June 21, Day 6. Crossings.

Friday, June 21. Summer Solstice. Day 6. Crossings. I hiked 14.52 miles and climbed 2727ft.

Total for 6-day hikeathon, I walked 102.64 and climbed 15,539ft.

Dear Trail Friends,

In addition to the theme of today’s hike (crossing back and forth between the SE Boundary Trail and the Mount Pickett Trail on the connector trails between them, and crossing the park boundary to visit and return from Doe Bay Resort), I associate the title of today’s hike (and blog) with the summer solstice, hence our crossing into summer, the earth “crossing” the point of maximum tilt (of the northern hemisphere) toward the sun, our days crossing from lengthening to shortening, the sun from its highest position in the sky. 

As I was hiking today it was mostly overcast and the moments of sun were very welcome. For my last rest stop, I realized I wanted to find a tree I could lean my legs against in inverted pose that would be in the sun.  It’s actually hard to find a tree with a level area beside it and no protruding roots or rocks, let alone such a tree in the sun (when the sun might disappear behind clouds at any moment)  so I knew the odds were against me, when I spotted the perfect tree - of course I had to walk through a small sea of nettles to get there. (Photo 1)

Fortunately I was in pants not a skirt and I forged through. As I did, a wisp of song went through my mind (I cannot discover where it comes from but it went “I would swim through an ocean for you and for me, I would swim through an ocean for you” or was it “ I would walk through a desert for you”?). I was singing it to that spot of radiant warm earth basking in the sun in front of the tree: “I would walk through these nettles for you.”

During my break I felt myself enfolded in the particular quality of silence and stillness I associate with the green world and summer. Nettle leaves fluttered in the breeze. There was a gentle hum in the air. The sounds and movement seemed to deepen the quality of silence and stillness. I was immersed in a moment of pure absolute “being.”

It occurred to me that I had hoped this hikeathon might help me “digest” the meaning of all the memories, thoughts and feelings stirred in me by the Europe trip and my college reunion. Instead it brought me to a moment of simple being in the present.

There was a lot of difficulty on this hikeathon. It was not by a long shot all ease. Yet I had a sense of how willingly I would metaphorically “walk through nettles” - face the stings - to experience a moment like this of pure being. 

I was much too exhausted during this hikeathon to keep a daily blog. I hope to write a little for each day, now that I have completed the whole hikeathon. I certainly questioned whether I could complete the hikeathon at all, when I was so exhausted on Tuesday and had bad back pain. I am glad I finished it and glad to be reminded that the heart of hiking really exists for me in these moments. 

I was keenly aware of the sun today. I found myself walking straight into sunrise (photo 2)

And after the sun rose and the sky was overcast, I found myself cherishing the momentary patches of sunlight in the woods (photos 4 and 5). 

I was struck as I left the park to walk toward Doe Bay Resort by a row of beech trees - impressed that I knew their names (I know the names of very few trees and plants) and impressed by the way they shone (I almost wrote sang) in the early morning sun. (Photo 5). 

I liked that the Doe Bay sign (photo 6) had a sunrise in it and that I took a photo with the morning sun behind it. 

If summer means one thing to me, it is these moments of being I associate with silence, stillness, and sunlight, times when the clock (in the sense of counting the minutes to hurry and do something) stops. 

Another way this theme emerged today was in noticing how some trees grow, literally bending over backwards to grow toward the light. It reminds me of swimming through nettles to get to a spot where I can feel a moment of summer. Sigh. Photos 7 and 8 show two such trees, bowing and bending to reach the openings between trees where they can find light.  

I like noticing relationships between trees. They seem to compete with one another for light but also to support one another. The same challenge we humans face. I contemplated the embrace of two trees during my first rest stop and inverted pose this morning (photo 9)

I had a whole imaginary conversation with my niece about how unlikely I was to find hair ties on this remote trail (my niece Josie Angel had beautiful long thick black hair and used a lot of hair ties which her cat stole and played with. When her mother finds hair ties she imagines they are messages from Josie from the spirit world and she has inspired me to watch for such messages too). So you can imagine my delight when, within 10 minutes of the end of my summer hikeathon, I came across a yellow hair tie. So let’s end this blog with photo 10, and I hope to see you on the trail somewhere sometime again - thank you for walking with me. 

