legend told by the Klickitats that explained how, after the two sons (Wy'East and Pahto) of the chief of all the gods (Tyhee Saghalie) fought over the same land, the chief separated them but created the Bridge of the Gods (Tanmahawis) for the families to visit each other. Then, the same quarreling brothers fell in love with the same woman (obviously, they'd learned nothing) and she couldn't choose between them, so the brothers fought and fought, shaking the ground violently until the natural bridge washed away in the river. As punishment, they were turned into Mount Hood (Wy'East) and Mount Adams (Pahto), and the lovely maiden became Mount St. Helens (Louwala-Clough).

I was just glad there was some kind of bridge to get me from here to there, alive and well, and back on my cycling map after what ended up being a 215-mile detour, all because our sun god (Horus, Ra, Amaterasu or whoever) hadn't quite finished melting the snow on Elk Pass.

In my mind, the adventure was over. I had just another twenty miles to Hood River and then a handful more to the farm. Along I went, between the river and the interstate, through Cascade Locks, neighborhoods, and then an industrial area where railroad tracks crisscrossed next to big metal buildings. I saw a stopsign up ahead and, while still pedaling, took out my map from my handlebar bag to determine where I was. Through bulging eyes and with a bottom-dragging load of disbelief, I saw that the route I was supposed to take was, in fact, the interstate. This had to be wrong. I couldn't bike on the freeway. Everyone knew that. I stopped at the intersection. I read the directions again and unless I'd used up all of my cognitive skills figuring out the flow of truck traffic on Route 14, it did in fact tell me to get on the interstate. Over and over, I reread the short paragraph. It kept telling me the same thing. But another road went to the right. Surely, _that_ was the road I should take. It had to go somewhere. With the stress of the day still cooped up inside, I started to cry and then just as quickly, stopped. Then I got mad. I flipped the map over, looking for a phone number so I could call the cycling organization and let them know just how mad I was that they would be so stupid as to guide me onto the freeway.

It wasn't so much that I was afraid of biking on the freeway. The shoulder was certainly wider than any other road I'd traveled. I was afraid of breaking the law. Well, not so much breaking the law as much as being seen by hundreds of motorists pulled over by the state police getting a ticket and imagining people saying, "What was she thinking? Everyone knows you can't ride a bike on the freeway." While I continued to stare at the map, a young bright-eyed farmboy in overalls drove up in his dusty old pickup and asked if I needed help. I instantly felt saved. With one starry eye and the other still glazed, I asked, "Are you allowed to ride a bike on the interstate?"

"Yes, ma'am. I see them on there all the time."

Relief rushed through my body. I thanked the man, straightened my collar, rode my rig up the on-ramp, and entered the Land of Interstate. And what a blast it was. With a tailwind and some serious draft created by eighteen-wheelers at seventy miles per hour, I trucked along. Only a few times did I have to be extra cautious when the shoulder narrowed over a bridge or next to an outcropping of rock. My only worry was that, because I was going so fast, it was much harder to assess and react to the debris situation. As far as I could tell it consisted mostly of cinders. But a few times I had to swerve (which, on a loaded bike at twenty miles per hour, was much less graceful than the word "swerve" suggests and was more like a jerk) to avoid some foreign object or another—probably a bolt.

An hour later, ramped up from my first freeway adventure, I glided to Hood River and immediately started asking random people on the street where the brewpub was. "Which one?" the first guy happily replied. Yes, I actually had a choice. Oregon had a reputation for crafting good beer—and a lot of it. In fact, in 2011, Oregonians gulped down 290 million pints from more than one hundred breweries, adding almost 2.5 billion dollars to their state's economy. Apparently, that trickled into twenty-five thousand jobs, from hops farmers to the plumbers who were called in to fix the leaky toilets. And, on top of this figure of 290 million pints (which looks more impressive like this: 290,000,000, especially from a state with a population of less than 3,800,000) floats a froth of even more revealing numbers. Considering that around 25 percent of those people were under the legal drinking age, 15 percent were over sixty-five and likely keeping their drinking to a minimum so as to not interfere with their various pharmaceuticals or exacerbate their health problems, and another 15 percent were below the poverty line and very likely had already cut beer out of their budget or opted for a less expensive machine-crafted brew, that meant 1,710,000 people each drank 170 pints of handcrafted beer, or just over three pints per week. And, of course, this loosely scientific analysis doesn't even consider all of the nondrinkers and ex-drinkers who have chosen to live presumably clearheaded, healthier lives with _out_ contributing, I might add, one cent to the economic health of their own state. Losers. But back to my numbers and final conclusion: Oregonians like beer. And being a rabble-rouser from the north, I decided to mess with their numbers.

I chose Big Horse Brewery. It was a tall building on a pillar of a hill with a view. Perfect, but not. Though I wanted to sit outside on the third-story deck and watch the windsurfers ride the river, there was no place to hitch my bike or even to see it if I dared to leave it free for the taking. So I rode around to the back outdoor patio and corralled it just over the brick wall, not far from the last empty table in the late-day sun. I didn't like not trusting people, but I also couldn't afford to lose any gear, or money, for that matter. Against the advice of my friends, I carried all the cash I thought I'd need with me instead of using a card. I didn't want to have to worry about finding an ATM two days before I'd need cash for a campground (or a beer). I'd just spent the last six months planning every detail of this trip. I wanted to have everything I needed at all times so I didn't have to plan. I wanted to be self-contained.

My first IPA tasted so good that I ordered another one—and hot wings. I justified my indulgence by upgrading my arrival to Hood River to a celebration of still being alive. I wrote and drank and wrote and drank. I texted friends. Lived it up. And then it occurred to me that I still had to ride to the farm. I wasn't sure how far away it was, exactly, or what the terrain was like. Based on the hill this brewpub was built upon, my emotional and physical exertion from the day's ride, two beers, and the elevation graph on my map, which looked like an EKG read out, I became slightly concerned about the I'm-not-riding-anywhere limpness in my body. And then my phone buzzed. Joni was one of the owners of the farm and she happened to be in town, and, knowing that I was due to arrive that evening, wanted to know if I needed a ride. How did this luck happen?

Ten minutes later, we instantly clicked, though Joni seemed to be the kind who clicked with everyone. Since the moment we hugged hello in the Big Horse parking lot, all the way to her farm, I chattered on and on about everything and nothing, answering her questions and asking a few of my own. I didn't notice anything about the route we took except that it was steep. She was right when she said the farm was on a mountain. We pulled into the dirt driveway and parked between two older-model station wagons in what looked like a used-car lot. Obviously, there were more than a few inhabitants on the land. I got out of her truck and the first thing I saw was an enormous snowy Mount Hood bursting up from behind forested foothills. And in front of them, a sloping field of yellow wildflowers. Maybe I did die on Route 14 and this was Heaven.

I settled in. Settled down. Reined in the stampede of emotions from my long day. After setting up my tent in that serene field next to one large pine tree halfway down the hill between the gardens and the edge of the woods, I walked up to the common house to have rabbit stew for dinner with eight beautiful strangers.

*****

TREE FAIRIES AND THE ROOSTER

Most mornings—in the warmth of my sleeping bag, in my tent, in the field of wild yellow flowers, at Cold Creek Farm—began with the crowing rooster. Sometimes the songbirds came first. One time an owl started off the day while it was still officially nighttime. Often clouds curled above me, morphing in and out of cartoon animals and storybook faces, but moved along quickly, revealing large swaths of blue sky. For the rest of the days, the sun seemed to always have the final say as to how things would go. It did drizzle on and off, here and there, but the rain never kept us inside or from our work at hand.

On the first morning, when the rooster crowed, I was instantly thrilled. That exuberant wake-up call was how my day started as a child. I had a feeling the whole week ahead of me was going to trigger a slew of good memories. I lay there for a long time, lingering in and out of sleep, listening to birds sing and trying to guess when the rooster would crow again. As the glow outside brightened, some birds changed their pattern and the rooster moved on to his next order of business for the day—chasing hens, I presumed. Knowing I had a day of work ahead of me, I didn't linger too long before executing my routine: to crunch my stomach muscles while balancing on my tailbone in order to add warm layers, roll over on my elbows and knees to unzip and flip up the tent flap, assess the weather, crawl into the wet grass on all fours, rise up, find my balance to pee, start my stove, make tea, sit on my clothes pannier that doubled as a camp chair, and write in my journal. Then, I could get on with my next order of business. Food.

Joni had invited me and the other WWOOFer, Jason, up to the common house for a "big country breakfast." That's what they called us— "WWOOFers:" People who worked on these farms through an organization called World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. It seemed revolutionary to me. What a great way for people to travel inexpensively, learn new things, and meet interesting people.

Though definitely not a quaint, urban breakfast, it wasn't exactly "big," which was when I came to accept the fact that my appetite would never again be satisfied. I was glad to have my road food with me. I was still ravenous and they didn't seem to have a lot of food to choose from. Or, rather, they did. They had shelves and shelves of food in the kitchen, in the mudroom, the root cellar, and in a small spring-fed pond. I just didn't know what food belonged to whom and whether or not I was allowed to eat it. Everything seemed easygoing. Not too many rules—or at least they were the kinds of rules a person from the grid just inherently knew. Like knocking on a closed bathroom door first in a crowded house. Here, if one was walking down the path to the three-sided outhouse and he or she saw a stick leaning against the doorframe, that meant someone was already in there. I learned that rule experientially. Poor Brian. I didn't see anything.

After we did a quick cleanup in the kitchen after breakfast—which was really more like Joni doing a quick cleanup while Jason and I held various kitchen items up in the air asking, "Where does this go?" —we headed straight out to the garden.

For the next four hours we pulled weeds, prepped soil, planted, mulched, and watered. After a few years of not having my own garden, it felt good to get my hands in the dirt and to smell so many different aromas swirling in the breeze. Bees buzzed around yellow mustard flowers. Worms scurried back down their holes when I ripped out deep roots, exposing their hideout. A robin landed nearby and gave me a look. I assumed she wanted that worm. Joni told me about a robin they'd saved a year ago and I wondered if maybe this one was her. She sure was friendly.

And how magnificent it was to have that _huge_ mountain right there, all day, in my face. It was only topped by the interactions I had with everyone who lived or worked on the farm. I especially enjoyed talking with Joni whenever we worked side by side. Several years older than I, she had buckets of stories to tell—of the farm and of her life. I was surprised to learn that she had lived her entire adult life in intentional communities all over the world. I found her to be gentle and smart. Not just about living off the land, but also in regard to people—no doubt an asset when choosing to not just get along, but to live harmoniously with so many other people day in and day out. American rugged individualism has had centuries to invade our collective psyche. So in theory, getting along sure did sound nice, but seriously? What about me and _my_ wants and needs?

That first evening came early. I was tired. After two weeks of riding and being fired up by the constant goal of getting somewhere, my body finally let go. I put together a simple dinner for myself and disappeared into my tent for a long, deep sleep.

"HEY! Get up! NOW!" the rooster went off in a rant. Apparently, the day had, in fact, broken and I was being summoned to help fix it. I wrote down a few foggy dream images and went right up to the common house where I made coffee and eggs. I had some alone time to gaze at the mountain before Brian and Chris came in. They were friendly young guys who were eager to help me find my way around the kitchen. They were two of several apprentices attending a four-month homesteading and primitive skills program here. That particular day, they were learning about raising rabbits—not just breeding them, but also how to butcher, skin, and tan them. As they told me this, I smiled inside as the rabbit-stew dinner conversation from the other night made more sense. In a few days they were going to drive out to the coast with their entire group to harvest seaweed to dry, store, and then eat on some cold, rainy winter day when they got a hankering for seaweed chips.

After breakfast I wandered through the tangled gardens back to my tent. With a firm hold on the ground, the plants seemed to burst up and out with abandon. Drops of water suspended on bright green leaves and stems caught the sun. One pregnant drop sat in the middle of an orange nasturtium flower, waiting.

Because Joni had something to do in town, Jason and I had the day off. I was glad for it. I wanted some time to just roam around and do whatever I felt drawn to do. My first inclination was to wash my riding shorts and underwear and then hang them on the stiff needles of the spruce tree behind my tent. Then I sorted my clothes, inventoried my food, texted my mom, and went back up to the common house to make more coffee.

I climbed the steps, pushed open the squeaky door, and walked in. I had to laugh. There, flopped on the couch, perched on stools, and folded into the floor, were these barefooted, young twenty-somethings dressed to dig in the dirt, hew a beam, or skin a rabbit (in a fashionable, suburban kind of way), all using their phones to text and check email and their laptops to learn birdsongs and listen to old-timey music. Apparently, the solar panels in front of the house did generate enough electricity to charge batteries and keep them connected. Twenty-first century homesteading at its best.

On my way back to my tent, I went through the garden, again. Only this time I grazed my way through. Tender chard, bitter kale. Spicy mustard greens. After two weeks of eating dehydrated kale powder, it was such a delight to have moisture in my greens. The rest of my day went like this: meandering, tasting, smelling, touching, and following my thoughts anywhere they went. At some point I cleaned my bike.

By evening I was ready to rejoin the community. I sat on the couch next to the window, watching and listening to the young folk interact as they independently made their own dinners. They talked at length about liberating food by dumpster-diving and even stealing it. At first I was surprised at how the idea of stealing food didn't sit right with me, but then their views made more sense as they shared their stories. After all, you had to eat. You did what you had to do. And if you learned how to grow it or gather it, all the better. Now _that_ was liberation.

When the sun went down, we all gathered around a large fire pit outside that served as the hub for the common house, a cabin, and the tee-pees where the apprentices stayed. The apprentices brought their fiddles and mandolins, and a guitar for me. From somewhere unknown to me, various unfamiliar people joined us. It was as if they'd come from the forest as one might imagine tree fairies in a young-adult novel to be lured by a gathering of people with instruments around a fire. They all looked so fresh and alive. The music came right away. Those of us who could play or sing took turns leading a song. It felt great to play with people again—just to play, not perform—especially under that night sky thick with stars and the glow of fire bouncing off so many young, happy faces.

The following morning, with the sun to my left and a rainbow to my right, tiny raindrops caressed my face. The rooster was crowing his heart out as I lit my stove and put on a pot of water. Joni had mentioned she wanted us to put in a long day, so I headed up the hill to make breakfast as soon as I finished my tea. As I walked along the now well-trampled grass path, I hoped I wouldn't interrupt the yoga session, again. I also hoped someone opened a few windows this time. Six sweaty, hormonal people who only showered every three or four days doing yoga in the same room offered a certain odor one would not normally choose to inhale while eating. Ah, the smell of twenty-first century homesteading at its best.

I weeded all day. There was never any end in sight, so the goal was just to keep going. Clouds kept covering and then uncovering the sun, making us all laugh at how often we took off our long-sleeved shirts, only to put them back on ten minutes later. After I put in my hours, I took a nap in my tent, warm from the sun. It was the kind of deep sleep that often happens in the heat of day after hours of physical labor and fresh air. After what felt like hours, I woke to the sound of a cat scurrying around my tent. It was Luna, the Siamese. I unzipped my tent flap and saw Joni still working in the garden. It was clear that dinner wouldn't really be at six when she'd said. Everyone here seemed to operate without a clock, which I also tried to do as much as possible in my own life—just not at meal time. But it worked here. Nobody held it against you if you got involved in a project. "There's food around. If you're hungry, eat," seemed to be the thinking. In general, the way of life here seemed to work. But then again, what did I know? I could have just been caught up in my own excitement and was merely romanticizing an arduous, stressful life while tied to a plot of land into a wild, carefree, forever-young life set loose by Hollywood and a culture that sustained itself on the concept of freedom. Maybe this was just one big dysfunctional community living off the land because people's trust funds had run out or they were running from food-theft charges against them in thirteen states.

Though there certainly was a lot I liked about how they lived. The fact that almost everyone here went barefoot was freeing just to observe. Although I had noticed two of the guys tending to cracked soles and infected cuts on their toes. Maybe there were other ways to feel free-footed. And how wild, I thought, like the animals they truly were, that they peed wherever they happened to be—in the raspberry bushes, behind a tree, or in a bottle that they transferred to the irrigation barrel to dilute and then spray on the garden. Yes, you read that correctly. Who knew that urine was good for plants? I learned this not because I saw anyone actually pouring urine into the irrigation tank or overheard a discussion about it. I learned it because Jason and I were weeding in the central garden one day while the sprinklers were on in the adjacent garden and we noticed an overwhelming urine smell. Because we were close to the outhouse, we assumed a breeze was to blame. Occasionally, we walked through the spray from the sprinklers to retrieve a wheelbarrow or look for a rake. Typically, not a big deal. This went on for a couple of hours until Lonya came out to apologize for having the sprinklers on and not knowing that Jason and I were out there. That was when she told us about irrigating with diluted urine. "Oh, really? Urine?" I said nonchalantly, while in my head I was arm wrestling Jason for dibs on the shower.

*****

NAKED FIELD NYMPHS

On the morning that was really still night when an owl hooted in the woods to the east, I woke from a vivid dream. I was getting ready to go on my bike adventure, but I was going to canoe some of it. I was planning where I'd get the canoe and in what rivers I'd paddle. One river I stood next to rushed by fast, and I thought it would be fun. I planned to leave on Halloween. Then, suddenly, I was in some cave, barely light enough to see, that had a big pool of water hidden up high. A river flowed out of it. There were three guy-friends of mine there, though I didn't recognize them. I floated down a short distance and then came back. It wasn't too rough. Other guys, strangers, came in the cave. We hid from them. They snooped around. We even hid under the water until they left. Then a woman came in. I was naked and under the water. There was no hiding from her, so I did the opposite. I showed myself completely. I swam like a mermaid, naked, sensual. I felt beautiful and powerful. The woman was taken aback. I stayed under a long time. Didn't have to breathe. What a great feeling to not have to breathe. I lingered in the dream as long as I could until I realized I was breathing—in my tent. As the sun rose up over the trees, the owl hooted for its last time. The birds started singing, first just a few chirps back and forth, and then the whole mountaintop came alive. Before long, the rooster joined in.

After our own morning routines, Jason and I met in the garden and got right to work. He wore his pointed Chinaman hat and I wore my baseball cap as we could tell it was going to get hot. With our short sleeves pushed up over our shoulders, we weeded, made new beds, hilled up potatoes, spread mulch, and pulled out old wild mustard plants. The bees did not seem so pleased about that, buzzing louder and louder as they followed the yellow flowers onto the compost heap. Hours passed quickly as the work felt more like play. At times Jason and I slipped into conversations, sharing facts and vignettes about our lives. But mostly, we drifted into our own thoughts, interjecting some comment into the breeze when our rows met or our paths crossed.

Sometime after lunch an older man with a full head of grey hair wandered through the weathered split rail gate looking for Joni. She'd overheard him and came walking into the potato patch where I was working. It turned out that he had worked on this farm forty-two years ago in the summer of '69, and that he had been living in his car ever since. He was just driving by and wanted to say hi and see the place again. They talked for a long time as Joni, half squatting, kept two hands in the dirt. I learned about the past owner and builder of the house and the hundred-year history of this land being communal. I heard about squabbles, divorces, open relationships that never seemed to work out, political activists who had wandered through, and on and on. Working just yards from the two of them, I couldn't help but to hear it all. They certainly didn't seem to care. Imagine, living in a car for forty-two years? Without more information as to why he chose to do that, I couldn't decide whether I thought that was cool or sad—liberating or limiting. I supposed if I could see his car I'd have a better sense. Was it a rusty, two-door hatchback? Or, was it a shiny, custom cargo van with a safari roof rack and a ladder up the back? Were the floors and seats veiled by old magazines, moldy coffee cups, and potato chip bags, or piles of books by Vonnegut, Muir, Carson, Emerson, Kesey, Plath, Salinger, Thoreau, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Angelou?

It became apparent he wanted to look around the place, so Joni pulled out one last clump of weeds and wiped the soil from her hands. It was quiet again. Almost. Just birds and bees and the breeze. Jason was out of sight. The sun beat down. The moment swelled as I left my head and returned to my hands in the cool, moist dirt. And then I heard women laughing. I looked out in the field of tiny yellow flowers and quickly looked back down, and up again. Oh, my. Beautiful naked field nymphs were laying strands of seaweed on top of the grass to dry. Clearly, Lonya and the lovely young women in her group had become so terribly overheated from their strenuous seaweed drying that they had had to take off their heavy cotton tee shirts and shorts. I certainly didn't mind. It had been a long time since I'd seen smooth twenty-five-year-old skin, not to mention breasts with nipples that actually pointed outward and not down toward the ground. The joys of youth. And from the looks on the male apprentices' faces, they either didn't mind as well, or didn't even seem to notice. They all worked together, asking questions, wheeling wheelbarrows, as if maybe working naked was protocol. Interestingly, the men either hadn't been working as hard, or their tee shirts and shorts were made of that amazing lightweight variety of cotton that kept them from even breaking a sweat—for the moment anyway. A few minutes later, as if she were wearing lacey lingerie for the first time, Lonya walked into the potato patch where I was working to get a wheelbarrow and asked me if I minded them working naked. I said, "No, not one bit." She giggled—and maybe said something. I can't remember. She sauntered away through the high grass, her hips swaying left then right, then left...

*****

TO SIT AND FERMENT

It was sometime after six o'clock, maybe closer to six-thirty, when Jason and I strolled up the hill to the main house for a special dinner with just Joni, her partner Don, and his three teenage girls. I knocked on a well-used door just inside the sun porch attached to their ground-level living space. Joni opened the door and we walked into the huge room and followed her along a narrow path between couches pulled out into beds, sculptures, a hanging tapestry, paintings, musical instruments, books, lamps, stacks of board games, and into the kitchen area. The air smelled of simmering chicken soup and freshly baked bread. Garlic hung from an exposed beam, and on the counters sat all sorts and sizes of glass jars filled with kimchi, kombucha tea, kefir, tomato sauce, and pickles. More books lined more shelves. Jason and I jumped right into the scene, helping to prepare the table for the coming feast. All seven of us brilliantly navigated the small kitchen space without one head-on collision or a dropped bowl of soup. A crisp green salad billowed out of a wooden bowl in the middle of the table. A stick of butter on a saucer, a glass pitcher of tea, and salt and pepper shakers soon found their way there, too. A stack of miscellaneous plates caught my eye so I grabbed them. Jason counted silverware in the drawer. Three different conversations weaved in and out of each other. We talked a lot about preserving food. Joni and Don canned and dried much of what they grew, but they mostly enjoyed fermenting it. I shared my experience with making yogurt, and Don said kefir was so much easier than yogurt. The starter, fermented seeds that clung together and looked like small curds of cottage cheese, sat in a container of milk and was left to ferment, refrigerated or not, for a day or so until it was ready to drink. Don said if I liked my kefir to bite my tongue off when I drank it, then I should just let it sit longer. He gave me a clump of starter to take with me and make my own. All I had to do was add milk every so often to keep it alive. It was the perfect thing for this trip. I needed the fat and protein, and, from what I'd heard and read, the probiotics were good for all sorts of reasons.

Unsure of whether or not I would start drooling before I could get my paws on the warm, fresh bread, I nearly hooted when Joni said, "Okay, let's all sit down." Through a web of outstretched arms and grabbing hands, the salad bowl and basket of bread flew around the table. Salt, butter, salad dressing, and the pitcher of tea took diagonal paths, crisscrossing the table several times. We ate and laughed and filled up our plates and bowls again. If I could have, I would have put that evening into a jar to take with me on the road. I'd just have to add more laughter every so often to keep it alive.

*****

CESIUM RAIN

Overnight the weather had changed. Clouds blew in from the west on a strong wind. Knowing it would be a chilly day in the garden, I put on an extra layer under my tee shirt and grabbed my wool sweater. By the time I got up to the common house, it started to brighten as if the skies might clear.

I quietly opened the door, as I knew Scott would likely be sitting against the wall in focused meditation. And he was. As I tiptoed across the kitchen floor, he said in a quiet voice, what he had said the morning before. "Come in. Don't worry. You're fine. Make all kinds of noise." I didn't, of course, but later while eating my oatmeal, I wondered if he'd meant it and what he would have done if I had made all kinds of noise—the noisy kind. Instead, I made sure the kettle didn't whistle and my bowl didn't clank against the other clean dishes when I deftly extricated it from the intricate stack of bowls, plates, lids and pots in the drainer next to the sink. And when I sat at the big, rectangular, wooden table, I positioned my chair facing away from him so as not to distract his concentration on the far wall by my counting the hairs on his bare chest.

I got out to the raspberry patch right after breakfast since it seemed within the realm of possibility that it would rain. I weeded all morning and into the afternoon while the sky did a little of this and that. It spit on my hand, caressed my cheek. And one fat drop plopped on my scalp, ran down my hairline, my brow, the bridge of my nose, and fell off the tip, disappearing into the soil inches from my shoe. In all the usurping going on, the sun never did clear the sky completely, nor did the drizzle ever turn into full-on bucket pouring. Though the weeds were sparse between bushes, Joni wanted me to rip out the Kentucky bluegrass before it took over. And it would have. Inching up and down the rows of five-foot high bushes, I zoomed in on the buggers and then swooped down for the kill every few feet. Not on this day, but sometimes Joni saved the bluegrass and used it to barter with a guy in town who made a tonic from the roots, which were supposedly good for one's kidneys.

During one of the sunny episodes, Joni called me in for lunch. I finished the row I was in, grabbed my sweater off the wire fence, and walked up to the picnic table next a tall pine tree half in the shade and half out. Leftovers from our dinner the night before had already been dished. Again, we all shared good food and interesting conversations. The soup was even better.

Everything felt perfect. And then I made a comment about how happy I'd been not hearing any news, especially about the damaged nuclear power plant in Fukushima. Then Don said, "Oh, I just heard some things on NPR. You want to know?" He sounded grim. I hesitated, but it was as if I couldn't help myself. I said I did.

"What's the last thing you heard?" he asked.

"Well, just that the cesium was showing up in milk and seaweed along the coast and a few particles of the bad stuff, I don't remember what, plutonium, uranium, were floating around in Seattle. I think."

"Yeah, I heard that, too. I also just heard that they did a three-month study on infant mortality rates on the West Coast since just after the explosion and there was a 35 percent increase in infant deaths. It usually only fluctuates a percentage point or two."

I knew I shouldn't have asked as I felt my body tighten. After so many years of one alarming fact or figure after the next, it was a normal reaction. But I knew how to process it better. I seemed that I ran through the emotional gauntlet faster now, depending on my mood or starting place, and jumped right to a compassionate, functional detachment. Other times, I allowed myself to think I had enough of the truth and the ability to assess the situation accurately to make general predictions about my future and life decisions based on those predictions. But most times, I skipped right over the emotions, the analyzing and deducing, and went straight for the fun. "Happy hour, anyone?" How could I not recognize and celebrate all the beauty and goodness in my life? Was it putting my head in the sand if I lived a life that brought me joy? Or was this the ultimate path to peace?

Don kept talking. There was more. A heaviness covered us all. Joni's almost constant smile had fallen away. Don's girls stopped playing their fun word game. Jason chimed in with other news he'd heard. And I shared my Fukushima experience about the powdery white film on my handlebars.

About a week after the nuclear plant had melted down we'd had several days of a hard rain, typical for Bellingham in March. This was two months before I left, so I rode a lot every day, as I was training. Each night at the end of those rainy days, after my bike had dried off inside, I saw a white powdery film on my handlebar tape that I'd never seen before after a ride in the rain. I freaked out. Everyone I tried to talk to about it didn't seem concerned one bit. I didn't know whether I was overreacting or not because I wasn't sure if we were getting all of the information. That was the problem with hiding the truth, I thought, even if it was done for the sake of keeping people calm. Personally, I preferred to know the truth. It was not knowing that caused me the most anxiety. I never did find any comfort. I called the health department. They weren't concerned either. The nice guy I spoke with said he only knew what the Environmental Protection Agency had told them and they had said everything was fine. Finally, I had to stop thinking about it in order to get through my days. Radiation poisoning was just one of many ways we were killing ourselves. At some point, I told myself, I had to stop worrying about dying and just live.

Suddenly, Joni jumped up from the table as a red-tailed hawk came swooping down above the chicken pen. She ran through the garden and down the hill through the high grass, clapping her hands and yelling at it to go away. It took one more swoop and drifted up and over the ridge. When Joni returned she told us about the problems they were having keeping the chickens safe and how they'd already lost a few hens to the hawk. "As long as we're outside and paying attention," Joni said, "we can usually react in time and chase it away." If only we could simply clap away the radiation and all the other twenty-first-century predators that hunt us every day.

*****

LIFE ON A BIKE

On my last day of work at Cold Creek Farm, I stood in the garden for a long moment. Vibrant green stems and leaves surged up around me. Chard. Broccoli. Potatoes, lettuce, and kale. Cucumbers. Hops and squash. I breathed in the sweet smells. I would miss this place. The soft warm soil in my hands. The view—from the plants at my feet to that giant snowy mountain. But I was also ready to move on. It had been filling and rich. I hoped to come back someday. Maybe like that old guy, I'd stand in the garden and tell some free spirit how I'd worked here for a week in the summer of '11 and have been living on my bike ever since.

*****

NINE HUNDRED CHANNELS  
IN GOVERNMENT CAMP

I looked out at Mount Hood one last time. Thick grey clouds, maybe snow clouds, wrapped around its middle, leaving only its cone and base exposed. Still feeling pretty good despite not having ridden in a week, I decided I'd try to make it all the way—an above-average normal day—to the small mountain town of Government Camp, especially if those grey clouds were going to dump on me. I figured Bennett Pass might be rough, but no worse than White Pass, which had been so windy and cold. Of course I could do it. The thought of having the gift of my friend, Leanne's, cozy cabin waiting for me was all the motivation I needed.

After a hearty breakfast and heartfelt good-byes, I threw my leg over the saddle of my bike for the first time in seven days and pedaled down the driveway of Cold Creek Farm. The thrill of the road bubbled up in me until it was a rolling boil. Before I reached the end of the driveway I heard Brian yell, "Have a nice life!"

"Okay! You too!" I yelled back. And down I went. Down off that wild mountain and then up through orchard after orchard, through Odell and along Hood River to Dee, to Parkdale where I raced a train of waving tourists and lost, and up again for thirty miles to the top of Bennett Pass at almost 4,700 feet where I officially started around the southern half of Mount Hood. Other than a sore butt and just being plain old exhausted, I hadn't had any significant physical issues or injuries until that point. By the time I reached the summit of Bennett, my right knee hurt so much that sharp pains shot down my shin to my ankle. I shifted more of the burden to my left leg and then that knee started to hurt, too. I didn't think having a week off from riding was the reason, rather that it was from squatting in the garden on bent knees for hours at a time that did me in. I got a chuckle out of the irony anyway. I could ride 650 miles with hardly a pain, but pulling tiny weeds in a garden for a week might possibly ruin my entire trip.

To add to the last grueling hours of my first day back, it got cold. Colder than it was supposed to be at the end of June (in my East Coast-raised opinion). And with much of my mental energy soaked up by my knee, I didn't have much left to keep the cold from bringing me down. About ten miles before I rode into Government Camp it started to rain, a cold rain. The kind that you only push through because you know you have a warm cabin waiting for you at the end like a carrot on a stick. Finally, I saw signs for my exit.

I limped into town and found my way to Leanne's cabin. With numb fingers I dug into my backpack and found the key chain she'd given me saying, "Oh, I don't remember which ones are for what doors, but they're all on there." Needless to say, I tried every key three times only to find that the lock itself was the problem. So even when I _did_ have the right key it needed to be jiggled, joggled, and sworn at before releasing its hold.

Finally, the backdoor opened and I knew I would not die of hypothermia after all. With the last three drops of liquid blood in my fingers, I finagled my panniers off my bike, carried them up the steps, and dropped them just inside the kitchen door. Next came my bike. Onto my shoulder, up the steps, and against the back wall in the combination mud/laundry/shower room. Peering into the kitchen, I chuckled to myself. Robin, who would be meeting me here in two days, had asked what she needed to bring. Her camp stove? A cooler? Towels? In just one glance around the kitchen I saw a toaster, coffeemaker, microwave oven, blender, popcorn maker, stove/oven, refrigerator, and espresso maker. Later, when looking for a pot, I'd find a waffle iron, a bread maker and a super-duper chopping machine. I guess the fact that it lacked a dishwasher made it a cabin. Well, that plus the fact that it was also only about 250 square feet and surrounded by pine trees and snow with a little creek rushing behind it. This was the first cabin in Government Camp built by the German master craftsman, Henry Steiner, in the late 1920s. He'd built it by hand, without the use of power tools, using the timber and stone he'd found on the land. He was so skilled, in fact, that when the Works Progress Administration decided to build the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in the mid-1930s, they had asked Henry to hand-hew the massive Douglas fir columns. He did it in just two weeks.

I took off my booties, flipped off my shoes, and pushed every switch and button I could find on the gas "wood stove" until it came on. The fake logs instantly glowed. I hung my wet clothes on hangers above the stove and placed my wet socks, gloves, and hat on the hearth. After I put my rice and beans into a pot of water, I played around with the various television remotes to see if I could get anything to come in. In keeping with the rustic conditions, it had nine hundred and some channels and the screen extended from the gas stove in the corner to the front door. All I could get was a message saying "No Signal." I was mostly relieved because I knew I'd just sit there all night watching stupid stuff while feeling bad about myself for not having the self-discipline to not sit there and watch stupid stuff. And with nine hundred channels, there was a lot of stuff to flip through just to confirm that it was generally all stupid and certainly not worth watching. What was it about modern technology anyway? Without it around me, I missed none of it. Not toasters or microwaves. Not my computer. Not indoor plumbing—well, maybe sometimes that. Definitely not television. But if it was in my face, it was hard to not want a little taste.

After dinner I pulled out the sofa bed, sipped chamomile tea, and watched the monotonous glow in the stove while holding an ice pack on my knee. Unfortunately, I picked up the remotes again and accidentally pressed the right buttons in the right order. Success. If you could call it that. For hours I lay there flipping through every channel with hope in my heart that the next one would dazzle my mind or stretch my imagination or move me to tears. By the time I got through them all without any of those things happening, a little mischievous voice said to me, "By now, there must be something new on some of those first channels." So back I went—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven...

Foggy-headed and hung over from one too many digital images, I woke up slowly and shuffled through my morning. I had no place to be and nothing I had to do. It was as if I were on vacation from being on vacation. Eventually, I got dressed and wandered a few blocks into the center of town to find a café for my second cup of coffee.

Monstrous, sometimes three-story, modern "cabins" swallowed up the handful of century-old, five hundred square-foot pioneer cabins that still stood defiantly well-maintained. To me, being jammed so close together reduced them to being just a place to stay. Had they each been on their own alpine hillside nestled among snow-covered pines, I would have been better able to appreciate their massive posts and beams, southern walls of glass, and long, steep roofs that stretched toward the ground. It was like having too many interesting, but loud, conversationalists packed into one room.

I sank into a soft couch at the High Mountain Café on the main street with a strong cup of coffee. Young, cheerleader-pretty women hustled behind the counter while groups of their peers decked out in colorful ski coats and hats came and went. Some stayed. Though it wasn't my kind of town, me not being a skier, or young (or hip), it seemed like a great place to vacation if you were.

Lounging on two couches near me were five glassy-eyed guys with their hoods up over brimmed caps on matted, curly locks that framed their five o'clock shadows. In between sips of coffee, two of them flipped through snowboarding magazines while another two played with their video recorders, sharing clips of each other flying off jumps through the air on their snowboards. Occasionally, they'd simultaneously burst out in laughter at something they saw. When their breakfast sandwiches came up, they leaned forward over the coffee table, ate, answered texts, and talked about last night's party. The one woman in their crew hadn't recovered yet. A small, puffy clump of white down, she lay curled up at the end of an adjacent couch with her head in her hands.

More young people came in. The chairs filled up. As the volume of voices rose, so did the background music. It was time for me to go. I retraced my steps, adding a few peeks into shops and a walk through the grocery store, where I bought milk and a few postcards before heading back up the hill to the cabin.

