September 1, 2016 0 Miles I wake about 6am with a gnawing hunger and walk over to the restaurant for breakfast. It’s closed, but the wifi is on, so I sit on a bench out front and check to see if there’s any more luck about a ride. The guy from the PCT facebook group says he came through last night looking for us, but didn’t see us anywhere. We were camped so close to the highway that the two semis that came through nearly nipped my pillow. My friend from college is still offering a ride from Yreka, provided by a friend of his aunt. I tell him I’ll let him know the second we have a ride to Yreka. Just as I start to dread sitting on the highway thumbing for a ride, the owner of the restaurant and store comes out. “Hey, I’m headin’ into Yreka this mornin’,” he says. “If you boys still need a ride, I’ll take ya. I’m leavin’ about 7.” “That would be great, thank you.” “Sure thing. You’ll miss breakfast, but they might be closin’ the highway this mornin’, so it’ll be near impossible to get out after that.” I’m so grateful for the people along the PCT. We’re saved from potential hours of waiting, maybe even days. Roadside comes by a few minutes later, also seeking breakfast. I tell him, and we go back and pack up our stuff. When we come back, the cook/waitress invites us into the closed restaurant. “I’m not set up for breakfast yet,” she says, “but I can make you guys some coffee for the road.” We sit at the bar and chat with her. There is a spatula that looks like it should be attached to a tractor and pictures on the wall of people trying to eat pancakes the size of tectonic plates. I feel hungry and painfully full at the same time. The owner comes by, gets a cup of coffee for himself and says “You ready to go?” We climb into the cab of his truck, Roadside in the back seat. On the way out of town, I ask about the “No Monument” signs. “It’s the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. The government is trying to make this whole area a national monument,” he says. “What does that mean for the town?” I ask. “Well, it means we can’t sell our property anymore. If I wanted to give the store to my daughter, I couldn’t. I’d have to sell it to the government, and they’d probably pay me a whole lot less than it’s worth.” I tend to like protection of wild places, but I can see why that would be infuriating for someone, especially in a small town with generations of history. There are loads more questions I could ask—what’s the government’s plan for the land? Will they kick people off the land if they don’t sell?—but I’m wary of opening a pandora’s box of political invective. It shows up anyway. “What’s are the two X’s for on the State of Jefferson flag?” I ask naively. I know a little bit about Jefferson. It’s a plan to divide California into two states, of which Jefferson would be the northern of the two. I had some inkling that it was about water rights. “It means the politicians always double-cross us.” He tosses this out easily, like it doesn’t affect him personally. I act like I’m chewing on this information, but really I’m avoiding the obvious question (“how have they double-crossed you?”), fearful of what it will turn into. It doesn’t matter. He starts to tell us about the ways that politicians ignore the northern part of the state. He’s vague, but it sounds like it mostly has to do with general dissatisfaction over being a conservative county in a state that votes overwhelmingly liberal. I’ll look into it later and discover that it goes all the way back to 1941, when a group of young men from the rural northern counties of California and southern counties of Oregon stopped traffic on state route 99 and passed out pamphlets that included a declaration of independence. It said that they would secede “every Thursday until further notice.” They were angry about the lack of road development in the region, which they said was needed in order to mine and log the area, and later they complained about planned water development in the area, which would mostly go toward agricultural irrigation in the central valley and urban use in Los Angeles. The movement hit a snag almost immediately when the bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the US into World War II. But it has held on and even finds increasing support among the more conservative rural counties, as they continue to feel disconnected and ignored by the state’s liberal politics. As we get going, the restaurant owner talks briefly about the presidential election. He doesn’t say what he thinks of Trump, but he thinks Hillary Clinton should be in jail. I think he’s been misled by conservative radio, but I’m not about to get into a political debate with him. He has been generous to give us a ride, and I don’t want to spoil my gratitude or make him regret his generosity by starting an