Day 4. Part 2. March 4, Patagonia Mile 52.8 to Mile 58.8

Continued from Day 4 Part 1. 

Day 4. Part 2.  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. 

My exuberant lunch with Milton inspired me in many ways. I also enjoyed the best huevos rancheros I've ever had. I really loved the Stage Stop Inn, and its attached Wild Horses Restaurant. 

So after lunch I am walking happily along, a mile or two outside town, grateful to be on a dirt road with a smooth surface - unlike yesterday's loose rocks all over the trail - and my feet (and hips and back) not complaining as much as I might have anticipated after yesterday's 27 mile walk. Suddenly a car pulls up beside me and the driver extends his hand and in it is my credit card. Gerry, the owner of Stage Stop Inn (who has already gone out of his way to be helpful to me - even carried my resupply box up to my room!). He hands me my credit card, which I had in my exuberance left in the restaurant. So photo 6 of course is Gerry. 

Happily reunited with my credit card, aglow with gratitude, I was living the hills with their tall gold grass. They remind me of similar hills around Sacramento. Those hills inspired a poem, which II wrote in the early 1980s, called The Woman Who Rides the Hills. 

Photo 7 shows the hills and, I hope, conveys a bit of why I love them. 

 

Here (thanks to Chris who found it and sent it to me) is the poem. 

The Woman Who Rides the Hills

This grass all along the hills south of Sacramento 

fair-haired, translucent, bleached and blurred by the

unblinking sun, this is the gold of which the rush never told.

It spills from these hills, clings to their voluptuous 

shoulders and thighs, clothes their smooth flanks  

with animal softness, like the fleece of a mythical beast. 

Who could resist it, or want to? Not the woman

who willingly rubs her cheeks against the furred 

folds of these hills, strokes them with open palm, 

slides alongside and against them, touches her own

breast, belly, ribs to their tawny loins. Not the

woman who sits astride, who rolls and rocks 

with the hills, rides and is tossed, climbs astride 

again and again, and rides, rides, rides until

she and the hills together, roaring the gold of their pleasure, swallow the setting sun. 

(Sorry I cannot widen the margins so the line breaks make more visual sense)

It is fun for me to reread that now. Just as married love is totally different from romantic love (at least in my experience) so I chuckle a little at the poem now that I am living in actual daily intimacy with these hills. This gold grass is not soft. It is hard and stiff and it can poke and tear gear if I don't treat it with caution. But the poem is right about one thing - it is a great ride. 

 

I had an interesting moment on this hike regarding water. I had used up a liter of my 3 liter supply and was not quite sure where I would get more water - most of the approaching supplies are described as "unreliable."  Now because it is early spring some of those unreliable sources may be just fine. But I can't know which ones and I sure don't want to run out of water. 

So, where one of those unreliable sources was supposed to be (a tank), I found a shallow cow pond. Surrounded and probably suffused with cow poop and pee. I started to walk away thinking "no thank you" - and then I thought about running out of water. I thought "hey I could put it in my dirty water bag and if I can find better water I will just dump it out." But if I really need it...

It was the first water I have ever scooped into my water bag that was actually yellow in color. Yuck. Not to mention that when I stepped to the edge of the pond I slipped in deep mud. Photo 8 shows the cow pond. That messy spot in the mud on the lower right is my slipped footprint. I'm not sure the photo does justice to how unappetizing it was. 

 

Those of you who have walked with me for a while now know that my feet insist that I take breaks, and lie in "inverted pose." I was surprised and pleased to find a tree I could lean my legs against during my afternoon break.  I love the feeling of my back on the ground ( with only a skinny 1/8 inch foam mat between me and Mother Earth) and gravity gently tugging and massaging my back. The swelling and hot prickly feeling drains out of my feet. The blood seems to flow down into my brain and deeply refresh me. And when I look up through the branches of the trees into the sky, I fall in love with this upside down view of the world. 

If you could enlarge photo 9 (and rotate it 90 degrees to the left, counterclockwise)  you would see the tiny cloud-like shape of the about-to-be half moon, tucked just under the second branch down from the top on the right side of the tree on the right. It was the first glimpse I've had of the moon this trip. (Now it is shining brightly through the translucent fabric of my tent, and making my fly cloth cast a shadow. I also see the Big Dipper through the mesh "window" of my tent.)

 

Speaking of the moon. I heard the most incredible sound while I was typing this. Must have been cayotes howling, but I never heard them howl quite like this. And then as suddenly as it started it ended. Silence. 

Thank you so much for walking with me. I love your comments, whether you post them (if you can figure out how to do so) or send them directly to me by email, or via Chris. Your presence enriches the journey. 

I'll end with a story Milton told about a bagel company that had to throw its old bagels away and he finagled to rescue the bagels. He took them to a homeless camp under a bridge where he was living (I think in Denver). He and his student teacher took them together. He told his student teacher " you will learn more from these people than you will ever learn from me in the classroom. " he said "when you act out of genuine caring toward people, it affects you more than it does them. It multiplies the richness in your life, two times, four times, it just goes on multiplying." He also said to his student teacher (holding up his thumb and forefinger a quarter inch apart) "there's this much difference between then and us. It could have been you or me."

So here I am, on my pilgrimage to Ribbon Falls - where the people emerge from the dark world in which they can't see (or be kind) to each other, into the light where they can. 

And of course how did Milton (Mr. Paradise Regained) enter my life?  I found a glove on the trail and instead of leaving it there I thought just maybe I could take it along and return it to its owner. 

My cousin Alice  told me that after reading my blog  she and cousin Richard used the song Red River Valley for their morning dance. Ever since they got married, they get up and turn on music and dance together every single morning. I downloaded the song too so I can dance down the trail (toward Ribbon Falls) to its music. 

Good night. Seeet dreams. Walk strong and walk safe.