After an idle afternoon of drinking tea, looking at my maps, and icing my knee on the pullout couch, I gave in to the channel-flipping marathon in front of me. Wild animals ran through fields, physicists speculated on how the Earth began and how it may or may not end, Julia Roberts and Richard Gere sparked, John Wayne strutted. Clooney flashed his smile, college women played softball, Bigfoot "experts" walked through the woods in the dark night calling out to the hairy fellow, bull riders flew through the air, newscasters performed, all sorts of balls were kicked, swung at, and thrown. Horses raced, news...

...Dinner. Tea. Ice. Flipping.

*****

SQUIRREL TURD

One thing Robin and I did very well together was laugh. So I was thrilled that she was driving all the way from Bellingham to visit me for a few days. Sometimes the laughter got out of hand and I pulled some muscle in my stomach I didn't know I had, or my cheeks cramped and my eyes leaked. Once, maybe twice, some sort of liquid beverage went down the wrong pipe or forced its way back out between my unsuspecting lips. It was true that some of those laughs had been hops-induced, but even if we'd been sisters in a convent sewing closed the holes in our habits, Robin would have made my needle laugh off its point.

She was quick and always had a pocketfull of quirky, sometimes borderline raunchy sayings that had been, fortunately or unfortunately, passed down from her family. In a size-two soft voice coming from a sparkling, youthful face in the middle of a grocery store aisle, her sayings like, "Well that's nuttier than a squirrel turd" jolted me into a chuckle even when I knew it was coming. So, with my spirits high from this adventure and her chomping at the bit to start her summer vacation, we were guaranteed to laugh a lot. I hoped she had gotten an early start and would arrive soon.

I waited on the back steps. The sun had prevailed, finally, warming up the air and melting the snow into the creek, already rushing with melted snow. I pushed my short sleeves to the top of my shoulders, leaned back against the post, and closed my eyes. My knee still hurt. For a moment, it concerned me as I started to imagine the possibility of it not improving. What if I had injured it enough that I'd have to end it here? Or a few days from now? How would I get back? What if I pushed on and injured it for life? This hadn't made it onto my what-if list. But then, just as quickly as the worry came, it went. It would just be a new twist in the adventure and I would ride through it.

*****

ONLY THIRTEEN MILES

The first day of summer started off cloudy, as did my head. I hadn't slept well. I kept waking up parched but too lazy to get up and pour myself a glass of water. A day of coffee, strong beer, sunshine, and salty corn chips no doubt played into it. I'd been sucked dry. But my fogginess didn't last. Nor did the day's. By the time Robin and I rinsed off the breakfast dishes, changed our clothes, and filled up our water bottles, the sun had poked through a hole in the blanket of clouds and we were re-energized and eager to get up to Timberline Lodge.

The lodge was several miles from Government Camp, named for the forty-five cavalry wagons abandoned there by Lieutenant David Frost and the first U.S. Regiment of Mounted Riflemen in October, 1849. Litterbug. But they did have it rough. They got stuck in the mud and snow, half of their livestock had died, and Frost's men were headed for the same fate. Obviously, the sight of all those wagons of equipment was enough of a tourist attraction to have inspired a community to sprout, complete with cabins, a tavern, and, eventually, 80 years later, a ski resort.

We parked in the lot next to the lodge with one hundred other cars and marveled at mighty Mount Hood and the snowy views surrounding us. We walked up a gradual slope behind the lodge and over sets of ski tracks to a cluster of old grey scags, where we took dozens of pictures of the gnarly beauties. Out in full force, the sun soaked into my black wool shirt, and into me. In deep, long breaths, I sucked in the cool fresh air. Up on the mountain, an ant line of skiers and snowboarders trickled down the slope. Robin's alter ego, Sister Mary Helpful, suggested I not actually stand on the ski tracks as this was usually an indication of it being a popular skiing route, thus having a high probability of there being skiing traffic in the future. Possibly the near future. I supposed she had a point.

We soon agreed it was happy hour somewhere and headed inside to try out one the local brews that we'd seen on their Web page. We found the main entrance and slipped into the flow of tourists also going in. Under massive, hand-hewn beams we meandered down a hallway, admiring the paintings, sculptures, and old black-and-white photographs of workers and skiers. We peeked into the game room where the sun bounced off an old wooden shuffleboard and Ping-Pong table that had been seemingly sanded and shellacked so as to never ever degrade. We continued down the hall into the center room that opened upward like a cathedral. Built during the Great Depression as a way to give work to the unemployed, this grand chateaux made me feel like a mouse. The only thing human-sized were the chairs and tables in the dining room and the souvenir tee shirts in the gift shop. And every potential curve had been shaved flat and cut at a particular angle so as to butt up against another flat surface. Even the stack of rocks that formed the fireplace and chimney that protruded up through the high roof like an obelisk had been painstakingly chiseled into lines and sharp angles. As a person who was always trying to lighten her load and make things simpler, I was awestruck by the immeasurable effort that went into this magnificent structure. There, caught in time for all to see, were the sweat and blood of so many people, not to mention the hundreds of years of sunshine and rain it took to grow the trees and the billions of years of heaving and settling to birth the rock. I wondered if it weren't for the Works Progress Administration money that had funded the project if it would have been built at all. It just seemed over-the-top and perhaps not as important as, say, food. Nonetheless, I was certainly glad it had been built, as it was a beautiful reminder of what creativity, hard work, and cooperation could become.

After we toured the rest of the first floor, we climbed the steps to the restaurant and found the last available table against a south-facing window. While sipping our beer, we took in the view of snowy mountain peaks. Somewhere beyond the furthest one, if all went as planned, I'd be celebrating my halfway point at Crater Lake, 270 miles and six days away.

Having enjoyed our tour, we wandered back to the car and back down the mountain to the cabin where we found a bright patch of sun on the deck. In shorts and our bras we sat in canvas chairs, our legs stretched out on a footstool until the sun slipped behind the trees. A simple dinner of popcorn and a movie gave way to a restful night of sleep.

After breakfast and coffee, we packed our lunches, filled our water bottles, and laced up our hiking boots. We'd decided to hike around Timothy Lake, which was a scenic twenty-mile drive south. On the map the trail appeared to have almost no elevation gain, which would be easy on my knee.

We turned onto a narrow, paved road. Though I didn't know it yet, I would be traveling down this same road two more times in the near future. At the intersection where we had to turn to get to the lake, we pulled over and stopped next to a sleepy meadow. Acres and acres of soft green grasses blew in a gentle breeze. Down the middle cut a tiny creek that spread out into a wet marsh. Far on the other side, where the grass met the forested hill, was a tiny, weathered log cabin. After taking a few pictures, we continued down the road, passing a slew of campgrounds, one after the next, along the south lip of the lake. They all had names like Mountain View Campground and Lakeside Campground. After the last one, where the road met the dammed-up tip of the lake, was a dusty parking lot. We pulled in, read the parking rules sign, read it again, and parked. After checking that we had everything we needed, we put on our daypacks and walked to the trailhead. A sign read, "Timothy Lake Trail - 13 Miles." We decided to go counterclockwise through the campgrounds first to end with the more secluded section.

As we expected, the trail around the lake was mostly flat. I was glad. My knee was still sore and I was getting more concerned. The first mile or so of the "trail" was essentially a campground pathway between tents and campers. But in between the separate campgrounds the trail led through a more wild section of trees and underbrush and, sometimes, right along the water's edge. Shady coves curved in. Arms jutted out. Trunks of trees, completely submerged, lay on the shallow bottom. Old, splintered stumps stuck out. Canadian geese floated by.

Periodically we came to an intersection of trails and campground pathways where there were signs for this and that—a boat ramp, pay station, firewood. One sign, which appeared at every intersection, either was the result of a screwup at the sign factory or a mind-control experiment. Just like the very first sign at the trailhead, this one also read, "Timothy Lake Trail - 13 Miles." The first time we noticed it, we chuckled at the harmless error. After all, how did a person walk without covering any ground? The second time, we laughed and made some jokes. Two hours into the hike, with the day heating up, we played along and pretended to become disheartened to discover we still had thirteen miles to go. By late afternoon when we came to the last sign, where the trail met the road, almost in sight of Robin's car on the other side of the bridge that crossed over the dam, we started to question reality.

Fortunately, a string of fifty horses and riders loaded down with bulging canvas saddlebags came filing out of the woods and onto the road and jostled our wits back into place. Suddenly, we were either being invaded by Boy Scouts or church-camp kids, or the Mounted Riflemen were coming back for their wagons. One after the next, nose to tail to nose, the horses trudged up the hill on the edge of the road, their steel shoes clopping on the pavement. By the time we walked back to the car, the last few rumps of the trailing packhorses disappeared over the crest.

*****

GOLDILOCKS

It took a few hours to get settled in, but there I was, back at Timothy Lake after deciding to only go twenty miles for my first day. Once I got up and over Blue Box Pass I knew my knee would be fine. I just had to ease into it.

Though I got there quickly, I spent a long time trying to find a good place to camp. First I explored an area near the Pacific Crest Trail, but it felt too open. Then I tried Clackamas Meadow Campground, but that was too expensive. I started to feel like Goldilocks. Then I found a place next to, but not in, Timothy Lake Campground, which meant it was free. Not only did I need to get back on budget after all that vacationing with Robin, but there was just something romantically primal about reaching the end of the day and just bedding down for the night under a tree without having to pay for taking up space and breathing air.

I sat on my clothes pannier next to my tent, drinking cranberry tea in a cloud of mosquitoes that were more or less keeping to themselves. It felt so good to be back on the road and in the woods. Though I'd had a fun time with Robin, I was tired of television and beer and junk food. I had missed the woods—birdsong, the smell of pine, the sound of rushing water, my cozy tent, and, to my surprise, sleeping on the ground. With the last of the sunlight about to vanish and the air perfectly still and cooling off fast, I stared into dark forest. I could hardly wait for tomorrow.

*****

IF SASQUATCH LIVES

I'd just had one of the best rides of my trip from Timothy Lake on Route 42 to the Clackamas River where 42 intersected Rt. 46, and then on 46 to Detroit alongside the Breitenbush River. The roads were smooth and the climbs moderate. And the downhills were windy and fast. With hardly a car to worry about, I lost myself in the trees—big trees and sparse underbrush—which allowed me to see far back into the forest. At one point, near Red Box at four thousand feet, I saw Mount Hood in my rearview mirror and another high snow-covered peak in front of me. Was it Mount Jefferson or Mount Washington? Just then, I heard a sudden movement in the woods and looked to my left. I expected to see a deer, but it was bigger than a deer and didn't have that bounce to it. Maybe it was a bear. Or, as I let my mind go wild, maybe it was Bigfoot. That stupid television show I flipped past at the cabin a few nights earlier must have stuck with me, because for the next few miles, from the false security of my bike, I kept thinking about it and wondering what it would be like to see one. Would my heart stop or pound out of my chest? Would I run? For me, there's no question that they exist. Too many people have seen them up close. I just didn't want to personally have it proven to me while alone in my tent in the middle of the night. Bears are scary enough walking around your camp looking for that crumb you dropped. But, Bigfoot? No thanks. Like most things big, hairy, and smelly, I preferred to encounter them from the other side of a television screen. However, I concluded, as I rode up that road, if Bigfoot did exist, he lived among big trees and big rivers in big mountains. Just like these.

The last seventeen miles to Detroit dropped me down two thousand feet. Glorious. Maybe it was that I felt relieved that my knee was okay, or that I was back on the road and in the wilderness, or that it was just a wonderful ride through magnificent beauty, but the closer I got to Detroit, the more I wanted to celebrate—yes, as in, a light cold beer in the hot sun. The first place I came to had a herd of Harleys parked out front. As much as I wanted to go in, I didn't want to go in. Across the street was a pizza place with a beer sign in the window and outdoor tables. Perfect. I coasted into the lot, leaned my bike against the picket fence and trotted inside. There were a couple of people ahead of me so I turned on my phone to check for text messages. I immediately started composing one in my head that I'd send to Robin when I sat down with my beer. "If Sasquatch lives, he lives here!" I knew she'd get a chuckle out of it.

"May I help you?" the young woman asked.

"Uh, yeah. Uh," I uttered as I was distracted by the front page of the newspaper on the counter. I grabbed a copy and asked what kind of beer they had.

"Bud, Bud Light, Coors Light, Corona."

Holy crap! The headline read: "Camera Crews Come To Detroit To Interview Area Residents About Bigfoot Sightings."

"Corona. Please." I handed over a five-dollar bill while another woman in the back poured my beer into a chilled glass and brought it to the counter. With my beer and the six-page paper in hand, I walked outside and found a seat in the sun. Both excited at the thought of actually being in Bigfoot country and somewhat disturbed by just how thin the walls of my tent actually were, my eyes soaked up every letter in the article. Apparently, there had been a few recent sightings by the sort of people you'd want to trust. Psychologist/teacher/firefighter types. You know, people who weren't wacky, generally. I tried to imagine the thrill of seeing such a creature, minding its own business, of course, hundreds of yards away on the other side of a deep river. Or, of hearing its other-worldly screams bounce off the walls of a deep ravine in the night. Okay, maybe not that. I gulped the last of my refreshing beer and promptly put the elusive biped out of my mind and into a lockbox along with the rattlesnakes, cougars, and, just in case my friend back in Bellingham was right, psychopaths.

Just a mile up the road I found a great place to camp next to the Detroit River. It was off a side road near a bridge and had clearly been used as a campsite before. The fire ring encircled two half-burned logs. Candy-bar wrappers stuck up between rocks. Worn paths led into the woods where decomposing toilet paper dotted the bases of trees. It wasn't an official campground, but I was pretty sure if they let litterbugs sleep in these woods, then I could, too.

I set up my tent on a mostly sandy spot next to a three-foot diameter fallen tree that stretched halfway across the river. The sound of the rushing water must've drowned out the Bigfoot screams echoing through the valley during the night. I knew this because I kept waking up having to roll over yet again to ease an ache in my back, only to hear the roaring river. Maybe I'd ridden too far the day before. Or maybe it was the rock under my tent. Either way, by morning, I was still tired.

Nestled in my warm sleeping bag, I thought for sure I had awakened to an overcast day, but when I unzipped the door and peered out, it was just that the sun hadn't yet risen above the ridge. In minutes though, it rose up into view with a blast, and I knew it would be another hot one. I made breakfast, filtered water for the road, and had a nice conversation with a ground squirrel who tried to get into my tent and another one with a robin who was looking for a handout. They both cocked their heads and listened quite attentively to what I had to say—first, about respecting my gear and then, how human food was bad for wild animals. They turned and left without saying a word.

According to my map, I had a long thirty-nine-mile climb ahead of me to the top of Santiam Pass and then a fast nine-mile ride down the other side to Indian Ford Campground. I'd been worried about Santiam Pass for days. Not just because I wasn't sure how to pronounce it and thought I might be punished by Santiam's forebearers for that, but because it looked so punishing on my map. The little green graph kept going up and up. There was a bit of relief for a few miles at 3,700 feet, but then it continued its grueling ascent. So, I fueled up.

Once on the road, it only took me a few miles to realize it was a Sunday. Not because I'd looked at my phone or noticed packed church parking lots. It was that nearly every vehicle that passed me was either an RV, a motorcycle with a pack and tent strapped to the back, a pickup truck stuffed with coolers and bikes and towing a trailer loaded with an ATV or a motorboat, or a car stuffed with sleeping bags and pillows and bikes or canoes tied to the roof. It was the last weekend in June and the end of the first weekend of summer vacation for the kids. Every family in central Oregon had gone camping somewhere in the Willamette National Forest (poor Bigfoot) and now they were heading back home, all at the same time. There would be no daydreaming on the shoulder for me.

It was somewhere between Bugaboo Creek and Lynx Creek that I realized I'd been reading my map wrong for the last 640 miles. Well, not wrong exactly. Just without paying attention to all of the details. Apparently, when figuring my stops and starts for the coming days, I had relied upon the pretty green graph printed above the bird's-eye view of the identical route, which was there to inform me of the climbing (or coasting) I could expect. The x-axis indicated the miles and the y-axis showed the elevation. Some days had looked easier than others, although I never did look back on it to see if it matched my actual experience. Often, I'd look at my map during a break and have some mental or emotional reaction to what the pretty green graph was telling me. If it looked steep for a long time, I'd psych myself up for a slow, long haul the way an amateur, first-time marathon runner might. If the graph showed a lot of jagged ups and downs, I'd approached it more like a district-championship softball game, where you couldn't exactly chase butterflies in right field, but could mentally relax a little between hills.

So there I was, pulled off to the side of the RV-truck-boat-bike parade, guzzling some water, when I stared at the Santiam marathon in front of me. And then I saw it. I saw it as keenly as if I had been the graphic designer at the map company. Each segment of my bird's-eye route was six inches across. The x-axis of the pretty green graph, however, was sometimes thirty-three miles across and sometimes twenty-four. And the y-axis was sometimes divided up in two hundred-foot increments and sometimes one thousand-foot increments. My lesson: Numbers matter. And fear, whether of maps or hairy hominids, often turned out to be a waste of energy. In this case, Santiam Pass, though still a respectable climb, would not kill me.

With less anxiety, but a slightly tired butt, I mounted my freedom float and continued climbing through vast patches of charcoal trunks sticking up through thick brush where a fire had raged years earlier. I got into a steady rhythm, even though it was slow, and felt strong right on up to the top, over, down, and almost all the way to Indian Ford. Perhaps it was because of the heat and the psychology of maps, or maybe I had been punished for not pronouncing "Santiam" correctly, but I only had so many turns of my pedals left in me.

*****

ALI'S SIBERIAN BRIDE

The sign for Indian Ford Campground appeared just in time. Every last one of my calories had been tossed into the furnace. I was a wilted weed in a Mojave drought. I rolled up to the self-pay station, took an envelope, found a site next to a creek, and, drunk on pure sunshine, weaved my way back to the entrance to put my money in the slot. I found a shortcut back to my site through prickly bushes. I don't remember what I did next. Presumably, I set up my tent and started soaking my dinner after I'd filtered some water from the creek.

Tall Ponderosa pine dressed in smooth, paramecium-patterned, reddish bark gowns towered around my site. Their large cones scattered beneath them on a thick carpet of long, dry needles. Who knew just how many layers of needles lay beneath my feet? The terrain had changed quickly as soon as I'd gotten over the pass. The forests were more sparse. Dryer. Yet sweeter. I didn't know why, but it surprised me. I'd always expected a dry terrain to smell like nothing, or at most, like old dust. But instead, it smelled like growth. And the opposite seemed to be true of the west side of the mountains, especially in the far Northwest, where wet, dense forests, thick with life, smelled like decay.

I lay on the picnic table for a while, looking up into the circular patch of hazy blue sky between the treetops. It had been a clear blue color in the morning before the chemtrails appeared, spreading outward until the sky was a white veil. Three new ones appeared before I mustered up the energy to assemble my stove. For me, like Bigfoot and radiation poisoning, the spraying of chemicals from the butt ends of planes was real. My eyes and my memory were all the science I needed. These white lines that crisscrossed the sky and remained for hours did not happen when I was a kid. And now they do. I didn't need to know why.

Dinner was a hit. I'd bought a chunk of cheddar cheese in Detroit and discovered that when you slice forty-seven pounds of it into your hot pot of rice and beans it turned into a chunky cheese fondue. No human really needed that much herbicidal-pesticidal-genetically-modified-corn-fed-growth-hormonized cow-milk product. But it was _so_ good. And besides, I needed to use it up before it went completely limp. At my picnic table set for a queen (clean spoon and a pinecone centerpiece), I dipped my featherweight, dehydrated bread pieces into my pseudo-Mexican slop. In my imagination, I added salsa, cilantro, and a squeeze of lime. It was over-the-top. The feast certainly sobered me up enough to take a short walk around the campground but not enough to walk in a straight line. Those huge pinecones had been scattered everywhere I was about to step, mostly lying on their sides, but sometimes standing upright. I thought about this for a moment, and, thinking that a moment was long enough, proclaimed to fully understand the lifecycle of the Ponderosa pine. It happened, this burst of sudden knowing, because I happened upon a little shoot of a new tree bursting out of the needle-covered ground. It looked as if it had taken root from one of those upright cones. I thought, "Of course!" That's why the tree needed to drop so many of them—as if the tree were a male dropping his seed. The chances of one of them falling and landing upright had to be quite slim, I continued theorizing. But when they did land upright, the miracle of tree life began. "Amazing!" I was so pleased with my scientific discovery that when I returned to my campsite, I proceeded to pick up all of the unlucky cones that had, by no fault of their own, landed on their sides, and I twisted their little butts into the ground so they could someday become one of those towering trees, too. It would be another two months until I learned about the actual role that pinecones play in the propagation of conifers. It turns out that reproduction is a tad more complicated than the posture of the cone. Nonetheless, that evening under the pines, I was thoroughly entertained by my wonderment and false discovery.

After a cup of chamomile tea, I crawled into my sleeping bag. In a matter of minutes, the rush of cars on the nearby road began sounding like a mountain river and lulled me to sleep.

At 3,300 feet, I woke up early because I was cold. After reviewing my dreams and peeing, I was consumed by the thought of now having camp coffee, as a caffeine addict will do. It was only because I knew I now had some that my brain set off the alarms. Coffee, coffee, coffee! I was glad I'd planned it that way—that the food box Robin brought to Government Camp would include my first bag of coffee. My logic, as you might recall, was that I'd drink tea instead of coffee because it was so much lighter. A week or so before my departure as I was packing my food boxes, I decided that the idea was absurd. After all, besides an adventure, this was also a vacation and who deliberately deprived themselves of life's simple pleasures on an adventure-vacation? So, I decided that by the time I made it up and over six passes I should be able to handle eight extra ounces. So in my last four food boxes I stashed one super-duper-strength cup per day's worth of Tony's Organic French Roast from Bellingham.

The sun was only halfway up behind those glorious Ponderosas when I saw the first two chemtrails of the day. I wrote down my most vivid dream, which was one of those weird ones I sometimes had about running through a field with four legs instead of two. Both my front and back feet clutched and then released the grass as I ran, as I imagined a cat paw might do. The rhythm of my four legs working together—pulling with my front ones and pushing with my back—gave me a heightened sense of balance and being connected to the ground.

After rice and beans and eggs for breakfast, I packed up and headed on down the road, six miles to Sisters. It was just as cute and vibrant as I'd thought it would be. And though it did look like a real western town and smelled like a real western town, when you lifted up the corner of the café rug you saw tourist-funded restorations, tourist-driven art and culture, and tourist-behind-the-wheel traffic. But it didn't keep me from having an authentic exchange with Odisya, the owner of Ali's Café. I chose her café over Huckleberry's across the parking lot only because of their names. I associated Ali's with some Sufi poem I liked about The Friend, and I guess at that moment it won out over the thought of jam or muffins or whatever one made with huckleberries. Imagine that. Poetry over food.

Odisya was from Siberia, which, to me, was almost the same as saying someone was from Earth. Where in Siberia exactly, I didn't know. I never found out. The point was not that she was from Siberia but that she was from somewhere cold and far away where she'd met her now husband, who had brought her back here to Sisters twenty-some years ago. Barely five feet tall, she wore silky fabrics with elaborate designs in rich greens and purples. Dark strands of her wavy hair wrapped around long silver earrings. With a thick Siberian accent (I smartly surmised), she talked in words per second as if she'd learned at a young age that the friction of her lips moving would raise her body temperature enough to survive the walk to her mailbox and back. With a hunger in her dark eyes, she asked me just enough to get the gist of my adventure and then she lovingly lit into me. She told me that life was not about money, but about being happy, that she loved being alone like me because people took your energy, and that she wanted to be free like me, but that she had to run the café. Then, two more times she told me that life was not about money. I would have stayed longer, as she was such a delight, but I was at risk of catching on fire. I thanked her and wished her well. As I walked out the door, she blessed me and told me that she loved me.

*****

ALL-WEATHER WOOL

It was hot, I had put in a strong day, and I was in a town that was known for its brewpubs: Bend. I rolled into Tumalo State Park, six or seven miles out of town, rejoiced at the five-dollar hiker/biker sites, set up camp, and headed into town to see what trouble I could find. Just as I entered the thick, strip-mall skin of town, presumably protecting a golden heart from two-wheel, rubber-soled bohemians, I rode through a pile of glass. I couldn't have helped it. Cars were passing on the left. A storm drain was on the right. As soon as I went through it I thought, "flat." Half a block later, my back tire got spongy and that was that. Amazingly, the culprit was a pushy nail that had elbowed its way through all those shards. I stopped at the next light and walked onto the sidewalk. Twenty feet ahead was a bus stop where a woman looked to be waiting. I asked her when the next bus was coming and it pulled up behind me. I hoisted my bike onto the front rack, got on, paid the fare, sat down, and thought, "What a perfect place this was to get all the information I needed." I fired off my questions into the air like bird shot. Where did this bus go? Where was the bike shop? Where was the best brewpub? Everyone on the bus wanted to help me find my way. They all clamored at once. One guy wasn't sure what I meant by "brewpub," but he liked the sports bar down the street because "they always had the game on." I gleaned more about every bus route, every bike shop and every place to get a beer in Bend than I would ever need to know. As luck would have it, this particular bus went straight to the station, which happened to be right across the street from a bike shop and only several blocks from one of the popular brewpubs out of a dozen to choose from. What 77,000-person town needs twelve brewpubs? My guess was that they also had a coffee shop on every corner to help with those rough mornings. My tire was repaired and I'd finished my first beer in the time it would have taken for me to fix the flat myself, ride into town, and aimlessly wander around looking for fellow beer snobs to show me the way. No doubt I would have still been roaming around looking for the Bend Brewing Company. Timing was everything.

Just like the bike mechanic had said, the masters at BBC did craft a good brew. I nursed one, then another, while I wrote, absorbing the room. Conversations wove together. Servers swerved between tables and patrons. The late afternoon sun poured in through the windows. Just a stranger passing through, dirty and sunburned, I knew no one in that pub as I sat there writing. And yet, I felt as if I'd met everyone in the room dozens of times on the road. I recognized the cheer in their faces. "For as unique as every person is," I wrote, "people are people. They thrive on happiness and just want to be free to do what makes them happy."

I found a shortcut back to the campground and was relieved to not have to deal with mall-land traffic and nails hidden in piles of glass. After a refreshing shower, I sat at my picnic table. Birds sang. Kids played on the hill behind my site. I sat there for a long time and watched a storm blow in as the sun began to set. The play of light behind swirling dark clouds created sharp contrasts on the horizon. Through my camera lens, silhouettes of distant pine trees framed the view. I couldn't take enough pictures to keep it from slipping away. I didn't know whether or not this coming storm was the result of man-made cloud-seeding, but in that moment I didn't care. Beauty was beauty. I put on an extra layer and crawled into my tent for the night. Soon after I turned off my reading light I heard the rumble of distant thunder.

The slow-moving storm took an hour to pass through, hovering over me with an intensity I hadn't experienced in years. Periodically throughout the night, I woke up to raindrops gently patting my tent. By morning the rain had stopped, though the sky was still cloudy. I lingered in my tent a while before getting up. The birds seemed to be revved up about something as they called back and forth at the top of their little bird lungs.

By the time I got to sipping coffee at the picnic table, the birds had softened their tone and dropped down a few decibels. Two tiny ones played what looked like a love game in the tree behind me while my fellow campers walked to and from the bathroom. I moved to the other side of the table to see the birds better and noticed that they had a nest above my tent. I also noticed that my neighbor wore her pink fuzzy bathrobe and slippers when she went camping. I smiled. She smiled back. Mama bird seemed agitated. I couldn't tell if she was mad at me for being too close or mad at her mate. He kept flying to the nest where she was and then she'd jump at him and he'd take off again. Finally, he got the message and stayed put on a fence post twenty feet away. They sang some sweet song to each other, back and forth.

Nervous about the ride ahead of me, I got on the road in a hurry and guessed my way to the right road that would take me past Mount Bachelor to Lava Lake. It wasn't the steepness of it that made me nervous. I'd had plenty of steep climbs at this point. It was the fact that I'd get as high as six thousand feet, my highest elevation yet, and by day's end I'd only get down to five thousand feet. It would be cold. I didn't enjoy being cold. That was the reason Robin had to pry that second wool sweater out of my hand in Diamond Jim's parking lot moments before my departure. But worse than being cold was being afraid of being cold. The mind, at least mine, was an expert exaggerator. It could take any reality and turn it into a full-blown fantasy. Like a laser beam, it could focus in on one cell of a fact and agitate its mitochondria into a star.

And as I feared, Mount Bachelor was heartless. Usually, I could at least get to the top of a pass before I'd have to put on my gloves and hat, another layer of wool, and rain gear for the frigid ride down, but this time I had to stop miles before that to bundle up. Patches of snow became white hillsides. At the same time I reached the top of the pass, I met the bottom of the clouds. Storm clouds. I couldn't see anything except the road and ten feet of snow to my left and right with tips of trees sticking out in crystallized air. I had no time to worry about the temperature. My job was to get off the mountain. On down I went. The cold air pulled tears out of the corners of my eyes. That darn end of my helmet strap slapped a spastic rhythm against my ear. With numb fingers I pulled on the brake levers every few seconds. Tiny snowflakes flew in all directions as I passed by picturesque alpine lakes. I hoped my rear flashing red light was working as pickup trucks towing fishing boats passed me by at more knots than a spinner-chasing trout. Why anyone would choose to float around a frigid lake conjuring up the tall tales they'd tell if they made it home unfrozen was beyond me. It didn't take long before I descended out of the clouds and the snow. My fingers were still numb but wouldn't be for long. I visualized my heart sending warm blood down my arms and into my hands. Presto. In minutes they felt normal again. Sadly, thoughts of warm blood could not lessen my anxiety about sleeping in snow. Although merely going down helped me to relax.

I didn't know for sure if the campsite I stopped at was on Lava Lake or not—my intention—but the fact that the fire pit was not under three feet of snow like the others I'd passed gave me hope. It was still early, just two o'clock, and I could have ridden further. As I stood there, unable to decide what to do, the camp host came by. Maybe the worry I saw in his brow was my own reflected back, but he immediately offered me a free site sheltered from the wind. When I said I might push on to the next lake, he warned that it would likely be a little colder there, adding that it was thirty-four degrees when he'd gotten up that morning. That was all I needed to hear. I decided to stay. I had plenty of time to set up my tent so I walked a few hundred feet to see the lake. Despite it being the most beautiful lake on the planet, I stayed for nine seconds, just long enough to take three pictures. Cold air blew across the even colder water and nearly bit my face off.

I soaked my beans and rice right away as I set up camp. A hot meal would help warm me up. Unfortunately, a hot meal required fire and fire required pressurized fuel and pressurized fuel required properly working O-rings in the pump mechanism in my stove. Somewhere between my morning coffee and here, my stove had broken. I fiddled with the stupid thing just long enough to determine I'd be having cold beans and rice for dinner. Because I was hungry, it wasn't half bad. Warmed by the irony of this mysterious lack of fire on the coldest evening of my trip, I fretted for almost two full seconds about not being able to have hot chocolate. Oh well. As I watched the clock on my phone climb to six, I decided there was no good reason for me to sit at my picnic table and ponder the beauty of the stubby alpine trees for the next three and a half hours until the sun went down. I'd leave that to the tee-shirt-flaunting fisherman roasting hot dogs over his roaring fire with his grandson four sites over. I crawled into my frigid tent, snuggled into my mummy bag, and pulled the string taught until only my lips and nose were exposed.

Eleven hours later I woke to birdcalls and raindrops delicately tapping on my tent. Knowing it was likely ten degrees colder outside, I ignored my bladder for as long as possible. Insane fishermen were already starting their electric motors and heading out onto the lake. When I couldn't squeeze my legs together any tighter, I adjusted my wool hat and ventured out into the last day of June that wasn't nearly as cold as I'd feared.

With a broken stove, breakfast was easy—two energy bars and some kefir. Getting out of camp was easy, too. I was on the road by seven thirty. And it was a good thing I got an early start because, as it turned out, the weather was a seesaw that I'd be riding for half the day. I began dressed in all the layers of silk and wool I had under my rain gear, as it was still misty and chilly. Then the sun popped out. I rode until I started to sweat and then stopped and took off a layer. When clouds blew through, I stopped again to add a layer. On and on this went. Sometimes I took off two layers and a couple of miles later put on one. Between costume changes and all of my pee and snack stops, it was a miracle that my brake pads didn't wear down to metal.

Had I paid more attention to the scenery and the effort being made by the weather gods to get me to stop, I would have stayed an extra night. It truly was a spectacular stretch of road. As its name suggested—the Cascade Lakes Highway—there were several pristine mountain lakes laced with campgrounds that I imagined to be rustic and lightly used. But I pushed on and by midday I'd left the chilly land of lakes and was back on a warm Route 97—the same straight, flat highway that I'd first experienced on day four with Alan along the young Columbia River. Only this time, instead of a headwind, I had a tailwind. Thrilled by this extra push _and_ a hot sun, I sailed along, stripped down to just shorts and a sleeveless shirt, fast enough to catch the draft of eighteen-wheelers flying by.

Before I could count to ten, I was at a ranger station just north of Chemult waiting for the friendly ranger to finish with a phone call. She had clearly mastered the art of patience as she happily answered every question a potential tourist could come up with before the summer was over. I wandered around looking at maps and books, used the bathroom even though I didn't have to go, and then looked more carefully at the maps and books in case they'd been replaced with new editions while I was in the bathroom. Finally, I could tell the phone caller had either run out of questions or was threatened at gunpoint by a burglar. Before the ranger said good-bye, she reminded the caller not to forget bug spray as the mosquitoes tended to be aggressive. In my anticipation of having it finally be my turn to play Ask The Ranger, that last piece of advice buzzed right by my ear.

At first I thought it was my unlucky day because the ranger informed me that I'd already passed the campground I'd wanted to investigate. But instead, it was my lucky day because she offered me the entire Walt Haring Sno-Park (that's how they spelled it...still don't kno why) for free since it was off-season and they hadn't had a chance to tidy it up. Although they had turned on the water, she assured me. When I rode into the park, just a half mile or so up a dirt road from the ranger station, I couldn't help noticing how tidy it was. Perhaps I'd find garbage in the pit toilets that had been strewn about by lazy cross-country skiers. Nope. Maybe tree branches and unsightly twigs had been scattered on the ground in the designated campsites. Nope. And then I figured out what she meant. Instead of dry, dusty dirt, the ground was actually covered in a thick layer of mosquito poop and they hadn't had the time to sweep it off the mountain.

A cloud of nickel-sized mosquitoes followed me like the paparazzi followed Princess Di. I usually refrained from killing insects unless they actually bit down hard or drew blood, and even then, I'd first try to deter them by putting on more clothing or threatening them with the heel of a shoe. Occasionally, I'd just ignore them the way some boys pretended not to hear when bullies called out "Fag." I tried this tactic first. But they realized I was just playing a head game and persisted. Then I put on my cargo pants and a long-sleeved wool shirt despite it being eighty-three degrees. They laughed and sharpened their needle noses. Then I put on a fleece top, zipping it up to my chin, and wrapped a bandana around my head like a Czech grandmother. They took a minute to regroup and sent in a drilling brigade to attack the tops of my hands and forehead. I gave up and unloaded my gear. Every so many punctures I stopped what I was doing and clapped my hands like a walrus just to see how many I could get without even aiming. Dozens.

I set up my tent as far from the dirt road as possible behind a scraggly bush next to the picnic table. The park itself was very secluded, but still, if I had chosen one of the campsites closer to the parking lot, I'd be easy to see by any one of the zillion fishermen driving down the dirt road to Miller Lake, and especially to anyone who pulled into the park to use the toilet. I figured there was nothing wrong with not wanting to advertise to a prospective opportunist that I was a lone female in a big, empty sno park. My mother would certainly not think less of me if I took precautions.

It was still early by the time I finished setting up so I decided to hike to town on the dogsled trail through the woods about which the ranger had told me. Still unsure of my surroundings and whether or not the ranger would send others up here too, I hid my panniers thirty feet away in thick brush under a memorable tree.

