Day 4. Part 1. March 4, Patagonia Mile 52.8 to Mile 58.8

Day 4. Part 1. Friday , March 4. From Patagonia Mile 52.8, elevation 4075, to Mile 58.8, elevation 4760.  Walked 6 mi, up 869 ft down 264 ft. 

Dear Trail Friends

I am sitting in my tent which is flapping loudly in the wind. I found a lovely spot and I wasn't going to let a little wind (and a lot of rocks) stop me. To put up my tent I had to clear a lot of rocks. Then I had to hold down the corners of the tent with heavy rocks, or it would blow away before I could stake it.

 Another hiker might go away and find a site more sheltered from wind. Not me. I get all adversarial and excited about wrestling with the wind, not letting it stop me. 

Photo 2 shows the tentsite and photo 3 shows two small hidden cacti I nearly stepped on when I  was stomping around looking for a place to take the tent photo from. Aren't the little cacti amazing? They are maybe one or two inches in diameter.

 

This is a weird association but the cactus pattern is making me think of a man named Milton I met today. He is cycling the trail (on a trail bike with the heaviest widest wheels I've ever seen on a bike, and a good thing, given all the loose rocks all over the trail). I was about to step out of the hotel lobby to go to lunch as he came in. I noticed his gloves looked like a glove I found on the trail, so I told him "I found a glove just like yours on the trail. " and he said "I lost 4 gloves just like mine on the trail. " So I handed him the glove that I found, and sure enough it was one of the ones he lost. Photo 3 shows Milton reunited with his glove. 

 

 

One thing led to another and he joined me for lunch. I asked him about the tattoo on his hand (photo 4) and he explained that this kind of spiral shows up in lots of cultures, that it is about time, and to him it is about time winding down. By "time winding down" he seemed to mean his own aging, and the reason for his journey, as well as our aging species - and the probable coming to an end of our species. and so of time as we know it. 

 

Somehow our conversation led to his love of marine biology and a scientist-artist who drew creative renditions of underwater creatures that inspired a lot of his art (he makes elaborate blown glass sculptures). Anyway the tattoo on his back is inspired by that scientist-artist (Ernst Haeckel?) and his rendition of the underview of a medusa jellyfish. Photo 5 shows the tattoo (I talked him into lifting his shirt up in the restaurant so I could see it. )

I grant you it the jellyfish doesn't much resemble the cactus - except they are both colorful and have radial symmetry - but one of the delights of hiking is that it allows for what we used to call "loose associations" (back in my emergency mental health days when I evaluated folks as a danger to self or others due to mental illness - and so had to think in terms of diagnoses and symptoms.).Hiking does not just invite loose associations in relation to the ideas that pop into my head, but also loose associations in relation to the people who pop up as oart of my journey. Something about the trail - the "betwixt and between" of it maybe - allows me to meet strangers and leap into immediate mind and heart opening conversation. That used to happen in my youth, in adolescence and college when we were all "betwixt and between." But not since until hiking.  I do love the trail. 

Milton, by the way, was given his mother's maiden name as his first name. His mother was a direct descendent of the poet who wrote Paradise Lost (and, as his great great great great etc grandson pointed out, also Paradise Regained). 

To be continued in Day 4, part 2.