I originally ended this blog here but as I reread it I feel sad. I am aware that I am deeply tired in a way that makes me wonder (for the first time) if the hikeathons and blogs will not also come to an end (as they surely will, of course, if not now, sometime). 

I think about summer, the moments, and about the flow of water and life, and the nursing logs and new life growing out of the old. I think also of the prayer from Dag Hammarksjold that a classmate/pastor offered at our 50th reunion - my paraphrase - “to what has been, thank you. To what is coming, yes.”

Much of my life has been lessons in letting go, something that doesn’t come easily to me. Letting this blog go makes me think of the final task of life, letting go of what we love in life, trusting the mystery of the flow of life, including our own aging and death. 

When I was looking through Judy’s cards for the one about water, I came across this one that for me is about letting go and trusting. The young bird makes me think of the raven with the blue of the sky in its eye. I guess I am thinking of the summer feeling, trusting enough to let it be and let it go. Let it fly to wherever it is going. So let’s end now (and thank you for walking with me, and may we meet on the trail again) with the back and front of Judy’s card - photos 11 and 12. 

Wow, I'm really having a hard time letting this blog go. Here I am again, with one more after-thought. I am remembering my grandfather's last days when in 1972. He was lying in bed in semi-coma, and my Aunt Mary, his oldest daughter, leaned over him, whispering "Let it go, Father, let it go. Its a beautiful butterfly and it wants to fly free."

I was 25 years old, and it was my first time witnessing death. I decided then that one of my goals in this life would be to live in a way that would allow me to die at peace. I have kept it in mind ever since. Every letting go is practice for death.

June 20. Day 5. Water.

Thursday, June 20, Day 5. Water. I hiked 18.26 miles and climbed 1632 ft. 

Dear Trail Friends, 

Starting in the predawn dark, as I have every day of this hikeathon, is a joy for me. I was especially aware of it Thursday, of watching the world slowly change from a black and grey world to one with hints of light, and gradually color. Photo 1 is a collage to illustrate the magic of walking through this change. 

And of course the magic of the changing light of dawn is magnified by the reflection in water. 

Last year on this hike I took a trail from Twin Lakes that I hoped would lead down to the north shore. It never did. It made a very long hike and the trail, which I was so thrilled to discover last year, does not seem to be being maintained (unlike the short trail behind the Richardson Waterfowl Preserve in Deer Harbor, I have no fantasies whatsoever that I would be capable of maintaining this much more demanding trail). So... back to the drawing board. I was surprised to discover on my Gaia app (Gaia is the hiking gps app I use to record my tracks) a small trail leading from the Cascade Lake lagoon to Rosario Resort. Why not take that newly discovered (at least for me) hike down, and explore the grounds of the resort, right there on the shore of Cascade Bay? After all, it was once the lovingly built mansion of Robert Moran, the man who gifted Moran State Park to Washington state. It totally makes sense to include it. 

I totally loved walking around the Rosario Resort grounds, including the beach and the dock. (And like most of these walks I had them all to myself in the early morning). But what moved me the most were two things, installed over a century ago, that clearly expressed Robert Moran’s passions for shipbuilding, for beauty, and for Orcas Island. 

One was a masthead that made me think of the Greek warrior goddess Athena. (Photo 2). I also offer you photo 3, poor quality though it may be, because it gives you a sense of Robert Moran (who had been a poor boy who arrived in Seattle with nothing in his pocket and ended up making a fortune building ships) and what it meant to him. 

I was impressed by the landscaping all over the grounds but I don’t know how much of that retains any of Moran’s style. But when I saw the fountain and “canal” with arched bridge (dated 1915) - evocative for me both of Venice and of Monet - I was moved by the legacy this man left and the passion it expresses. Photo 4 shows the fountain and bridge. 

I was struck, just as I was last year in the hikeathon, how this particular hike traces the flow of water down the mountain - from Twin Lakes down a creek to Mountain Lake and from there down a creek through a succession of waterfalls eventually to Cascade Lake. I was struck on the hike to Rosario that  there was a gully where a stream might once have been, but it was dry. I wondered if I would find water there in a rainy season? Or had the dam (which, if I recall correctly, helped to create Cascade Lake as a manmade Lake) ended that flow? I like the way this hike makes me curious about island history. I’d like to know more about Robert 

Moran. I’d like to know about the gold mine and the putative medicine wheels. I’d like to know about water cycles on the island, and human interventions, when the dams at Mountain Lake and Cascade were built and for what purpose and with what consequences. 