The dogsled trail paralleled Route 97 high up on a hill and then dropped down all at once to town level. Along the edge of the woods, I soon passed behind modular homes where old trucks and riding lawn mowers sat next to rusty metal sheds. Occasionally there would be some kind of white appliance in high grass and a pit bull, or pit-bull mix, tied to a doghouse at the center of a bare dirt circle. When I came to a huge empty gravel lot, I turned left onto another dirt road and headed into "town." A large travel center bustled with truckers and the people who worked to accommodate them. Tractor trailer trucks surrounded the building like a gang of thieves. Gas pumps under high roofs were on one side and pumps under lower roofs were on the other. Presumably, average car-driving tourists stopped here too, but essentially, Chemult was a truck stop, showers and all. Lining the road was KJ's Café, a tiny convenience store, a Laundromat and gift shop, Loree's Chalet Restaurant and Lounge, and several other businesses having to do with either gas, food, or alcohol. My first stop was the travel center where I used the bathroom and perused the shelves for anything I might need. I was out of bread, but they only had white bread and I preferred nutrition. Cheddar cheese would have been a treat, but it was a million dollars. I did see a few different kinds of insect repellent, but it came in family-size buckets and was pure DEET. Other than that, I only saw chips, pretzels, candy bars, soda, and hemorrhoid cream. I decided to go across the street to see if the convenience store was more like a real grocery store. As I waited for a lull in the truck traffic, I envisioned fresh, organic produce and locally made goat cheese. I opened the door and sighed. It was smaller than the truck-stop bathroom. It had three shelves and two little refrigerators. Upon glancing at their stock I wanted to shake the clerk by his shoulders and say, "Don't you realize you could actually compete with the big travel center if you carried different things?" But I didn't. Instead, I carefully inspected the three shelves over and over, walking every square inch of floor again and again, hoping, praying to find something I could buy without taking out a second mortgage on my tent. The clerk must have thought I was waiting for my get-away car to pull up before I flashed my .38 Special and demanded all twelve dollars from his register. Finally, I chose a loaf of not-quite-white bread that had a few whole-wheat dust particles sprinkled on top and a small block of cheddar cheese that was also expensive but was at least a brand I liked. On my way to the register I happened, again, to see a shelf of insect repellent. And again, I couldn't bring myself to buy so much of it that they'd have to evacuate an entire town should I run over a bolt, veer off the road into a tree, and split open the vessel. Mostly though, I didn't want to lug around the extra weight or bathe myself in concentrated poison. I preferred my poison to secretly invade me without my knowing so as to avoid all that pesky guilt.

I continued walking down the road to the combo Laundromat-gift shop. The laundering portion was locked and the gift shop was having a going-out-of-business sale. No one was inside. Not even the shopkeeper. On the outside wall next to the door was a sign saying that showers were around back. I didn't investigate, but planned to come back the next day to take a hot one and wash away the mosquito saliva. A little further down the road was Loree's Chalet. It was only four thirty, so it made sense that there were only two cars in the parking lot. No doubt, the dinner crowd would come streaming in soon. I entered the dark chalet, startling the waitress out of her chair. She asked me where I'd like to sit, the restaurant section or the lounge. I chose the lounge for no other reason than there was no one in the restaurant area to stare at and make uncomfortable as I wrote in my journal. I followed the waitress, a plump older woman well past retirement age, into the adjacent room, which was also dark and void of customers. I chose an oversized horseshoe booth facing a television hanging from the ceiling at the end of the bar that spewed out canned laughter every few seconds. After the waitress took my order and put in her required number of visits to my table, she sat down and folded napkins while glancing up at the screen every third fold. I took my good old time drinking down two pale ales and eating a two-dollar side of fries.

With the late-day sun shining through pine branches, I walked back to camp while casually flicking away mosquitoes. When I reached the end (or beginning) of the dogsled trail, I saw that another cyclist had arrived and was setting up his camp not too far from mine. I was both relieved and disappointed. I liked being alone in seclusion, but I also slept better if there was someone else sort of close by with whom to share the seclusion. I walked over to his site to introduce myself as he was hanging clothes on a line stretched between two trees. Steve was his name. Nice enough guy. Maybe a little awkward. Or maybe I looked strange in my mosquito armor of winter clothing and babushka, which caused him to be wary, which I interpreted as awkward. It didn't matter. After a polite amount of small talk as I more formally flicked away mosquitoes, he said he needed to make dinner. So did I.

I retrieved my food pannier from under the bushes and found a bag of rice of beans to soak. I'd already burned off the calories from the fries just walking back and was hungry. Until my dinner became sufficiently saturated, I decided to try fixing my stove. The directions for replacing the O-ring sounded easy enough, and, after a few tries, I actually succeeded. Unfortunately, the O-ring was not the only problem, if it had been a problem at all. It still didn't work. At least I had bread and cheese to make up for the lack of heat. And, at least I had two arms—one to shovel in my slop and the other to perpetually wave around my head and face. After I rinsed my pot and just seconds before I lost my sanity, I sprinted into my tent. The dance one must do to enter a tent without letting mosquitoes in is part jitterbug and part seizure, and requires a thick skin to deflect the laughter sound waves coming from nearby campsites. On this evening, I was in luck because Steve, obviously drenched in DEET, had his back to me.

*****

BURL

I woke to a weird animal call right outside my tent. It sounded like a cross between a bird and a bullfrog. It seemed to be saying, "Lizard. Lizard. Lizard." Over and over. By the time I reached for my recorder, which I'd brought for this very sort of occasion, it was gone. I didn't hear it fly or run. It was just gone.

The air seemed cold, though I was quite warm in my sleeping bag. I unzipped the tent flap to stick out my arm and saw a thick, glowing fog with bright shafts of first light streaming through tree trunks and branches. And it was cold. I put on more layers and crawled out of my tent to check the thermometer. Thirty-six degrees. That surprised me as I knew it would be in the high eighties again by the afternoon. Fifty degrees seemed like a big jump for half a day. By the time the fog slipped away and the full sun burst above the trees in a cloudless blue sky, I could feel the mercury rising in me. I figured I had just a few hours before it would be an inferno under my wool armor.

Without a working stove my morning ritual got thrown off. I chewed on some dried eggs and a chunk of cheese and hightailed it to KJ's Café where I encountered my first not-exactly-happy waitress of the trip, drank far too many cups of weak coffee, and wrote down my dreams:

In the first dream I heard footsteps outside my tent. I thought it might be real, but soon figured out I was dreaming. A man was trying to figure out how to get into my tent. I was scared and so groggy that I couldn't speak. I kept trying, but nothing would come out of my mouth. Then, he reached into my tent and began to lift me up and carry me away. Finally, I was able to say, "What do you want?" He said, "You." I said, "Go away!" He did and I jolted awake. When I thought about it, he'd reached in very gently. I'd just assumed he was going to hurt me.

In another dream, I was outside standing next to a horse pasture. A male squirrel chased a female squirrel into the pasture and riled up the horse, which then tried to stomp on it. In doing so, the horse hurt its hoof and immediately lay down. Suddenly, I was inside a house and a woman looking out the window saw all of this happening and she yelled, horrified, that the horse was dead! Just like that. Stone dead. I was also shocked and went outside to see. Kneeling at the horse's head, I started to cry and said something like, "No, you can't be dead! I want you to live!" And all of a sudden, she came back to life. She stood up and came over to me. I was so happy she was alive again.

The cranky waitress couldn't shake her mood as I wolfed down a generous bowl of oatmeal and a plate of butter-soaked toast. Since I was ahead of schedule, I decided to take the day off from riding. Instead, I planned to investigate my showering options, find an outlet to charge my phone, and hike to Miller Lake—a straightforward, manageable task list for the day, I thought. I paid my bill and set out to see about those showers behind the Laundromat.

The showers themselves were broken, but the bathroom sink was a fine substitute, not to mention I saved seventy-five cents. Outlets were easy to find, though not always in a place a person would naturally sit around and wait. So I settled for a partially charged phone, which would likely get me through the next day. And Miller Lake—well, it was out there somewhere, but the trail I was on didn't go there. Despite my reading the color-coded map of the trail system painted on a big sign at the end of the parking lot three different times, I had gone left when I should have gone right. Or maybe it was the other way around. I blamed it on the mosquitoes—distracting buggers.

At one point, I started jogging to get away from them. It worked, except that I nearly self-combusted under my layers of wool and fleece. By the time I guessed my way back to camp, I must have spent all of my energy trying to cool off because all I could think about was taking a nap. Fortunately, Walt Haring had been born in 1910 and lived a life in which he grew to love, and support others in their love for, winter sports so much that the local community built and dedicated a cool, mosquito-proof log cabin near the entrance of the park, which was kept unlocked for anyone's use.

On my back, I lay on the hard picnic table under the cabin's smooth log rafters. A big woodstove with a kid-deterrent railing around it sat a few feet from the east wall. I imagined it was quite a scene in there in the winter, packed full of tired, happy people hanging wet clothes on the crossbeams and clamoring on about their exciting day playing in the snow as they tried to squeeze in closer to the stove.

If it hadn't been for a carful of people that pulled in next to the toilets, I'd still be sleeping there. Holding onto my groggy peace, I figured I'd be able to drift back asleep when they left. Then a diesel truck pulled in. Apparently, it was pee time, only I had no liquid left in me and missed the call. I sat up and thought long and hard about how to fill up the rest of the day. It was only three thirty and all I could think about was sleeping. As I watched a chipmunk run back and forth along the top of a crossbeam, it occurred to me that I might be bored, or dehydrated, which were two very different things. Since I had no inclination to do anything, the perfect antidote for boredom, I decided to start with going back to camp to drink some water. That was when a beautiful tree about a hundred yards away caught my eye and lured me in.

She was just as beautiful up close. This big old lone ponderosa pine—the only one her width and height in the area—had had a problem somewhere along the line. About four feet up from the ground was a fat burl wider than her trunk that hung from her like a breast. There was another big knot fifteen feet up. At twenty-five feet, she took a sharp twist to the right before going straight up again. It was the kind of thing trees did to get around obstacles like other trees or a boulder that jutted out. But there was nothing like that even near this tree. Maybe there had been years ago, or maybe it took on some trauma or disease. Whatever the reason, she had grown through it with the scars to prove it. I walked around her several times, clockwise, then counterclockwise, taking pictures, and wondering what had happened.

*****

CRIME SCENES

I left the sno-park north of Chemult and had breakfast at the same café as the day before— "K.J.'s" or "The Wheel." I noticed they had two signs. My guess was that it had changed owners and the new owner never took down the old sign. Not being a local, I didn't know which sign was up to date. I had the same waitress, too. She was still having a bad day. After a light breakfast and several cups of coffee, I zipped along Route 97 with more of that tailwind that I loved, averaging about fifteen miles per hour. The road was straight, flat, and hot. And, with a narrow shoulder covered in debris and trucks and RVs whizzing by, I didn't have much space for daydreaming. Still, I found my rhythm and enjoyed the ride.

Twenty-five miles flew by and I needed to pee and have a snack. I started looking for a side road or a patch of trees. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a deer in the grass. She was curled up. How strange, I thought, for her to be sleeping so close to the road. Then I saw blood. Her rear end was torn apart. I stopped. Startled, she tried to drag herself up the embankment. Her back leg was mangled. Obviously she had been hit by a car or truck. The poor thing. She tried to crawl further away. I backed away to give her some space and looked into the oncoming traffic. Somebody, some guy in a pickup truck with a rifle in his gun rack needed to stop and put this deer out of her misery. At that moment I looked up and saw a grey wolf crouched down twenty yards away. He was going to put her out of her misery, but I had come along and interfered. I moved away to give her more room so she would stop trying to drag herself. The wolf also retreated out of sight. Buzzards flew overhead. I stood there for a long moment trying to think of what to do.

For a brief second I felt excited that I might witness a wolf going in for the kill as if it were a television show. I even got out my camera. And then, as if I'd thrown a pitcher of cold water in my own face, I thought, "I don't want to see that!" I looked at the doe lying there. She turned her head over her shoulder and looked at me. She didn't seem to be in agony, but I didn't know what animals felt and didn't feel. Was she in shock? Her sweet face destroyed me. I kept saying, "Bless you. Bless you." She kept looking at me. What could I do? Tears filled my eyes and I apologized for our fast cars, our highways. At least she'd be a meal for a wolf pack. But it wouldn't be a natural death. She wouldn't die because she was old or weak. She could have been the strongest doe in the herd. And now the whole herd would be weaker. The kinds of havoc we bring to this world are immeasurable and run deeper than we may ever know.

I had to leave. I looked one last time, turned away, and got back on my bike. There was nothing I could do. I accelerated quickly, found my rhythm, and wiped my eyes dry.

The sun felt so good soaking into my skin. An hour quickly became two hours as it often did on the road. Even without looking at my map, I could tell the day was winding down and I had to start looking for a campsite. Despite the last two nights being free, I'd lost count of the red-ink days that were beginning to weigh on me. Unplanned second breakfast stops, postcards, tire tubes, midday I've-got-to-replenish-my-electrolytes purchases, and end-of-the-day celebratory beer could really add up. I should have written everything down, but hadn't. How hard could it be to add or subtract a few dollars here and there from my daily allotted amount? Two dollars over. Three dollars under. At any rate, I was stressed about money, as I'd been before I even left Bellingham and would be until I got back to Bellingham.

So, my intention was to find a free campsite that night. And it was highly possible. I wasn't positive, but according to my map, it appeared that I was right on the border of the Willamette National Forest just east of Crater Lake National Park. I could almost bank on finding a forest road along a creek that led to an idyllic, private campsite. And there it was.

I turned right onto the dirt road and stopped to check my map. Though there wasn't a sign anywhere that indicated there was camping allowed in the area, I saw a little green teepee symbol on my map down a side road, like this one, off Route 97 about five miles or so. I couldn't decide. The "dirt" on this dirt road was more like angular acorns and walnuts on a base of hardened dust. I could break a spoke. It was uphill. I was tired. But, this seemed like the last place to camp before Collier State Park, which might be expensive. Guilt over my fourteen-dollar breakfast sat on my handlebars and looked me in the eye.

Up I went. I curved to the left and then to the right, sometimes in the shade. Most times, not. One mile. Two miles. Each curve, as it always did, masqueraded as the crest of the hill. Numerous times, I'd have bet my bike that I had reached the top. Three miles. I finished my last drop of water. Finally, the trees opened up. I saw signs up ahead. The road flattened. A tiny building stood off to the left. A pit toilet? A campground? I turned left into an entrance to something. The parking area was empty. Further back the sky unfolded. A fenced-in lookout spread out along the edge of the mountain high above the Williamson River. I leaned my bike against a wide tree trunk and walked over to see what I could see. Mount Shasta was my guess, but like most of the snow-covered, sleeping volcanic peaks I'd seen along the way, they didn't yell out their names.

Just then, a newer model pickup truck pulled up and parked. A tie-dyed-tee-shirt-wearing guy with a bulging belly and stringy long hair capped with a bald spot got out and walked in my direction. His two little dogs followed. One ran off to explore the bushes and the other one—white, fat and still a puppy—wiggled at me in delight while jumping on my bare legs with its sharp nails. Not wanting to be rude, I ignored the pain and waited for the owner, already asking me questions and commenting on the heat and the view, to discipline his dog. He did not. The obese clump of fur jumped and scratched some more. The owner finally interrupted himself and asked his little sweetness to please stay down. I took that opportunity to shoo the cuddly canine off my shin as I would a pesky fly, and it ran through the brush looking for its pal.

While still engaged in conversation with Jerry Garcia's distant relative, but wanting to see the view, I walked to the weathered split-rail fence holding me back from my death. A brilliant blue-green serpentine river flowed through the valley below. I asked the guy if he knew what made it that color. He guessed it was from the algae that grew in its shallow waters. After Edward Scissor-Claws came back for another attempt at shaving my legs, I asked my new friend if he knew about a place to camp further down the road. He said the last time he was here was thirty years ago, even though he didn't live very far away, and that yes, he remembered there being a campground further down but it might be closed because of all the budget cuts. I said it didn't matter if it was closed and that, in fact, I was hoping to find a secluded spot next to a water source in the national forest so I didn't have to pay at a regular campground. I supposed it went without saying that I was very weak, I'd be alone, and I didn't have a gun.

Before I accidentally dropkicked his best friend over the cliff, I said good-bye, got back on my bike, and continued on the dirt road. Down. And then down some more. For three miles I kept going down. So much so that my brakes squeaked and my hands and forearms started to hurt. I was glad to have the road to myself, as I had to maneuver between rocks and potholes and over washboard patches. At times I found one narrow path with the least amount of stones near the center or along the edge, almost in the grass. More than once it occurred to me how grueling this hill was going to be the following morning with stiff knees. But the promise of an idyllic campsite next to that gorgeous river kept my spirits high and neutralized the reality of going back up.

When I reached the end of the road I saw the "campground." It was closed all right. Closed the way the Mayan temples were closed. Derelict and forgotten, the once-perfect respite for weary campers had been conquered by weeds. Even the fire rings had surrendered. I followed the road past a blank, left-leaning bulletin board and a padlocked outhouse. Another road, now reduced to two parallel paths in eight-inch-high grass, curved to my right. I took it. The paths were a mix of dirt and sand, making it difficult to continue riding so I dismounted and walked through the brush and young saplings. At about the same moment I saw tire tracks, I thought I heard a truck door slam. The guy with the dogs had probably driven down here just to see for himself what had become of his past. I imagined him here as a young man sitting around a fire with his friends, passing a joint and playing a guitar. But these tire tracks obviously weren't his. I would have seen him pass by. These were old—no doubt from one of many people looking for a free idyllic camp site next to a beautiful river. I passed by a fire ring, and then another one. As I got closer to the river, it was obvious that these rings had been used more recently, as black coals filled their center. I hadn't heard any more truck doors, but I did notice my own tire tracks behind me clearly leading anyone who was looking to wherever I'd end up. The more I thought about it, the more this place was starting to look like a crime scene waiting to manifest. And when a place looked like a crime scene in daylight, it was likely to feel like one in my dark, overly creative imagination at night.

Just a bit further on, I came to the river. It was perfect. I leaned my bike against a thin tree trunk and walked to the edge. The shallow, clear water looked so inviting on this hot day. I couldn't get my shoes and socks off fast enough. I set them on the bank, stepped into the water, cringed, and stepped back out. How could it be so cold? The sun was so hot. So much for the vision I'd had of myself walking along the enormous sun-bleached tree that stretched halfway across the river, stripping down to nothing, and jumping in. I couldn't put my socks and shoes back on fast enough.

And then, as if they'd been waiting and watching all along, out of nowhere, those voracious man-eating mosquitoes attacked me from all sides. I thought I was done with them. I scurried over to my bike, dug into my panniers, and pulled out two layers of long-sleeved shirts, my hat, and my rain pants. I put everything on, zipped up the turtleneck, and then wrapped my bandana around my neck. I wasn't sure why exactly I'd neglected to buy, for the third time, that bottle of insect repellent, back in Chemult. Then I remembered and thought, "Poison-free living sure is hard."

So, again dressed in my armor of wool, I filtered water from the river, sat in the shade, and ate my hummus and dried bread. As the brigadier general commanded his troops to begin drilling through my clothes, another faction concentrated their efforts on my forehead. As before, my first defense was to ignore them. My second defense was to eat faster while occasionally waving them off and simultaneously cursing at them. My third defense was to slap myself silly in the face while shaking my entire body in a convulsive fit. Perhaps this was the reason, and not a lack of funding, that the campsite had been closed.

I chugged some water and got the hell out of there fast. I rode up the sandy path, past the bulletin board, the outhouse, and up the hill for three long miles. Finally, I crept over the crest and the lookout. Then down. Then pavement. Relief.

Collier State Park was just a few miles ahead. I pulled in. It was crowded like a city pool in August. RVs everywhere. Kids on bikes. Dads pushing firewood carts. I stopped at the host site just past the registration bulletin board. Two older couples sat under an awning that extended out from a medium-sized RV. A large blonde woman who filled up all of the space in her canvas camp chair asked, in a Western European accent, if she could help me. With my hackles up because I'd just read the sign telling me how much the sites were, I asked how much a tent site was. "Nineteen dollars," she said.

"Really?" I asked in my pretend-surprise voice laced with a slight tone of smartass. I then asked if they had any hiker/biker sites for less money. I knew the answer to this too, but asked anyway in case she were to someday be invited to a state park management meeting where she would attend because they always served glazed doughnuts and she would suggest that they offer hiker/biker sites as a way to accommodate those who take up less room, don't contribute car noise and exhaust, and who often don't even burn a fire or shower because they're too darn tired.

"No," she said in her Norwegian/German/Swiss accent. Okay then. I'd just go find a site and pay the stupid nineteen dollars, which I really _did_ want to pay because I love state parks and want to support them, but I was just worried about money and really didn't want to give up my coffee and muffin.

I hauled my attitude through the camping carnival until it fell off when I saw another cyclist with a vacant site right next to his. Perfect. I rode into the site and then realized that this other cyclist was the same guy I'd camped near two nights ago in the sno-park. Steve. He looked over and recognized me, too. We both said hi and he immediately invited me to stay in his site, adamantly refusing to accept a dime from me. Suddenly, he wasn't as awkward as I remembered him being. So, we shared the site which, I must say (Ms. Camp Host), was plenty big enough for two hiker/biker sites. I set up my tent in the far corner, showered, did my laundry, charged my phone and combined some of my food with Steve's for dinner. It was something like couscous-tomato-cheese-bean stew.

Incidentally, Jerry's cousin from the mountaintop was camping in his tiny '68 camper in the site across from us. His precious canines were caged in a wire pen next to his campfire where he sat by himself. No guitar. No reefer, as far as I could tell. I felt a little bad for having violent thoughts toward his princess, if only for a split second.

*****

JO'S WIFE, COWGIRLS,  
AND GLUTTONY AT THE LAKE

The next morning, as we shook hands good-bye, Steve said there was a great café just a few miles down the road in Chiloquin. It was only a couple miles out of my way so I decided to check it out. I left by seven with my heart set on a fresh, dark roast in a cute café run by friendly people. As I rode into town, I saw that some houses had been boarded up with plywood over the windows and others, with peeling paint and swaths of missing shingles, looked as though they might blow over in a strong breeze. An old warehouse stood next to the railroad tracks and a grain elevator rose up across the street from that. Except for the two people I saw sitting in a dusty 1980s Ford truck in an empty gravel parking lot, the town was void of human life—no one on the sidewalk, no cars, no open doors. The whole town had been shut down. Then it occurred to me that it was Sunday. I continued past a few more dilapidated buildings. My first thought was one of pity for the poor people who were no doubt victims of our deteriorating economy. But then I rode past a community center that doubled as an art center, followed by a library and a tribal economic development center. Then a massage studio. That café Steven recommended came next. It had an artsy flair to it. Of course the town also had the usual post office, market, gas station, barbershop, hardware store and church. A few buildings further, on the side of a big concrete block building, was a freshly painted, colorful mural that seemed to depict both their Native and Western industrial roots. This town was definitely not impoverished. Maybe the people lacked the money to keep their porches upright, but they certainly didn't lack a reverence for life and community and the will to create a place that nurtured its people. The street may have been quiet and the buildings closed on that particular day, but it was far from lifeless. It was just Sunday. They were merely resting from all that living they'd been doing. Though I didn't get to experience the café, I was glad to have gone out of my way to see Chiloquin. It gave me hope.

Fort Klamath was an easy fifteen-mile ride through the fertile pastureland of Wood River Valley that stretched out like a green lake all the way to the base of Devil's Peak and Klamath Point. I was to meet my friend, Anne, from Bellingham in a couple of hours and had plenty of time to stop and take pictures of every scene that made me gasp. I should have just walked. Horses grazed contently as their foals lay on the ground in the sun. Black Angus cattle with little tags in their ears grazed too, but less contently and more, well, on edge—so I projected. Wood River meandered close by, flowing along with me, sometimes on my left, sometimes on my right. Now late morning, my caffeine-deprived brain cells started to complain and so I pushed a little harder to get to Fort Klamath, where I hoped to find an open café or diner or some public establishment where I could get my fix. I stopped at the Fort Klamath Resort and Campground a mile or so before what I thought might actually be a town, thinking they could suggest such a place. Two friendly middle-aged women sat behind the office counter. To my delight, when I asked where I might find a good cup of coffee, they said almost in unison, "Right here!" And one of them added, "It's free."

"Really? But I'm not staying here. I'm just passing through," I said.

"Doesn't matter. Help yourself," one of the women said as she pointed across the room to the industrial-sized stainless steel pot on the counter. I hoped the coffee would be industrial strength, too. I thanked them, filled up a cup, and went back outside to soak in the sun. I found the piece of paper where I wrote down the name of the place I was meeting Anne, thinking it should be coming up soon in the next few miles. It read: Fort Klamath Resort and Campground. What? I looked at the sign above the office and then back down at the piece of paper again. I skipped back into the office and declared to the women, "Apparently, I _am_ staying here!" They were almost as thrilled as I was. With still more than an hour until Anne was due and the official check-in time, I asked if there was a café in town where I could get a light breakfast. "Town?" one of them said with a smile, intimating that there wasn't really a town, per se. She suggested I go to the deli at Jo's Motel a couple of miles up the road, adding, "It's _really_ good." So off I rode toward something really good.

Jo's Motel, which was more like a chain of rustic cabins, was so much more than just a chain of rustic cabins. The hand-painted sandwich board sign out front read: "Organic Deli and Grocery." As I rode into the gravel lot, the intoxicating aroma of pancakes and bacon sizzling on a griddle seized my senses. I leaned my bike against the railing right behind a cute red three-wheeler with a wire-mesh basket hanging off the handlebars, and walked through the squeaky screen door. Though the tiny store was no bigger than a cupboard, it was not Mother Hubbard's. It was chockfull of everything you could ever want or need, and it was all organic. Not just the milk, cheese, butter and bread, and the local vegetables and fruit, but the beer and wine, the tea, coffee, the flour and sugar, grains, dried beans, nuts and seeds, pasta, tomato sauce, pesto, soups, hummus, jams and jellies, peanut butter, almond butter, apple butter, and even the lip balm, shampoo, lotions, toothpaste and insect repellent... _insect repellent???_ That was it. I was never leaving this town—I mean, roadside. What more did a person need? Beautiful scenery for one's outside life (without the torment of pesky blood suckers) and beautiful food for one's inside life (without the torment of pesky chemical poisons).

My luminous delight must have seeped through the screens, causing all passersby to stop and investigate the little shining shop alongside the road because suddenly I had no room to turn around and barely enough air to breathe. Three new customers had just walked in. I barged my way through them to the front counter, which was also the grill, and ordered a big country breakfast and a cup of coffee. The middle-aged woman who took my order—Jo's wife, I assumed—looked as though she hadn't slept since they opened the road to Crater Lake weeks ago. Nevertheless, she put on her biggest smile and promised she'd bring out my food as soon as it was done. I took my cup of coffee and went outside where I stole a chair from a table in the shade, put it in the sun near the road, and sat down with my journal on my lap. At a picnic table only a few yards to my left sat three young cyclists who were also waiting for their hearty country breakfasts. I didn't see their bikes but couldn't miss their colorful, collision-preventive cycling shirts. They looked at me and smiled. I smiled back and couldn't resist verbalizing what had just flashed through my head.

"So, how _did_ all three of you fit on that bike?" I nodded toward that charming red three-wheeler with the basket. They laughed and responded appropriately with something like, "It wasn't easy." We were breakfast buddies for life. I asked about their trip. They asked about mine. They were old college friends, now in their first career jobs, who had started their trip in Portland where two of them worked and were doing a big loop through Oregon and northern California. The third guy was from the Midwest—the Upper Peninsula. I knew he meant Michigan, but those UP-ers are their own breed, and not that they're embarrassed about being a part of the Great Lakes state, but I think they might be a little miffed about never being represented on that mitten-hand that Michiganders throw in people's faces when someone from out of state asks, "Where are you from?"

We gradually exhausted ourselves of things to talk about so I took to jotting down thoughts in my journal. When stacks of steaming pancakes were placed in front of them, that was the end of our conversation for good.

Finally, my plate of French-toast ecstasy came out along with another cup of coffee, and I was immediately rocketed into a higher plane of pleasure. Pure maple syrup from Vermont was all I needed to thrust me into nirvana, and lo and behold there it came in a cute little bottle held by the pleasant-pleaser herself, Mrs. Jo. Had I been alone I'm pretty sure I would have moaned. I'm not sure where I'd developed a deep appreciation for good food made with care and attention, but I was glad I had. Eating for fuel had its virtues, raw and uncomplicated, but food that freed me up enough to shiver or moan every now and then was pure pleasure.

Halfway through my stack, a family of three well-dressed, blond-haired giants sat down with the young cyclists, as there weren't any other tables available. In heavy German accents, the father introduced himself and his family to the cyclists who then did the same. They all jumped into a lively conversation. Amazingly, it came out that the German father worked in the same field as the two Portlanders. Though I couldn't help but overhear everything they talked about, I _still_ could not figure out what field they were in exactly. My best guess was that it was "technological." I felt old. How could I not figure out what line of work they were in? It didn't matter. What did matter was that these complete strangers from different continents had crossed paths and were conversing as if they worked for the same company. Go figure. The German wife, who carried herself with confidence, resembled an Olympic shot-putter wearing flakes of her gold medals as jewelry. The couple's lanky adolescent son sat quietly at the end of the bench seat. He and his mother weren't as entertained by the shoptalk as I was. They also appeared to be unimpressed with the length of time it was taking for Jo and his wife to cook their pancakes with love.

After I sopped up my syrup with my last forkful of French toast, I succumbed to the realization that this moment of pleasure was over. I cried. Not really. Actually, I took my plate and mug inside and paid my bill. I assured Jo and his wife that I'd be back with my friend, and thanked them for my breakfast. Outside, I put on my helmet, said good-bye to the Portlanders and one UP-er, and rode off. Back to the Fort Klamath Resort I went. I had barely parked my bike and taken off my helmet when Anne drove up.

We hugged and squealed and carried on about how wonderful the other looked and then took care of business—checking into our cabin. I locked my bike to the deck and brought in my panniers. Anne brought in her bags and we unloaded her cooler as I started to salivate. Yes, I'd just had brunch, but who said that eating good food needed to happen at a prescribed mealtime or only when I was hungry? For me, a meal could happen at any moment whenever food presented itself. My stomach was wide and my appreciation deep. I could handle multiple feedings with as much exuberance as the first one of the day. So we settled into our cabin on the banks of Wood River where rowboats floated peacefully, tied by a short ropes to a stubby dock.

After a few savory rounds of crackers, meats, and cheeses, and all the condiments a hungry gypsy could ask for, I told Anne about a sign I'd passed down the road for a roping being held that afternoon. Being from Bellingham, and before that the East Coast, I didn't know what a roping was exactly. I figured it had something to do with rope and probably cowboys on horses.

We pulled up in Anne's wagon and parked in the grass next to dusty trucks hitched up to horse trailers. Fly-swatting saddled horses tied to the trailers waited for their turn to go into the ring. Anne and I were beside ourselves snapping pictures at every little thing that reeked of the wild west. And a lot reeked. In fact, I stepped in some. We found our way to the small set of covered bleachers next to the ring and took a seat amongst the local ranchers. As far as I could tell we were the only tourists on the scene, as we were the only people brandishing cameras and not wearing a cowboy hat or red, white, and blue (it was July 3, after all).

To our left, on two regal horses that appeared to mean business, entered a cowboy and to my surprise—I don't know why—a cowgirl. I guess I had a stereotype lodged in my head about ranchers and cowpokes. As someone who started riding horses as a young girl, I was surprised at myself that I would expect to see only men out there. But there it was, a busted stereotype. Mounted on their jittery horses, the two _cowpeople_ held their reins taut in their left hands and their ropes in their right. The announcer (a woman, by golly) garbled a string of word-sounding clusters and out came a sprinting calf from an opened gate, making a beeline toward the other end of the corral. The horses, reddish-brown with black manes and tails, shot forward as their riders twirled rope in the air. I was sure there was a special term for that rope that ropers twirled, but like the names of trees and wildflowers, I didn't know it and didn't need to know. The woman set her rope free. As it landed on the calf's head and neck, the guy threw his rope toward the calf's back legs. They were both right on target and the calf tripped and jerked and fell to the ground. Three people next to us hooted and clapped. The ropers released their hold and the calf got up and ran out the exit gate to safety. The announcer called out some numbers that presumably rated the performance as another calf was herded into the chute.

This routine went on and on for hours—probably until the cows came home (sorry)*but we left after we'd embarrassed ourselves enough by laughing at inappropriate times and pointing in amazement at things like the water-spraying thingamajig that the tractor pulled around the ring to keep the dust at bay. We laughed all the way back to the cabin, in between forkfuls of Anne's culinary genius, and well into the night.

After solid sleep, strong coffee, and poached eggs on toast, Anne and I drove up to Crater Lake. One of the reasons I had invited Anne to meet me here was that, despite having traveled all over the world and hiking many mountains along the way, she had never been to Crater Lake. Though not Kilimanjaro or Mount McKinley, I knew this ghost of Mount Mazama—once fourteen thousand feet high, and now a five-by-six mile wide caldera after blowing its top off in a massive volcanic eruption more than seven thousand years ago—was supposed to be breathtaking. I'd thought, "What a great thing it would be for two friends who each thrive on nature-induced breathlessness to experience it together." Anne was just as excited as I was to experience Crater Lake—only not necessarily the "together" part. See, there were four mostly reasonable ways to get to Fort Klamath, just south of Crater Lake, from Interstate 5 and one unreasonable way, which my mother and I would discover three weeks later. Apparently, being the reasonable person Anne was, when she had looked at her map, she decided that the route that went right through the park and past the awe-inspiring, purest-water-on-Earth lake was the most reasonable way to Fort Klamath. I wilted. Not really. I laughed and laid a fake guilt-trip on her to use later for an extra square of her breathtaking brownies. She played along.

So up we went through tall pines and then shorter pines and snow. Lots of snow. I'd point and say, "Ooh, look at that!" and she'd say, "Yeah. I saw that yesterday." However, the one good thing about her reconnaissance mission was that she'd discovered which pull-offs offered the best views and a pit toilet. As much as I daydreamed about going back in time and being a wilderness explorer, there was something to be said about pit toilets on mountains after a night of gluttony. Finally, we came to the first pull-off and my first view of the lake. Anne's second. I walked toward the edge of the rock wall meant to save the lives of stupid people (so much for natural selection). First, I saw a cloudless blue sky. Then a rock rim blotted with patches of snow came into view. In two more steps, an upside-down reflection of the rim and sky on a vast, intensely blue lake. Without a breath of wind on the water, it was hard to tell where the rock ended and the water began. Zoomed upon through my camera lens, it looked like a Rorschach inkblot. I saw peace, though any reputable psychologist would have called my bluff as I quickly became an agitated maniac. I took picture after picture, pointing my camera in every direction, zooming in, zooming out, turning it sideways to the left and sideways to the right. Before long I'd forgotten which perspectives of which trees against which part of the caldera I'd already taken and so I took them all again. My camera finger cramped up, my wrist developed carpel tunnel, and Anne threatened to eat all the fresh grapes and cherries if I didn't return to the car at once. She ruthlessly ordered me to step away from the beauty.

A half-mile further we came upon another pull-off. Fresh views tantalized us. I tried to imagine what explorer, John Wesley Hillman, might have felt when he stood in front of this same view. Or what the Klamath Tribe must have witnessed when Mount Mazama erupted. The way they told it, the sky god, Skell, and the god of the underworld, Llao, got into a shoving match of sorts. Mount Mazama was destroyed, leaving behind a crater that filled with rain and snow. Selfishly, I'm kind of glad Skell and Llao weren't able to work through their differences without violence or know enough to find a mediator. Crater Lake was truly spectacular.

We continued around the crater in this fashion—pulling over in the designated places, maneuvering around small children and dogs, successfully not parking on top of motorcycles hidden behind RVs, me running to the rock wall, camera first, while Anne sprayed on another layer of insect repellent. By the time she got to the edge, took her pictures, and spouted out the names of all the different wildflowers (yes, she's one of _those_ people), I was on my fifty-seventh picture for that stop. Needless to say, by the time we got halfway around, I was desperately reviewing and deleting photos to make room for more as my memory card had had enough of the blue, white, and brown inkblots. We were filled up, too, and decided to call it a day. We turned around and headed back the way we came. Just below the snow line we found a picnic table where we ate late lunch under a stand of lodgepole pines. Far below us, Annie Creek ran through a canyon. I would have been more interested in exploring the area, but Anne reached into the cooler and pulled out two paper packages and one tinfoil block. Slowly she unwrapped the paper and even more slowly said, "Smoked gouda cheeeeese, turkey breassssst." Then out came the spicy mustard. My mouth watered. I already knew what was in the tinfoil. Brownnnnnies.

