In the Lock of Cascades

  
It’s so easy to walk through a land at 2.5 to 4 miles per hour, little alone drive through at 70 mph, and forget people use to eat, procreate, worship, and die with purpose before we got here. This terrain demands humility or you die, and someone else gets to be aware of what Is. 

I have heard the tribes would ride for weeks to the huckleberry patches that cover many acres, and pick berries for weeks. When they were through, they set fire to the area to keep the forest from infringing on their food plots. I weep, this was not only in ages ago, but up to the 1950’s- then the forest service took over and curtailed such works. 

Berry’s and mushrooms are now pick by the Vietnamise and other marginal groups of the area-Seattle, etc. They camp for weeks on end and gather whatever will yield cash- they are to industrious to beg and find no place in the main stream, so they pick and pick. I’ve seen these people after spending weeks on end in the forest, you can smell them coming. I’m honored to have been near them.

  
I met “half-slow”, a 59 year old Vietnamise man, on the trail day before yesterday, who said ” yes, if leaders were to walk on PCT-maybe, just maybe peace”. I had trouble keeping it together. He left Hanoi at 14 years of age under war from the country he would come to for life-how is that possible?

I meet young Japanise who can hardly speak English, they are the right age to be the grandchildren of the men my father took the rifle from in WWII, how is that possible? They are so dedicated to finishing a walk across a “wonder”. How is that possible? We have done it since recorded time, the killing.

  

I wonder and walk. 

• The ” Spaniard”, 67 year old Mexican man from San Diego, said he is living the dream- ” I have to eat, sh–, and walk” – this is my time to live”. I have never seen a smile so deep- I have never meet him before, but I’ve known him since  I was born.
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What would I give up for my grandbabies to see and hear from this that is That? 

 When we get so self righteous as a specie, maybe we could go lay in the woods 80 miles from another human and deal with what comes to us. It’s not the wild beasts, it’s the 40 days and nights , and wondering if the Angels are there to care. 
  
Tomorrow will be 40 days, tomorrow night will be 40 nights, every drop of water is important-give a cup to someone not like yourself.

  
Just a walk.