My spurious (well, inappropriate) romantic fantasy interest, Rolf (the man who rebuilt the stone tower on Mount Constitution and with whom I was having such an enchanting conversation that I missed the shuttle from Seatac airport to the Anacortes ferry landing) is utterly passionate about water. He is in the business of recycling waste water from toilets and wants to teach people not to discard toxic pollutants, especially trace metals present in things like medicines and cleaning supplies (I think), in hopes of making that water fully reusable (on Orcas, and as a model for the larger world). 

So is my curiousity about water mere barely disguised sexual desire posing as lust for ideas? Or is it, as our dear professor Freud would surely reassure me, mature adult sublimation?

Which reminds me of a poem I once wrote, and a drawing my sister Judy made for a card (photo 5), on the back of which card she added a quote from one of my poems (photo 6). 

I kept thinking of that poem and the drawing while I hiked beside water. I thought of water as something I was immersed in - like forest bathing - bathing in the presence of the water, the sounds and movements and reflections - without literally getting wet. And also I thought about water as metaphor, my name River, the idea that my name was a kind of medicine, meant to help me identify with the changes not the constancy (like the cartoon I always imagined of a river trying to cling to its banks). 

Which associates to a song I loved in my early lesbian days by Chris Williamson called Waterfall: 

Sometimes it takes a rainy day
Just to let you know
Everything's gonna be - all right
All right

I've been dreaming in the sun
Won't you wake me up someone
I need a little peace of mind

Wake me from this dream
That I have dreamed so many times
I need a little peace of mind
Oh, I need a little peace of mind

When you open up your life to the living
All things come spilling in on you
And you're flowing like a river
The Changer and the Changed
You've got to spill some over
Spill some over
Spill some over
Over all

Filling up and spilling over
It's an endless waterfall
Filling up and spilling over
Over all

Filling up and spilling over
It's an endless waterfall
Filling up and spilling over
Over all

Like the rain, falling on the ground
Like the rain, falling all around

Sometimes it takes a rainy day
Just to let you know
Everything's gonna be - All right
I know, I know, I know all right

Filling up and spilling over
An endless waterfall
Filling up and spilling over
Over all

Filling up and spilling over
It's an endless waterfall
Filling up and spilling over
Over all

I sure wish waterfalls were easier to photograph. I loved visiting the whole series of falls - Cascade Falls, Cavern Falls, Rustic Falls, Hidden Falls - and taking the time to walk as close to them as I could. I would like to share the sound and the rush of water with you, the excitement and the motion. So here is Cascade Falls (Photo 7) and Cavern Falls (Photo 8). 

But of course I also love the less dramatic flow of the Cascade Creek in the quiet places (photo 9) and the even gentler ripples on Mountain Lake (Photo 10) 

When I got to Twin Lakes I was running out of iPhone battery. I really didn’t want to lose my track recording. But it turned out that I brought the wrong cord (the micro usb for recharging the charger instead of the lightning connector for charging the iPhone). So along come to men, first hikers I’ve met all morning. I use the CS Lewis approach (from Surprised by Joy: You wouldn’t want to spend Christmas with me, would you?) “You wouldn’t happen to have an iPhone charging cord with you, would you?” Lo and behold, they did! So Carl and Steve (Photo 11) stood around while I charged my phone and we talked about my life and theirs (artists from LA, Carl a registrar at a film school, Steve a middle school teacher) and about Orcas’s first gay pride event (which did not interest them at all - they came to Orcas to be alone in the woods not to seek out a crowd. They could find that pretty easily in LA.)

I also met David on the trail, one of the current stewards of our Out on Orcas group. I helped Kathy Wehle to found Out on Orcas (in 1998 I think, the year after my mother died, when Kathy and Theresa took me under their wing in my grief and aloneness). Chris was teaching a lot at Pacifica and I was feeling lost and alone. David spoke of the excitement of meeting the young people who are organizing the Pride event, how they didn’t know about us (the Out on Orcas Group), how much fun it was to sit in a circle and go around and have each person say what pronouns he/she/they preferred. “The future is in good hands,” David said. He said he thought the pride event would be great and said there would be a booth for Out on Orcas (our social group - mostly old folks) and for his farm Orcas Song. “Queer farming,” he called it. “Oh, I said, we don’t recruit them, we grow them.” 