Further down the road, back among the tall trees, we stopped at the gift shop that conveniently had the only gas station for miles around as we were on "E." As over-the-top as Crater Lake was, the gift shop was just a typical gift shop—sweatshirts and tee shirts with the words "Crater Lake" in various fonts next to oil-paint-esque images of the lake, key chains with a miniature photo of the lake, hats depicting a simple line drawing of the lake, postcards of the lake, and books about the lake. In a matter of minutes, one of the most magnificent sights I'd ever seen became just another lake.

To elevate our gift shop experience, we were privileged to have two of the friendliest sales people in the state. A young attractive woman and an equally young and attractive man, who both had an enthusiasm for their job that closely mimicked mine as a teen when I had car insurance and gasoline for which I had to pay and would do anything to get out of the house, even sell cutlery door-to-door. They were much friendlier than I ever was and it still didn't work on me. The young model snuck up to me from behind and asked, "So, are you going to the fireworks tonight?" instead of, "May I help you find that book on Pacific Northwest trees I intuitively know for which you are looking?" No, wait. She would have dangled her preposition like the rest of us.

"Uh. No. Oh, right. It's the Fourth of July," I responded. Put off for lots of reasons that this innocent girl did not need or want to know about, I continued, "No, I'm celebrating my independence by being independent." It may not have been so profound, even bordered on stupid, but it was all I could come up with given her posterior ambush. We wandered the aisles another minute or so and then left with five postcards with the words "Crater Lake" in various fonts plastered over photographs of the lake—some of which resembled mine.

We continued out of the park and back to Fort Klamath, passing by the actual fort. A sign that summarized its history stood near the roadside. I had stopped the day before on my bike and gave it a quick skim. Like most historical markers I'd read, I remembered it being interesting, artfully precise, and easy to digest. It told a story in a spray of choice facts, leaving it up to the readers to squeeze between them to find the truth. Of course we had to stop at Jo's. It was our third time there, the second that day. Jo's wife looked exhausted as she scanned a piece of paper, periodically touching it with the tip of a pen. Anne and I studied the shelves as we chattered on, joking about this and that, easily amusing ourselves but unable to pry off Jo's wife's lid. Poor thing. Tourism was tiring. As was offering an organic slice of life in a predominantly inorganic society. It would have been so much easier for her to give in and order all the same food-like products from all the same few distributors every other store owner did. There could be just one big tractor trailer truck that stopped at all the stores in a hundred-mile radius. I, for one, appreciated her perseverance.

Anne and I left with organic wine for her, organic beer for me, and organic whole milk for my kefir. Back at the cabin we found we had new neighbors. An enormous RV had parked mere feet away from our deck where we would eat, drink, and share openly about our personal lives. We considered staying inside that evening to spare this young family the raw details, but it was too hot to be cooped up inside. And besides, they had windows that closed and we were there first.

Just minutes after my stomach finished digesting lunch, Anne brought out a plate of thin wheat crackers, cream cheese and her famous hot-pepper jelly. I washed it down with a beer and imagined myself having to add an extra week onto my trip just to burn off the excess calories I'd consume by the time Anne and I parted. Soon came the pasta and homemade Alfredo sauce and pesto. Choices only added to the gluttony because who could really choose one or the other? I had to have both so as not to offend the chef. Grilled chicken. Broccoli. There may have been a green salad in there too, but the brownies made me forget.

Amazingly, my stomach did not burst in the middle of the night and I woke up the next morning with an appetite. It was clear by now, after having had two breaks from riding already, that my appetite didn't stop just because my pedaling did. After my coffee, I politely ate the poached eggs and toast Anne made me and then inhaled a bowl of granola and kefir. It would be just enough to get me through to our late-morning snack back on the rim of Crater Lake.

On this day there were a few clouds and a breeze on the water, which slightly altered the view from the day before, so I, of course, had to take more pictures. Because we planned to go on a hike, we didn't have time to stop at every pull-off, to Anne's relief, but I was able to capture a few completely new views of that one branch of that old sun-bleached scag against the distant Wizard Island. We had hoped to hike down the one and only trail that led to the water, but when we got to the trailhead it was closed. Now July 5, and midweek, the park didn't have the funding to pay an extra ranger to guide us down—or so I assumed.

Plan B: We looked on our map and found a trail just north of the park very close to the mouth of the Rogue River. We pulled into the trailhead parking lot, got out, and immediately began the insect-repellent application ritual. Once thoroughly drenched in the aromatic, organic, herb-infused oils, we put on our hiking boots and packed our lunch. A person certainly did not want to be out on the trail (or anywhere) without food. I wanted to just take the sandwich ingredients and the bread with us, and Anne wanted to make the sandwiches at the car. I'm glad she got her way as I will explain later. We crammed our daypacks with our premade turkey breast and cheese sandwiches on fresh bread with a light coating of spicy mustard. Knowing Anne, there was also probably fresh tomato and avocado, but the sight of that tinfoil block of brownies distracted me and I can't remember. We also packed a couple of water bottles, sunscreen, toilet paper and of course, the insect repellent.

We walked across the lot toward the bulletin board at the trailhead near the pit toilet. To our dismay, it appeared that someone had thrown a bag of household trash in the toilet and an animal had gotten in there, pulled it outside, and scattered its contents on the ground, including greasy bags from a very popular fast-food establishment, and used tampons. Had it not been for the bloody tampons I was sure some good Samaritan would have picked it up by now as it looked as though it had been there a while. I didn't know what Anne was thinking, but I had no intention of being a good or even mediocre Samaritan on that day, as I would be eating with my hands very soon, or so I hoped, and I didn't have anti-bacterial gel with me. We both commented on the mess and continued walking to the bulletin board to review the map of the trail. As we were about to enter the woods, a middle-aged woman on a fully loaded recumbent bicycle rode up. She looked to have at least as much gear as I was hauling, only it was dustier. Anne and I asked about her trip—where she was headed, from where she'd come. It was far. That's all I can remember. Dang brownies. I did, however, hear her say that she wasn't traveling alone. Her friend, who had gotten quite sick a few days earlier, was far behind so she decided to pull over and wait. I didn't know what she meant by "sick," but it was rough enough riding all day in the hot sun with forty-five pounds of gear. I wouldn't want to do it if I were sick. And yet, as I had discovered, when I had to get somewhere by the end of the day, I just did. There was no fussing about riding uphill for thirty miles or numb fingers or a sore butt. We wished the woman well and said good-bye as I thought to myself that this woman wasn't being very nice to her sick friend by leaving her so far behind. Maybe her friend was a tough cookie and didn't want to be a burden.

As Anne and I entered the woods, we walked through a wall of mosquitoes. It was strange. Like walking through a stark temperature change. First there were no mosquitoes and then suddenly there were hundreds of them swarming around our bodies. In just several more yards, they were gone. Not that they had left the continent, but we knew the odds of each of us returning to the car with almost all five quarts of our blood were pretty good.

This was the first time I had ever hiked with Anne, though I'd heard about so many of her hiking adventures. They all seemed to carry the same theme. Either Anne, or somebody in their party, somehow got into a life-threatening, or at least precarious, situation. There was the time she slid down a snowy slope and her ice axe got stuck, which then slammed into her face to cause a bloody mess. There was the time she got stranded in a monsoon in the Himalayas. There was the time she got giardia and was sick for several months and lost forty pounds. There was the time she got caught in a snowstorm on Mount Rainier without the right gear and had to huddle up with the other members in her party to stay warm (sounded like a party to me). Clearly, either I hadn't gone on enough adventures in my life or she had a certain knack for attracting peril. I thought I might want to stay alert.

After a short distance we heard rushing water, and the baby Rogue River—more like a swift creek—soon came into view. Only several yards wide, it rushed through a shallow ravine still filled with several feet of snow and over moss-covered limbs that had given up on their stronghold and fallen into the river. Smooth, grey boulders lay just beneath the surface, redirecting the current with their density. White skeleton trees leaned over the surface. Some of them stretched from one bank to the other, their smaller branches sticking into the river itself. In just a few days I'd be riding next to this same river, only its rapids would be category III and IV, and the deep ravine it had cut through the mountain a testament to the power of water and time. The trail generally followed the river from here on, sometimes climbing, sometimes dipping back down, but never too far from that calm rushing sound.

Though lower in elevation than Crater Lake, we were still at five thousand feet, so the trees were no taller than forty feet and were thin by Pacific Northwest standards. Purple wildflowers grew in patches next to old stumps and Anne tried her hardest to help me remember the flower's name. I did, for that afternoon anyway, but now I can't. It's making me mad. I'm going to text her right now to find out... Phlox! Now I remember. Phlox, phlox, phlox. I will never forget.

We hiked onward, hot and hungry, past patches of phlox until we came to a beautiful, nearly perfect, lunch spot. Though it lacked horizontal sitting opportunities, it was the only place we'd come to that was at river level, which was where we'd both imagined the perfect lunch spot to be. Lunch spots were important when adventuring. We could dip our bandanas into the cold water and listen to that soothing rush. We managed to find two small, uncomfortable rocks protruding from a steep bank next to a spring that ran into the Rogue. I had to prop my foot on a tree root to keep steady. Anne situated herself to my left in a similar manner. To my right was a snowbridge that spanned the trickling spring, offering a cool breeze as it melted before our eyes.

With all of my coordination skills set on maintaining my perch on that one tiny rock half the size of one butt cheek, I was glad to have a premade sandwich handed to me. Just reaching out to receive it threw me off balance and I nearly fell into the snowbridge. What a lovely moment it was there on that rock. I was keenly aware of how blessed I was to have such a good friend come visit me in the middle of an adventure that held such great significance for me. To share it, even if just for a few days, with another adventurer who knew what the experience was doing to my insides meant so much. Though I couldn't explain precisely what this trip had done or was doing to me these past four weeks, she could see it and feel it in me. She had to. I could feel it. I was light. Everything was right. Aligned. Nothing was wrong. I could do anything. Succeed at anything. I was unstoppable. She had to know this for herself as she'd had so many adventures in her seventy years and had to know the elation I was feeling—the coming together of the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. This intense hyper-presence I was living. She'd been there many times: on a mountaintop after climbing for days, pushing her body to not just survive but to excel. She knew about fear and self-doubt. She, too, had experienced many moments of ineffable beauty, of being nearly destroyed by the aroma of a pine forest or the hoot of an owl calling out in the final hour before dawn. Of course she knew, even if we never talked about it. I reached toward the snowbridge and with my index finger wrote our initials in the snow, making us both giggle like school girls.

With a huge smile, Anne unzipped her daypack and pulled out the block of brownies. After one or two—I wasn't counting—the snowbridge suddenly collapsed. Startled, and then amused, we laughed at how our initials were now floating into the Rogue and would soon be floating along next to me three days from now.

As usual, the hike back seemed shorter than the hike out. Sweat poured off Anne's brow as we hit the hottest part of day. I pointed out every clump of phlox as we shared more of our past misadventures in the wilderness. Before long we hit that mosquito wall, smacked ourselves on our arms and legs, and then reached the safety of the littered parking lot. Only now, the litter, bloody tampons and all, was gone. We assumed the woman on the recumbent had done the good deed. I felt bad. First, for not being the one to do it and then for thinking she wasn't being very considerate by not waiting for her sick friend. We'd never know how their adventure turned out, other than what we made up. The sick friend got better. They were inspired by the beauty of the land. And good fortune carried them safely all the way home.

Our last dinner at the cabin was much like the first two feasts, only slightly heavier with the weight of leaving. Though I was excited to get back on the road and she was excited to visit a good friend on her way home, leaving the smile of a friend was an unwelcome moment. I slept well and woke early to write and watch the sun rise above the treetops behind sleepy Wood River. After Anne wandered out from her room, we shared our dreams and then shifted into packing-up mode. After we ate a simple breakfast, we cleaned out the fridge while packing our clothes in between brushing our teeth and gathering our toiletries. I loaded my panniers and bike into the back of Anne's car, filled my water bottles, and found the piece of paper with the address for Hutch's Bike Shop in Klamath Falls. Anne had agreed to drive me there because I needed a new back tire, as it was nearly bald from a thousand miles of friction. I also wanted to avoid Route 97 which, from my experience thus far, was just a long, flat, hot stretch of highway. We did our dishes and took one last look to make sure we had all of our stuff.

It was a thirty-minute drive that would have taken me close to three hours on my bike. Ah, the beauty of gasoline engines. During the drive, we reviewed all the fun we'd had and good food we'd eaten. The shop was easy to find. She parked right out front. I unloaded my bike and gear. We hugged good-bye. And away Anne drove, down the street, around the corner, and out of sight.

*****

DEAD INDIAN ROAD

While I waited for the guys at Hutch's to put on my new tire, I asked the one who looked the least busy about the best roads to take to Ashland. As I came to expect from my prior bike-shop experiences, every person in the shop who'd ever ridden a bike or knew someone who'd ridden bike, and knew where it was I wanted to go, chimed in. It was better than any map. In a matter of minutes, I knew which roads were windy with narrow shoulders, which ones were hilly, and which ones were most scenic. I quickly decided on the route that one guy seemed to know intimately. I memorized the left turns and right turns: "Clover...Paradise," and then "Left on Dead Indian Road, only they don't call it that anymore." I thanked all twenty-seven of them, paid my bill, and I was off...all the way to the café down the street.

I sat outside where I ate a stale muffin and drank coffee-flavored hot water while fighter jets flew overhead. Either they were practicing or we had just invaded California. An older man walked by and asked a few questions about my journey. When I told him where I was heading, he said, "Oh yeah, you wanna take Dead Indian Road, but you're not supposed to call it that anymore." It seemed that everyone knew what they weren't supposed to call it, but clearly, they couldn't remember what they _were_ supposed to. Now I was off—for real—to the road no longer named Dead Indian Road.

Just a few miles out of town, and I was back in the mountains. This was one of those roads printed in yellow on my map that I could always count on to lead me through almost more beauty than I could bear. I soon came to Clover Creek Road. I turned left and imagined I'd see a little creek at some point trickling through this relatively dry mountain meadow where clusters of wild daisies flourished in the shade of deciduous trees I couldn't name. I stopped several times to take pictures, inhaling the sweet air as if it were my last breath. Finally, I saw it. The creek. Two creeks, actually—one on each side of the road. They slithered through the golden grass. But wait. I laughed out loud. It wasn't water. It was a current of tiny clover flowers. I figured in early spring there had been a trickle of water winding through the meadow that then dried up as the days warmed, leaving just enough moisture for the clover to survive. Amazing. And apparently it had happened that way year after year because they'd named the road for it.

The day heated up fast and I sucked down a lot of water. I had to stop at Spencer Creek to filter more. In my thirst, it didn't occur to me that the cow patties I had to step over every five feet were from the free-range herd of cattle which also drank from, and pooped in, this meandering meadow creek. Yum. Either my water filter had risen to the occasion or my kefir bacterium ambushed those giardia outlaws before they even had a chance to draw their pistols. Twelve more miles tugged at me so I tossed some dried cranberries into my mouth and pedaled on, hoping to get as close as I could to Howard-Prairie Reservoir. I soon saw a sign for Paradise. Hallelujah. And then, there it was: "Dead Indian Memorial Highway." Ohhhhh. I got it. Without even knowing the precise historical facts of this particular area, I knew enough general history to recognize the renaming of this road as the community's attempt to pay some homage to the First People of this land. Certainly, a road name could not change the past, I thought, but maybe the intention behind it could change the future. I'd later learn that this same road, when it was just a trail, used to be a trading route between the Shasta and the Takelma Peoples. When the Euro-American settlers came through in greater numbers in the mid-1800s, it became a wagon road that they called Indian Market Road. When the gold rush hit, tensions between the settlers and miners and the Native Americans increased. In 1854, several dead Indians—presumably murdered by Euro-Americans—were found on a prairie along this route.

When I pulled into the campground, the second thing I saw was a tall, skinny barn. Three stories high. I'd find out later from the sign next to its door that the Park Service had built it for the barn swallows. Being endangered, the bug-hungry birds with pointy wings needed a place to nest and have their young. That was nice of them to do, I thought. I also discovered, when I looked inside, a stack of hay and a stall. This explained all of the hitching rails and the extra-large campsites. Groups must pass through here with their pack animals.

The first thing I saw when I rolled into the campground was a pickup truck next to the skinny barn and a guy in a plaid flannel shirt sitting in a folding chair next to his fire pit, crocheting. This seemed unusual to me, as I had never seen a man crochet—or knit or sew. His small, scruffy dog was tied to his truck and lying in the shade underneath it.

I slowly pedaled past the truck and around a curve under tall pines. The man had his back to me, and though he had to have heard me, he didn't turn around. In front of me, a prairie of tall green grass gently leaning with the breeze spread out like a calm bay. A low, forested ridge was the only thing that stopped it from continuing on forever. Way out in the distance was a small lake where huge white birds floated. I pointed my camera at them and zoomed in. They had long, orange beaks. Not one big-white-bird name sat on the tip of my tongue. "Don't pelicans have long orange beaks?" I wondered. Who knew? Not me. Some people just seemed to be able to absorb the names of things, especially the things they loved. Whether it was French cooking terms, dog breeds, or the astrological signs of fallen rock legends. Not me. Though I certainly loved the natural world more than anything mechanized, computerized, and plasticized, the names of birds and trees, or anything, really, with legs, eyes, wings, leaves, or roots, jumped right out of my memory and covered its tracks. I couldn't recall it. Unless I'd grown up with it, like the barn swallows. They lived in our family's barn and left their little white droppings on the backs of the horses. I had to duck my head when I walked in to avoid getting pegged by them as they zipped about. I'm sure scientists have discovered and, no doubt, named that syndrome by now. Adult Onset Noun Slippage Syndrome. Or, Childhood Lock Brain. Whatever my memory problem was called, it was frustrating to know that this infinitely beautiful natural world would always be limited to pine trees; white, orange, yellow, or purple flowers; butterflies, birds (some with big wings and some with big beaks), bushes (some with berries), and grass. Gosh, that bugged me.

On that note, like the expanse of the prairie before me, the campground itself opened wide beneath tall pines that grew their needles from limbs that stuck straight out from the upper third of their trunks. (Do you see how tiresome this is? It would have made things so much easier to say "lodgepole pine." Then the burden would be on you to go look it up if you didn't know what that kind of tree looked like.)

I rode around, under lodgepole pines, to find a good campsite. There wasn't anyone else there except for the crafty cowboy, so it was just a matter of choosing one with a view of the lake, a patch where the morning sun would hit my tent, and in close proximity to the water pump and pit toilet. It just so happened that the site twenty yards away from the crocheting man and his dog was perfect. I hoped he wouldn't mind.

I dug out my wallet from my backpack and opened it to find only twenties. The campsite was fourteen dollars and I'd learned that in remote places like this, there wouldn't be a camp host coming around to make change. I decided to ask my camping cohort two sites down if he had any change. I walked up behind him and said I was sorry for interrupting. He wasn't the friendliest person, but he did look in his wallet and apologize for only having a five and a twenty. I thanked him anyway and went back to my site to try to find small bills in a pocket or hidden in a map. Nothing. I decided to wait until morning to see if a camp host did come around.

Before taking any of my gear off my bike, I walked back past the guy's site to the well to fill up my water bottles. As I went by he was getting something out of the back of his truck. He turned and, in a much friendlier tone, offered me his five dollar bill straight out. Again, I thanked him and told him my plan to wait until morning. The pump was a big one and it took some muscle to pull down on the handle with my right hand while holding the empty bottle under the spigot with my left. After a dozen or more pumps, the cold clean water came pouring out. For being tasteless, it sure did taste great.

After I pounded in my last tent stake and threw my sleeping pad and bag inside, I took off with my camera into the meadow. In just fifty yards or so, I realized I wouldn't be able to get close to the lake at all. My feet sank into the moist ground more and more with each step forcing me to change my direction. It didn't matter. Even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't escape the stronghold of beauty around me. East. West. North. South. Up into the clouds and down between blades of grass. I soaked it in until every cell of me was saturated. I snapped picture after picture, close-ups of orange flowers, purple flowers, white ones, too. I aimed across the lake and into the sky, studying the lines and contrasts. Color didn't matter as much to me, as it never did. It was light and the lack of it that truly pleased my eye.

I flushed a small bird from the waist-high grass. Yelling at me, she flew a few yards ahead, pretending to be injured as if she were trying to lure me away from her young. It seemed late in the season to be having young, but I really didn't know anything about this bird or its reproduction cycle. I apologized for invading her space and let her know I wasn't a threat by immediately changing my course. It was time to head back to camp, anyway.

Having been spoiled by Anne's good food, dinner was just dinner. It did its job. In anticipation of the sunset, I sat at my table facing west and wrote in my journal. A gentle breeze moved the meadow grass into a dance. A deer sauntered by. The big white birds flew to different sections of the lake, making a loud, drawn-out skidding splash across the water when they landed. Hawks circled overhead. Perched on a far-away limb, an eagle watched over its domain. Dragonflies chased each other and butterflies cooperated with the breeze to get themselves generally where they wanted to go. Ravens ranted and a caterpillar crawled over my hat on the table.

I stared out into the meadow for a long time. I'd missed this. The peace. The feeling that everything was right in the world. If just three nights in a cabin were enough to make me miss this, how would I ever handle being back in Bellingham? I needed nature. It grounded me. Fed me. Caressed and played with me. It entertained. Made me laugh and cry. It made me wonder and gave me answers. It pushed me along and urged me to keep going. Or it drew me in to look closer. It forced me to stop. And sometimes, it even dropped me to my knees.

I had just finished writing a list of all the animals I'd seen, testing my brain to see what I could actually name, when my neighbor walked into my camp. His uninvited entrance and awkward greeting rubbed me wrong. He was trying to be nice, but it felt uncomfortable. I knew I could sometimes overreact when my space or privacy was threatened. Hadn't he seen that I was writing? Although I'd had other guys approach me in other campgrounds, curious to know about my travels. I'd welcomed them in and didn't mind one bit that my writing, or ever-important rice-and-bean soaking, had been interrupted. But this time, I felt on guard. He started off with small talk about watching me walk in the meadow and hoping that I knew about the rattlesnakes and how you never should walk back the same way you came because that's when they'll strike. And then he unloaded.

He admitted being afraid of snakes, but of not much else. He mentioned a recent security job he'd had for one of the lumber companies in the area patrolling the forest for intruders, and how his experience as a sniper in Vietnam, along with his extraordinary night vision, made him perfect for the job. He held up his hand to show me that he'd lost half a finger. They told him to take up knitting for therapy. He continued to spew out rounds of facts about his life, past and present, punctuated by long pauses and direct eye contact that he held steady, as if he were looking into a scope through crosshairs.

"Do you remember Christmas Eve, nineteen-seventy...?" I lost the last number as he stared into me. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I could tell that something bad had happened.

"No, I'm sorry, I don't," I said. He seemed miffed. I let him know that I was barely five then. He explained at length what had happened on that date—how he had been on a secret mission to rescue POWs and because he had been in charge and the best sharpshooter, he was ordered to kill, if necessary, anyone in his group who got caught behind enemy lines, and how things did go wrong and how he had had to shoot and kill his best friend. He stopped. His stare ripped into me. My eyes filled with tears, his pain bleeding out of him right in front of me.

I tried my best to sop it up with apologies and my own horror. He went on and on. Secret military files. Things he couldn't share or they'd kill him. Jobs he'd had and lost. How he came up here to get away from the fireworks in town. How he always carried a knife. How he almost killed a co-worker who came up from behind him with a snake. His coke-addicted, soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. How he hadn't hit her yet and was looking for a new girlfriend. He wouldn't go away.

Finally, after I stopped responding, he picked up on my disengagement and shuffled his feet into a new position. I gently mentioned being hungry and wanting to get to bed early. Saying that he did too, he excused himself and walked back to his site. While eating dinner, I took pictures of the brilliant sunset over the ridge behind the lake. It would turn out to be one of the best sunsets of the trip. I didn't want to be afraid. He was just a terribly damaged soul and needed to be heard. I got up and walked to the pump to refill my water bottles. I didn't see him at his camp when I walked by, but soon noticed him walking his dog at the far end of the campground. On my way back, since he was still far away, I veered a little closer to his truck and memorized his license plate. I couldn't believe I was doing it, but there I was, doing it. I wrote it down as soon as I got back to my site.

Moments later he walked by my site with his dog. He didn't look up. And he wouldn't have if I hadn't gotten his attention. The only reason I did was that I had been trying to decide whether or not there was a threat of bear out there and wondered if I should hang my food in a tree. I asked him what he thought. He said he supposed there could be. Thinking out loud, I said maybe I could just put it in the bathroom. It had a secure door. Did he mind? He didn't. Then he offered to put it in the cab of his truck. I graciously accepted his offer and then felt uncomfortable. I remembered him saying he had to leave really early so I brought that up. He said he'd just leave it on my picnic table and try not to wake me up. Again, I thanked him and handed over my pannier of food. He said good night and that if I got bored and wanted company to come knock on his truck, as he hardly ever slept. I watched him walk away carrying my bag and wished I had just put it in the bathroom. It was just food, but it felt as though he was carrying off my journal, wallet, treasured pictures, and love notes. Halfway to his site, he turned around and said it felt good to do someone a favor.

As I lay there in my tent, hardly breathing and my opened knife at my side, I planned my escape through a hole I'd slice through my tent. At the same time, I felt completely ridiculous. I could see my own mind manufacturing this horror movie, but I couldn't stop it. It had its own life now and I just had to play it out. I put on my headlamp, thinking I could blind him first before slicing my tent open. I'd poke him in the eyes. He'd have a knife. I could sleep with my feet where he'd expect my head and kick him in the face. Being twenty miles from the nearest town, I knew screaming wouldn't help. Besides, I wasn't a screamer. I texted Robin and Anne a few details and asked them to leave their phones on throughout the night. To Robin, I sent his license plate number and tried to make a joke about her sending that plate number to the police if she didn't hear from me in the morning. I quickly learned that that sort of humor was not likely to make a friend laugh. Then I felt bad that I'd now written her into the script and she had no other choice than to play along and worry. I lingered between sleep and consciousness for a few hours until finally I let go and slipped into sleep.

Before dawn, before the birds started singing, I heard his truck door slam shut and then footsteps that got louder and louder. I couldn't actually hear him set down my pannier on the table, but I did hear his footsteps fade away into the darkness. His truck engine turned over and its tires crunched down the dirt road. The end. It was over. I turned the page.

The birds soon woke and the eastern sky slowly began to glow. I lay there for a while. Stretched my legs. Texted Robin and Anne so they'd stop worrying and planned my ride for the day. When I unzipped my tent, I gasped at the sunrise before me. I lay back down on my side and watched the sky brighten.

From a few bird songs and occasional splashes in the lake to a chorus of honking geese, buzzing insects, and the high-pitched chortle of bald eagles, this stunning sunrise brought the sweet meadow back to life. For me, there were few things that gave me as much joy as witnessing this magical awakening of the natural world, a wild world seemingly tamed just enough to survive by its submission to order and structure and cycles within cycles. I plugged in to the current swirling around me and charged up for whatever was next.

*****

INDIAN MARY, SUNSHINE SALLY, AND THE  
VENDING-MACHINE TECHNICIAN

Once I reached the summit of Table Mountain and started my nine-mile descent into Ashland, a city I knew nothing about other than it was the host of _The_ Shakespeare Festival, I was able to stop processing my self-inflicted rape and murder from the night before. My sights were not only set on this little city sprawled along Bear Creek (seriously) at the base of Mount Ashland and both Wagner and Anderson Buttes, but also on Medford, Central Point, and Grants Pass. Not just to see them and get a feel for them, but also to get through them. On the other side, in just a day and a half, I'd be at Nomad Land, a place I knew nothing about other than what had been written in the WWOOF Directory. Something about working hard and playing hard, playing music, and occasionally howling at the moon. Who howled at the moon anymore? It sounded like a place I needed to be.

Sure enough, Ashlanders love Shakespeare. Every other shop had some sort of reference to the dramatist in its name, often written in an Old English font. In honor of the man, though not a fan, I had a cup of coffee at McCoy's Café as I wrote a tragedy about the tragic waste of a perfectly good coffee bean in a weak cup of coffee. I'm kidding, of course. There was no McCoy's Café, and I didn't write a tragedy. I didn't have the energy because I couldn't get properly caffeinated for such a feat.

I chugged the last few swallows in one gulp and asked the next available passerby how to get to the bike path. The only reason I knew there was a bike path was because someone had overheard me in Hutch's back in Klamath Falls talking to the bike mechanic about my route and offered up his knowledge. It was easy to find, just a short ride through a neighborhood to a park. I'd see a sign for it, I'd been promised. And I did. To my delight, the path was paved, edging up against Bear Creek (seriously) most of the way to Central Point, some eighteen miles under shade trees—an appreciated feature on this hot July day. There was something extra freeing about riding without a concern for traffic. My mind could let loose. Gallop away. In fact, I'm quite sure if I'd had another few miles, I could have solved all the world's problems, starting with the lackluster effort by local municipalities in creek naming.

By the time I got to Central Point, world governments had trained their militaries to be organic farmers and automobile engines ran on water. And boy, was it hot. Once I got out from under the shade into the real world of traffic lights, gas stations, banks, and convenience stores, it was a no-brainer that what I needed was the hard stuff—that very popular cola in a can. I typically never craved soda, and when I did I hardly ever bought one, but for some reason when I saw that travel-mart or quick-stop or whatever the heck it was called, I craved a cold pop. Had to have it. I also had to use the bathroom. How convenient. I leaned my bike against the glass wall and entered the air-conditioned sugar and salt shop.

When I came back out, my bike was still there. I knew it would be, as it had been for the entire trip so far. Despite my worrying about bike thieves prior to my leaving, I only felt the need to lock my bike to some permanent structure just a few times—mostly in busy campgrounds overnight and once a few weeks later at the Eugene Hostel after a local guy told me that Eugene was the bike-theft capitol of the universe. Instilled with the fear of thieves, I'd wrap my bike lock cable around a house, twice, and hire a security firm to patrol the area. Other than that, I felt completely at ease with leaving my bike unattended and free. No doubt the extra forty-five pounds, which probably looked like eighty, was a deterrent. And who would have the nerve to rifle through my panniers in broad daylight in front of other convenience-seeking shoppers?

After the cola burned a hole in my stomach, and after I asked a vending-machine technician for directions to Valley of The Rogue State Park, I was "off like a herd of turtles," as Robin would have said. As my map indicated, and the vending-machine technician confirmed, Interstate 5 was unavoidable. Unlike the last time I had to ride on an interstate, there was no crying. I pedaled up the on-ramp like a pro and set my cruise control. Two miles later, with the torrent of vehicles zooming by, I saw the waving hand of my new vending-machine-technician friend in the middle lane. By the time I realized who it was and extended my arm above my head to wave back, he was already halfway to Washington state.

Although my plan was to stay at Valley of the Rogue, if not for the hot shower then because it had such a great name, I exited the interstate several miles earlier to investigate a KOA campground...uh, I mean "kampground." I was hot and tired and thought that maybe I'd get a kool site next to the klear river and that it wouldn't be as krowded as state parks tended to be.

As I pulled up to the office, little screaming brats splashed in the pool nearby. I knew I would not be staying there, but went through the motions anyway. I used the bathroom and then went into the office to ask the nice lady if there happened to be another campground close by. Though her friendly mood instantly changed to one that sounded like I-am-so-tired-of-losing-customers-to-other-campgrounds-without-swimming-pools, she offered up what she knew and steered me to Valley of the Rogue.

I got there as fast as I could, only to wait in line at the park entrance behind super-duper SUVs, RVs, and trailer-pulling pickups. When it was my turn to register at the booth, the ranger asked me where I'd like to be. I said, "Oh, it doesn't matter," and then proceeded to ask her about every site she offered. Was it private? How far was it from the bathroom? Was it near the river? Fortunately, she had a sense of humor. She gave me a beautiful, private corner site near the river and a smile.

The only unfortunate thing about my site was the fact that it lay directly between the bathroom and the group Boy Scout camp. Though there was a paved path that tried desperately to guide young campers between the sites of fellow campers, it was no match for thirteen-year-old-boy lack-of-awareness-of-paved-paths. As the first few groups passed through, I bit my tongue but could not avert my eyes. When the fourth group of boys strutted through with towels over their shoulders, joking around and completely oblivious to my existence, I called out, perhaps with a slight tone, and asked as politely as I could for them to please not walk through my site. All of them, except for that one gum-chewing, shirtless, I-know-I'm-gonna-be-a-hunk-someday boy, were very apologetic and scurried over to the path. Of course, by the time they had finished taking their showers they had forgotten about me and my desire for private space and walked right on through my site on their way back. This happened two more times until finally all of the Boy Scouts were squeaky clean.

The sun rested on the tops of the trees, deciduous for a change. In the site next to mine, on the other side of the paved path, was Mr. Dad. Now, I'm no family psychologist, but it seemed to me that he had his two kids for the weekend and he was going to give them an experience to remember, or at least one that was on par with the memorable experiences his ex-wife gave them. Parker was the little boy's name and I only knew this because his dad called it out every two minutes. "Parker, come back here...Parker, don't do that...Parker, leave your sister alone...Parker, sit by the fire with me and listen to me play the guitar and sing a song I wrote for all the world to hear...Parker, do you want to roast a marshmallow?" Eventually, Mr. Dad came over to talk to me and of course I was cordial. Seriously.

After he left, I showered, charged my phone, ate dinner, drank hot chocolate, and decided it was officially summer in the Pacific Northwest. I even wrote it down in my journal: "The beginning of summer, July 7, 2011." I was still wearing shorts after seven, I hadn't worn my wool hat to bed in one whole day, and my hot chocolate stayed hot until it was gone. Life was good.

I could have continued on Interstate 5 to Grants Pass and all the way to Nomad Land where I'd work for two weeks in exchange for food and community, but I had the time and so I took the scenic route, as many of us do when we have the time. Because I hadn't had a cup of coffee yet, I don't remember much of the scenery between the state park and Grants Pass. I'm sure it was lovely. Once through the outer mall-land rim of Grants Pass and into its pure core, I thought to myself, "I could live here." It was only the third time on this trip I'd had that thought. The first time was when I was in Mazama and the second time was in Bend. Grants Pass had character. Bellingham-like but without the rain. It was definitely smaller than Bellingham and lacked the same degree of congestion and energy, but it seemed to have the same sorts of things I liked in a small city. Friendly people who lacked hustle and bustle, cafés, art galleries, music venues, massage therapists, bike shops, music shops, and brewpubs. And again, there was no rain. In fact, it was hot. And then I glanced up at the sign that stretched across the main street. It said, "It's the Climate." Oh. Apparently, other people had noticed the sunshine here too, formed a committee, and made a motto out of it. And once it was a motto, it was sort of a guarantee. Fantastic. Sunshine for the next two weeks guaranteed. All I needed was a cup of coffee and a muffin.

Two helpful strangers later, I found Sunshine Natural Foods and Market. It had a bright yellow sign. I determined it must be good. The woman behind the counter had her hands full with baking and answering a customer's questions, yet she still offered to make a fresh pot of coffee for me. While it was brewing I walked through the aisles. Vitamins and supplements, fluoride-free toothpaste, biodegradable soaps, medicinal teas, local honey, organic produce, tofu, meatless burgers, milk-less cheese, raw goat milk, organic flours, grains, seeds, nuts, and beans, and of course, all sorts of books—half of them on how to cook or prepare these products in order to maintain optimal health and the other half on how to address particular illnesses if these products weren't working.

In the front part of the store was the café. Welcoming booths collected the sun, and a stack of newspapers sat on the windowsill next to the door. I took one and sat down with my coffee and a muffin and tried to imagine myself coming here every morning. Well, for starters I didn't know anyone who walked in. And the woman behind the counter didn't even know my name. Maybe I couldn't live here.

