Friday, August 28, 2009
Chicago Park, CA
Charlotte: Friday Morning ~ Out of the canyon! First I want to write about our extraordinary morning. Here we are at Tofte Ranch at 11.26 AM and showered. First we enjoyed a wonderful cup of coffee on the porch, sitting in chairs. Only 4 days without coffee, has made a huge difference in our appreciation of our morning cup but I think the challenge of our trip played a part in that. We savor the flavor and aroma - we are present with our cup of coffee. Sitting on chairs with cushions on the porch - ahhhh, so comfortable and relaxing. A little snack of coffee cake left over from Arlene's Bunco night - really good coffee cake, I might add, some beef and green olives, also from Arlene's Bunco night. Then, finally a long hot shower - mmmmmmmm. It felt like we needed to scrub everywhere twice to get the camp dirt off and the hot water felt luxurious. All clean again, we took a survey of each other's bodies checking out the scrapes, bruises and bites. Larry has some really large angry bites on his torso. We carry the marks of our trip but mostly we are sore and bone weary tired.
Our trip out was amazing - miraculous in retrospect. After a long painful and agonizing night for both of us, daylight finally arrived. We spent a wakeful night of moans and groans, a few conversations, lots of tossing and turning, checking the time, watching the stars and clouds in the sky and a few short fitful periods of sleep. It never cooled down last night.
Arlene is NOT home. We forgot she was headed to Sacramento on Friday. I have to say it is so perfect that Arlene isn't home and also perfect that we didn't remember. I have been saying that ever since we lost out on our perfect campspot yesterday "Everything is working out in a perfect way" - even having someone else take the campspot we were drooling over.... while we were hauling our gear down river. I remember the dejected look on Larry's face when he turned to me and said "Someone is in our camp spot." I decided rather than choose the frustration, anger and disappointment, I would claim "Everything is working out in a perfect way."
And now here we are alone at Arlene's with time to clean up, talk, reflect, be quiet, write and rest AND we wouldn't have met our 2 special angels - if Arlene had been home and we hadn't decided to come out of the canyon a day early.
Larry: Up at the first sign of light, rolled up our bed, got it all packed up and we are headed up the PW Trail by 6:30. The trail was lots rougher than our friend intimated but by awakening our tired muscles, we climbed out of the canyon. We waited maybe 20 minutes before our first angel stopped to give us a lift into Colfax. Craig was a typical Iowa Hillian with full mustache and beard, long, shoulder length hair, cut-offs and thongs. We had to hold the seat belts across our bodies because they didn't work and he didn't want to get a ticket. His pick-up was so high off the ground I had to give Charlotte a boost from behind to get her up and in the truck. The truck smelled of cigarettes, diesel and dust and old wet dog, which I suspect usually rides in our area of the seat. Craig shared stories of how he found Iowa Hill before going off to prison and how he had returned as soon as he got out of prison. Everyone has a story to tell if you just ask the right questions. Interesting! Charlotte's first comment after Craig dropped us off and drove away was, "What would my mother say?" and after a chuckle..... "CHARLOTTE, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING????!!!"
Craig dropped us off at the Chevron Station in Colfax, where we had planned on phoning Arlene to come get us. The pay phone was missing from the booth, so we decided to hike around to Hwy. 174 and hold up a Chicago Park sign.
8 AM in Colfax is probably the busiest time of day, what with dropping kids off at school and people heading down to Auburn for work. We got lots of looks from the long lines of cars at the 4 way stop. Us, in our dusty clothers, with packs on our backs, hiking sticks in hand, bandanas and caps on our head. Some folks acted like they didn't see us, others stared us down with grim looks of disapproval on their faces, while others smiled and waved or gave us a thumbs up and some even offered encouraging comments. I wondered what stories they were telling about these 2 middle aged people walking through Colfax, California on a Friday morning with packs on their backs?
We made our way around to 174 and held up our sign. Very quickly our second angel stopped. Suzzette, a hair stylist and her 2 dogs gave us a lift out to the tiny Chicago Park Store, even though she didn't live in that direction! At the CP store, I asked the proprietor if I could use the phone to call our friend, Arlene, but got her answering machine. I left a message thinking she was out feeding cows. In another little bit I asked to use the phone again..... still no answer. After about 45 minutes, our 3rd angel stopped and offered to buy us some breakfast. Kelly thought we were homeless and assumed I was a vet and wanted to help out. I explained our situation. It seems she is an old backpacker and now packs folks in to the backcountry of the Sierras with horses. Kelly gave us a lift all the way to Arlene's! We felt a kinship with Kelly.
We were sitting on the front porch, clean from our hot showers, with a cup of coffee by 10 AM!!! Thanks to our band of angels. We toasted each other with our coffee for a job well done. Thank you God for our week of adventure and discovery and thank You for bringing us safely out of the canyon!