But I was struck later as I walked how even though these young people knew nothing about us, the fund that Kathy also started (that helped fund among many other innovative projects in theater and film with gay themes on Orcas) and all her hard work had planted seeds for the acceptance and safety that these young people now experience. It made me happy to think her quiet hard work and all of our contributions helped to open minds and perhaps even to soften hearts once filled with hatred.  And I think I will close with a couple of nursing logs - well, a nursing log and a nursing stump. I love the new young trees growing out of The new growing out of the “legacy” of the old dead trees. 

What does all that have to do with water? It’s all about flow, isn’t it? (Which reminds me of my tattoo: “Home is where the heart is open to the flow of life.”) 

See you on the trail tomorrow (which is actually today and actually over, but we don’t care about technicalities, do we?)

Thank you for walking with me. 

June 19, Day 4. Bouquet.

Wednesday, June 19. Day 4. A bouquet of short hikes all over the island:

Coho Preserve (Toward south end of east wing of Island). .82mi, 167ft

Obstruction Pass State Park (South tip of east wing of island). 2.38mi, 406 ft

Eastsound Village (middle of island), 6.56mi, 186ft

Killebrew Lake (near southeast tip of west wing of island). 2.56mi, 85ft

Deer Harbor Preserve & Frank Richardson Wildfowl Preserve (near Southwest tip of west wing of island). 5.14mi, 225ft

For the day’s total, I hiked 17.46mi, and climbed 1076ft. (Also drove quite a few miles!)

Dear Trail Friends, 

I am alas writing these blogs days later because I got very exhausted during the hikeathon. So here goes for Tuesday and the bouquet of small trails. 

I don’t have any photo for the first short hike at Coho Preserve because it was too dark for photos. So let’s start with one of my favorite spots at Obstruction Pass (Photo 1). I love the way Madrona trees seem to love  being near the water and to lean their sensually curved trunks into the light and perhaps the salt air as well. They express my own yearning to lean into the sun and the sea. 

I also want to give those of you who don’t know Orcas Island a sense of the island’s shape and size. Photo 2 shows the overall island with the tracks for Wednesday’s “bouquet” of hikes in blue. 

Just to give you a sense of how much rest time I got while driving (which, along with mostly flat trails made this a much easier day than the first three), the drive from my house to the Coho Preserve is 4.3 miles (9 minutes), from there to Obstruction Pass park is 2.2 miles (6 minutes), from there to Eastsound Village 10 miles (22 min), to Killebrew 9.5 miles (19 min), to Deer Harbor 7.8 miles (16 min), back to my house 12.7 miles (25 minutes). In fact with parking time and a little more complicated logistics I actually spent a lot more time in the car, but that shows the minimum would be over an hour and a half. 

It really is amazing to drive to so many trails in different parts of the island and walk through so much diverse beauty on one little island in one little day. It really makes me feel awe for the beauty of this island, and it makes me want to formulate this hikeathon and find a way to put it “out there” so that others can have a similar experience. While I was walking (I’m not sure which day) it occurred to me I could write an article for backpacker magazine and talk about my backpacking experience, my foot injury, and how it led to the hikeathon idea. I could have a website where people could download the tracks and directions for each hike. So the dream has a bit more shape than before. 

Killebrew Lake is a short hike but I was really struck again by its beauty and how different it is from the other lakes I hike around. Photo 3 is the play of the morning light with all the beautiful green life. Photo 4 is the light again and also the water. Photo 5 is a collage of a detour I made searching for a new trail in what turned out to be private property. I was mesmerized by the way the old discarded cars and equipment were becoming part of the green world around them. 

And photo 6 is a “sea of nettles.”

From Killebrew I headed for Deer Harbor. Photo 7 is just because I loved the flowers - the lush pink peonies (or whatever they are - some kind of ruffled petalled daisy) flaunted their stuff in front of the fire engine red trucks. (Do you think they turned red out of alarm at the peonies being so “out there”?