With the help of the Sunshine Sally, I found my way out of town to the road that supposedly took me to Merlin and then to the road that followed the curves of the Rogue River, now much bigger than when Anne and I sat on its bank next to a snowbridge four days earlier. On my map the little yellow road didn't have a name, but it didn't need one. In describing this part of my trip to others all I needed to say was, "You know, the road that goes along the Rogue through Galice." Or, "to Indian Mary Park." Indian Mary was a legend here. Not just for her own generous spirit, but also because of her father, Umpqua Joe. Not only did he warn the local Euro-American settlers of an Indian attack for which he was rewarded with his life and permission to live where he had always lived instead of the new reservation, but also for simultaneously killing and being killed by Mary's husband in an argument over a dog. That must have been some dog. Either a really good one or a really bad one.

The closer I got to Galice, the more cargo vans pulling trailers loaded with river rafts sped by me. That part of the Rogue was known for its rapids. And the Galice Resort—a store, restaurant and souvenir shop all in one—was known for actually being the town of Galice. In fact, there was a sign hanging from the front porch that read "This is Galice," which was the only reason I knew where I was. I enjoyed an ice cream cone on the east side of town, talked to two young drenched girls vacationing from Iowa, and read about Indian Mary and her daughter Lillian on a placard next to the ice machine.

Continuing west along the Rogue for several miles, I came to Coyote Creek and turned onto a narrow road that cut through steep wooded slopes above it. When it shrank even more into just one lane, I stopped and checked my map. Thinking it seemed right, I kept going. Large hand-painted, no-trespassing signs leaned against trees at the ends of long dirt driveways that snuck into the woods. One straightforward plywood sign read: "DO NOT ENTER OR YOU WILL BE SHOT!" I decided not to enter. Further along, a few long-term campers sat in a grassy meadow next to the creek. A woman came around from behind their old camper carrying a bowl. A little spotted fawn followed her to where she placed the bowl on the ground and the fawn ate whatever was in the bowl. A mile further, a pickup truck displaying an empty gun rack sat parked on the edge of the road. A ratty blue tarp covered its bulging bed of random possessions. I'd later learn that some of the trucks parked alongside these roads, along such creeks in these parts, belonged to individual prospectors mining for gold. I had no idea people still did this. It was a taste of the Wild West without all that inconvenience of having to dodge arrows and extract wagons from mud holes.

Either the people who lived along this road didn't own cars or ones that worked, or they all used some secret subway under the mountains to get to their jobs, because I still had not passed anyone coming or going for several miles. It was a good thing, too, because much of the area wildlife used the road as a place to lounge, or to cross with so much indecision that they appeared to be lounging. First, I came upon a snake sunning itself. Just two feet long. Not sure what kind. Then some wild turkeys. One gobbler stood barrel-chested with his tail fanned out on display. A few miles further there was a mother fox standing in the middle of the road waiting for her slowpoke pups to get a move-on. She had two ahead of her, already up the bank, and a few behind her dillydallying in the weeds. They were curious and had been easily distracted by a blade of grass. When I approached, Mama Fox stood her ground and barked at me. And when I say "bark," I mean a weird alien sound came out of her mouth. I'd never heard a fox bark before, but as with most animals that make a noise at you, it was fairly easy to interpret. "Where did you come from and get the hell out of here!" Knowing what she didn't know, that I had no desire whatsoever to harm her pups, I did not retreat. Rather, I stood there making calm, sweet noises at her in the form of English-language words, hoping she could interpret my intention to wait patiently until she got her little ones across the road.

It was probably only eight more miles to Nomad Land and I was glad. My legs felt mushy and I was thirsty. If only I had seen the sign I needed to see, those eight miles would have felt more like eight miles instead of twenty. But I didn't see it and wouldn't know I'd missed it for nine more miles until I came to a crossroad that appeared town-like in that it had a post office, tavern, gas station, and general store. On a white shed next to the store hung a small sign with gold letters that read "Rest Rooms." Perfect.

I coasted across the main road to the bathroom shed, got off, and leaned my bike against the back wall in the shade under the overhang. My first thought was urgent: "Bathroom now." My second thought was somewhere between nonchalant and purposeful: "Electrolytes." Suddenly, I could taste one of those funny-colored sports drinks in my imagination. The store was sure to have at least one of them.

Minutes later, as I guzzled my neon-green drink, I checked the map. Sure enough, I'd gone too far. So I called Brenda at Nomad to let her know I'd be later than I thought and back I rode, the way I'd come. Sufficiently electro-lit, I chugged along, up and down and around, counting mile markers and then arguing with myself about how many more miles I had to go. My excitement grew as I figured it to be under five.

I soon came to the bridge at the confluence of Coyote Creek and Martha's Creek where I should have turned the first time around. The road curved with the creek, over gentle slopes through woods of pine, maple, madrone, and scraggly oak trees with sage-green moss hanging from their branches. When I came to my last turn I mentally took a deep breath, probably physically, too, as I recalled Brenda telling me on the phone that the last mile was a climb. Just one more uphill mile to where a new adventure awaited.

*****

INTENTIONAL COB AND  
THE WITCH'S TEACUP

When I was eight or nine, I still loved to play in the woods behind the house—a different woods and house than I had explored when I was four and practicing my table manners. Sometimes I'd swing on the old, fat grapevines that hung down from the tops of tall trees. There was one strong vine that hung from a stout tree on a steep hill. I'd carry the end of the vine up the hill as far as it would reach, wrap my legs around it, and lock my ankles and feet together at the end. Taking aim at a distant tree down the hill, I'd squeeze my hands tightly around the vine above my head and raise my feet off the ground. I'd quickly pick up speed and fly far and high above the land until I'd reach the tree I was going for. I'd release my legs from the vine and then rewrap them around the slender tree's smooth trunk. I'd hold myself there for a second or two before letting go and swinging back to where I'd started.

Other times, I'd swing my dad's big axe over my head and steer its fall into the meat of an old fallen limb. I'd make deep V-cuts the way my dad had taught me, keeping my eye on the exact place I wanted the sharp edge of the axe to strike, which then told my body what I wanted it to do. As I came to discover, it was the same technique for hammering nails, throwing rocks, swinging softball bats, and shooting foul shots.

No matter what I did in those woods, it was in the guise of a pioneer woman living on the Western frontier. I even built a little log hut once. I notched the ends and locked them together. One night, after I made a stick roof, I slept out in my "cabin." It was two feet high and only had three walls. It was really a log tent. I scared myself silly that night when I heard some critter, probably just a squirrel. But in the crunchy leaves, just a few feet from my head, it was loud enough to be a monster. I don't remember why I felt so strongly about wanting to spend the night in my cabin, or why I was inspired to build it. I even dug a little square hole, put plywood over it, and called it a root cellar. Some animal ate the green beans from the garden I'd put in it.

Whatever the reason that children are drawn to play what they play, I am glad to have never outgrown my love of playing in the woods on my frontier. Even now, I find such pleasure in making shelter, gathering water, eating simple food, and exploring the land from a saddle.

So when I found out a few days before my arrival to "the land," as it was often called, that I would be helping the women there build a rustic studio, I couldn't have been more thrilled. I had just assumed I'd be pulling weeds and peeing in the vegetable garden. And, it wasn't just your same-old-same-old stick-framed, fiberglass-insulated, shingle-roofed, board-and-battened structure where the onslaught of right angles pounded the creativity right out of the builder's hands. This structure was being made out of cob (a mixture of clay, straw, and sand) and curves. Lots of them. In fact, aside from the windows, doors, support beams, and steps, there were few straight lines. And for me, when it came to building, the fewer the straight lines, the better. Not just because that meant I'd waste fewer pieces of lumber, but also there were just so many more possible and interesting ways to get from point A to point B. And it was just plain fun to find them.

My first day on the job started early. Up with the birds, I scurried down to the common house to fuel up. With only one brief introduction to the kitchen the night before, it took many cupboard and drawer openings and closings just to make coffee and boil two eggs. I should have just waited fifteen minutes for the six hungry, helpful people who'd show up to walk me through it.

"Well? Are you two ready?" Brenda asked with a big smile as she signed with her hands to Marissa, another WWOOFer. Before any sound came out of my mouth, I was standing.

"Yup. I sure am," I said, and followed her and Marissa out the door. We walked up the dirt path that passed by my tent under young trees to a pile of sand on a tarp. Our first job was to shovel the sand into the back of a pickup truck. If ears could have salivated, mine would have been drooling onto my shoes. I had done a fair amount of shoveling sand over the years and the sound of steel slicing through it, especially a course sand, was pure pleasure. It was almost as pleasing a sound to me as rock knocking against rock or brick against brick. I picked up a shovel and dove in.

It had been many years since I'd shoveled anything into the back of a truck for a good length of time, and my body reminded me of it. Certain back muscles that used to be the first to complain after an eight-hour day when I was twenty-six seemed to still have the same complaints, but after only an hour or less of work. And like then, I just took my mind off it and periodically changed my stance or technique.

When the sagging bed was full, Brenda backed the truck up the hill to the building site. Marissa and I picked up our water bottles and followed on foot. As I approached the top of the hill, my eyes widened. There it was. More than a footprint, but less than a first floor, the hand-sculpted structure stood partially shaded under worn blue tarps that stretched between trees. Though I wasn't a potter like Brenda, my hands knew the pleasure of shaping wet clay from my childhood when I'd play in the creek. They ached to feel that pleasure again. After some maneuvering, Brenda backed up to within inches of the mixer, usually meant for mortar, but which Brenda hoped would also work for cob. "We mixed last year's cob the traditional way, with our feet," Brenda said. "It's great fun, but it takes a long time."

After Brenda showed us how to make it, we all took a job and quickly fell into the process. Brenda started off mastering the mixer, adding straw and water to the clay and sand in the right amounts at the right time. Its engine roared. Even Marissa said that she felt it in her chest and knew it was loud. She pulled back her long straight blonde hair, tied it in a ponytail, and emptied two buckets of sand from the back of the truck into the mouth of the beast. Out of brain-rattling range on the other side of the studio, I ripped into a hill of brilliant red-orange clay with a pick and shovel. Time flew by. I'd fill a wheelbarrow and then push it along a narrow path between the west wall of the studio and a steep bank and continue up a plank to the mixer. Sometimes Marissa would come around the corner at the same time with her own wheelbarrow full of finished cob on her way to dump it on a big blue tarp. We never collided, but laughed about a few near misses. After a while, usually when someone's shoulder or back got tired, we traded jobs. I had forgotten how much I loved repetitive, physical work, especially under an intense summer sun. Like riding, it cleared my head.

After a long stretch of batches, Brenda would stop, sit down on the ground, an upside down bucket, or an old six-by-six, reach into a leather pouch, pinch tobacco between her fingers, and roll a cigarette. In between swigs of water, we asked questions about each other and shared short stories of our lives.

On one break, I walked around snapping pictures, imagining how much my dad, an alternative-building enthusiast, would like to see this. I would later regret this. In my attempt to capture the unique beauty of this old building method, and to track our progress, I took truckloads of pictures. Every day, for thirteen days, I took those pictures with wet clay on my hands. Why it did not occur to me that wet clay would eventually dry, becoming a lightweight collection of tiny particles with a knack for finding small, dark spaces between delicate mechanical parts designed to move smoothly in a coordinated fashion without irritation or resistance, I'd never know. In two weeks, the lens would crunch open when I turned it on. A week after that it would no longer zoom. On the very the last day of my trip, as luck would have it, right after I took a picture of Anne standing in front of her stove cooking me a welcome-home dinner, it would stop working altogether.

As far as I could tell, the clay never really washed away. And when it dried it was more orange, or terracotta, or the color of madrone bark in red season. Everyone on the land had orange shoes and knees. Orange handprints decorated jeans and brims of hats. It was on sink faucets and on the refrigerator handle. I had the stuff in all of my pockets, my ears, up my nostrils, under my fingernails, and in my hair. It was a good thing the outdoor solar shower didn't have a drain to clog.

Throughout this first day, other women came and went, lending a hand and then getting back to chores and gardening. At the very end of the day, Brenda announced that a bunch of them were going to a local swimming hole they called "The Teacups" to cool off, and Marissa and I were invited. We covered the piles of wet cob with plastic to keep it from drying out, washed off our arms and legs at the hose, and met everyone else down at the common house.

Seven of us hopped into two different vehicles and drove a few miles along Martha's Creek. After parking in a wide, dusty pull-off, we walked down a steep, precarious path to the water. Downstream, the creek rushed through dark-grey jagged rock cliffs. Upstream were three little teacup-looking swimming holes at the bottom of a gently sloping bed of that same dark, sharp rock where six young naked women perched in the sun. Apparently, it was a popular swimming hole. Somebody in our group recognized them as being from the Witch Camp that happened every year in the area. It was hard to tell whether they were real witches or witch wannabes. But they surely cast a spell on me. Suddenly, I was young again.

We walked down, said hello, and found our own patch of daggers with which to puncture our butts and shoulder blades. I set down my towel and without a second thought, took off my clothes and sat at the edge of one deep pool of green-gray water, slowly dipping in my toes and feet until they were completely submerged. The heat of the sun cooked me from all directions. I knew what I was in for, but I dove in anyway. It cooled off the whole day in an instant and had started on the next day when I quickly swam back to the ledge and climbed out, dripping with new life.

For an hour or more, all thirteen of us women, half whom I didn't know and the other half I'd known for twenty-two hours, flocked together, getting drunk on the sun and sober on Martha's chilling elixir. I lay there with my eyes closed. My body stopped resisting the uneven rock beneath it and settled into the crevices. I felt more alive than I could remember. When the sun sank below the ridge, we put on our clothes, gathered our things, and walked up the dusty path the way we'd come. I rode back in the bed of the truck, hair flying everywhere. I hadn't done that in years.

That evening, like every evening, we made and ate dinner together. With only three square inches left of spare space in the kitchen, it was a wonder no one ended up with a wooden spoon down her throat or a cast-iron skillet upside her head. Somebody sliced or diced. Somebody tended the stove. Somebody else assembled a salad, and others set the table. All our efforts culminated in a feast for queens. Wholesome. Savory. Spicy. Sweet. Though it was never spoken of, it seemed as though we were all keenly aware that we were living the good life. Simple. Close to the land. And with the intent to care for ourselves and each other.

*****

THUMBS

By early afternoon on our third day of making cob, we had used up most of the sand and had nowhere else to pile the cob. Steep, wet, red-orange foothills rose up from blue tarps around the site border. The two colors were stunning side by side. In fact, it might have been the first time I'd ever enjoyed the sight of a blue tarp. We were finally ready to start cobbing. We cleaned out the mixer and broke for lunch. With the satisfaction of our goal completed, I sat on the back deck in my filthy clothes and ate two peanut butter and honey sandwiches. A breeze blew off the heat and rang the delicate chimes that hung in the big maple tree in the front yard above the garden. I couldn't wait to get back up to the site for our first lesson in the art of shaping shelter.

Brenda was already up there when Marissa and I got back. We set down our water bottles in the shade and followed Brenda to the south wall where she proceeded to show us how it was done. It seemed easy. Though there may have been specific terminology and theories behind the techniques, it seemed to me that you just balled the stuff up in the shape of a big potato, slapped it on, and poked holes through it with a pointed stick that was called a thumb. The stick pushed the straw into the layer beneath and tied all the layers together like rebar in cement. And you could always find a thumb lying around as they were easy to make or find, being just sticks, stones, or bones. And everybody, including me, seemed to have her favorite. One that fit her hand just right.

Some portions of the walls were stacked straw bales where there weren't any windows. A layer of cob got plastered right on the bale and thumbed into the straw. Anything could be cobbed in. Blue glass bottles. Glass blocks. Shelves. When it was time for a window to go in, you just placed it where you wanted it and cobbed around it. Planks and beams were used to provide support and help distribute the weight above windows and doors, as in any building. Inside, bench seats and shelves were also shaped out of cob. There seemed to be so much freedom without the restriction of straight lines. Walls could curve. Arches were simple. And, because it was clay—raw earth—mistakes weren't cemented in, but easily corrected with a hand saw or some water. To my relief.

The days passed like this. We got up early and put in long days of cobbing. We feasted in the evenings. Music happened spontaneously whenever someone felt like picking up a guitar or sitting at the piano...and what a treat. Some of the women were polished musicians, and it seemed that everyone could sing. Friends came and stayed a few days to help. When they left, other ones came. Some were just gypsies passing through and wanted to trade a day of work for a couple of meals and a bed. The land was a whirlwind of sparkling people whipping up interesting conversations and connecting with each other. But there was also time and space to be alone, even if you had to make an effort to find it.

One late afternoon, we were all having happy hour in our own corners of the land. Shelly watered the plants on the deck. Brenda picked greens in the garden. I sat on the front deck, writing. The clouds and sun did a dance, rustling the maple tree's giant leaves as a few raindrops patted my face. Basil, mint, lavender, oregano, and thyme filled pots and whiskey barrels along the railing, causing a strange mix of aromas that swirled around me. Dogs ran in and out of the house. Ruby sang on the roof as she picked cherries from the top branches of the cherry tree where the ladder couldn't reach. All was well on the land. All was well with me. I felt so comfortable and part of life here somehow. Like a thread in a rug, I was being woven. And it didn't seem that I was the only one, or that it was an accident. Life was deliberate here. There was a design in mind for the tapestry. People chose to look each other straight in the eye, inside. They chose to be open and generous. Mindful.

*****

S-CURVE

I knew I was dreaming. I walked down a back road, writing in my journal as I walked. I came to an S-curve and saw a brown bear off to the right at a safe distance. I kept walking. More bears appeared. I took notes. I decided I should go back home. These new bears were now closer to the road so I was more cautious walking by them. Then I came to some big animals in the road eating something. I thought they were coyotes or wolves standing over a carcass, maybe an elk. Then I realized they were cougars. I became more frightened. One saw me and started walking towards me. I calmly got on the ground, curled up like a fetus, and covered my head with my arms and hands. It sniffed me and then very sweetly curled up around me, holding me in its legs and paws close to its body, soft and warm.

*****

DOORKNOB HOLES  
AND THE TINY BUBBLE

With several pairs of hands on each end, we hoisted the first beam up onto the north and south walls. Thrilled to see it up there, we hooted in celebration. Not only did we feel super-human for lifting something so heavy, but also, this was the beginning of the second floor. Cold bottles of beer got passed around. Tired and covered in cob, we glowed orange in the late afternoon sun as we stood there admiring our work.

Though I'd come from a family of builders and doers, and learned at an early age that I, too, was capable of figuring things out and making ideas come to life, helping build this studio and being around so many capable people was a welcomed reminder. In fact, being capable seemed to be the invisible cornerstone of the land. Need a greenhouse? Oh, okay, let's build one. Want a pottery studio? Sure. A chicken coop? Easy. Grow and preserve food? Nothing to it. Get along with each other? We sure can give it a shot. Why not?

The rest of the beams flew up in the next few days, my last days. And, amazingly, as Brenda joked, they were even level. "Imagine that!" she exclaimed, laughing as she eyed the tiny bubble in the glass tube. Now, the second floor could be laid down. And like many things Brenda built and the materials she chose, her practicality and cleverness shone through. Instead of regular flooring (expensive), she had decided to reuse old, solid-core interior doors laid flat across the beams. They would go on fast and cost her less than twenty bucks. Some had to be cut, of course, to fit the curves of the walls, but overall, it was simple and served its purpose. And so what if she had doorknob holes in her floor?

After dinner on my last evening, before the last light faded, I walked up to the site. The air was cool. I went inside the earthen shell and looked up through the beams. The silhouette of madrone branches lay on the western sky. A few faint stars appeared overhead.

For much of the day, I'd been thinking about leaving. I was ready. I still had so much ahead of me and was excited to get back on my bike and to be alone in my head. But also, I wasn't ready for the end of summer, of this adventure. As I stood there, warmed by the afternoon sun that had been stored in the cob walls around me, the end started coming into view. The days were already getting shorter. I'd reached my turning point and from here on would essentially be heading north. Back.

*****

UP SNOWY MOUNTAIN  
IN THE CHERUB'S SEDAN

A little old man, cherub-like, took me in his car up a snowy mountain. It was a big old, but shiny, sedan and not so good in the snow. The winding road went up and up in a spiral around a cone-shaped mountain. The roads weren't even plowed, but he kept driving, quite easily. The road was on the very edge of the mountain and we were so high up. I was afraid. When we reached the very top we got out of the car. The little man led me to the edge. I knew what I was supposed to do. For a brief moment I resisted, and then I just stepped off the edge, out into the air, knowing that I'd be okay. And I was. I kept walking across the sky.

*****

SNAKESKINS AND SIGNPOSTS

Maps lie. Or rather, they withhold. Traditional maps, that is—the kind that are fixed in ink and not the kind that move as you move, talking you through your mistakes. But I knew this, and as long as I remembered this fact, I would not be disappointed when my map became useless on top of a mountain near Dutchman Butte just north of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. One truth that would be revealed was that the yellow ink did not necessarily signify paved roads as I thought it had in other parts of Oregon, on other mountaintops. To add to my adventure, despite the little yellow lines on my map not having names, I trusted that there would be road signs with town names and arrows. Maybe even mileage.

All I wanted to do was go west on Route 42 without having to first go north on Interstate 5. But as was true for the early settlers, mountains and rivers got in the way sometimes. Out here, "as the crow flies" was really only possible for crows. I had studied my map for days prior to this portion of my journey and had finally decided to stop worrying. Not because there was a high probability of a more direct route existing, but because I just got tired of looking for one. I couldn't find my readers and my eyes hurt. Besides, I'd been on the road long enough to know that, like water, roads flowed, too; and if I could read the landscape and the sky, I could find my way. Eventually, anyway.

The morning was fresh, and Cow Creek Road offered me a fast, scenic ride. A creek. Some cows. I kept my map handy because the next road I'd be taking had a string of numbers for a name. There was simply nothing about 31-7-190 that conjured up a memorable image. I was also paying attention to places where the road crossed over Cow Creek, or some other creek, to see where I might be and when I might expect to see 31-7-190. I went along like this for many miles until I came to a fairly decent-sized secondary road that turned left over a bridge and proceeded up a hill. This had to be the road I was looking for, but it didn't have a sign. Well, it had a signpost, but no sign. By the looks of the post (a wooden four-by-four), the sign had been broken off with some large implement of destruction. I looked back at the bridge and noticed that, to my good fortune, someone—no doubt the enemy of the sign-destroyer—had painted the name "UNION CREEK" in all capital letters with an arrow pointing over the river. Apparently, this painter couldn't remember 31-7-190 either. I looked at my map to find Union Creek. I saw Ollala Creek. I saw the West Fork of Middle Creek and Rock Creek. I did not see any blue squiggly line called Union Creek. However, there were two blue squiggly lines without names. In a burst of certainty I declared that one of them was Union Creek and that was that. I fueled up with nuts and dried apples, drank some water, peed under the bridge, and I was off.

Over the bridge. Over railroad tracks. And the climb began. At least the road was paved. No sooner did I have that thought then the road curved around to the right. Dirt. Dang. Dirt, as in dusty pebbles with a few cherry tomato and fig-sized rocks mixed in. Touring bikes loaded with forty-five pounds of gear and food didn't like roads like this. Nor did I. So I ignored it and focused on the trees.

Twenty-five miles later I was at the top of the mountain. Well, almost the top. I stopped short because I'd reached a Y in the road and, again, the road sign had been ripped off the post and left lying on the ground. I picked it up and tried to align the splintered ends. It didn't work. Either road could have been the right one. I looked at my map again. I was supposed to make a sharp left to the south, then a sharper right to head back north. I looked at the sun and the clock on my cyclometer. The road that veered off to the left was definitely heading south. But I had just come from a sharp left which had then turned right again. I was compelled to take the road to the right, but I couldn't tell how much of that impulse was my gut or the fact that it went down and the road to the left went up. I decided to investigate both options. I leaned my bike against a tree and started walking up the hill. It was fairly heavily traveled but there were also piles of gravel off to the side up ahead that were probably intended for road repairs, explaining that heavy use. I walked just a little further and saw that it became much steeper. Wanting desperately for it to not be the right way, I turned around. When I got back to the intersection, I checked the sign again in case I'd missed a clue. Still perplexed, I got on my bike and rode slowly down the mountain looking for any kind of sign. And there one was. Twenty-five feet ahead, a huge square orange sign leaning sideways against a tree read, "ROAD CLOSED 5 MILES." Great. Desperately wanting this to be the right way, I ignored it and kept going. I soon came to another Y with another mangled signpost but no sign. There was a pattern here and it did not go unnoticed. Why didn't they just erect a sign at the intersection of 31-7-190 and Cow Creek Road that said "IF YOU DON'T LIVE HERE, GO AWAY. WE DON'T WANT YOU RIDING AROUND OUR MOUNTAINS AND PEEING UNDER OUR BRIDGES. OH, AND DON'T EVEN BOTHER GOING UP THIS ROAD BECAUSE YOU'LL GET LOST AND WE WON'T COME LOOKING FOR YOU." That would have done it for me. I would have taken Interstate 5 with the rest of the tourists.

This new Y was easy to assess, however. Down the center of the left-veering road grew a narrow band of grass. So I stayed on the right-veering "main" road—for another fifty feet. Another Y. Okay. I gathered myself. Knowing that five miles was a long way on a dirt road when it went downhill and you might have to come back up, I took the sign's advice and turned around. Back up I went. Past the third Y. The second Y. The road-closed sign. The first Y. And back up that dang hill past the piles of gravel and up. Good lord, I was at the top of the world. It was absolutely stunning. But the hill didn't seem to stop and I was pretty sure that a downward direction was the way off the mountain. Confused and hungry for guidance, I did what any wilderness woman would do. I called a friend—in this case, Robin—with the hope that she was sitting at her computer and could go to that very popular website that has maps of everyplace on the planet and zoom in to my exact location. I think the conversation went something like this: "Hi there. It's me. Can you tell me where I am?"

She tried her hardest with the information I had to offer—Union Creek and 31-7-190. After quite a while she was able to figure out where I was and came up with an elaborate set of directions, which included several different strings of numbers mixed in with "...left, right, veer left, sharp left, hard right..." I tried with all my brain power to remember, thanked her profusely, assured her I'd be fine, said good-bye, and knew I was in big trouble.

Back down the hill I went for the third time. I wasn't sure why, but I also went back to decapitated signpost number two. Now, seriously frustrated and hot, I blurted out loud, "I need a friggin' sign!" The word "sign" was still coming out of my mouth when my eyes fell to the ground. In the grass was a grey, brittle snakeskin pointing in a perfect straight line down the hill. Okay. "Thank you," I said out loud. I still had to contend with all of the Y's in the road and the fact it might be impassible in five miles, but I knew in my gut that I'd get off the mountain and find my way to Route 42.

Taking one last look at the map, I saw a little blue squiggly line in the direction I was headed. It crossed a road that may or may not have been the road I was on. But I figured there was a good chance it was this road and that there had simply been a washout, thus closing the road to vehicles. But I was a bike. And I could throw my gear across, put my bike on my shoulder and wade through it if I had to.

Sure enough, five miles later I came upon a washout, but it hadn't taken the whole road with it. A two-foot wide section of road remained. I laughed, got out my phone, and sent a text to Robin to tell her I'd made it.

*****

FAIR GAME

I was quite sure I'd just experienced a time warp. How did I just ride eighty miles after a late start, a two week hiatus at Nomad's where I drank and ate for three people, and spending a chunk of time foraging for signs on a mountaintop? Yes, minus the mountain, it was essentially downhill. But still. The only answer, besides a time warp, that I could come up with was 90 percent pure adrenaline and 10 percent necessity. From the second my butt settled onto the saddle, I was high on a freedom-endorphin cocktail mainlined straight into my veins. To be on the road again, riding like the wind, was a high I could stay on forever. Although, truth be told, had there been a campground before Coquille, I definitely would have put off forever until tomorrow and snagged it. But then I wouldn't have met the Californian woman on the old covered bridge who inspired me to keep following my passion and who gave me two bottles of cold water during the hottest part of the day. Or Tony, the ex-Californian who now lived in a small camper at the entrance to the city park where he was the camp host (yes, official camping in a city park). I would have never learned about his life in Los Angeles as a songwriter and musician that led to his corporate career that led to him going back to school that led to him now being a sports psychologist for professional female golfers. Gosh, if he had been in my shoes earlier that day, he'd still be on that mountain taking every possible Y just because he could.

I barely got my tent up before the sun set. This was the first time I'd eaten dinner in the dark. I rinsed out my pot, watched a little beat-up pickup truck pull into a spot at the far end of the park, and popped two Ibuprofen knowing that eighty miles were hiding in my knees waiting for their pre-dawn retaliation.

Five-eleven in the morning splashed in my face when a fisherman floating down the calm Coquille River jumped down his buddy's throat like a treble hook. "Friggin' girlfriend? Just because you go out with a girl, does that make her your girlfriend?" Before his buddy could reply, he offered his final words of advice. "God...friggin'...girlfriend...Jesus..." Something like that. His voice drifted away, but I did not. I was up. And really, it didn't matter because I would have been awakened early anyway from the high-pitched sound of trees being chopped up into wood chips at a lumber mill across the river.

My legs felt pretty good. I was surprised. I crawled out into a thick fog. The pickup truck was already gone. A gaggle of geese and one little black-and-white duck—not sure what kind, of course—gathered around a bench next to the river. I made tea for a change, knowing I would go into town later for coffee as I only had forty miles to go to the Umpqua Lighthouse State Park, where I hoped to walk along the sand dunes and have my first view on the trip of the Pacific Ocean.

The goose gathering (plus a duck) began to stir. It seemed that they saw me rustling around in my plastic bag of breakfast foods and thought I might have something to offer them. "Na," I changed my mind. They weren't that smart. I poured some egg pellets into my pot of water and opened a new bag of dried bread. And here they came. Waddling in a line, led by the little black-and-white duck who obviously had become their leader due to his or her keen ability to see a cube of bread fifty yards away. The more he or she quacked, the faster the geese followed. And the more I rustled through my bag, the more the little duck quacked. My mouth fell open. I would never again underestimate the power of the fowl brain. Humbled, I apologized for my human arrogance and hoped to earn their forgiveness by speaking to them as I would another human—or a dog, anyway. I explained how it was not that I was being selfish with my food, but it was truly in their best interest not to eat processed people food. Sure, they might eat grains in the wild, but once you ground them up and added yeast and all sorts of substances that had names you needed a chemistry degree to pronounce, it would have disastrous effects on their fowl gastrointestinal system, which might, over time, weaken their immune system, diminish their egg production, increase their gosling/duckling mortality rates, underscoring the wisdom behind not counting fowl before they're hatched, and perhaps even alter their DNA forever. I was of course making this up, sort of, but I was quite sure that despite their proven intelligence, I had likely lost them at "gastrointestinal." Remarkably, Little Duck stopped their advance, cocked its head, gave me a look I couldn't comprehend, and waddled away. They huddled together, no doubt having high-level democratic discussions about what their next move should be in order to acquire the nutrition they needed while expending the least amount of energy and upholding their commitment to maintain a healthy environment while creating a sustainable future for all fowl and non-fowl alike.

As my eggs soaked, I shoved my sleeping bag into its sack and deflated my sleeping pad. By now the duck's gaggle had dispersed and were meandering through the freshly mowed grass under big broadleaf trees while occasionally pecking at mysterious things on the ground—presumably, fowl food. Then suddenly, Commander Duck looked up and stared across the park in the direction of the bathrooms. At least two-hundred yards away were two human figures slowly walking towards us. They were so far away that I couldn't tell if they were a man and a woman, two men, or two women, or what they were wearing. Actually, I just assumed they were clothed Homo-Sapiens. They easily could have been a different bipedal species altogether and stark naked. Back under the shade trees, Big Duck On The River got all titillated, which in turn riled up the whole Goose Republic. What did they know that I didn't?

The closer the two figures got, the more frenzied the fowl became. Finally, I could tell the figures were human, but their genders remained inconclusive. In another minute I surmised that they actually weren't walking, but shuffling. And then, a decade later, the puzzle pieces began to come together. One of the shufflers carried a bag under his or her arm. Aha! I bet it was a bag of old bread. The gaggle went berserk. All at once they sprint-waddled off toward the bathrooms as if they'd all simultaneously had a sudden case of diarrhea. By the time the shufflers came within gender-identification range, I'd already packed up my tent, eaten my breakfast, and read the last third of War and Peace. Now it all made sense (not the book, the frenzied fowl). One severely old great-grandpa was out for his morning shuffle with his less-severely old friend to feed their mutual fowl friends. They inched their way down the park road past me to the bench with all the geese and duck in tow. It was blatantly clear that The Bench was the feeding place and there would be no food offered until they all reached The Bench. Not twenty-five yards from it. Not ten feet. There were rules,, and patience was a virtue and all good things came in due time. Great-Grandpa emptied his bag of stale bread on the ground and started back with his human friend towards me without even saying so much as good morning to his fowl friends.

As I loaded my panniers onto my bike, I heard Great-Grandpa in a loud voice ask his friend, "Is that a he or a she?" His friend gave some response, though I couldn't hear it. Then again, "Is that a he or a she?"

"It's a she," I said, knowing he was referring to me.

"Huh?"

"It's a she," I said a little louder.

"What? I'm deaf," he yelled as he reached to his ear, turned up his hearing aid and shuffled closer. Now, at a more convenient six-foot yelling distance apart, we engaged ourselves in conversation. Well, maybe I kind of forced him to engage, but I couldn't help it. My impulse came from an old childhood wound when strangers out in public wondered if I was male or female. A man would call me "sir," or a young child would ask his mother in the grocery-store checkout line if I was a boy or a girl. If a male peer was unsure, he usually figured it out quickly, and then got mad and called me a "dyke" or "fat dyke." This scratching on the scab had tainted my mood.

One more time I said, "It's a _she_."

"Oh. Yeah. I said that." Apparently, his memory and hearing were neck and neck in the failing race. "Where you headed?" he asked, as his friend stood yards away, definitively unengaged.

"Up the coast and back to Bellingham, Washington," I answered.

"What?"

"Up the coast," I repeated.

"Oh. By yourself? Aren't you afraid?"

"No. Why?"

"Well, an attractive girl like you out there."

I paused. Ninety-nine percent of my being adored old men 99 percent of the time, but every once in a while, I became a praying mantis who felt compelled to challenge an entire generation for every oppressive, sexist, or otherwise misinformed opinion they might hold. I struck. "So if an attractive woman is out in the world alone, then she's likely to be harmed in some way?"

"Well, uh, no. That sure is a nice bike." He stared at my rig as if he'd never seen a bike before. I felt bad, appropriately so. He wished me luck, advised me not to get run over, and reunited with his friend.

I finished packing up and rode into downtown Coquille to Frazier's Restaurant to have breakfast with all of Great-Grandpa's neighbors—prompting me to wonder if this town was a retirement Mecca—and to write in my journal about why the old man thought what he thought. I couldn't let it go. Was it just old thinking that had been formed in his childhood? That women were weak and the weak were fair game? Or had he been a young man who had been unable to control his urges a time or two, forcing himself upon an attractive woman who had been so foolish as to venture out into the world alone? I'd heard that one in four women will be sexually assaulted in her life, predominantly by men. Did statistics even exist regarding the percentage of men who did the assaulting? I didn't know and wouldn't know, certainly not at Frazier's and not before the end of the day. But, as I finished my stale muffin among this gang of feeble, wrinkled men, lovingly helping their cane-dependent wives up from their tables, I realized I didn't really need to know. What did it matter? The nature of twenty-first-century men, young and old, whatever it may be, wouldn't keep me from venturing out into the world alone.

I paid my bill and set my sights on the Pacific Ocean.

*****

FRAYING SHIFTER CABLE  
AND THE SALMON COUNTER

I couldn't wait to get to Florence and start heading east again. My dunes experience was a dud. I'd imagined myself sleeping on the beach under the stars as the rhythm of crashing waves gently rocked me to sleep.

