I sleep alright after I put my earplugs in, dull the edges of the sounds around me. I wake a couple of times given that, with earplugs in, there’s no really localizing sound, and there are a couple of sounds in the night that could be… well, could be whatever; my brain doesn’t care about them, and puts me back to sleep. When my alarm goes off, all it cares about is coffee and food, and I’m the first up and first out, grabbing water at Lava Spring before I head northward into the morning. Continue reading →

I sleep better than I have in days, and when my alarm goes off at 5:50, I feel refreshed, even before my morning coffee. I enjoy this feeling for a while, even though I’m ready to face the day, see what it’s got in store for me. 30 miles, I hope. I hope. Continue reading →

I’m up at 6 and writing – I’m still so, so far behind on my blog, and the catch-up has to happen sometime. At 6:45, it’s warm enough to poke my head out of my sleeping bag and I call it, start getting ready for the day.  Continue reading →

There’s so much to catch up on when my alarm goes off at 5:50 – I start writing furiously about my Labor Day weekend and yesterday and entering Washington and and and. My sitemates start moving around 6:15, so I guess it’s cool to properly start my day. I cook and eat dinner – so much easier to eat when food is hot, even if it does take forrrrreeeeeeverrrrr to cook – and chat with my spotmates who are either being nice or being so passive aggressive that it passes for nice. Well, it’s not something I can fix now, though I do throw out another apology for rolling in late last night. I try to pull chocks fast, and I’m out by 7:45 – an hour and a half with dinn-fast, not bad – before they start making moves in earnest. Continue reading →

We’re up pretty early, earlier than Seamus needs to be, so he can take me back to Cascade Locks. I’m wistful about leaving – Seamus has this view of the world that cuts through a lot of my the bullshit, and his honesty has this way of speeding me to conclusions I’ve nearly arrived at myself. He’s always a breath of fresh air, and my time with Alice and him has been a healing one. Still, I’ve one more state to walk, and it’s time to get to chores so I can get to walking. Continue reading →

6am is the new 5am – between the days getting shorter and the seemingly ever-present cloud cover, it’s basically still dark. But by the time I deflate my sleeping pad and evaluate the day’s water and elevation and mileage, it’s light enough to see by. I touch the things I’d hoped would be dry – my wind shirt, my socks, my gaiters – and find them all still damp, and in the case of the last two, that were cozied up under my sleeping pad all evening, more damp than they were before. The magic of the Cascades. Continue reading →

It’s a cold, wet night – I burrow down into my bag, but it only helps so much, and I’m grateful that my 3° bag is headed to meet me. Not that it’ll be warm if I’m not able to keep it dry, which is not so difficult while it’s in my backpack so much as difficult at load-in/load-out time. I wake a couple of times thinking the bag’s gotten wet somehow, but it’s just the cold – my Mountain Hardwear tent, despite the wet, is holding strong. My leg is pretty annoyed by the bite/sting/whatever though, forcing me awake to try to make it comfortable. At 6, it’s still too cold to leave my cocoon, but at 6:30 I have no more excuses. I start my coffee and the sad business of putting on cold, damp clothing.

Continue reading →