Then I saw a silhouette raven sculpture that caught my eye because the raven’s eye was a hole - through which the blue of the sky was visible. I kept thinking about what it would mean to have the sky in one’s eye - and somehow that felt connected to the theme of summer. (Photo 7)

Now I’m going to break all my own blogging rules. Since I’m writing this all in the afterwards I don’t really need to keep my days separate. So photo 8 is a selfie I took on Thursday after resting awhile in the inverted pose - instead of looking at the camera, I looked past it into the sky. I like to think I have a little of the sky in my eye quality in it. 

In Deer Harbor I walked around behind the Frank Richardson Waterfowl Preserve only to discover the trail starting to disappear. So if I’m serious about this hikeathon - and including that trail - I’m going to have to learn a thing or two about trail maintenance. (I can already see myself googling “best ultralight trail maintenance tools”). Photo 8 is the Preserve from the just discovered (during last year’s hikeathon), now vanishing trail.  

Then I walked to the little shoreline Preserve in Deer Harbor and I loved breathing the sea air. But far more exciting was the friendly goat I met hanging out with a bunch of big boats. (Photo 9)  It seemed deeply meaningful that “goat” and “boat” rhyme. The goat stated unequivocally that even though b precedes g in the alphabet, goats were here before boats. (I'm not so sure of that, but he was.)

Photo 10 is so you can smell the sea air. So you’d better smell it, if you want to be a good trail friend. I notice I left the harbor water out of the photo so you’ll really have to use your imagination. 

So, finally, I began to hike the village of Eastsound. I was planning to walk the labyrinth at the Episcopal Church (like the Medicine Wheels, it helps focus the pilgrimage aspect of the hikeathon), but found it full of young women dancing and beating drums. What on earth, I thought, is our priest Berto doing letting these pagans dance on the Episcopal labyrinth? Now mind you, I respect and admire Berto’s support of other traditions, and normally I do not use “pagan” as a term of derision, but the moment somebody gets in the way of my plans it’s amazing how intolerant I can become. 

On the other hand, unpleasant as I find surprises that create obstacles to my plans, the best parts of the hikeathon are the unexpected opportunities. As I passed the episcopal church I noticed that Indian Island was accessible (this happens very rarely at low tides, the combination full moon and approaching solstice were probably responsible) and I walked right on out to the island. Photo 10 is the island with people walking the narrow spot of sand exposed by the low tide.  Photo  11 shows me on the island. 

Fortunately a young woman volunteer was there as a host and for “crowd control.” I was about to dawdle when she told me the tide was coming back in - fast. I ran splashing through the returning water and was amazed that my waterproof shoes (of which I was skeptical) while outwardly soaked stayed inwardly dry (and dried quickly afterward). 

As I walked down the beach I saw a family at play and remembered how much joy I got watching families at play on my Oregon Coast Trail hike (or for that matter on the Oregon PCT. ) I love it when I can get the “you are so beautiful” feeling about human beings. For some reason it comes to me easily when walking in response to sky, earth, trees, birds, butterflies - for me to feel that “wow” in response to a human family happily at play in the midst of summer on the beach is a special treat. 

Just moments after I left the beach, looking back, I could see that Indian Island was pretty much an island again. (Photo 12). Tides are like seasons - great teachers about transience. 

There’s a footpath between the post office and the airport that is part of my village of Eastsound walk. It used to be through trees (or maybe high shrubbery? Not sure). but they were all cut down on one side and now it is open meadow. I grumpily resisted the change for a long time (all change is bad unless I initiate it),  but during this hike I noticed that I appreciated the open space - how it’s way of feeling open was very different from a mountaintop - reminding me more of the Midwest and the prairie. (Photo 13). 

Okay. Time to stop this one. Thank you for walking me. Now you can join me in one of the best parts of each day’s walk - coming home, and being welcomed by Magic and Mystery in the window, waiting for me. I can’t exactly say “see  you on the trail tomorrow” since tomorrow from the point of view of this blog is yesterday from the point of view of when I’m writing. But we aren’t going to get stuck in some old fashioned linear notion of time, are we? See you tomorrow on the trail - we’ll be walking around lakes and along water ways. 

June 18, Day 3. Mountain.

Tuesday June 18, Day 3.  Hiked up and down and back up the mountain. 18.56 miles, climbed 3660 ft. 

Dear Trail Friends,

As I was walking down the road from the top of the mountain, a car pulled over and a young woman asked where she could find the trailhead for the hike up Mt. Constitution. 