First of all, it was cold. I forgot that it might be. For the entire ride from Coquille to Umpqua Lighthouse the tips of my fingers were numb and I had to wear my wool hat. And who decided that the constant whine and roar of dune buggies all day and into the night enhanced one's opportunity to enjoy the beauty of a unique and inspiring landscape? After I set up camp, I put on more wool layers and walked to Marie Lake and then to the lighthouse overlooking the dunes, and beyond, a pencil line of a cold, grey ocean. For the entire walk the roar of buggies got louder and louder, drowning out the ominous warning pulse from the lighthouse. When I reached the lighthouse, oddly nestled between two architecturally deficient motel-like buildings behind a chain-link fence, I saw young children playing in the communal yard. Who would build a low-income housing project yards from an historical structure in a state park? I read the sign at the foot of the whitewashed phallus. Homeland Security. Oh. It was a barrack. I was told not to trespass, disrupt the lives of Homeland Security personnel and their families, or stare a little too long at the lighthouse lest I see the secret, super-duper surveillance equipment in its head collecting data on the mating rituals of sand fleas. Okay. Got it. I slowly stepped away and retreated to the tourist platform across the road. Next to the pay-binoculars and signs about migrating whales, I gazed across the dunes to a thin white strip of crashing waves. But I certainly did not feel the euphoria I'd hoped to experience. There it was, the Pacific Ocean. Five dune buggies sped by. I went back to camp, made dinner, and crawled into my tent by seven o'clock.

In addition to the disappointing dunes, I was also not so impressed Route 101. Yes, I was only on it for a short time and not on the most scenic section, but as roads go, it did not deserve to be the focus of twelve-thousand cycling books. The shoulder was fairly narrow. Traffic was heavy with far too many first-time RV drivers weaving across the white line as they peered out of their window trying to see the ocean (often with a wide-eyed, clench-jawed navigator in the passenger seat). I pedaled faster and took to flapping my straightened left arm up and down whenever I saw an albino bull barreling up behind me. It mostly just made them mad. Who was I to demand more than six inches? Signs for Florence gave me relief. There, I would not only pick up Route 126 east to Eugene where I'd rest a day before my mom arrived, but I'd also find a bike shop to buy more carbon dioxide cartridges and look into getting my shifter cable replaced. As the young man in the bike shop promised, Route 126 was a "sweet ride." Relatively flat, it followed the Siuslaw River, and the shoulder was "as wide as a second lane." I'd find out hours later that that particular river was one of the best on the coast for salmon, and when they were running, that shoulder was a parking lot.

I had been sluggish for most of the ride. Maybe some of it was my mood. Finally, with a dozen miles to go, I got into my groove. Being on level ground helped. It was easier to get into a rhythm and stay in it longer, thus becoming a meditation of sorts. I was in such a state when I saw a little building up ahead with a big sign that read, "Farmer's," and other smaller signs indicating that they sold everything from organic potting soil to fishing line to...microbrews??? If I had been a cartoon character driving a car, my tires would have squealed as I whipped into the parking lot.

After a friendly conversation with the store owner, I stuck my twenty-two ounce bottle of Ninkasi Tricerahops I'd just purchased in my backpack and rode another five miles to a closed-but-no-one-would-know-if-I-were-there campground next to Knowles Creek. I picked the farthest site from the entrance, right next to a bend in the creek, nestled up to an embankment that held up the road. I opened the bottle with various items, including a molar, as I did not have an official bottle opener. I found a comfortable sitting rock at the water's edge, took a swig from the bottle, and opened my journal. I took another swig and started writing.

This was a true "babbling brook." With hardly any imagination, I could hear a person rambling on and on about something he or she found exciting. Birds sang to each other from one side of the creek to the other. A thick, soft layer of moss covered tree trunks. My fingers longed to run through it. Ferns exploded out from behind old rotting logs that had fallen, by nature or sawtooth blade, a century ago. I felt so blessed. Water bugs skated across the still pool in front of me. The beer tasted extra good. I knew that when it was gone, I'd wish I had just one more sip to enjoy, savor.

I moved to a larger flat boulder and lay in a patch of sunlight. After adjusting my back to fit around a lump, I dozed off. Just as I started to dream, I was startled awake by the sound of a person walking in the stream. I raised up my head and saw, twenty-five feet away, in a full wet suit, a man carrying a diving mask walking towards me. Now, this creek was no more than eight inches deep. Perhaps I was dreaming. We both said hello. He commented that this was a great campsite and asked how far I'd come on my bike. Later, I realized my bike had been parked up the bank and behind a tree. He must have seen me ride in. Anyway, I of course asked him what he was doing because I seriously had no clue. As it turned out, he was counting baby coho salmon—something he'd done for the past thirty-five years. He pointed the little guys out to me. I'd never seen young salmon. They were two to three inches long and easy to spot. And they were everywhere. He said this stream was one of the healthiest in Oregon, and that this year's numbers were up to about 85 percent of what they were two hundred years ago. That surprised me. I had gotten so used to bad numbers. Another species extinct. Another toxic river. Another cut in funds. Maybe someday, it would be okay again. Back to normal.

I set up camp, made dinner, and before the sun went down, hot chocolate. Happy for the salmon and for my own good fortune, I used two packages this time. I was tired of it not being as chocolaty as I liked. For the entire trip, I'd been suffering, if one could call it that, not because the hot chocolate was deficient or the hot chocolate maker remiss, but because I had a big cup and I'd been pouring too much water into it, thus making it far too diluted. Why I couldn't stop my pour sooner was a mystery. It was probably the same reason I couldn't only have half a bowl of cereal. Somewhere along the line I'd come to believe that vessels absolutely must be filled. It was a rule.

I went to bed early, mostly because I had nothing else to do. I was still in a mood. Some of it was probably PMS, but also, I was getting closer to home and honestly, I was slightly confused about where home was. The road felt like home. Adventure felt like home. Freedom felt like home. Empty campgrounds, sort of like home. At least I knew enough to know I might never figure this one out—especially this particular evening—so I went to bed.

I kept hearing noises. I swore I heard something walking in the water. Then I heard people talking. A man and a woman. I unzipped my tent door and, sure enough, a man and woman were walking their dogs through the campground. Their dogs came over to investigate my scent that no doubt wafted from my tent like a smoke bomb on a crowded street of activists. They quickly ran off when their owners called. I zipped the flap closed. A little later I heard more talking, but now it was dark. I was also drifting in and out of sleep so I didn't know if what I heard was real or a dream. Then I was awake. I thought. The walking in the stream started up again. I was convinced it was a bear. I held my breath for long periods of time, listening as hard as I could. At one point I even took my knife out of the tent pocket and located my headlamp and my phone. I felt silly, but I couldn't help it. Hadn't I learned my lesson from Dead Indian Memorial Road? Then two people, a man and a woman, came into my camp and walked around talking, oblivious to my presence. Then the man came into my tent. I jolted awake. I couldn't believe how real that was. I drifted back and there they were again. And again I woke up. And again I fell asleep and they were there. Finally, the last time it happened, I said, "Okay, this is a dream. Now go away!" And they did. I slept until morning.

I woke to the sound of heavy truck traffic on the road less than forty feet from my tent. Logging trucks. Great. I timed them. They were spaced about ten minutes apart and came in groups of two. The shoulder had narrowed by the end of yesterday's ride so I figured it might continue that way. I was worried before I even got up.

The last of the fog lifted through the treetops as the sun carved out a circle above the ridge. With my kitchen and bedroom neatly packed away and a clean and oiled chain, cassette, and chain-ring, I rode back onto Route 126. Logging trucks soon passed by with their loot as contradictory aromas of sweet pine and diesel exhaust filled my senses. Without thinking, I fell into my habitual routine: determine the trucks proximity to me (inches or feet), mentally erect a protective bubble around myself, and calmly focus on the ground a few feet ahead of my front wheel. Interestingly, up to this point, I'd told myself that if ever I had determined there to be just inches between me and the truck, I would bail into the weeds, a ditch, whatever. However (and don't tell my mom), I never did bail even though there were at least a few times when I should have strongly considered it, when mere inches of air kept me upright, if not alive. Apparently, I'd believed my bubble to be adequate protection and in good working order. And, with the exception of Route 14 from Washougal to Hood River, I'd always been calm. To one cyclist with whom I'd crossed paths earlier on, I'd proclaimed, "I guess it's just one big exercise in faith."

"Or insanity," he replied.

"Or that."

Faithful or insane, I continued on up the road with one finger periodically checking my right shifter cable that I'd noticed was fraying even more than the day before. Though I'd thought about having someone look at it when I stopped at the bike shop in Florence, I was skeptical about their service as they also sold guitars and skateboards. So I left, holding the assumption that eventually I would have another adventure when the cable finally did break, but there was no need to worry yet. A mile later, the need came.

The only thing I knew about right shifter cables was that they pulled or pushed on the derailleur to make it shift gears (which was probably the only thing a person really needed to know). I could see how it was supposed to be connected to the shifter and now wasn't. Fortunately, I was essentially on flat ground so I rode in whatever gear I was stuck in—ninth, I thought. Of course I could still use the left shifter, so I also had eighteenth and twenty-seventh. I went along this way for about ten miles until I reached a steep enough hill that I had to actually address the problem. I pulled off to the side and leaned my bike against a signpost (its sign intact). It was pretty obvious what I needed to do. I took the cable out of the bar-end shifter, pulled it into first gear, and shoved a handy-dandy plastic tie into the channel so it wouldn't slide back into ninth. I got back on and headed up the hill. I was terribly proud of myself.

A hundred yards ahead I saw the Walton Store. It was an old general store that also housed the post office. The perimeter of the front porch was lined with flower boxes overflowing with pink pansies. Oddly enough, I had a craving for coffee and a muffin so I zipped across the road before the next logging truck came by. The friendly woman in the store, who also served as the postmistress, informed me that there was a big hill coming up. I knew what "big hill" meant to the locals in these parts as I'd received warnings in the past couple of days but never figured out which hill they'd meant. While sitting outside at the picnic table, I looked at my map. Cougar Pass—769 feet. Had I been with a friend, I would have play-yawned and made some joke as I surmised that to be the "big hill." I ate and sipped slowly from the paper cup while my phone charged in an outlet I'd found on the side of the building behind the dumpster.

Back in the saddle, Cougar Pass came and my handy-dandy plastic tie went. Dang. I stopped and tried the same setup. And again it slipped out because of the higher tension from my ascent. Next plan. I decided to simply pull the cable myself. I got back on my bike, wrapped the cable around my hand, and started pedaling up the hill while simultaneously pulling it into a lower gear. Perfect. Easy. And on I went.

Up and over. Down. Then up and wow, did it hurt. My fingers had turned white. So to avoid this slow amputation-by-wire, I stopped, put on a glove, and continued. Still hurt. Stopped. I saw a stick on the ground and lit up. I wrapped the cable around the stick and pulled on that to shift. Once I was in the gear I wanted, I rested the stick across the handlebars to take on some of the tension, and away I went for the next thirty-five miles to Eugene.

*****

HOP HEAVY AT PAPA'S

I'd never been to Eugene before and for some reason I'd developed a curiosity about it. Based on things I'd heard and read, I imagined a city of funky neighborhoods where artists and poets and musicians gathered at colorful cafés all morning, tended to their gardens in the afternoon, and collected data for their art in bars and music clubs at night. I wasn't sure exactly when they did their art, but that didn't matter in my fantasy. Everyone rode old bicycles that squeaked, and long-haired children of all colors and creeds acted out their own fantasies with puppets they'd made from old pastel shirts their parents had gotten at the thrift shop. On every corner there was a food co-op that sold luscious organic mangos that dripped down your arm when you bit into them, and across the street was a used bookstore, a gallery, and a junk store masquerading as an antique shop that sold inexpensive treasures if you could find them. Just a few blocks away were small, mostly maintained houses on tree-lined streets on which twentieth-century vans, hatchbacks and pickups sat with their rusty bumpers held on by an array of political stickers.

When I woke from my fantasy, the light had turned green. I was now officially within city limits. Route 126 was a straight shot to downtown. I was okay with staying put. The shoulder was wide and didn't appear to be littered with debris. But as I approached the next traffic light I saw a sign for a bike path that also ended up downtown. Had I been in New York City and in a car I would have exploded into the left lane, cutting off the snoozing or texting driver behind me, and bolted through the yellow arrow. Instead, I waited for the green light, crossed the street in the crosswalk, pulled up onto the sidewalk, pushed the button on the post, and patiently waited for the white human-shaped walker to appear on the sign on the pole across the street. I was immersed in safety and order. I willingly reined in my wild-mare self and, without a second thought, proceeded as I'd been trained.

In just a block, I saw the entrance to the bike path. This one was sleek with clean, new pavement. And wide. In seconds I was in my rhythm, and without an ounce of stress about cars and debris, I focused on my next mission—getting a new shifter cable and finding my way to the Eugene Whiteaker Hostel. I rode for only a few minutes when I came upon a man just about to get back on his bike who was just asking to be accosted for information. Not really, but I stopped anyway and said hello. He seemed taken aback. An unshaven, older man wearing dirty clothes and with a missing front tooth, he had obviously been absorbed in his own thoughts, which I had interrupted. He finally smiled and said hello. I asked him if he knew where I could find a bike shop as I held up my homemade stick-shifter. He relaxed and brightened up. "Oh yes! Just up ahead on the left, next to the bike path. Paul's." How clever, I thought, to open up a bike shop right on a bike path. I thanked the old guy and rose up on my pedals with yet another jolt of wow-the-universe-really-is-conspiring-to-have-things-go-my-way.

To underscore this conspiracy, as Paul put on a new shifter cable and chain (it, too, had reached the end of its usefulness), I asked him if he knew how to get to the Whiteaker Hostel. Of course he did. Not only did he know that, but he knew that the Ninkasi Brewery was just a few blocks from the hostel. My luck was endless. Visiting the crafter of one of my favorite beers while in Eugene hadn't even occurred to me. I nearly fell to the floor on my hands and knees in praise of Hops and whatever other master crafter was behind this easy flow from one fulfilled need to the next.

The Whiteaker Hostel was much like the Whiteaker Neighborhood where it was located—eccentric and welcoming. A colorful painting of a man with wild rainbow hair and a beard hung on the fence along with old burlap coffee bags. Frayed and faded Tibetan prayer flags hung from one corner of the back porch to the other. Another painting, this one of the geometric Flower of Life, leaned against the porch wall behind an old plaid-cushioned chair from the '70s. Fluorescent hula hoops leaned against the garden shed wall next to a black wheelbarrow near a circular brick fire pit that held half-burnt logs. Around a wooden telephone-cable spool turned on end with a glass ashtray on top were three plastic outdoor chairs that had been painted bright red (which I appreciated). I didn't know why, but I was not particularly fond of those white plastic chairs that litter this planet. I supposed in the right environment they wouldn't be so ugly to me—like in a mall food court, or outside a security booth at the gated entrance of a pharmaceutical company. But to see them on rustic flagstone patios of eighteenth-century stone houses, next to yurts in the desert, or in front of mud huts in Africa, for me, polluted the entire rich, organic scene with their cheap, unnatural, will-never-degrade presence. At least these were bright red. I was even tempted to sit in one. After I checked in and the hip young owner took me on a tour, I stopped to talk with two middle-aged guys who were sitting around the cable-spool table, smoking. We bounced some small talk off one another. They asked about my trip. I asked about their wine. Then, the one guy asked, "How many flat tires have you had so far?" I looked up in the sky and counted in my head.

"Three so far. Just the back. I've never had a flat on the front," I laughed, and reached over to the wooden fence and knocked on it. It certainly made sense, I explained, that most flats would happen to the rear tire as that was where most of the weight was, and how it sure was a pain to have to deal with the chain and derailleur. "I'd much prefer a flat front tire," I said as I took a step sideways before saying good-bye and heading back toward the house

As I've said already, Eugene was known to have a high population of successful bike thieves. I think it was a category on the 2010 census. Yet the hostel host told me I didn't have to lock up my bike if I didn't want to, as he closed and locked the backyard gate every night. I said okay and then went to the backyard and locked up my bike. Sometimes peace of mind was far more valuable than trust.

I climbed the staircase to the women's dorm on the second floor of this old Victorian house. I found my room and surveyed my choices. One bunk bed near the balcony door had someone's backpack and clothes piled on the top and the other bunk bed next to the hallway door had someone's luggage crammed between the headboard and the wall on the bottom. I supposed it really didn't matter. Top or bottom. Outside wall. Inside wall. I put my panniers on the upper bunk above the luggage-carrying woman and claimed my space. I put on a clean tee shirt, my only tee shirt, but kept my biking shorts on since my cargo pants were now permanently stained with orange-red cob. I brushed my hair and slipped the ponytail through the back of my baseball cap, grabbed my daypack, and hurtled down the steps, out the door, and down the sidewalk in the direction of the Ninkasi Tasting Room. In about three strides I saw their signature aqua color with which they'd painted their entire two-story, cement-block building. Green ivy grew up one side. If my head wasn't spinning from the beer by the time I left, the clashing of these two colors would do the trick.

I ordered their Tricerahops inside, found an empty table outside in the sunny courtyard, and pulled out my journal and pen from my pack. I lifted the glass to my lips, tilted back my head, raised my arm, and instantly felt refreshed by the cold, bitter brew.

I could have been in Bellingham. There were lots of loners like me and a few young families. A train blew its whistle not too far away. Two waddling toddlers, strangers to each other, crossed paths and beamed with surprise and delight. They stood there, staring into each other's eyes. Their respective parents smiled at each other from across the courtyard. There was so much life out here in the world beyond entrenched daily routines in familiar places. It also seemed that there was so much more life inside—in me. I wondered if I could capture and hold on to this magic once I returned Bellingham.

My second beer started to settle in. I decided to venture out into the neighborhood to explore, find some interesting people, and get something to eat. I drank the last of my water, gathered my things, and walked toward the gate. As I stepped onto the sidewalk I said to myself, "Do not look at the ivy wall. Do not look at the ivy wall."

I strolled along to what appeared to be the neighborhood center. I walked across the street at the triangle, making note of the different places to eat. A tavern, whose parking lot smelled like a volatile mix of alcohol and urine. A pizza place. Or Papa's Soul Food. Perfect. Feeling loose and wild, and as if money did in fact grow on trees, I walked up the steps onto the porch of this old house-turned-restaurant. Inside, linen tablecloths covered little round tables. I gave the hostess my name just as a table opened up. I followed her to a back corner where I could see everything—the patrons, the servers, the kitchen door, and through the front windows out into the neighborhood beyond. With ten dollars left in my pocket, I ordered the six-dollar barbeque chicken sandwich. It came with homemade coleslaw and a pile of napkins. As it melted in my mouth and dripped down the inside of my wrist, I determined it to be the best barbeque chicken sandwich I'd ever eaten.

*****
LAUGHING BUDDHA AND  
THE IMITATION WOOD

The next morning I woke up early, and quietly slipped out of my room and down the stairs only to find the kitchen door still locked. I guessed they didn't want early birds in there clanking around pots and pans and waking up the night owls. Fortunately, I only had to wait a couple of minutes and the manager walked in with the key and let me in. I refrained from banging the teakettle against the stove, made my coffee, and flitted out the backdoor. Yes, I sat on a red plastic chair. It was lovely, perfectly fitting the shape of my organic buttocks.

The sun soon popped up over the neighbor's rooftop, shining light on many things I hadn't noticed the day before, like a huge mural of a city apartment building on the entire side of the garden shed. A cement laughing Buddha sat on a stone in the flower garden. And on the fence behind the garden hung an assortment of mirrors, doorknobs, blue glass bottles, antique wrought-iron ornamental grates, hanging plant hooks, and various brackets with curvy spirals.

Clouds blew in and covered the sun, giving me a chill. Then it came out again. In. Out. It did this just often enough to send me back inside. I needed to make some breakfast anyway and get out of the house early before Mom arrived around noon. I still needed to find a pair of shorts at a thrift store and retrieve my food box from the post office downtown. As I rose from the red plastic chair, I casually looked over at the bike rack. My heart always skipped a beat whenever I did this because my bike often blended in easily with other bikes and I just didn't see it. This time though my heart skipped two beats. First I didn't see it. Then I did. But I also saw that the front tire was flat. I am not kidding.

I had to laugh. I walked over to it and spun the wheel around looking for glass or a nail, but saw nothing but smooth rubber. Because I didn't need to ride it for a week, I just let it sit there. Obviously, the fence I'd knocked on for good luck was imitation wood. I must admit, I did have the slightest hope that the two friendly smokers had just played a trick on me and let out the air because of what I'd said, and that when I tried to pump it up it later it would quickly fill up with air, no harm done. To save you the suspense, I will tell you that the tube had, in fact, been punctured and it was just being nice by holding its last breath until it had gotten me here.

After oatmeal and a hot shower, I surveyed the contents of my wallet, put my journal in my pack, and set out for the day. I retraced my steps from the night before, past Ninkasi and up the little triangle where Papa's Soul Food set back from the street. On the other side was the New Day Bakery, which happened to have a mural on its wall of a big, bright, presumably rising, sun. There was no question that that was where I was headed. The aroma wafting out was a net and I was an easy catch. I sat at a wrought-iron table on a quaint brick patio outside and soaked in the heat of the sun. With a mug of coffee and a warm blueberry-bran muffin soaked with butter off to the side, I opened my map. I quickly found a few different routes Mom and I could take that would give her a taste of where I'd been and still gave me a fresh adventure or two. I didn't have a care in the world.

I left the New Day and wandered through sections of the neighborhood I'd yet to see. Just a block into the exploration, I saw a large sculpture made with old bicycles in someone's grass parking strip between the street and the sidewalk. The artist clearly had a knack for cutting up bicycles and welding them back together in entirely new ways. A few houses further was a front gate made out of different-sized painted bicycle rims, and next to that, a stone wall where an old fat Schwinn with fluorescent stripes leaned. As I snapped a picture, a man called out from inside the two-foot wall, "Are you taking a picture of my bike?"

"I am," I said. "It's really cool." He left the pile of household stuff he was picking through on the patio to come over and chat. He said he loved that bike even though it was a junker. He also said, nonchalantly, that it was his fourth one this year. The first three had all been stolen.

"Really?"

"Yup. That's why I put all that bright tape on it. So I might be able to identify it before they peeled them off or painted it." I was so glad I had opted for peace of mind over trust and had locked up my bike the night before. His two little boys came running out of the sliding-glass door. They looked as funky as the bike. Long, wavy hair. Stripes in clashing directions. Barefoot. They'd all just moved in that morning to this lower apartment and were thrilled to be a part of one of Eugene's many cooperative housing units. I wished him and his family well and thanked him for the picture of his bike.

The thrift store that the hostel manager suggested I visit was closed, but the sign promised it would be open in fifteen minutes. I explored more of the tree-lined streets, peering into people's backyards to see their gardens—some vegetable, but mostly flowers and herbs. By the time I got back to the thrift store, it was unlocked. I entered behind two grandmas carrying bags of clothes. It was a small room and only had one rack of possibilities—well, two, if I included the one of men's basketball shorts that hung below the knees. After trying on several pairs of women's shorts, I settled on a pair of plain-Jane blue denim that appropriately covered my butt but ended a couple of inches up from my kneecap. Not exactly me, but at least I'd look clean for my mom's visit.

A dozen or so blocks east was the center of town, the University of Oregon, and the post office. Too far from the hostel to turn around, and committed to my downtown destination, I realized I'd done a dumb thing by not wearing socks. I only had one pair of short socks, but they were filthy with cob, two months of daily-riding wear, and five days of riding sweat. And I certainly didn't want to nullify my clean appearance. It didn't take long before I developed blisters on both heels, forcing me to alter my stride and foot placement to ease the pain. By the time I got to the post office, I had two additional blisters from the alteration and no more stride or foot-placement options. The pain was certainly bearable, but grabbing enough of my attention to cause me to not notice much about the buildings or the people. It was a city. People were walking and driving, neatly divided by a string of parked cars.

As soon as I got out of the post office, I set my ten-pound box on the ground, took off my shoes, tied the laces together, and threw them over my left shoulder. I picked up my food box, set it on my right shoulder, and walked back to the hostel, barefoot and not-so-fancy but free. When I turned the last corner I saw my mom unloading her luggage from the back of her rental car. My mom was here!

*****

UP WITH MOM

It had been two years since I last saw my mom when she'd flown out to Bellingham to be with me for my mastectomy. It was an emotional time, as you might imagine, so our visit wasn't exactly fun. This time, however, fun was pretty much a guarantee. We had gone on so many adventures together over the years. One time, we drove six hours to Boston from New Jersey for a bowl of clam chowder. Another time, we drove all over upstate New York for three days, searching for a town that kept appearing in my dreams. We never found it, but it took us through the Finger Lakes where we laughed so hard in my tent one night next to some lake that was the color of emeralds. On another adventure, we flew out to the Pacific Northwest because it was the one part of the country neither of us had been yet and we'd always felt drawn to it. We landed in Portland without a plan, rented a car, looked at a map and headed northwest to the coast. Somehow we drove through every scenic place in western Washington in just a few days—the Olympic Peninsula, the San Juan Islands, the North Cascades, the Columbia Gorge. We even walked through Pike's Place Market in Seattle, watched them throw fish, and listened to street musicians lined up down the alley. That same evening we happened upon a Kenny Rogers concert on the waterfront. I thought Mom might wet her pants as Kenny Rogers was one of her favorite singers. The experience—not my mom's potentially wet pants, but the whole vacation—had planted a seed in me that grew into my love affair with the Pacific Northwest. We walked through the rain forest dragging our jaws. Moss everywhere. Gigantic ferns. Old-growth trees as wide as cars. We gasped at the sight of Mount Rainier and at the color of glacial water in Ross Lake. My mom loved the natural world just like I did. She'd cry at the drop of a hat if you put a raging river in front of her with an elk or an eagle or some animal in the scene. That was mostly when she cried. The only other time she cried that I knew of was when her daughter had cancer. Other than that, she didn't cry much. Not nearly as much as I did. She was steady, even-keeled, and calm in almost any situation life hurled at her. Like a sapling, she could bend. I don't think I ever saw her snap. And although her emotions could surge and swell, whether it was happiness or fear, they didn't seem to keep her from being reasonable and grounded. Maybe it was because she had a deep-rooted trust in herself and in the world that everything would just work out. Whatever the reason, I think it was partly why she was almost always genuinely happy most every day, and the perfect companion for an adventure.

I called out to her with a big hello. She turned, cocked her head, and shined her big smile. When I reached the driveway, we hugged and picked up exactly where we'd left off. "Ooh, I like your haircut," I said.

"Me too. Isn't it cute?"

She'd already checked in. We now had our own room, just one bunk, but in a different house, same hostel, just two blocks away. I gathered my panniers and rolled my bike on its flat to the back of the SUV, put the seats down, and loaded everything into it. She wanted me to drive despite my not being listed as an extra driver in the rental contract. In our attempt to be legal, we did stop at the rental office a few blocks away to put me in the contract, but they wanted what seemed like our combined life savings, so we did what everyone did...lied, saying, "Oh, never mind, that's okay, we both don't need to drive." Three blocks away after leaving the rental place, my mom pulled over and I got behind the wheel. We didn't know where we were going, but that was always half the fun. With Mom looking at the map, we headed south. Snaking through the university district and then up a hill, we found the road that led to the Mount Pisgah Arboretum. My mom, not being much of a city person, just wanted a quick drive-through to get a feel for the place and then the sooner we could get to open space, the better. The arboretum wasn't far out of town. Just far enough to need to pee again. As arboretums go, and I'd only been to three or four, I have to say this was more of an old farm someone donated to the city when her grandfather passed on. A very generous gesture for sure, but I was kind of hoping for...well, I don't know....trees. There were a few along a path. Okay, maybe more than a few. And some along a creek. More behind an old barn. Maybe I'm not being fair. Certainly we were not there to see trees, but rather to talk, which is likely why I don't remember seeing many. We had a lot of catching up to do and I just couldn't focus on both high-speed chitchat and a close inspection of bark and berries and the veins in leathery green leaves.

After a quick walk in the flat, shady sections (Mom didn't venture out into the sun or climb hills—not because she couldn't, but because she didn't want to), we headed back to the car and back into town. Upon our second pass through this one tiny section of Eugene, a city of 155,000 people, my mother proclaimed that she could not live here. I tried to stick up for the city, noting that, surely, there must be other sections that we had yet to see on our way to and from the arboretum. But there was no convincing her that it likely had a few positive aspects that some people found attractive, pleasing, and even possibly valuable. Did I mention that she doesn't like cities? We returned to the hostel to park the car and then set out on foot to find dinner. Secretly, I was determined to give her one these "positive aspects" of Eugene, and to my delight it came in the form of P.R.I. (Pizza Research Institute). Fortunately, we didn't know any of the other patrons and, of course, the staff was accustomed to their customers releasing moans from that deep, cheesy pleasure place within. So we had no reason to be embarrassed. None whatsoever.

Our first night sleeping in the same room was typical for us. Giggling. Her body's setting free of captured gasses. More giggling. Her snoring. My tossing and turning. Maybe some people were better off living in less densely populated areas further away from other people. Much further.

The following morning, after showers and breakfast, we headed east along the McKenzie River. Where the river veered north, we kept going east over McKenzie Pass. We hoped to get as far as Sisters around noon where we'd begin to retrace my spins north to Detroit and then to Timothy Lake. In fact, my plan for the next week was to cover much of the same ground I had on my bike in order to give my mom an idea of what I'd experienced, if only visually, and to hear her say, "Wow, you biked up this?" It was odd to be on the same roads again in a car. It was like those speeded-up football game replays where the running back's legs looked like they might fly off his torso. Trees. River. Mountain pass. Town. Then suddenly, we were at a restaurant or a gas station. And again, trees, river, mountain pass, town. We didn't even break a sweat. I told two days worth of stories in a span of three hours. "That's the rock I sat on to eat lunch...That's the creek I camped next to...That's the tree I peed behind."

After nine years of not having a car, sometimes I could go months before hitching a ride to a gathering at a friend's out in the county, or borrowing one to haul something too heavy or bulky for my bike trailer. It was always a shock to my system, especially if I had to go on the freeway. The world whizzed by so fast. Unless I made eye-to-eye contact with a stupid tailgater when he or she passed me, I never really connected with other people out in the world even though we shared the same road. My head got to feeling funny too, like my space-time went haywire or something. I'd much rather ride my bike or walk. I liked being able to talk to people or to watch salmon shoot out of a waterfall or a hawk glide from one branch to another. Although, I must admit, traveling by car sure was a great way to get things done in a hurry. I guessed the prevailing wisdom was that the faster a person could get his or her stuff done, the more one could do. Brilliant. If only that was my goal. I wasn't really a car-hater. In fact, I loved to drive. I just liked time more, as well as a moderate pace. At some point, when I'd lived on the East Coast, probably in a New Jersey parking lot they called "rush hour," I'd realized that unless I was wealthy enough to buy time, I'd have to make it from scratch. I made mine by having as few expenses as possible so I didn't have to work all day, every day. Cars were expensive. And in certain places, like Bellingham, I could get by just fine without one. Shoes, bikes, buses, and trains served me well enough. Besides, much, if not most, of the world's population got by fine without one. Why couldn't I? Although making time by being car-free is not for everyone. It depends on what a person wants to do with all those extra hours. As long as she mostly wants the extra time to just be—to think or feel or just observe the world around her—then being without a car works out extremely well. But if she wants the extra time to go back and forth to the hardware store, the vet, the bank, the chiropractor, the bookstore, the pharmacy, the art gallery, the antique shop, or to volunteer at the food bank, take cello lessons, attend the gym, play soccer, ski, visit old friends in neighboring cities, check in on an elderly relative, cart around three children to their lessons and sporting events, go out to see live music, go to three different grocery stores for all the best deals, and meet her partner in the park for a walk after work, she's screwed. She needs a car.

Though still not yet exactly retracing my bike route, the terrain on this first leg of our adventure looked the same as I remembered it in this part of the Willamette National Forest. Big conifers. Winding roads along rushing rivers. I could never get tired of this lush land. Yet I loved how quickly everything changed when you crossed over to the other side, over some invisible line along the crest of the Cascade Range. After lugging their heavy load all the way from the ocean, the clouds had no other choice but to dump it right there in order to get up and over those high peaks. We blinked and were instantly transported to another planet.

Dark-grey lava fields stretched out before us. Up close, the hardened lava looked like a sponge. But clearly, the only thing being soaked up here was the sun. Nothing grew. Occasionally, where a patch of soil had been swept up in a pile by the wind, delicate lavender flowers hugged the ground. Here and there, a scraggly tree or two stuck up out of the jagged rock. Their bright green needles were short and grew from stubby branches starting just inches off the ground. My guess was that despite their small size they were very old. With half a drop of water per year, I'd grow slowly too. Way off in the distance, at the edge of the lava flow, a thin forest appeared out of place. On the southern horizon, the North and Middle Sisters rose up in their snowy caps. The sign near the roadside read "Belknap Crater," which confused me at first as I'd read that this was a volcano. In my mind volcanoes looked like cones. All I could see was a bulge in a ridge. No cone. No crater. Another sign along a path read "Dee Wright Observatory." Had it not been for the mosquitoes, the heat, and the guilt of leaving Mom in the car, I would have walked up the steep path to the observatory where I would have no doubt been able to actually see a crater somewhere out there in the lava field. Instead, I took a few more pictures and headed back to the car.

With lunch on both our minds, we continued down the mountain on Route 242 to Sisters. Even I was not so impressed this time around with this quaint town. It was much more crowded with tourists. And hot. We walked up one side of the street and down the other, patronizing one store, a restaurant, and a public bathroom. I was a tad disappointed because when I'd first ridden through, my first thought—after "Which café should I stop at?" —was how my mom would just adore this place. I couldn't wait to bring her here to see her get all excited the way she did and exclaim, "Oh, I could live here!" At least the salad I had was fresh and tasty.

Heading north, Santiam Pass in reverse seemed just as arduous from the car as it did on my bike. So much so that I quickly burned off my salad. My mother agreed, so when we got to Detroit we had to stop at the convenience store to refuel with two big bags of chips, some kind of awful dip that my mom liked, and a twelve-pack of warm, diet lemony soda. Driving was hard work.

Once we caught our breath, we headed along Breitenbush River through what will forever be in my mind as "Sasquatch Country" toward Timothy Lake. Mom peered out the window like a kid on Christmas Eve looking for Santa's sleigh. Like me, she was more thrilled by what seemed out of this world than what was surely in. "There he is!" she joked. "Oh my, he is big!"

Every campground that lined the shore of Timothy Lake was packed with campers. We pulled in to every one, a few of them more than once. Finally, we found one available site next to the entrance of one with a name like "Lake View" or "Hood View," though we only had a view of the pay station and tents. That didn't matter. We were happy just to have a place to park for the night. We wouldn't really be camping. My tent was almost too small for me, let alone the both of us, and of course I only had one pad and one sleeping bag. What we would be doing that night was something called "Try not to wake the real campers with all the giggling, farting, and snoring reverberating inside the rocking SUV." I took my bike out of the back, locked it to a tree, and spread out the pad for my mom and layers of clothes for me which ended up doing very little to soften the protruding seat hinge under my hip. We'd share the unzipped sleeping bag as a blanket. After preparing a special dinner for my dear mother—not just rice and beans, but burned rice and beans—we retired into our cozy quarter. It was a toss-up whether we should keep the windows cracked so as not to die of methane poisoning, or to keep them shut so as not to die of hypothermia or Swiss Army knife-wielding, sleep-deprived campers. Because the windows were electronically controlled, which required me to get out from under the sleeping bag and lean into the front seat to turn the key in order to push the correct window button after trying all of the wrong ones first, we did not remain indecisive for long. We both agreed that death by methane was far worse than hypothermia, and that, in general, campers tended to err on the side of forgiveness when awakened by giggling. It sure beat growling, hissing, or rattling.

As you've probably guessed, no one died. In fact, we both slept well. It must have been from all that driving. After I impressed my mom with gourmet egg pellets and coffee that I dug out from my new food box, we packed up camp in about forty-seven seconds. We had miles of highway in front of us and a hankering for a real breakfast. Eager to explore new territory, I took us through Warm Springs Indian Reservation, which was not exactly accurate, as "warm" implied a tad of coolness mixed into the hot, dry air. It was sort of like calling my appetite healthy rather than insatiable. With the A/C cranked, we spewed out endless chatter about extraterrestrials, parallel universes, and what a human-Bigfoot hybrid might look like if Bigfoot mistook me for his wife. When we got onto politics, our spewing slowed into more precise spurting. The brown, barren hills kept coming. Just a couple of miles from the Duschutes River, along the banks of Shitike Creek, was the actual town of Warm Springs. After a quick coffee break, we continued south to Route 97 toward Madras, where we stopped for a late breakfast at the Black Bear Diner. Not only were there bears in every corner and on every shelf—small, life-sized, ceramic, wooden, poly-fibered—but every inch of wall space had been covered by stuffed, dead animal heads that glared at us as we ate oversized plates full of pancakes and strips of their mammalian brothers and sisters. Maybe I just imagined the glaring, but I did feel some discomfort. The envelope on the table also made me feel uncomfortable. It asked us for a donation for a young female employee who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and couldn't afford to be treated. When I left the tip on the table, I slipped a few bucks into the envelope, thinking, "What the hell is three bucks going to do?"