argument. It’s not like either of us would change our mind anyway. We’re just products of different cultures. Roadside is quiet through all of it. The best part of his conversation is that it distracts me from my growing hunger. That distraction ends when we get to the road closure. Hotshot fire crews are everywhere, mostly standing around and waiting for instructions. The restaurant owner tells us that they are prisoners who join the fire crews for a chance to get out of prison for a while and make a little money. It’s far less than minimum wage, but it can help them get a job as a firefighter when they get out of prison. Our driver gets out and wanders around to talk to some of the other local people he knows. Roadside and I stay in the truck. We talk occasionally, but mostly I just watch the prisoners interact and I try to ignore my hunger. It’s a strange limbo. There’s no rush except my hunger, nowhere I need to be anytime soon. I’m detached from all goals except my basic human needs, dependent upon the kindness of strangers, lost somewhere between society and wilderness. It takes over an hour, but we’re finally allowed through. The restaurant owner asks where we want to get dropped off. FOOD, my belly screams. “Is there a good diner somewhere close to the highway?” “Sure, I know a good place.” At the diner, I get in touch with my friend’s aunt’s friend, Jim, who says he can get here in about an hour. Roadside and I devour two breakfasts each and then go sit curbside. I ask him how he got his trail name. He says a couple people picked him up hitching, and when he didn’t already have a trail name, that’s what they told him it should be. Mr. Tea was right, trail names are a little contrived when they don’t come with a funny story or a distinctive characteristic. Jim picks us up and takes us toward Ashland. He’s a kind, older man who has an easygoing attitude and a warm smile. If he’s bothered by the way we smell, we can’t tell. We roll down our windows anyway. He takes a side road at the Oregon Border to show us where the PCT picks back up. As we’re heading back toward the highway, we pass three hikers and I could swear that one of them is Bad Santa, whom I met way back at Lake Tahoe. It’s still crazy to me the way we all slide down this trail like beads on a string, passing each other in the mornings or in towns and not seeing each other for weeks at a time, but randomly bumping into each other. I wonder how many hikers I’ve passed because they stepped off the trail for ten minutes to go to the bathroom and I never knew they were there. Or how many have passed me for the same reasons. Jim drops us off at the Ashland Motel, just across from the Oregon State campus, where we get rooms on the second floor. I do my laundry, take a shower, and then walk into town for lunch. It’s a couple miles, and along the way I see that school is in session again. It reminds me of how stressed I used to be as a teacher, and how relaxed I feel now. Was it the job, or would I have felt the same in any job? I get a giant plate of Nachos and an 8-beer sampler at the Standing Stone brewery and dive into Intruder in the Dust, by William Faulkner. It’s been a year or two since I’ve read Faulkner. It’s like coming home to an old friend. This one is filled with epically long sentences, usually several pages per sentence. Yet it’s not difficult to parse. I wonder whether I would have the focus for this if I were at home, distracted by thoughts about my job and the concerns of my household. After lunch, I pick up more fuel for my camp stove—so glad it lasted—and wander back to the motel. In the evening, Roadside and I get dinner together at a restaurant called Loft. The food is great, the wine is great, and we are completely out of place in our tattered hiking clothes. I wonder what the other patrons must think of us.
Roadside is an interesting character. He’s quiet, even for a thru-hiker. When I ask him questions about himself he answers, but it’s always a little less information than I expect, and he doesn’t volunteer anything on his own. “What time do you think you’ll head back to the trail tomorrow?” I ask him. “I’m gonna take another zero,” he says. A double zero. Two days in a row of not hiking? That sounds really good to me, actually. I like this town a lot, and I’m losing weight. It would be good to have another day to stuff myself with food, do some more reading, lay on a bed, sit in a chair, and just take a vacation from my vacation. It’s already September, and we still have a lot of miles to go before we reach Canada, but I haven’t taken a double zero yet, and really, what’s one more day? By the time we get back to the motel, I’ve convinced myself that this is a good idea.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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