June 16, Day 1. Boundaries

Sunday, June 16. Day 1. Boundaries. 

I hiked all the trails closest to the perimeter of Moran Park, with a few small excursions (view point off SE Boundary trail, short trail to Winter Falls Lane, short excursion to Cascade Falls, looping around trails at edge of Cascade Lagoon). 

Hiked 17.5 miles, Climbed 3329 ft. 

SO MANY SUMMERS

Dear Trail Friends,

This is my second Orcas Island Hikeathon/Pilgrimage. As in my hikeathon in late August 2018, I hope to walk 100 miles in 6 days and in so doing immerse myself in the beautiful and mysterious order of this world we have been born into - the order I mean of the universe before (and perhaps after) our human attempts to organize the world to satisfy our needs and desires. Though our modern “wilderness” areas are not really wild - they are carefully managed and maintained - they still give me a profound experience of the nonhuman beauty and order. For which I am deeply grateful. 

My late August hike last year turned out to be a lot about autumn. As I walked I became aware that autumn had begun to arrive in the natural world around me. This made me think of the attention to seasons in Japanese haiku (the same culture that gives us the idea of “forest bathing”) and inspired me to dream of doing a series of hikeathon/pilgrimages during the different seasons of the year. Thus, the current summer hikeathon was conceived. 

I suspect my blogs will be short and possibly infrequent for this summer hikeathon. Part of me questions how much new there can be to share either in photos or thoughts and feelings as I hike the same trails that I hiked last year. But I remind myself that was a different season and I was in a very different place in my life. 

I started today’s hike this morning at 4:15, hoping to catch the birds beginning to sing and the dawn, which I did, but with very little sense of wonder. It was mostly grumpy thoughts: the pack is heavy, my back hurts, I can’t believe this trail is this steep. I am sitting at my first rest stop and have just gotten up from my inverted pose (lying on my back, resting legs against a tree, with feet high) and just had the “Here I am” feeling that I so love on the trail. 

So I decided to snap a photo (photo 1) and invite you to come rest with me here, beside Twin Lake (we’re at the larger of the two twins). 

It may be the same trail as last time, but isn’t it lovely?  

Now it is after 3pm and I am home. The first thing that struck me on this hike was that I had a concept of summer, and I was hiking along looking for photographs to illustrate my idea of summer (such as flowers in photo 2 and 3). 

I like it better when the trail surprises me and I get that “wow” feeling - so this is what summer is - instead of trying to fit the unknown into my nice neat little conceptual boxes. And I noticed today that the more tired I became the more open I was to new experience. Maybe I just didn’t have the energy to force it into my categories. I think that being physically tired does create an altered state of consciousness for me that is more receptive and I think that is part of the magic that makes me love the trail so much. 

So I was walking along and suddenly I was gazing over a “sea” of ferns. (Photos 4 and 5) 

They were taller than me and reminded me that we had a similar gathering of deciduous ferns on our regular daily walk around Cascade Lake for many years - and then something in the ecosystem changed and they stopped appearing. It had been magical for me - the way they went away in winter and then came back in summer, so thick and so high. We used to call them the “fern forest.”  Photo 6 shows where the fern forest used to be - a few scattered ferns a foot or so high but nothing like the forest/sea dense with tall ferns that used to be there. 

I was also struck by a similar “sea” of horsetail ferns that seemed characteristic of summer. (Photo 8). 

But it was late in the hike, when I was walking along the south perimeter of the park and treating myself to loops around the lagoon, that I really had a sense that summer began to “call” me. I noticed that I felt a physical pull toward the water. It was like sexual desire - physical longing to be in that water. The soft warm air, the gently rippling water, the sunlight, seeing a swimmer in the lagoon and imagining my own former self swimming there as I walked, seeing young women paddling a two-person kayak and imaging myself paddling. The desire was so compelling and so sweet that I feel certain I will be swimming in the lagoon again soon, however briefly, no matter what the outcome of my physical therapy and whether or not my shoulder can learn to swim free-style again (as I hope.) Photos 9, 10, 11 and 12 are meant to help you imagine how it felt to sense the water calling to me, and to be filled with sweet desire. 

As I walked around the lagoon I met a woman with a dog and walking stick (which she carried but did not use). She accosted me with “you are actually using your sticks!” And we had a brief conversation. She mentioned that she loved to go to the dog park and sit with  other old women. She was working on a haiku, she said: “Old women on a bench/ Sharing stories.” After we parted I found myself intrigued with her haiku and wanting to make it my own. So here, with credit to Diana, is my version:

So many summers:

Old women on a bench

Sharing stories. 

I just keep picturing the old women sitting on the bench in summer, remembering so many other summers, bringing them to life with their stories. 

That seems to express perfectly for me what the summer hikeathon is at this moment. So many summers being evoked as I walk through this beautiful world. Mine and yours. And I feel so grateful to be - as I walk and as I blog - in the midst of so many beautiful summers. 

They don’t take away the horror and suffering in the world, not for a moment. But they exist in spite of it, and I am very grateful. 

Thank you for sitting on the bench with me sharing trails (I meant to say stories, but I kind of like the slip). And as always, you know how much I love to hear from you about what memories and stories stir in you in response. 

See you tomorrow on the trail (walking together through so many summers).