I'm sure there was something worth seeing between Madras and Bend, but I don't remember what it was. Looking at my map now, I see that we went through Crooked River National Grassland. I don't remember any grass. Nor do I remember Redmond. It was as if we both had the same mantra in our heads. "Go west. Go west." We'd had enough of brown and barren. We wanted life, life, and more life. Our mission was to get back to trees and mountains and green. Finally, we reached Bend but didn't even stop. "Cute," my mom noted. "Bellingham-like." I barely got through telling a story and pointing out where I'd had lunch and then we were out of town on the Cascade Lakes Highway. Up and up we climbed towards Mount Bachelor with the same rhythmic thud from gaps in the road that I'd experienced on my bike, only this time, at fifty miles per hour, it was more like disco music than a sweet waltz. As if both our heads popped out of water at the same time, we gasped. Then exhaled. "Ahhhhh. Green. Trees," I said. And just around the next corner, a lake. And another one. They were just as serene as when I first saw them, only without the snow. Mom gawked and goggled at all of the appropriate moments. Occasionally, we stopped to take pictures, sometimes even getting out of the car. During one stop I read the information sign that told about a forest fire that had whipped through this particular area some years ago after a tree was struck by lightening. I was surprised to learn that that tree had smoldered inside for up to three months before engulfing the entire forest. "What were the chances," I wondered, "for conditions to have been just right for that one spark to do so much damage?"

By the time we got to Route 58 we were ready to find a motel. Because I knew what our options were if we went left (Chemult and the cranky waitress), we turned right. It was a gorgeous way to end the day. Crescent Lake. Odell Lake. Willamette Pass. Salt Creek. All the way to Oakridge. After driving through town twice, we ended up in a newly painted, older motel. The friendly woman in the office made sure we had everything we needed and seemed to know what every restaurant in town had to offer. After I did my laundry, we drove a half-mile down the road for heaping plates of burritos.

We got up early the following morning. Mom wanted to go to the fish hatchery up the road before heading to Crater Lake. So we did. We had the place to ourselves. It was small and was more like a display of any wild animal they could get their hands on, dead or alive. Live turkey, pheasants, peacock, and other game were in outdoor pens at the far end of the pools where eight-foot sturgeon swam. Other pools were thick with baby salmon. Next to the parking lot stood an old house in which the ground floor had been transformed into an aquarium and stuffed-animal showroom. The upstairs of the building housed the local police department. Or was it the state police? Either way, I thought it was odd. This was the only available space in town for law enforcement to set up shop? Big fish with hooked jaws swam around in the tanks, their bulging eyes peering into mine. They looked smart, as if they knew something I'd been wanting to know. On the other side of the room was a fenced-off section where a coyote, fox, marmot, bobcat, cougar, ground squirrel, owl, eagle, hawk, and wolf all just stood there, perfectly still, gazing off forever into some imaginary sunset and getting along together quite well. Maybe taxidermy was the key to peace.

Before any of the squad cars in the lot had even been warmed up, we were already finished with our first tourist activity of the day and heading out of town. Just a few miles up the road, Mom said, as she studied the map, "Why don't we take a shortcut to Crater Lake?" She was reading my mind. I'd already looked at the map the night before and also thought I saw a more direct route. But it was really only shorter in theory. Yes, from Point A to Point B it was a straight shot. But in between A and B were endless miles of those familiar squiggly yellow roads (no doubt dirt) between Juniper Mountain and Diamond Peak that reminded me of intestines. Just going by the map, it could easily put my adventures on 31-7-190 to shame. But we had a car. What could go wrong? I checked the fuel gauge, which was just below "F."

We turned right onto Kitson Springs Road which, according to the map, would take us to Hills Creek Reservoir. Sure enough, there it was. The map said, in that silent paper way, to keep going. Though the road narrowed to one lane it was still paved. Little houses and cottages set back in the woods got further and further apart. The thrill of the unknown bubbled out of us. When we reached our first intersection we collected our first clue as to how the rest of the day would likely unfold. There was no road sign. "Here we go," I thought. But then we were at the end of the reservoir, which seemed to match the first intersection on our map. Easy. "We have to be here," I said, leaning and pointing for my mom to see. Without hesitation, I turned right. The road narrowed. No more houses. As we anticipated, the pavement ended and a dust cloud hitched itself to our back bumper. We hooted in excitement. Though our ascent was still gradual, we were now too high above what we thought was Hills Creek to actually see rushing water. Only a densely forested steep ravine caught our imagination. Mom leaned over to look at the fuel gauge.

To our relief, we still hadn't met an oncoming vehicle. Certainly, we could have squeezed over enough toward the edge for someone to pass, but if we didn't have to risk falling into the ravine, then why not stick to the middle? The road became steeper and curvier. Back and forth in a series of long switchbacks we climbed. The trees opened up. The blue sky widened. Rounded, distant mountains appeared, one behind the next in layers of varying tones of green-grey. We stopped and got out of the car to take pictures. I actually took them as Mom scurried back into the car. Mosquitoes. Clouds of them. There was no way to get in or out of the car without at least a few of them getting trapped inside. And when we slammed the door in their faces, they got mad and hung onto the windshield, ready to sneak in next time we opened the door.

We leveled off somewhat and the trees closed in around us. Maybe we were going to head down now. Around the next bend we were relieved to see another intersection up ahead. Mom held up the map. This time there was a sign. Unfortunately, it had been knocked off its post in a similar fashion as the ones for 31-7-190 near Union Creek. Fortunately, however, the splinters were still intact and I was able to line them up to see which road was 2149 and which one was 2153. Now, I'm making those numbers up. Well, sort of. According to my map, they were real names for some of the roads in the area we were in, but we also drove on other roads with other number names that were not on the map. I still have no idea where we were, precisely, in a GPS sort of way. The point is that this was just the beginning of a very long day in the Calapooya Mountains on roads that sometimes had intact signs that matched the road numbers on our map, and sometimes did not.

Up we went. For a long time we went up. Hours. Around curve after curve. The switchbacks got tighter. The road narrowed even more. Now there was nowhere to pull over to let another vehicle squeeze by. If we did meet another shortcut seeker, one of us would have to back up until we reached a turnout—typically on the cliff-side of the road. Mom decided this was a good time to become obsessed with our fuel gauge. "We're fine," I assured her. "Still at half a tank."

Another intersection. Same confusion. Now we resorted to studying the map and reviewing our entire route with phrases like, "If this was where we were when we turned right, then this could have been where we were when we turned left." For some reason that we deemed logical in that moment, we turned right. At least we weren't going up anymore, and to us, that meant we might soon be going down. Mom checked the fuel gauge again. "We're still fine."

Around the next bend, a guy on a dirt bike wearing a bright orange motorcycle helmet came at us. He slowed. We slowed. I "rolled" down my window. (How do motorists say that nowadays, anyway? "I pushed down my window?" "I electronically commanded my window to lower?") Anyway, I rolled down my window. He told us not to bother going any further because there was a tree across the road. I thanked him and found a turnout up ahead and performed something they didn't teach in driving school so I had to wing it—the triple-K turn. It wasn't pretty, but I managed not to drive off the cliff.

Back to the last intersection we went. At least now we had no choice about which road to take, which was a relief in itself. The mountain goddess wanted us to go up this road and so we would. Onward. I discreetly looked at the fuel gauge. No problem. Still above a quarter of a tank. I thought that maybe we should eat. I suggested it to Mom. She said she wasn't hungry. She always said that. Then I reminded her about how sometimes she—I meant we—get moody if we don't eat and also how sometimes it was hard to think straight if we went too long without eating. I was feeling a little shaky myself. She agreed—not that I was shaky but that eating was a good idea. I pulled out some granola and an apple. She unrolled half a bag of chips and peeled off the lid to the plastic tub of awful dip that had been sitting in the car for two days now. What can I say? She's made it this far in life, seventy years, with no more than a hysterectomy, a broken tailbone, and the flu. As far as I know, those things were not caused by any food, or nonfood, that she had ingested.

Up the mountain we went, chattering and snacking in between being blown away by the wild beauty. We drove through deep potholes and around boulders. Fallen trees laid halfway across the road. Every so often we'd come around a corner and the forest would open up to the sky and we were on top of the world. Looking down, we saw miles of hair-thin dirt roads snaking up the mountains. We'd likely been on all of them at least once. Hoping the mosquitoes were too weak with altitude sickness to penetrate my skin, I ventured out of the car to take more pictures. Close-ups of tall white flowers I'd never seen before against endless mountains and thick stands of trees. Home to so many species of plants and animals. Home to us. How we, the species with "intelligence," could stand back and watch the poisoning and raping of this planet, I didn't understand. How did this happen to us? How had we become so disconnected from the very thing that fed us that we could not only stand by and watch it being killed but also have a hand on the blade, the trigger, the red button? Was our desire for convenience and bodily pleasure that strong? Were our minds really that feeble that we couldn't change our behavior? Our course? At what point does a thinking, reasoning species connect the dots? No Mother Earth equals no life. Unless the umbilical cord stretched out into space, we had better start seeing the picture. Or maybe that was the problem. Maybe we had connected the dots and it was too frightening to look at? Were we in shock, unable to move a muscle? Or was it just me who thought it was insane to put cancer-causing chemicals in our drinking water and food and then force a young woman to beg on diner tables to pay for her mastectomy?

Mom and I both thought that, surely, we had to start going down soon. But sometimes being sure was really just being hopeful. The truth was, we'd have many more uphill miles to go before going down and getting off this mountain.

The next intersection provided us with three new choices. Hard right down. Soft right down. Left up. Each new road came with new number names, only one of which was on our map. This was starting to feel like other adventures we'd had together. We recalled a time we drove on wintry mountain roads in Pennsylvania where Mom ended up having to back down an icy hill next to a cliff while I walked along the edge trying to find crunchy snow for her to use for traction. "No," she said. "You got out because you were too afraid to be in the car."

"Well, maybe a little," I admitted. But this time, not being in any kind of danger, we could thoroughly enjoy the adrenaline rush as we sat there trying to "feel" which road was the right one. "Left," I blurted.

"Why not?" Mom added.

It didn't take long to realize we actually had not been on top of the world before because we were now. In fact, I could see the Umpqua Lighthouse one hundred miles away. Not really. But we were high. Way up there. If I knew where we were, I could tell you exactly how high. "Really high" will have to suffice. We stopped for another few pictures, both thrilled to be on this unexpected adventure while simultaneously wanting it to be over soon. We continued on. Up. Curving left. Right. We talked about how another fallen tree could be the end of it. We'd have to retrace our steps all the way back to....then, there it was. No, not a tree. Not Bigfoot. Another intersection. We both looked at each other with a this-is-sort-of-not-funny-anymore expression. We went right and we didn't have one good reason. Intuition? All I remember is seeing one white sneaker on the side of the road. Mom saw it too. Strange. Certainly not a normal item to see in the wilderness. But we didn't think much more of it. Up we went. The road narrowed even more. Fortunately for me, as the driver, the cliff was on Mom's side. I hugged the rock wall to my left. She looked straight ahead and at the very same time, we each saw up ahead the one thing we hadn't considered to be a possible obstacle—a three-foot snow drift. I stopped the car. Okay then. We both agreed we should have considered that sneaker to be a sign.

Now, with no place to turn around, I had to back down. Great. I wasn't sure why driving backwards in a vehicle was that much different than going forward, but it was. Somehow I felt that I had much less control. Maybe it was because I only had one hand, my left, on the wheel while my right arm stretched behind the passenger headrest. Maybe some weird out-of-control hormone was released into the bloodstream when I spun my head around. All I knew was that I was less confident backing down that narrow road on the edge of that mountain than I was going forward. But there was no alternative. When the road widened just enough, I performed my somewhat perfected, triple-K turn. Mom and I sighed with relief as we were now heading forward, past the white sneaker and back to the intersection. "How about left?" Mom suggested.

"Sure. Why not?"

If I had a better word or phrase for "up" I would use it, but I don't. We drove toward the sky? We continued our ascent? If we'd been walking we would have been out of breath? Whatever. You get the picture. The mountain had no top and we were determined to reach it.

Finally, the road leveled off. But having been fooled so many times before, we maintained our composure. Around every new curve we expected to see another steep hill. But no. It never came. Could it be? After a few more curves, not only were we not shooting for the stars, but we were going down. Down, down, down. How lovely it felt to be going down. Granted, we'd be going down for many more miles, but, for some reason, our steady drop in elevation gave us a sense of security. Soon, we'd be back on a paved road with other civilized drivers. That was all it took. I'm still not sure where we had been, but we eventually came to the beautifully tamed, paved and level Route 138, which took us right to Crater Lake. Exactly as we'd planned.

Though with less snow, Crater Lake was just as spectacular as the first time I saw it. The color blue was never so blue. Mom was just as overwhelmed. We pulled over a few times for pictures (yes, there were still a few pinecones I'd missed) and then had lunch in the lodge. In two throne-sized chairs, we sat by the massive fireplace eating our gourmet salads as we watched the logs burn off the late afternoon Cascadian chill.

According to the map, once out of the park we could follow Castle Creek to the Rogue River and then follow that southwest to Shady Cove, where we hoped to find an inexpensive motel to rest our bones. I couldn't think of a better name for a town to evoke feelings of comfort and restful sleep. Sure enough, there was indeed a quaint little motel exactly matching the one in my head. Unfortunately, it was completely full. It was getting late. The friendly lady in the tiny office suggested Gold Hill. On down the road we went to Gold Hill. Though it did not summon the same feelings of comfort and rest, it did give me a pure alchemical rush. All I needed was a pan. These days, an ounce would get me far. One three-month bike adventure per ounce. Oh, yes—the allure of easy money. What a thrill it must have been to set out for the Wild West to find that nugget. Just one. That was all. And how devastating it must have been for all of the Native Americans when the white man came with gold on his collective brain.

The Indian Wars of the 1850s were a series of violent atrocities against the mostly peaceful native peoples and their way of life, beginning with the destruction of their natural environment and resources. It began with the murder of an Indian along the Oregon Trail by a white European in 1834 and escalated from there. And Mom and I happened to be in the thick of that old blood. All along the Rogue, battles were fought, lives lost, and Indians "removed" —usually to barren land where food was scarce. But not without first being given white man's diseases. And, of course, you know all this. But what you may not know is that you can still feel it. I'd felt it the first time I rode from Grants Pass to Galice and along Coyote Creek. And I felt it now. I didn't yet know about the Rogue Indian Wars, but I knew what I felt. A dark energy laid on the land like a damp chill in a gully. When I did first stumble upon the history of southern Oregon, my first thought was, "Of course."

*****

FORGOTTEN CURDS AND  
MAKING OUR WAY UP THE COAST

How silly I must have sounded to the woman at the motel in Oakridge where we'd stayed when I called to ask her to please put aside the little white bottle of kefir I'd accidentally left in our room the night before. I explained how these little fermented grains meant a lot to me, as did the stainless steel bottle I'd gotten in Klamath Falls with the silhouette of a tree and the words "Earth Lust" written on it, and that she shouldn't open it if she hadn't already because it was likely to be highly pressurized from all that fermenting going on and it would squirt all over, causing quite a mess. No doubt she had experienced a strange customer or two in her many years in the motel business because she responded politely and without one ounce of judgment toward kefir-loving, Earth-lusting people. I was relieved she still had it. I had been nervous all day about the potential loss of my incredible curds. But now I could relax. And the beautiful Oregon Coast that my mom had never seen would just have to wait for her because I needed to backtrack to Oakridge. She understood. It was the nature of adventuring. Now, because we took our time exploring Grants Pass (note to self: never go into a kitchen store with Mom again), stopped in Galice to eat and listen to a country band, and visited Nomad's to see the cob studio, we only got as far as Roseburg by day's end. My kefir would have to wait for me another whole day. I really hoped the cap wouldn't blow off by then.

On the map, the drive up Interstate 5 and over to Oakridge on Route 58 looked to be an isosceles triangle. Going north only to go southeast agitated the crow in me. "We could take a shortcut over Bohemian Mountain," I said.

"Uh, no."

"Well, okay then."

By lunchtime, we pulled into the motel parking lot as if it were a Grand Prix pit. I parked, ran into the office, got my kefir, and ran back out to the car. Before getting back in, I slowly twisted off the cap to release some pressure, expecting it to fizz out all over my hand. But it didn't. Evidently, somebody had opened it up in the last day. What a mess that must have been. Sorry.

Since we'd gone as north as we did, the straightest shot west took us right through Eugene again. Though we were tempted to go see if any of the trees had grown in the arboretum, we opted to roam around a congested industrial area looking for Paul's Bike Shop along the bike path so I could get my flat fixed. Only now we were on the road that challenged my memory. We found it after two ho-hum K-turns.

By the time we got to Florence our adventure had become an uneventful series of stops for food, gasoline, and restrooms. We'd been spoiled by the Calapooya Mountains and the mystery of the white sneaker. But the sight of the Pacific Ocean snapped us into a tourist state of mind. I soon found myself gasping every time we came around a bend and I saw another amalgamation of water, sand, rock, and sky. It was pretty, for sure, but still, I just couldn't fully appreciate it as I had my mind set on getting back on my bike. My body was in endorphin withdrawal from sitting for several days. Reaching for my turn signal or water bottle was not exactly exercise.

For the next couple of hours Mom and I turned our heads left and back to center every two seconds—ocean, road, ocean, road. Occasionally, I risked our lives by crossing the centerline to pull into a scenic overlook at a curve. At some point, in some town, we stopped for the night. It was expensive, but we had no choice. I left Mom in front of the television while I jogged to the nearest beach access. The sun was setting and I wanted to try to catch the tail end. The beach was right there, across from the hotel, but I had a feeling the owners of all those big houses on the hill wouldn't have appreciated my cutting through their sand patch. By the time I found access, the sun had slipped behind a thick grey cloud hovering on the horizon, almost guaranteeing the sunset would be a dud. How wrong I was. Though lacking bright color, the tango of light and clouds and their ominous reflection off the wide stretch of wet sand held me there longer than I'd imagined.

Down one portion of the beach, in a shallow trench, ran the final leg of a freshwater marathon that likely began on a mountain somewhere in the Siuslaw National Forest, due east. Thirty yards from crashing waves, the trench disappeared and the water fanned out onto the compacted sand, creating curved patterns of ridges. The smooth beach glistened like the inner layer of madrone, wet from rain. A swath of trickle sprinted down the slope toward a soft blanket of sea foam, crawling up to mix in with it. Gently, the foam coaxed it to follow, and together they slipped back into the ocean.

I stayed as long as could bear it. A cold, damp wind blew under my collar and up my sleeves. I hurried back the way I'd come, passing by a few stragglers, mostly kids still digging in the sand while their mothers stood nearby bouncing on their toes with their hands in jacket pockets, shoulders squeezed together. By the time I reached the sidewalk along Route 101, it was completely dark. I imagined Mom was already in her pajamas, reading or watching television and wondering where I was. Not that either of us needed it, but I stopped anyway at a convenience store across from the hotel and bought a quart of ice cream for us to share. Tomorrow would be our last full day together.

We left in a hurry after we sampled every item at the complimentary breakfast buffet, twice. Up the coast we went. Blue water. Sunshine. Huge waves cresting and curling in on themselves. Statuesque rock cliffs. Trees. Madrone. A beautiful scene indeed, but I was now even more on a mission to get to Astoria where I had another food box waiting. So I wasn't wholly present. I was also loosely thinking through my next couple of days. I reminded myself that I needed to make note of the four-mile Megler Bridge over the Columbia River when we got to Astoria. It always popped up in conversation with other cyclists who had ridden this route. Back in Twisp, Alan and I had talked to a guy who told us how he went over it on a mountain bike that, between the wind and fifty pounds of gear, literally fell apart as he rode. I decided that if the bridge seemed daunting or traffic heavy, I'd head east to Westport where I had noticed on the map that morning—as I inhaled a bowl of cereal—in little blue print the word "ferry." That sounded more bike-friendly to me.

By midday we reached the Megler Bridge in the old fur trading city founded by John Jakob Astor, and the "first" community on the Pacific coast. John had a knack for making money from fur and New York City real estate and musical instruments and even Turkish opium. He was so good at it that he was the first multi-millionaire in the U.S., accumulating twenty million dollars by the end of his life. In today's numbers, that would be billions. After seeing the Megler Bridge with my own eyes, stretching on and on and high enough to have its own blustery weather system, I decided the ferry option was a shoo-in.

By half past mid-day we found the post office, but not without some driving around in circles first. See, sometimes when I thought I could sense my way, I couldn't. This was one of those times. But, in my defense, every building was old and beautifully restored in that government-building style. Every other building flew an American flag. Every third building had people coming and going through the front doors with packages under their arms. Not really. I made that last one up. Eventually, after Mom gently suggested for the third time that I stop somewhere and ask for guidance, I pulled into a gas station.

Once in the post office, the clerk found my box right away and offered a brief history lesson after I remarked about how beautiful the building was. "It's the oldest building in town," she said proudly. I sensed that she could have told me much more, but I was preoccupied with my box and figuring out what to do before the line of people behind me became agitated. Because Mom had force-fed me restaurant food all week, I still had the full box of dehydrated food that I'd picked up in Eugene. I considered just mailing one of them back to myself in Bellingham since I was right there at the counter, but then I remembered what was in that box. As a reward to myself for making it to Astoria, I'd packed a few goodies. Decision made. I said good-bye and left the oldest building in town and reunited with Mom around the corner in the shade of a giant maple tree. Out of the back of the rental car, I sorted through both new food boxes and what food I still had left in my pannier. Dehydrated organic blueberries. Almonds, walnuts. More canned salmon. More hot chocolate and coffee. I even found a package of rice and beans that I'd labeled "Spicy! Yummy!" with a smiley face underneath and the message "Good job!" Since weight wasn't an issue, as there wouldn't be anymore mountain passes, I crammed what I could into my pannier, boxed up the rest, and mailed it back.

Now, I felt ready for the last leg of my adventure. My mind was free. The only detail that remained was finding out when the ferry left from Westport in the morning. We had all afternoon to find a motel somewhere kind of close to Westport and not too far from Portland, as Mom had to be at the Portland airport in the morning. The shorter her drive, the better she'd sleep. Thus, the better I'd sleep.

What began as a straightforward driving exercise became a circular driving endurance test. My shoulders and hip hurt. I couldn't turn my kinked neck past forty-seven degrees. My heavy eyes drooped. I was tired. Tired of driving. Tired of eating restaurant food. Tired of sleeping in a bed. Tired of television. Tired of not exercising. Every sign we passed indicating we'd soon come to a town gave me hope that it would at least have a traffic light and maybe a little strip mall, thus increasing the chances of it also having a little motel. Maybe. Please.

No such luck. In fact, it wasn't until we were heading west again, just twenty-seven miles from Astoria in Westport on Highway 30, directly across from the ferry, that we found a motel. It didn't matter that the screen door lacked its screen or that the other occupants were residents, or that the little neighbor boy came at me wearing a diabolical grin and holding the end of a running garden hose. It had a bed.

Our last meal was typical for us. Mom had preflying stress. My mind was already up the peninsula and in the rain forest. She was worried about all the money she'd just spent. I was worried about the money I still needed to spend. We didn't always know how to say good-bye gracefully. Somehow it was easier to leave if we got critical and testy, as if we were proving to ourselves that we "needed" to leave, that we'd had enough. I didn't have to point out that what she'd just said didn't make any sense even though I knew what she meant. And she...she...did that thing she does. Shoot. I can't remember. I'm sure she did something. Oh yeah...she got defensive when I criticized her...that was it. Imagine, the nerve!

We packed as much as we could, minus the things we would need in the morning. She fell asleep right away. I flipped through the mainstream news channels for a while. According to them, the world was a scary, dangerous place. Sure, whatever.

When Mom's alarm went off, my dreams quickly faded. She showered, dressed, dried her hair, and packed the last of her things. I took her suitcase out to the car. We wished each other well, agreed how fun it was, and hugged good-bye. I told her to call me when she got to the airport and not to worry. She had plenty of time. I watched her drive away, wiped my eyes, and went back into the room to finish packing.

*****

COUNTING STARS AND  
THE TWO-CHORD POLKA

When I walked off the ramp of the Wahkiakum, the little ferry that took several cars and my bike and I across the Columbia River from Westport, Oregon to Cathlamet, Washington, I saw the sign that welcomed me to my home state. Despite still having 410 miles to go until I'd have feathers instead of rain gear for a pillow, I did feel a surge of emotion when I read that sign. The next seven days would be the least physically challenging portion of the trip, as my route around the western edge of the Olympic Peninsula and up through the San Juan Islands hovered close to sea level, give or take a couple hundred feet. I revved myself up for the long haul, ravenous for the road—just as soon as all the wildlife got out of my way.

Not two minutes from the ferry dock, under a quickly rising fog, bald eagles perched on dead limbs, stretching out their wet wings to dry. Fifty feet up the road swam three beavers in the Elochoman Slough, just two bike lengths away from me. Fifty more feet, hawks glided past and vultures circled above. I proclaimed in my head, as loud as one's head voice can get without scaring the animals, "I love my bike and being on the road!" I felt so free and wild with no place to be except where I was. This was home.

Route 4 hugged the north bank of the Columbia River just until Skamokawa, where it then drifted northwest through the towns of Grays River, Rosburg, and Deep River, crossing over Nasselle River and along the edge of Willapa Bay. It didn't take long to notice that there was a lot of water in these parts. It was a wonder they were able to build a house or pave a road. While stopped at the Rosburg general store for coffee, I looked at my map and realized I had three camping options for the night. One about fifteen miles up Route 4, another one five more miles up 101, and, the last one fifteen miles beyond that. Since my knee was hurting, I decided I'd stop at the first one.

Thirty-five miles and two Ibuprofens later, I stopped at the second one. Bay Center. Apparently I'd dozed off. Except for my sore knee and someone playing the same two-chord polka on a synthesizer in an open garage next to the campground for four hours, I was glad to have ended up there. I had the place practically to myself. Huge trees towered over my site. The blackberries were ripe. And I found a path that led down to a tiny cove, its treasures fully exposed in the low tide. Like a young child, I explored every inch of beach. Under driftwood carcasses, in crevices of sandstone, between strands of bright green seaweed. On a stick that protruded from a wall of sandstone hung a snakeskin. It seemed to have been deliberately placed by someone, as if to offer a message to those who noticed. But if it was just by chance that the stick and the skin ended up there together, it was, indeed, a masterful work of art by the anonymous artist Herself. High above the cliff sat an immature bald eagle in one tree and a white-headed adult in another. They exchanged high-pitched calls that sounded like complaining. A steady wind brushed through leaves and needles. The smell of decomposing sea life wafted off the wet, sandy beach. A mile or more out, beyond Leadbetter Point toward the open sea, I heard the faint sound of crashing waves. A heron swooped down and landed on a limb sticking straight out of the shallow water. With the sun just moments from the horizon, a sliver of moon high in the sky caught my eye. I took a seat on the fat end of a long driftwood tree trunk and watched the horizon turn bright orange and then fade to a dull, yellow-grey.

By the light of my headlamp I found my way back up the path and to my site. Polka Man was still at it. I ate dinner while analyzing his chord progression. One, five, one, five...one, five. Before I crawled into my tent, I lay on the picnic table and counted the stars as they grew brighter. At first I counted just five, then a dozen. When I thought I saw a new one, I'd look slightly away to be sure. More came into view and brightened quickly. Twenty-two. Thirty-seven. When I got into the fifties I stopped counting. I knew the Persiad meteor shower would arrive in a few weeks and I'd hoped to get a preview. I didn't. The "music" stopped and a chill in the air settled on my chest, sending me in for the night.

********

A SWEDE, A GERMAN, AND A COUGAR  
WALK INTO A LODGE...

Had I known that Polka Man had friends—DJ-Groove-Man and his pals from the club—sixty miles north, I would have bypassed Westport and biked forty-four miles more until my legs fell off, past Aberdeen, past New London, beyond the steady thumping of a bottom end so low and loud it nearly reversed Earth's magnetic poles, to the next closest campground on the Humptulips River. But I was already in my tent. And I decided I needed my legs to get back to Bellingham.

I really had no right to complain. It was only seven thirty. They didn't know I was tired. What kind of camper goes to bed at seven thirty or without having a campfire, hot dogs, and a twelve-pack of beer first? They also didn't know that I was a tad cranky after having a chilly ride on a sore knee and nowhere else to camp but this overpriced RV city with a few tent sites thrown in to meet their low-income camping requirements. Fortunately, I found warmth, healing, and the highest calories per dollar at King's Pancake House across the street the following morning.

It smelled like fish outside and bacon and maple syrup inside. I sat at a booth where I could keep an eye on my bike and hear the local fishermen lament not being able to interest their daughters in the family business. One middle-aged, scruffy man empathized with his friends, saying that even his son didn't like to fish. Kids these days. The waitress flitted by, filling up my coffee mug while sweeping the floor, adding up a bill in her head, and teasing her regulars that maybe if they didn't smell so bad their daughters wouldn't mind going out in the boats with them. They all laughed and agreed. I ordered a stack of pancakes and a bucket of syrup and inventoried all the reasons I was justified in feeling blue: interrupted sleep, mosquitoes, cold misty rain, weird dreams. Yeah, life was hard.

The fishermen changed the subject to a drop in the price they could get for their fish and fewer of them, and then changed it again to bear hunting and how much harder it was to kill them with a bow and arrow. You had to get so close. And what if you just skimmed their ear and pissed them off? There was a local bear up behind the school that someone needed to get. "It's not safe with 'em roamin' around up there," one of the fathers said. The waitress kept everyone fed and laughing and my mood quickly lightened.

I hugged the foggy coast for the next twenty-two miles, intermittently putting on my gloves and rain gear and then taking them off. I stopped in Aberdeen for milk to feed my kefir and psyched myself up for the next forty-four miles inland where I hoped a few rays of sunshine would squeeze through the thick low-lying clouds. The Quinault Rain Forest, the only temperate rain forest in the northern hemisphere, was my reward. I hadn't been there in several years and longed to soak in every luscious shade of green.

The day gradually warmed, the shoulder widened, and the hills snuck under me without my noticing. Except for this one hill. It was slightly steeper and longer than the others had been. I was past fifty miles for the day and getting tired. Up ahead, where the road curved to the left, a car was parked in a pullout. An older man was walking his dog—a breed I didn't recognize—close to the weeds. By the time I came onto the scene, the man had walked to the back of the car, opened the trunk, put a bowl on the ground, and poured a bottle of water into it. I had intended to just say hello and continue climbing, but when the man saw me he busted into a smile that nearly knocked me off my bike.

"Hello there! Where're you going?" he asked in what sounded to me like a German accent.

I stopped, pulled off to the side a few feet, and took off my sunglasses. "Hi there. Bellingham," I answered. His whole face shone. A beautiful face. In his sixties or seventies, he could have been a model. He had a dark tan, accentuating his light ash-blond hair and blue eyes, high-set cheekbones, and a strong jaw. His dog was just as handsome. Well-proportioned. Smart eyes. Velvet coat.

"Bellingham? I'm from Ferndale!" he erupted. Ferndale was just a Frisbee-throw away from Bellingham. We were practically second cousins. I flared up a little myself. Soon we were engulfed in conversation. He'd just got this new bear dog after being chased one too many times by grizzlies near his resort in British Columbia. He had hiked many mountains in his life and seemed to attract bear. (Maybe it was because he was too friendly.) He was a photographer. He was on his way to his son's cabin near Kalaloch and I should stop by. And I should come see him in Ferndale, too, when I got back. He had a horse ranch and his wife had just finished a book about one of their horses, which was a descendent of some famous horse from Germany that was smuggled into Sweden before or during the war. He gave me his name, which made me laugh to myself. Not just because I finally realized, in my unworldliness, that he was Swedish and not German, but also because his name couldn't have been more stereotypical. If I told you what it was, his and all of Ferndale's Swedish population's privacy would be violated. But trust me, even when I just said it in my head, three steel syllables clanked around in my mouth before I spit them out one by one with an "s" tagged on in between each of them to soften their blow. And that was just his last name. His two-syllable first name hardened you up for what was coming. I refocused and caught up to him when he asked about my trip. I got a few sentences out before he nodded, smiled, and said his wife would love to meet me. And I really should come see him. And I was so beautiful. Huh? I thanked him and said I thought he was quite handsome, too, which felt weird, but it was true. He smiled. I smiled. I think the dog even smiled.

I took a swig of water and put my sunglasses back on. He repeated his name again, I secretly chuckled, and he gave me directions to his ranch off the interstate. It was only a few turns and the names of the roads were familiar. Knowing my poor memory for names, I repeated to myself the last road name he gave, the name of his ranch and his name (and chuckled again). He offered me a bottle of water, saying he had a whole case in his trunk. I thanked him but declined. I had plenty. He handed me a bottle anyway and I took it. I said good-bye and that I would come see him when I got back to town. He said that would be wonderful, wished me well, and like most everyone else I'd talked to on this trip, advised me to be safe.

Up the hill I continued, recharged by yet another magical interaction with a complete stranger. It seemed to be the nature of the road. Strangers were your friends and you had no clue when and where they would greet you and shower you with gifts. With that thought, I looked in my mirror and saw my new friend's car coming up behind me. I prepared to wave as he drove by and then realized he was slowing down. This wasn't exactly a busy road, but when the traffic came, it whizzed. I could tell he was pulling over a little. So I moved over, too—to the edge of the shoulder, a foot from a ditch. With his car now inches from my knee, I saw that he was leaning to his right getting ready to hand me another bottle of water through the passenger-side window. As he leaned, his steering wheel turned with him, crowding me even more. Wearing a fat smile, he had no clue he was about to run me off the road. I yelled and stopped suddenly. Still smiling, he had no idea what had just happened. He stopped, too, and stretched a little further until I took the bottle of water. I thanked him and he said, "Now you come see me," and drove away.

The closer I got to Lake Quinault, the more lush the rain forest became. But it wasn't just the incomparable beauty of this land—the only temperate rain forest in North America—that I loved. I also loved knowing that its people, the Quinault tribe, had superbly negotiated, and still maintained, their own sovereignty. Being a sovereign nation meant they had the inherent right to govern themselves. And, to me, that was like being on my bike, on the road, self-contained. If I wanted to turn left, I could. If I felt like stopping to snack on blackberries, I could. And of course I wouldn't eat them all, so others too could enjoy their sweet goodness. Certainly, sovereignty required integrity and respect, but what was so hard about that? Those things didn't cost anything and never weighed you down.

With a rush of good memories, I turned right on the road that led to the lake. I'd camped there a few times in the past and knew what to expect—a few campgrounds followed by the old lodge, the general store and then more campgrounds and cabins. I pulled into the first campground and rode around the loop to see which sites were available. Every site on the lake had been taken, but there were two on top of the hill that appealed to me as they were fairly private and close to the bathroom. Even so, I decided to see if another campground further down the road had a site right on the lake.

As I was about to pull out back onto the main road, a white-haired man in a new VW camper-van pulled in and stopped, the driver-side back tire still a foot over the white line. The smiling, older man rolled down his window. "Hi there! This is the best campground if you were thinking about going to the other ones," he offered in what I thought was a heavy German accent. Seriously.

"Yeah? Well, I thought I'd go down and see anyway, but thanks."

"My name's Otto." His sapphire eyes sparkled as he spoke. In just a few sentences I learned where he'd traveled all summer through our "beautiful country" and the route he was planning to take back home to Ontario. Not noticing me put my right foot on my pedal, he spilled out his life story. I instantly adored him and hoped the next few campgrounds didn't have any open lake-front sites. I shifted my weight and said I just might see him later.

"Okay. If you do come back, come look for me," he nudged.

