July 13 -15. Leave Them Wanting More. Day 17 and after-words. Part 1

Dear Trail Friends,

I have been slow to write this blog posting. I remember that when I studied bereavement and grief counseling there were certain events - like the "unveiling" of the tombstone - that made the loss more real and often intensified the pain of loss. Writing this blog feels that way to me. It is a public and verbal acknowledgment that my hike is over, at least for now. It also involves revisiting the last day of the hike and reliving in a very conscious way all that has been lost. 

My friend Peter McC reminds me "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." Wise guidance, though I think the trail of tears may sometimes be the only path I can find that leads me back to the trail of gratitude and smiles. 

I winced when I used the phrase "trail of tears" and reproached myself for conflating my relatively small loss with the loss of lives and home and culture that Native American people experienced on the historical forced displacement march we call the Trail of Tears. 

It also made me think of the Amanda Trail, the trail up Cape Perpetua that formed the penultimate section of my last day's hike. 

The Amanda Trail has a statue erected both to honor a Native American woman named Amanda (who was part of a forced march in what amounted to genocide here in Oregon), and to acknowledge and begin healing of the historical trauma inflicted on tribal people, and the resulting divisions in the community. Though I could not find a really good source for this story, these two websites helped a lot (in case you want to know more.)

http://www.yachats.info/history/Amanda_Trail.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/articles.oregonlive.com/travel/index.ssf/2016/07/amanda_trail_is_a_beautiful_hi.amp

I had a moment of "goose bumps" when I read the following paragraph (from the second link, quoted from an Indian agent referring to the "old" Coos woman called Amanda, who was  separated from her young daughter and taken on the forced walk.)

When they reached the sharp basalt shoreline near Cape Perpetua, old Amanda "tore her feet horribly over these ragged rock, leaving blood sufficient to track her by."

There is no record of Amanda's subsequent fate (but it probably did not include reunion with loved ones, return home, or a long healthy happy life.) I associated Amanda's bleeding feet with my own painful feet - (which had been fine all day but became intensely painful as I hiked Amanda's trail) - and felt a strong sense of connection. 

I don't mean to glorify or aggrandize my pain or loss. But the connection helped me to feel something akin to what I used to feel during the ritual of Communion in the Catholic Church. Somehow partaking ritually in the blood and body of the crucified Christ (who might now represent to me what Quakers call "that of God" in every person) involved acceptance of suffering - and faith in human connection, and the hope for suffering somehow to become redemptive (to empower us to live out the loving, kind side of ourselves more often than the fearful, angry side.)

The story of the Amanda trail (first link) suggests that the communal acknowledgement of European American culpability and tribal peoples' suffering was healing for both sides. I find that immensely hopeful. 

Photo 1 is the Amanda statue - which I personally did not find as moving as the story, but I do appreciate it as a shrine and focal point around which healing ritual and communication has taken place.

On a lighter note, earlier on the trail I came across a sculpture (by the same sculptor, photo 2) of two bears, with one scratching the other's back. The "scratchee" bear had her eyes closed and her chin stretched up in sensual bliss, in a way that reminded me vividly of my dog Misty. I guess I like it a lot better when we humans scratch each other's backs than when we take each other (or are taken) on forced walks toward confinement, sickness and death. 

 

Being reminded of Misty is sweet at this moment. It's good to remember as I face this loss - the loss of my dream of hiking the whole Oregom Coast trail - how the loss of our two loved dogs Nikki and Misty left an empty space in our (Chris and my) lives, which space allowed us to walk the Camino, and led to the opportunity to dream and live my dream of walking the PCT and the Wonderland and the Arizona trails (and walking the Camino a second time). 

Dreams, like dogs and people, die. It is strangely comforting to think that the death of this particular dream may make room for a new generation of dreams. 

Also that public acknowledgment of loss (even when it does not involve culpability) may help with the healing - even though it does makes the loss more real, and making it real hurts. 

Today is Saturday, July 15. I am sitting on a bus in Eugene soon to depart for Seattle. Already my final day's hike on Thursday, from Beachside campground to Cape Perpetua seems long ago - a lost time, a lost world. 

I gaze at the photos in the collage in photo 3, and I remember that wide expansive beach, the wave movement and music, the cold fresh sea air, and all the swirls and pools and small streams of water like a labyrinth that I walked through and around, trying to keep my feet dry and protect the dressing that padded and guarded my injuries (the ordinary and the blood blisters, and the swollen, inflamed, displaced fatty tissue on the ball of the foot and perhaps the heel as well. I did not have enough moleskin, bandages, and gauze to continually replace wet loosened bindings, not to mention the time involved in creating my elaborate dressings, so it was important to keep my feet dry. My feet felt okay (after painfully limping the previous night in camp) and I relished the challenge of finding my way around and across water to keep them and their dressings dry. 

 

I was enjoying the leaps and frenzied burrowing of the mobs of sand crabs and the graceful company of the little wave-dancer birds I now know (thank you Kathryn) are snowy plovers. I wish the photos could convey the movement and how it is part of the whole vast expanse, the waves, the sound, the sky, the horizon - but I trust your imagination to create it new. So here is photo 4, of sand crabs and plovers. 

 

Photo 5 shows Cape Perpetua ahead - where I will leave the beach and hike over the Cape. 

 

Several sources on the internet call Cape Perpetua "the highest point on the Oregon coast," but I find this strange, since it is 800 ft and Tillamook head, just for example, is 1200ft. 

As I walked the beach and approached the Cape I was assuming that the extensive beachwalking on Wednesday (July 12, day 26) had caused my foot problems (perhaps the four miles or so barefoot) - and, therefore, that once I hit the off-beach trail heading up the Cape, all would be well. Alas, it was not what happened. 

I had hugely miscalculated mileage as well - thinking I was doing an easy abbreviated day of about 6 miles to Neptune beach.  The mileage I ended up walking Thursday was closer to 13 - even though I stopped near the Cape Perpetua outlook, still 1 1/2 miles short of Neptune beach.  The planned pre-injury goal, the campground at Carl Washburne state park, would have been another 11 miles more - a very long day. )

To be continued in: Leave Them Wanting More. July 13-15. Day 17 and after-words. Part 2.