July 13 -15. Leave Them Wanting More. Day 17 and after-words. Part 4

Continued from: Leave Them Wanting More. July 13-15. Day 17 and after-words. Part 3. 

I began the Amanda Trail - a little bit steep but well maintained, no difficult roots, rocks, or muddy places - feeling just fine. I had improved the dressing on my feet at the second rest stop, and also spent time on my inverted pose with feet up against a tree trunk. At first my feet were entirely painfree. I made it to the bears statue and the Amanda statue (in part 1 of this blog) but realized my pace was slow (even if the feet did not hurt they must be slowing me down) and that I would not make it to Neptune Beach by 4:30, when Quaker friend and trail angel Sakre had planned to meet me. (Originally I had hoped to meet at 2 but that turned out not to work for her and my hike turned out much longer than I had thought). 

Sakre fortunately suggested that I let her know  somewhere I could get to by 4:30 and that she meet me there. I thought I could get to the top of the Amanda Trail by then, so I suggested Cape Perpetua. 

Only later did I realize that Cape Perpetua could mean the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center, the Interpretive Site and Lookout, both just off 101, or the overlook at the top of the Cape, at the end of Overlook Road (2 miles or so long). I had no coverage at this point and could not clarify. I decided to leave the trail and walk down Overlook Road and to try to message her. Meanwhile my feet had begun to hurt a lot. But there was no choice but to keep putting one foot in front of the other. 

I am now returning to writing this account (of my last day on the Oregon Coast Trail) a full week later. It is Friday July 21 as I write. I am back on Orcas, sitting in the living room with my view of trees and sky and the Sound. I got back to Orcas last Sunday July 16. I've even made a trip off island and back to get my car serviced and do Costco and Target shopping. 

Finishing this blog is challenging for me. Every once in a while the sadness that I had to leave the trail (and, as my persisting foot pain reminds me, that this could be the end of my trail dreams, because this is, after all, a body that has served me well for 70 years, and like a tired racehorse may have earned her rest) -the sadness rises up in my body, like a wave on a sensory and emotional sea swelling up and passing through me. 

My life feels strange and empty. Though I fantasize returning to finish the Oregon walk, and other future walks, I can't pour my energy into preparation. I do not know if it will be possible, and how much I am willing to gamble. For example, if my feet heal to the point where I can enjoy daily walks, am I willing to risk that for the sake of a possible long distance walk? (I know you are going to want to offer fixes and suggestions - please know that I have an appointment next week with a very fine podiatrist who has helped me effectively manage my foot problem - which she did warn me was age-related, incurable and progressive - in the past. )

It helps me to relate that emptiness to the relinquishing of our dogs, how after our dogs died I embraced that emptiness and into the space that they left behind came new dreams.

Like the quote my friend Linda includes with her email "what if this is not the darkness of the tomb but of the womb?"

I have been careful (and lucky enough to be able to be careful) not to comfort myself with food. It would be easy to do as I wean myself from the coffee and sugar I use on the trail (but have learned from experience that I am unable to use in a healthy and moderate way off-trail). Instead the phrase "leave them wanting more" keeps singing in my mind as I finish a snack or meal. Instead of trying to satisfy myself, I have been deliberately leaving myself unsatisfied, wanting more. And no, I am not starving or depriving myself or cultivating anorexia as my substitute for the trail. But I do find that consciously embracing the emptiness, both in relation to the trail and in relation my insatiable appetite for the sensual pleasures and comforts of food, is helpful to me. It is as if I am holding the emptiness as a kind of sacred space, a place where my hope and faith and curiosity can dwell in what the Quakers might call "expectant waiting" for the next meal, the next miracle, the next passion. 

But back to my story. I had realized as I approached the top of the Amanda Trail how ambiguous the meeting place I specified was. My gps did not even include the Cape Perpetua Trailhead at the top of Lookout Road as one of the Cape Perpetua listings. I had assumed the Trailhead was on 101 and that it would be the obvious unambiguous meaning of Cape Perpetua. Not so. 