Of course the next campground wasn't nearly as nice, as Otto had said. Nor did it have open sites on the water. I kept going to see if the general store was open so I could get postcards and some kind of treat. Ice cream, maybe. A bag of salty, crunchy junk food would have been great, too. I was shocked to see the store windows and door all boarded up. This was the tourist season. How could it have gone under? The ancient, one-pump gas station next to it was still open, but they didn't appear to sell anything treat-like inside. In fact, they may have only sold gas and moonshine. I headed back the way I'd come toward the historic lodge and its full parking lot. Without a second thought, I pulled in and parked against the railing along the walkway to the front door. I'd never seen the inside and wanted to take a look. Much like the other Cascadian mountain lodges I had seen over the years, including Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood, it prodded one to wonder how the heck they ever got those timbers up there. Massive, squared-off old-growth posts and beams grew out of the rain forest floor, holding up a canopy of gigantic three-hundred-year-old rafters. Even for those in the know, it must have seemed an astonishing feat.

I noted that they "proudly served Starbucks coffee," and, despite my preference to support small local businesses with my dollar when I could, I knew I'd be back the next morning because the fact was that I hadn't had a good strong cup of coffee since Nomad's. To add to my good fortune, I noticed they also served, though not proudly, microbrews on tap. It wasn't ice cream or salty and crunchy, but I twisted my own arm enough to accept a dark porter as my well-deserved treat after a sixty-five-mile day in high gear.

Of course the last of the two private campsites on the hill was two sites away from Otto's. I set up my tent and walked up to say hello. He was a small man, maybe five feet five inches, and seemed to be in his sixties. It was clear that he was still fairly active. His mountain bike leaned against the picnic table. His swimming shorts hung to dry from the bike rack on his van. In fact, he stood and walked like a much younger man. So I was surprised to find out he was in his late seventies. He loved to swim in lakes every morning as he'd done when he was a young boy growing up in Norway. (Ah, yes, Norway. I so need to get out of this country.) His wife had died five years ago and he'd decided to continue to travel just as they'd done together all of their lives. He led me to the opened driver-side door, reached behind the seat where his bed stretched to the back, and grabbed a framed picture of the two of them. As he spoke about their times together traveling all over North America, he freely shed a tear and continued to share more of his adventures and, somewhat apologetically, his newfound belief in God. Something in the van caught his eye that made him chuckle. He reached behind the seat again and pulled out a Santa teddy bear. It had been his wife's and he brought it with him on all of his trips.

Eventually, he took a breath, embarrassed to have taken over the conversation, and asked about me and my adventure. I assured him I didn't mind at all and then gave him the same watered-down answer I'd given to every stranger who'd asked these past two and a half months. I just didn't know how to summarize it. Or if I'd ever be able to. Adventures seemed to be like that. You could dance around the rock but never really break it open. It was always yours and only yours.

We both still needed to make our dinners, so we said good-bye for the time being, and I returned to my campsite. My rice and beans that I'd put in a pot of water before I set up my tent were hydrated just enough to not break a tooth. I lit the stove, brought them to a boil, and added some cheddar cheese that I'd gotten the day before. With a sprinkle of bread crumbs on top, it evolved into gourmet slop, tasting even better to me than it did my very first night on the road.

I gobbled it down and rinsed out my pot. I'd yet to use soap. I saved that for the important stuff—like my bike shorts, and, every three or four days, my hair. Seeing as I was still alive, I surmised that the need for soap was very possibly an old wives' tale. With time on my hands before the sun set, and knowing there was a short loop trail nearby, I hurried down the campground road to the trailhead, snapping pictures of a camper-sized old-growth Sitka spruce along the way.

The trail wound through a fantasy land of giant fern, shamrock, devil's club, western cedar, western hemlock, spruce and Douglas fir. I half expected to see transparent-winged nymphs and tubby green gnomes scampering behind moss-covered logs. A clear creek rushed below me and through me, reverberating against the ravine walls louder and louder as I walked toward it. I took out my digital recorder and held it as still as possible in front of me, trying to capture the moment. Of course it couldn't be done, by me or anyone, as it couldn't be done with photographs either. The wild moment could never be harnessed, let alone reined in and tamed.

I walked and walked, occasionally seeing a sign with a you-are-here dot on a map of the trail. I hadn't noticed when the sun had actually dipped below the horizon, but the dimming forest was hard to miss. According to the map, I was about halfway around the loop, so it didn't matter whether I kept going or headed back. I kept going and soon came to another sign. In large capital letters beginning with the word "WARNING," it advised me to be aware of my surroundings as there had been numerous cougar sightings in the area. As soon as my eyes hit "cougar," this paradise shed its cloak, revealing every dark stump to be a ravenous beast.

I read the list of things to do and not do if one should encounter a cougar, and then promptly forgot most of those things by the time I got to the next bend in the trail. What I did remember essentially advised me not to look or act like prey, or like a threat—a lukewarm sort of forest creature who didn't seem interested in eating cougar cubs, or who was particularly tasty herself. I'd done a fair amount of backpacking in cougar country without ever having had an encounter, but there was something about a sign that somehow made it seem likely that I would. Or could. I walked faster (but not too fast, like prey), and hummed a melody to let her know, in my most non-threatening-but-I-can-hold-my-own voice, that I was coming around the corner. But, of course, she already knew that, for surely she'd been stalking me for the last mile. So as to not allow those burrs of fear cling to me and ruin my experience, I summoned my common sense onto the scene. There were throngs of tourists, many of them with small, easy-prey children, milling about in these woods. The rangers were just doing a thorough job by letting everyone know about the local cougar population. In fact, I bet if I looked harder I'd also see a sign urging us hikers not to eat poisonous mushrooms, including a list of gastrointestinal symptoms to look for in case we did. With only enough light to see my boots on the trail, I walked just a teensy-weensy bit faster, clapped a tiny bit louder, and even looked over my shoulder a few times. Ridiculous, I know.

It wasn't much further when I heard the sound of a car. My heart slowed and my stride shortened. Civilization. The trail took me down onto the road. With the courage of a native Quinault, I happily walked along the edge of the shoulderless road in the pitch-black, wearing dark clothes without a flashlight all the way back to my campground where I'd have hot chocolate and go to sleep.

Morning came too soon after weird dreams—a dog came up to me on a street in Bellingham, it barked, growled, I looked into its eyes and barked back, and it walked away. I hurried through a cup of tea and a breakfast snack so I could get to the lodge for coffee. I ran into Otto again, as I'd hoped I would. We shared how we both loved the road and meeting different people along the way. That led to a discussion about the inherent goodness of people, which led to Otto saying, "That goodness comforts you during the day and when you're all alone at night, you have the comfort of God." I normally tightened up when a stranger brought up God. I didn't know why. Maybe because, to me, it—God, or the concept of God—was just way too personal to be tossing back and forth with a complete stranger. But this time I didn't. He had no desire to preach to me or ask me questions neither of us could answer with words but would try to anyway. He was just innocently sharing his own experience. We exchanged addresses and phone numbers and he asked me if he could hug me. "Of course!" I stepped toward him and we wrapped our arms around each other and squeezed. His whole being shimmered. We parted. I stretched out my arms and we hugged again. Later at the lodge, as I drank coffee and wrote in my journal about him, my eyes filled up with tears. I did want to see him again—at least keep in touch.

Wanting to cover as much ground as possible, I hurried out the door, jumped onto my bike, and headed back to Route 101. A thick cool mist enveloped me. As much as I'd thrived on the hot sun these past few months, I missed this. In a womb of moisture and cuddled by hundreds of shades of grey and green, I thought how I could never be too far away from this land for too long.

By the time I got a few miles out, I'd stripped off a layer and found my rhythm. My mind ran wild from here to there and back—Bellingham, what I wanted for breakfast, hope that my last carbon dioxide cartridge would work if I needed it to, Bellingham. Then I remembered: Otto said he was also heading up 101 this morning to catch the ferry at Port Angeles to Victoria. I stopped and dug out my phone from my pack. Maybe I could ride with him. I was sure he'd have room for my bike and gear. Then I could get back sooner—with fifty dollars to spare. I found his business card and called him. Maybe he was still packing up. No answer. I left a message about my spontaneous plan and got back on my bike. For several miles I checked my mirror for his VW van. Eventually, I figured he'd probably rushed out of camp soon after we'd talked and that he was already long gone. I'd spent too much time drinking my coffee, but would catch up with him someday.

*****

NIGHT MODE

I didn't know why I was in a bad mood, but when I got to Bogachiel State Park I nearly tore the heads off of two very nice young men innocently passing through the park hoping to take a shower. All they did was confirm what I'd just read on the bulletin board about this new fee now required just to step foot in any Washington state park. There had been more budget cuts and they must have just enacted the new rule because I hadn't come across it all summer. With the force of a fire hose I blasted them with my financial insecurity, adding just one little profanity, spraying the dirt right off them and saving them from having to take a shower. Their eyes bulged out of their soft, gentle faces as they slowly backed away, while suggesting in their most diplomatic tones that perhaps this was the only way to keep these beautiful parks that we all love up and running.

"I know, I know," I said as I withdrew my claws and relaxed my lips over my fangs. "I'm sorry. It's just that I'm almost out of money and I still have three days to go till Bellingham. That new fee plus the regular campsite is a lot." (I heard violins in my head from the pity partying.) They both offered understanding nods, but quickly retreated to their car, eager to post on their highly popular online social networking page how they'd just escaped the jaws of the Bogachiel Bike Bitch. Appropriately embarrassed, I took the blank registration form from the holder and walked my bike down the hill toward the campsites that encircled the bathrooms and showers. When I reached the first site, I saw the two men leaning into the backseat of their car gathering their towels and toiletry bags.

"Hey, by the way," one of them said as he pointed to the site to my right, "there's a hiker-biker site right over there for just five dollars."

"Really? Oh wow, thanks!" I said in the most friendly, apologetic voice I could muster while shrinking into the ground. I walked over to the site and found the perfect private tent spot under two forgiving trees and promptly filled out my form. After thumbing through the bills in my wallet, I dug through every pocket in every article of clothing twice looking for anything less than a twenty and more than a penny. No luck. Apparently, I had not repented enough, for it became clear that I had to now ask these same young men if they had change for a twenty. Ouch. I could read their highly popular online social networking page in my head: "Bogachiel Bike Bitch Begs." I inserted my money into the envelope and slipped it onto the state park offering plate.

Maybe I was tired. This was my fourth day over fifty-five miles, averaging eleven or twelve miles per hour. For me carrying a load, that was a workout. But I knew it was more than that. Even earlier that day at Kalaloch, I'd had a hornet in my helmet for no good reason. There was a woman standing exactly where I wanted to sit to eat my lunch. She was waiting for her husband to park their RV before heading down the path to the beach. There was no amount of mental pushing that would make her move from my spot. Either she couldn't hear my telepathic request or she didn't appreciate my urgency and blocked my impatient barrage with her own mental shield.

Of course it was more than being tired. I needed to go for a walk. After a quick setup and dinner, I followed a trail towards the Bogachiel River just a few hundred yards through the woods. But you sort of already know this story—the Zen bed of round river rock, the cobalt blue rubber glove. But I left out the part where I forgot to switch my camera out of nighttime mode from the evening before in the rain forest when I was trying to take pictures of that cougar pouncing on me. With the sun still hovering just above the tree line, that particular mode washed all of my pictures blue. A bold blue. Yes, cobalt blue. When I discovered my mistake, I wanted to keep it in that mode. I imagined a few of them blown up in matted frames on a table. But a few pictures later, I couldn't do it. I switched the camera back to normal. It wasn't what my eyes were seeing, and, for some reason, I felt more compelled to capture what was real, even if the unreal was also beautiful.

So, choosing my steps carefully, I walked, stopping to take pictures every several yards. With the dull ringing of rock knocking against rock under my feet, I flowed down the rock river until the sun fell behind the trees. I stood there for a long moment, looking left and right, and then turned back. Retracing my steps, I found my tent by the soft glow of twilight, took off my shoes, and slipped into my sleeping bag for a long, deep sleep.

********

LAST FLAT TIRE

I rode out of the campground before the Harley motorcycle gang had even gotten up for their first pee. They'd rolled in the night before while I was fretting about economics, or rather, my personal economy. One tall, broad-shouldered hunk of a gladiator dressed in black leather fortunately did not see me staring at him.

I was up and out early without breakfast because I knew the famous vampire town of Forks was just a few miles away, where the chances were good that I'd find a diner of some kind offering drippy eggs, toast, and a side of something. Before the fog and mist even had time to burn off, I entered the struggling town.

Dilapidated mobile homes rotted in tall grass. Rusted cars sat on three wheels next to defunct fishing boats on trailers. In the town center—a traffic light across from a bank—most shop windows displayed posters of dark-haired vampires and young blonde women I guessed to be the actors from whatever movie it was that had been such a big hit in recent years. Like the other tourists passing through, I wanted a taste of this fame, if you could call it that, while also trying to not swallow the sad truth that this impoverished town sold its soul to Hollywood just to keep the tourists stopping in and its children fed.

As I'd expected, the diner did exist, and it was packed. I pulled into the lot, leaned my bike against the front window, and followed three generations of an East Indian family through the front door. What came next was pure sociological entertainment. I sat in a booth, ripped out my journal, and began taking notes. Behind me sat a well-dressed, gold-adorned family from California. Next to me sat three locals dressed in camouflage and baseball caps. In front of me sat an Asian family speaking their native tongue, which sounded nothing like German. Beyond them, to my delight, sat the biker gang, dressed head-to-toe in black leather. The East Indians slid into the booth behind the hunters and across from the Californian Gold Card members. Surrounding us all, on every wall, was a collage of 1970s nature art and stuffed dead animal heads sporting antlers or horns with a dazed, not-quite-there look their eye. The middle-aged waitresses sprinted back and forth with plates and coffeepots forcing smiles when they had to. Everyone except the locals appeared slightly uncomfortable, as if they were thinking, "This is Forks? I wondered if they'd known this was just going to be a simple flour, butter, and sugar stop on their way to the more Hollywood-esque Port Townsend or San Juan Islands, and if they had, would they have had their coffee and banana-walnut muffin in the minivan and called it good? Poor Forks. There weren't a lot of good jobs anymore for their 3,100 people. Since the decline of the timber industry, their main source of income was primarily from the Clallum Bay Correctional Center which, apparently, wasn't exactly booming, as per capita income was only about $13,000 per year. According to my inner spreadsheet, that was just about enough to have one 1983 vintage car and feed two kids three vegetables per week.

With my sights set on the Dungeness Spit, seventy-five miles up the road, I wolfed down the stack of pancakes in front of me, which came with a half pound of bacon and fake-butter-soaked toast. I didn't eat pork, in general, but easily convinced myself that I needed the extra protein. As much as I wanted to stay to observe the newcomer, a tattooed scruffy backpacker, I scurried out the door and got back on the road. Knowing I'd lose the shoulder when I reached Lake Crescent, I fell into my rhythm and enjoyed my wandering mind on the wide road while it lasted.

Sure enough, as I approached Lake Crescent, the shoulder disappeared right before the blinking lights that warned motorists that cyclists were on the road. I stopped and read the warning to cyclists. Without a shoulder, this next section of winding road was particularly dangerous, especially during the week because of logging trucks, and during the summer because of RVs. Fortunately, it was Sunday. At least I wouldn't have to deal with the logging trucks. I pushed the button under the lights, mentally crossed my fingers, and continued along the southern edge of the lake. In addition to historians not knowing whether it had been named for its crescent shape or for being close to Crescent Bay, no one seemed to know whether it was the deepest or the second deepest lake in Washington. The official depth of 624 feet had been determined by students from Peninsula College in 1970 using an instrument that only went as deep as 624 feet. Despite the fact that depths in excess of one thousand feet had been discovered when laying power cables across the lake floor, the lake remains officially 624 feet, making it the second deepest lake in Washington. I couldn't help but be curious about what sorts of careers these Peninsula College students ended up pursuing. Perhaps they'd all gone on to become presidential economic advisers where they'd learned to measure data with their everything-is-fine tape measure.

Before I pedaled back onto the road, I looked across the length of the lake. Pyramid Mountain rose up on the left and Mount Storm King, the northern-most peak in the Olympic Mountains, stood straight ahead where the lake curved northeast to the left. Though I couldn't actually see it curve, I didn't have to. I simply read the map and it told me the lake was shaped like a crescent, and why would I dispute an official state map?

I couldn't ride fast enough. From here to Edison, two days away, the scenery would consist mostly of cars, small cities and towns, and views of the Puget Sound and distant mountains. Water, islands and mountains were certainly nothing to complain about, but the density of people and the things that invariably went with it blighted my view. It was hard for me to see past it. It's always been that way for me. I remembered swearing at cell phone towers when they first started popping up on top of wooded hills and in the middle of farmers' fields. Well before cell towers, I had the same reaction to billboards and strip malls and parking lots of macadam that spread out like dead lakes. All that stuff blocked my view of the natural world.

But this lack of wild scenery pushed me to ride harder. I had Bellingham on the brain. I envisioned myself riding into town along the bay, up the Interurban Trail. I saw familiar faces and smiled. They recognized me, too, and smiled back. I imagined sitting at a big table at Boundary Bay with friends, drinking strong beer, laughing. I had a good life in Bellingham. That I was sure of.

Eventually, the shoulder widened and the traffic was steady. There were fewer miles between small towns. A chilly breeze off the Strait of Juan de Fuca blew away the heat of the bright sun. I was pleased to be racking up the miles and wondered if I'd be able to put in eighty miles or more, which might get me to Sequim. If I could, and then put in another long day tomorrow, maybe I could get back a day sooner. I took a quick lunch break at a picnic table outside a convenience store. Port Angeles, home of Peninsula College, came and went. A lone cyclist startled me from behind, passing me by with great ease and without a peep. I yelled, "Hello!" at which point it occurred to him that sometimes it felt good when people said hello as they passed through someone else's personal space, sharing intimate views of each other's butts, and he yelled "hello" back. Perhaps that was rude of me to point out his rudeness. Too late.

The shoulder remained wide, but now had more cinders and, I presumed, miniscule sharp objects hiding between them waiting to strike at my tire. I turned on my imaginary shield and visualized all such objects being flicked away for other rude cyclists behind me to pick up in their tubes (just kidding). Not far from Sequim, I accelerated quickly on a long descent. In that sort of traffic at higher speeds, even with a wide shoulder, it was natural to gravitate to the right where more debris lived and prospered. I should have known. I did know. Sure enough. A quarter-mile later, halfway up the next hill, I felt that familiar, springy bounce. I pulled off the road and walked up a grassy path to do the deed. Myself. Without the luck of bike shops that materialized in front of me or buses that happened to stop across from one, I took off my back panniers, dug out my tools and new tube, and released the wheel. Though I'd successfully changed enough flats over the years, for some reason I cried. It was strange. Not a lot. Just a few tears. I turned the wheel and immediately saw the little venomous culprit. A headless wood screw. Scary bugger. It had gone straight in, as they always did. "How did that happen?" I wondered. It wasn't like it was standing on end and leaning toward my tire at the perfect angle. I surmised that it was likely a team effort. The front tire hit the screw, or nail, and flicked it upright for a split second just as the back tire rolled straight into its pointed end. Amazing hardware acrobatics indeed. I couldn't imagine how many screws and nails I'd actually have to flick up that missed the mark in order to create the odds that it could happen at all. I just hadn't seen that many screws and nails in my path.

It was no speed record, but with the help of my new friend, Carbon Dioxide, my last cartridge, I was back in the saddle in fifteen minutes. I felt charged up. Capable. But it was also a setback, at least in my mind, which was probably a good thing. Had I not had the flat, I might have talked myself into trying to make it all the way to Sequim, like the day I pushed myself all the way to Government Camp and strained my knee. My cyclometer read almost seventy miles when I saw the sign for the Dungeness Wildlife Refuge. A brown sign with a white teepee symbol followed. The turn happened to be across from a bus stop, and for a second I thought I might be able to take a bus in the morning to Port Townsend if I was serious about speeding up my return. I filed that thought away to revisit the next morning.

Kind of like the way my bladder almost couldn't hold it any longer once I knew there was a bathroom close by, my legs gave up on me as soon as they knew the end of my ride was near. The temperature dropped, too. I stopped next to a pasture of grazing horses to put on my jacket and gloves. The straight road to the refuge went on and on. The flat land stretched out in all directions. I passed several big new houses and a picturesque lavender farm. Eventually, I came to an intersection with a sign for the refuge pointing right. Then left. More road. Finally, after five or six miles I was there. High dunes blocked my view, but I could hear crashing waves in the distance and smell seawater. I rode into the camping area and quickly realized there were only a few campsites left. So I claimed the first vacant one I came to by leaning my bike against the picnic table and walked back to entrance where a stream of campers were dammed up at the self-pay station. I filled out the form and shelled out a twenty without a complaint.

Eager to get down to the beach and walk along the spit before the sun went down, I quickly set up my tent and threw my rice and beans in a pot of water. Luckily, I reached the entrance to the spit just before they stopped letting people in. A ranger stood at a table handing out brochures and answering people's questions. I stopped to ask a few myself. Apparently, being one of just a few such formations in the world, this was one of the world's longest natural sand spits. And it formed ten to twenty thousand years ago. I had a hard time comprehending that kind of time—into the past or the future.

I'd been to Spencer's Spit on Lopez Island in the San Juan's, so I sort of knew what to expect—a long narrow strip of beach piled high with monstrous sun-bleached driftwood. But as I came out of the woods at the bottom of the hill I discovered this was no relation to little Spence. It stretched on and on and then curved to the right. One side took the brunt of crashing waves and on the other side lay a calm bay. At the very tip, five miles out, was a lighthouse, though I knew I'd never make it there and back before the sun set and temperature dropped. I was already thinking about putting on my gloves.

I walked down the hill through the woods and onto the sand and pebble beach. At once, I became focused on the sound. It washed over me, through me. Like many of the Northwest beaches I'd walked, it was that sound of retreating water, after the crash, brushing over the tops of tiny pebbles that nearly put me in a trance. It wasn't just water against pebble, but pebble against pebble, too. Similar to the ring of river rock against river rock, only more delicate. I wondered if, 17,000 years ago, waves crashed up against pebbles just like these making this sound. And maybe some woman, perhaps a native S'Klallam, walked where I was now walking, thinking about how glorious this sound was—how it sometimes felt to be inside her body, too.

I walked a long time. The wind and sun at my back, I took pictures of smooth, wet stones sticking out of the sand. Green ones. Grey ones. Deep burgundy and orange ones. Black ones with white speckles and white ones with black stripes. I held my camera an inch from the ground to get their view of the world. They were giants—shining, peaceful giants. The people up ahead were ants. I wanted to keep going. I didn't want to go back.

When I did turn around, the cold wind hit my face hard. I zipped my jacket up to my chin and snapped a few pictures of the sun kissing the horizon. The pale-orange wash accentuated the outline of the Olympic Mountains as a cargo container ship crawled through the strait out to the sea. And then another one. I picked up my pace. A young, starry-eyed couple, almost tripping over their love, stopped me to ask if I'd take their picture. "Sure," I said as I reached for her camera. I aimed and shot, seeing on the tiny screen that it was a good one of them all wrapped up in their arms with wide smiles across their faces. They thanked me and the young woman asked if I wanted her to take one of me. "Sure," I said, and handed her my camera.

"Oh no," she lamented. "It says your battery's dead."

"Oh no. Well, I guess I won't be getting the sunset either then, huh?" I took the camera back and checked it myself. Sure enough. Oh well. There was still tomorrow night for one last sunset.

*****

PLEASE PASS THE DECEPTION

Dressed in full winter attire, minus my booties, on the morning of August eighth, I rode back to Route 101 and headed east towards Port Townsend. Several miles into it—you guessed it—I stopped for coffee and a pee. The large, seemingly new convenience store was hopping with tourists. On the Jamestown S'Klallam Indian Reservation, the store not only offered typical road-trip basics, but also a slew of gifts and memorabilia depicting various red, black, and white native designs. I sat for just a few minutes outside at a picnic table where I texted a few friends, checked the Port Townsend ferry schedule, and washed down an energy bar with my coffee. As I got up to leave, a group of colorful, sleek cyclists pulled into the lot on their shiny bikes, followed by their sag wagon—a clean white van with the name of some touring company painted on its side. I got on my bike and exchanged a friendly nod with one of them as I rode past.

Now, with the goal of reaching the ferry dock in time for the noon sailing, I mentally geared up for a faster-than-average pace. With few hills and a mission, I seemed to be gliding along without much effort. When I turned onto Route 20, I picked up my pace even more as the winding road lost its shoulder and I didn't want to mess around with more ferry-bound, tardy tourists than necessary. In the middle of a moderate climb, up off my saddle, two of those sleek cyclists whizzed past. No hello. I bit my tongue.

Several more miles, past Anderson Lake, I knew I was close. Keeping an eye out for familiar landmarks while checking my clock, I stepped it up another notch. Finally, there it was: the dock. I pulled up to the booth, paid for a ticket, and rode to the front of the vehicle line where a completely full bike rack sat. Leaning my bike against a nearby fence, I noticed the cycling group congregating outside the terminal across the lot, talking and eating. One of them, a clean-cut, middle-aged man with glasses, walked toward me and stopped a few feet away next to his bike at the end of the rack.

"Hi there," he said. "You're the one we passed earlier."

"Hi. Yes. I am."

"Where you headed?" he asked.

"Bellingham."

"Where did you come from?"

"Bellingham."

"Oh. Where'd you go?"

"Oh, down the Cascades to Crater Lake, over to the coast, and up the peninsula."

"Sounds nice."

"Yeah, it was. How 'bout you?"

"We're heading up Whidbey Island to some little town off twenty. It's supposed to be nice."

"La Conner?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's it. Then tomorrow we're going over Washington Pass to Winthrop."

"Nice."

"Yeah. How many miles a day do you put in?"

"It depends. Fifty. Sixty, sometimes more. You?"

"Oh, it varies. Today will be around ninety. But we don't have to lug our gear. How much does all that weigh?"

"Oh, I don't know. Forty, forty-five."

Our conversation went on like this for sometime and then he shared with me how he lived in Philadelphia now after moving there from Portland, Oregon.

"Philadelphia?" I asked, with an I'm-from-the-East-Coast camaraderie in my tone. "How's the good old City of Brotherly Love? And how could you ever move there from Portland?"

"Oh, I hate Portland. Philly is doing so much better. Housing prices are climbing...and my investments...returns...portfolios..." he said, losing me, and just as I was warming up to him.

He was nice and all, but I just couldn't relate. He didn't have a speck of dirt on him or his bike. I had dirt everywhere—probably inside things that had never even been exposed. I supposed if I'd had to, I could have found some common ground. But I didn't have to—at least in that moment. I also supposed I didn't have to be so surly, even if I kept it to myself, inside.

The monstrous ferry pulled in and the rest of his friends came over and unlocked their bikes. When the vehicles off-loaded, we all walked our bikes down the ramp and onto the lower deck. Because my bike had panniers and wouldn't fit in the bike rack onboard, one of the ferry workers directed me up front to the right while the other cyclists walked off to the left. I locked my bike to a metal cage next to a horse-sized orange life preserver and climbed the nearest set of stairs to the upper deck.

The ferry ride was about forty-five minutes—just long enough to want to find a seat in a booth next to a window to enjoy the view and just short enough to not get too comfortable. I chose to sit on the east side looking toward Whidbey Island. My map said, more specifically, I was looking at Fort Casey State Park. Had I been on the left side, I would have been looking at Fort Flagler State Park. Evidently, old forts got turned into parks after enough time had passed. And there were a lot of them in that area, and to the north. Fort Worden. Fort Ebey. Fort Ward, Middlepoint, and Fort Whitman. Looking at the map, it did seem that that particular waterway through the San Juan Islands was a fairly direct route for enemy vessels to get to Seattle, the heart of the Puget Sound—whoever the enemy was. Except for the Pig War of 1859, a fight over boundary lines with the British where a pig had been the only casualty, all those forts didn't see very much action. But they made good parks.

The deep roar of the ferry's engines rumbled through my seat and through me as we pulled away from the dock. Seagulls crisscrossed in and out of view. The dark birds I'd always thought were loons, and recently learned were cormorants, stood on top of black pilings lining the mouth of the dock. Kids ran past, followed by their parents telling them to stop running. Outside, tourists took pictures of each other leaning against the railing, their hair wild with wind. While my phone and camera charged in the outlet next to me, I ate some granola and dried apple slices, washing it down with fizzy kefir. After I texted back and forth with friends a few times, a computerized voice came over the loudspeaker informing drivers that it might be a good time to return to their vehicles as we were approaching Coupeville. Unsure if they wanted bikes to go first or last, I unplugged, packed up, and headed down the two flights of stairs to the sea of cars and trucks.

I pushed my bike up the ramp. Sunshine filled the sky and my legs felt strong. In just twenty-five miles, I'd set up my tent for the last time. Before turning onto the main road, I decided to look at my map once more just to clarify that it didn't matter whether I went left or right. Both ways led to Route 20. Just as I was about to pull out onto the road, a young woman on a bike with loaded panniers approached me with so much smile on her face I figured we had to have been long-lost friends. We shared our adventure stories and how we both wanted to write a book about them. Had we not been going in opposite directions we probably would have ridden together for a while. We wished each other fun and said good-bye.

I chose left, as it seemed slightly more direct. Up ahead, two electric-company repairmen confirmed my hunch. A few miles later, I reached Route 20. For days (okay, years), I'd believed that riding up Whidbey Island on Route 20 would be an awful experience. I assumed the shoulder was narrow and I'd be sure to get hit by a slow, swerving tourist or an angry speeding local trying to pass a slow tourist. And for me, once I got something in my head, it sure was hard to extricate. The truth was, other than having to be aggressive and look big when I rode through the congested section in Oak Harbor, it was a fine ride on a wide, debris-free shoulder. The tourists paid attention to the lines and the locals were either extra patient that afternoon or they had run their errands the day before and were at home watering their flowers or were out on their boats crabbing.

The hours passed quickly and before I knew it the trees grew wider and taller and fighter jets roared overhead. Deception Pass was near. There were many reasons I loved Deception Pass State Park—good memories with friends and family, beautiful sunsets between silhouettes of tiny islands—and fighter jets were not one of them. They'd come and go often and loud enough to interrupt a conversation or hearty laughter, drowning out the soothing crashing waves just when I was about to be soothed. Some naval base was just over the hill from Oak Harbor. I never actually read the name of it whenever I went by the entrance because I was always too distracted and confused by another sign in front of two big jets, erected as if they were taking off, that read, "Pardon our noise. It's the sound of freedom."

Partly for the sake of tradition and partly because I had just ridden almost two thousand miles and felt it appropriate to celebrate, I stopped at the convenience store attached to a fish and chips stand across the road from the entrance to the park. As I'd hoped, they carried a variety of microbrews. I changed my mind about getting fish and chips after I recounted my money, but not about a cold beer. I was fairly sure grease was not a dietary necessity. Hops, however, I had yet to verify as necessary or not and didn't want to chance it with just one day to go.

Every square inch of the 1,600-acre park (once military reserve) was packed with camp stoves, camp chairs, camp coolers, camp lanterns, camp utensils, camp flatware, and every other kind of rugged-ized household item made for living outside. The campers, however, were nowhere to be seen. They were all on the beach. And for good reason. Not only was it a beautiful beach, but it was a sunny summer day in the Northwest, which meant, of course, tomorrow could be fall so everyone should get out there and enjoy it now. I was feeling particularly optimistic about it being sunny for at least another week or two, so I took my time setting up my tent while enjoying my beer. And when I say "enjoying," I mean "allowing the physical buzzing of alcohol on an empty stomach after riding sixty-two miles to mix with the emotional fluttering of a magical adventure coming to an end." Lying on my back on the picnic table, I looked straight up, as I had done so many times that summer, through the circular opening in the treetops above. Beer or no beer, I could have easily flown up through that portal into the sky for a wild, wind-in-my-face, fearless ride.

I started to drift off, which I didn't want to do just yet. The beach was calling. I got up, locked my bike to the table and walked down towards the water. Following a trail that wound through fir trees, then madrone and salal, to the top of the cliffs above the beach, I took the first path I could down to the water's edge. Because the high tide was swallowing up most of the beach, I had to periodically climb up and over rock outcroppings in order to continue walking east toward the bridge. Spanning almost 1,000 feet from Whidbey Island to Pass Island and then to Fidalgo Island, the Deception Pass Bridge stood high above the whirling currents in this narrow passageway from Rasario Strait to Skagit Bay. Over the years, these waters had spun around a boat or two and even sucked up a slew of Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s who'd been thrown overboard in burlap bags by immigrant-smuggler, Ben Ure (namesake of Ben Ure Island just past the bridge), when customs agents approached. Interestingly, those sacks of people would surface miles away in Dead Man's Bay off San Juan Island. (Why Ben Ure Island or Dead Man's Bay has not been renamed yet, I don't know.) But before Ben, before Joseph Whidbey, George Vancouver, and Miguel Quimper, that area was inhabited for nearly ten thousand years by about ninety different Coast Salish tribes. That's a long time. They also had no political institutions. Interesting.

After climbing over a few more outcroppings, I found a sandy cove all to myself. Up from the water, in a patch of warm dry sand, I lay down on my back, resting my head on a grey hunk of driftwood, and closed my eyes. I was drenched in the sound of the waves. Children's laughter floated in and out of earshot. And just as I felt my body sink into the sand, the piercing whistle of a fighter jet crept up fast and roared by, threatening to tear this peaceful moment to shreds. And strangely, it was okay. Even after the second one. And the third. I had never felt so at peace—so alive and free. Whomever their enemy was, real or imagined, had nothing to do with me. I had no good reason to be afraid of anything—of mountain passes or rattlesnakes, the evening news or radiation. No cougar, no man, or lack of money in my wallet could buckle my knees. No poisoned air or water, no government, no cancer. "That was then and somewhere else," I thought. "I live in a different world now."

Just before the sun slipped into the water, I got up, took a few pictures, and walked back to camp. I ate rice and beans, drank a cup of hot chocolate, and crawled into my tent one last time.

*****

DISMOUNT

I woke, listened to the birds, and started my morning ritual. Typically, I would have been quite focused on whatever it was I was doing, which was one thing that had made this adventure as magical as it had been. I found it so easy to be present, consumed by whatever the moment offered up. The past had fallen behind, and the future was too far up ahead to see. But this was my last day. So, from the time I opened my eyes in my tent to my tearful ride into Bellingham, I was already sitting at a wooden table next to a window in Boundary Bay, writing in my journal, and enjoying a beer. Not that sipping coffee next to an ant hill wasn't entertaining or that counting waterfowl on the Skagit mudflats wasn't heartening. And not that nibbling on gourmet cheese and freshly baked bread in Edison on a bench in the sun wasn't luxurious or that riding along Chuckanut Drive wasn't grey and cold just like the day I'd left. I was just ready to be back, eager to explore this familiar town in a new way. So by the time I actually rolled up onto the sidewalk to the metal bike racks outside the brewery, it was as if I were already there, waiting.

I dismounted and leaned my rig against the rack. I unbuckled my helmet, took it off, and hung it on my handlebars. Walking through the front door was like walking into my skin. I sat at a wooden table next to the window and pulled my journal out of my backpack. A friendly waitress set down a glass of water in front of me and took my order. Minutes later, she came back with a cold beer. A thin layer of foam hugged the lip of the glass. The waitress didn't know it, but she held out that pint of gold in slow motion as if it were a prize.

For a moment, I was a stranger just passing through, dirty and sunburned, as I sat there writing. But then a friend walked in. We caught each other's faces and the room lit up.

*****

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To my family—thank you for teaching me how to do things, for instilling in me that I am capable, and for allowing me to roam around far from home.

To my friends—thank you for your inspiration, support, and encouragement, not just for this adventure, but for all the rides that came before it.

To every stranger who crossed my path—thank you. Your sincere delight in wanting to help me not only brightened my days, but also reminded me of the inherent goodness in every person. I'm convinced that the kindness of strangers is all a free-spirit really needs to survive.

END NOTES

The facts and figures, historical or otherwise, that appear in this book most likely came from Wikipedia. Some came from conversations I overheard between two locals in a café or as was told to me by some friendly person alongside the road.