“That depends,” I said. “there is more than one trail up the mountain.”  (She was able to explain what she wanted and I was able to answer her question and we both went happily on our way.) I was nearly down the mountain when she asked me, and photo 1 gives you an idea of what it is like to walk down that road. 

Three paths meet at the top of the mountain: the paved road, and two footpaths. One of the foot trails starts at Cascade Lake (the lowest lake, near the North arch entrance) and joins with another trail that starts at Mountain Lake (a larger, higher lake). The other trail starts at Twin Lakes. Photo 2 shows you my track along these trails for today’s hike. 

If you look above Summit Lake you may be able to make out the worlds “Mount Constitution” at the top (partly concealed by the three tracks meeting there). 

When I was a girl - I’ve written about this before - my vegetarian grandfather gave me a book from an international vegetarian conference. It spoke of the religions of the world as being different paths up the mountain. But, it cautioned, it is important to choose a path and walk it (not just stand at the bottom onservomg that all paths lead to the top). That story has always stayed with me, and of course the hike designed to walk all the paths up this particular mountain makes me think of that story. Only, in this case, it is possible to walk all the paths. 

I began early in the morning on the trail from Cascade Lake via Cold Spring. I stopped to visit the old gold mine, as I did on last year’s hikeathon. I found it a little scary to be inside the dark rock tunnel (though I went to the end of both branches this time, which did not turn out to be very far). I also found myself curious about the men who created the mine and worked in it. How did they make it (dynamite? Pick axes? Where did they carry the big rocks away to?) Did they find gold?  What did it feel like to them to work there? Photo 3 is a collage of the entrance viewed from outside looking in (left) and inside looking out (right). 

I made another stop at what I have been told is a Medicine Wheel made by native people following traditions that precede the arrival of Europeans. I prayed - a simple thank you and request for guidance and blessing - to the spirits of each of the four directions (there were stones in a circle and then lines along the east-west and north-south axes). I think I mentioned the stone circle at Turtleback Mountain and how similar it seems to me.  If this one is truly a traditional medicine wheel, I suspect the one at Turtleback is too. 

I also climbed the stone tower at the top, which I rarely do. But I met the man (Rolf Eriksen) who restored stone tower (when I was coming back from my 50th college reunion).  We were both waiting for the shuttle bus to the Anacortes ferry terminal to head home to Orcas. We got into the same kind of conversation I was having at my 50th reunion - memories of the Vietnam war (this remarkable man visits Vietnam regularly to do reparative work for that country) and stories of our lives - the kind of conversation you have when you are 71 thinking you are still 21 and your life is a still pretty much a blank canvas.  

At some point in the conversation we discovered we had missed our bus and so we shared a Lyft to the ferry, since it was the only way we could get home that night. I would have fallen head over heels in love with the guy (it felt like I was falling in love) if some calm cool/headed part of me didn’t point out that I was 71, long married, and that it wasn’t really appropriate for me to be swept away in the lovely and powerful vortex of feeling that was surrounding me. I was amazed that part of me could step out of it and appraise the situation. There’s something to be said for old age (in its favor, I mean). 

But memories of that rush of feeling made it a slightly guilty pleasure to climb “his” tower and read about what it meant to him. Photo 4 is the view from the tower (looking down on the viewpoint where I usually stand) and photo 5 a not very good photo of the description of the restoration. 

I walked down to Mountain Lake by way of Little  Summit. Photo 6 is from a little detour to Summit Lake (which is the one body of water in the park that gets left out on the day that the whole hike focuses on water) and Photo 7 is a view from Little Summit. 

When I had hiked down to Mountsin Lake, I found myself looking  at a tree reflected in the lake. Thd shallow transparency of the water and the sunlight and gentle ripples from the breeze seemed for a moment to be singing “summer” and expressing the quintessence of my hike’s theme. I hope to convey a little of that “song” in photo 8. 

Then I hiked to Twin Lakes, and back up the mountain again, and then headed down again, this time by the paved road. I was aware of lots of grassy slopes as I walked the road and continued to reflect on memories of summers, including rolling down grassy slopes as a little girl. Photo 9 (actually from Little  Summit) is to evoke that feeling of grassy slopes and rolling down. 

Okay. Enough. I am sad how little of the day’s magic I can share with you when writing (as I am) four days later. But I really appreciate your walking with me and I want to pay my respects to you and the trail even if tardily and imperfectly. I am so very grateful.