Walking the almost 2 miles down the paved road to 101, I wondered if Sakre and I would ever find each other. I felt guilty for putting both myself and my trail angel into this situation. We had met once 7 years ago - I doubted if either of us would recognize the other. I was also really scared by how much my feet hurt. This was not the kind of pain I have learned to walk through. This was pain I associate with injury. I needed to get off my feet. 

I arrived at 101 (already 15 minutes past our meeting time of 4:30) and went to the  interpretive center parking, and lookout, first. I saw no car parked there with a woman driver. So I prepared to cross 101 to the (.5 mile) road to the Visitor Center. But as I did, the driver of a car just about to pull onto 101 from that road rolled down her window and called out "River?"

"Sakre?" I called back. And she was waved. 

I crossed (not looking both ways as carefully as I should, but made it safely across nevertheless) 101, lept into the passenger seat -poles, backpack and all - and sighed with relief to get the weight off my poor feet. 

We both agreed that our finding each other was a minor miracle, as we drove the beautiful coastline drive south to Florence and I both rejoiced in the beauty and mourned that my walk was over. 

I knew it was over. After Thursday's test walk, I knew that to hike anymore, even after a day or two of rest, even if the pain seemed to be gone, as it had Thursday morning, might mean risking long term damage that might never heal. I wanted to get weight off my feet and consult my podiatrist. 

The next two days were an even greater miracle than our finding each other. Sakre and Michael hosted me gently and graciously, treating me to a very special dinner, to lunch on the Siuslaw River that runs through Florence (Michael, a retired forest ranger, taught me to pronounce Sigh-oo-slaw), and Sakre even drove me to pick up my old friend Yitz and his walker, so I could take host him for Friday night dinner (though she offered to loan me her car, we were both a little nervous about me driving an unfamiliar car in an unfamiliar place in a time of great stress, and we were both relieved I think by her offer to drive and pick us up after dinner - but it was definitely over-the-too angel kindness. "It's just what people do," Sakre said. That's the kind of people I want to grow up to be. Sakre even slipped me cash to take Yitz out to dinner - in case I couldn't use my credit card (which arrived safely along with my passport Friday afternoon!), though in the end Yitz insisted on hosting me. And while Sakre trail-angel-ed me along the rocky path of those two sad transitional days, she kept also gently nudging me awake to opportunities for happines still present on the unexpectedly twisting path of my life. 

Photo 1 shows a collage of Sakre (rhymes with Shaker) and Michael holding up a "Life is Good" t-shirt (that Michael, my former-forest-ranger/trail-angel found in a thrift store!) covered with trees. Also photos of Sakre and me on the lovely deck by the river where we ate our lunch, and an up-close photo of the amazing cobra-like insect-eating plants that Sakre took me to visit. I am thinking those plants ought to be a metaphor for something on this walk but I have yet to figure out what. Except simply that Sakre's contagious sense of adventure and wonder helped to remind me that where one trail ends others begin. 

 

Obviously I want to write more. And I want to walk more - more of that beautiful trail, other trails, more. And as I write this, I find myself hoping that even when I die I will still be wanting more life. Or perhaps embracing death itself as the next great adventure. 

And so I am content, in a discontent sort of a way, to leave this blog and this walk - to leave myself wanting more. 

I felt as if I "heard" the trail talking to me the other day. Just the way our dog Sappho seemed to speak to me the day she died in an accidental premature death. She said "don't cling to me. Honor me by being like me. I never looked back. I was always running to meet the next person or the next adventure. Do that in honor if me." In her honor, I adopted another Samoyed Nikki within a very short time. That I was a totally out-of-character response to grief for me, the worlds greatest clinger. (When I took the name River, I imagined a cartoon of a river trying to cling to its banks. )

As I've mentioned before, after Nikki and Misty died came the Camino, and after the Camino, the trail (Pacific Crest Trail, Wonderland Trail, Arizona Trail, Oregon Coast Trail - each on its own time "the" trail). 

So the trail is directly in the lineage of sweet Sappho who taught me to look forward -instead of looking back - and to leave "them"(myself in this case, but I hope you, dear reader, as well) wanting more.