The Journey: Part 17

A DAY IN THE LIFE

My apologies to The Beatles for borrowing their song title, but I doubt the surviving members of that band will really care.

I thought I would share a day in my new life with you.

6:00 a.m. my eyes open; I stall getting up, but Toby knows I’m awake, and his nose is literally inches from my eyes. I am up.

6:30 a.m. I take a photo of the sun, rising above the desert to the east, and my first “holy crap” moment for the day occurs. What I was not expecting was my first spotting of the famous “desert bloom,” a sea of purple stretching out before me, perhaps a mile long, verbena I’m told, and I hear a gasp escape my mouth.

7:00 a.m. It’s time for my first shower in four days, and it is heaven-sent, the best shower I have experienced in seven weeks on the road.  One of life’s little pleasures which I took for granted living in suburbia.

7:30 a.m. Take the dogs for their first walk of the day, falling into a comfortable routine with my two buddies, shaking the cobwebs from my old head, thinking of the coffee waiting for me upon return.

8:00 a.m. Enjoy said coffee, and a Reese’s peanut butter cup, my breakfast of choice. I know, I agree with you, it defies logic that I’m still alive.  And get this: I’ve lost ten pounds since leaving Olympia, thanks to the Bill Diet.  You can purchase a copy of my diet at your local health food stores.  I’m rolling in the aisle laughing at that last sentence.

9:00-11:00 a.m. kill time while Bev and Leo organize their backpacks for the day’s hike. Spend some of that time talking to three Australians camped next to us, assure them that we can, indeed, give them a four-mile ride down to the trailhead, loving the fact that I have met so many incredible people on this adventure.

11:00-12:30 give said hikers the promised ride, bid them good health, and then drive Bev and her son to Julian for a resupply followed by the drive to Mt. Laguna where they will start the hike where they left off the day before.  Note to anyone who cares: That drive from Scissor’s Crossing to Julian is one of the windiest roads I have ever driven, many of the curves the 20-mph variety, and it’s a posted speed limit you better pay attention to, with sheer drop-offs awaiting those who ignore the law.

12:30 p.m. Said goodbye to Bev and Leo, a tinge of anxiety washes through me, knowing, as I do, that the next section of the trail features some seriously dangerous sections, narrow trail, severe drop-offs for those who mis-step.

12:30-1:30 p.m. Drive back to Scissors Crossing and our campground, Stagecoach Trails RV Park, white-knuckling the steering wheel, holding one hand on Toby, who completely hates the swaying motion as the bus takes sharp turns.

1:30-2:00 p.m. Take the dogs to the dog park here at the RV park, let them run, give them well-earned treats, thinking to myself, for the thousandth time, at least, how lucky I am to have those two as my constant companions.

2:00-2:30 p.m. Try, in vain, to upload a video, cussing all the time because of the poor WiFi reception here in the park, wondering how many YouTube followers will unfollow us because I can’t post anything recent.

2:30-3:00 p.m. Talk to two hikers from Austria, that sort of thing happening with great regularity, shared a bit of each other’s lives, giving me the warms and fuzzies once again.

3:00-3:30 p.m. Cooked and ate my first meal of the day, three eggs, four sausages, absolutely delicious, which makes sense since I hadn’t eaten; fed the dogs because, well, they need it to survive, of course.

3:30-4:00 p.m. Did dishes because that kind of chore never goes away, no matter where you live.

4:00-4:30 p.m. Caught up on text messages. Talked with a good trail friend, Elizabeth, who was having a hard time finding a place to sleep at Mt. Laguna, texted me, I suspect she just wanted to be in touch with a human being, vent a little, find comfort a little, and also good trail friend Jenny, who caught me up on her day.  Also emailed some other hiker friends, gave them updates on the trail to this point, what to look for, what to avoid, a constant stream of information shared throughout the hiker community.

4:30-5:00 p.m. Took the dogs for another walk, met two hikers from Sweden, promised to give them the four-mile ride to the trailhead in the morning, eight sharp, and learned a bit about their lives, priceless information in my mind.

5;00-6:00 p.m. Sat with the dogs outside, enjoying the hustling and bustling of the campground, until the wind, and the setting sun, made it too chilly to continue basking in a dying sun.

6:00-6:05 p.m. Continued my cussing to the WiFi gods, to no avail.

6:05-7:00 p.m. Watched the sun set on this desert hideaway, hoping to catch a glimpse of my first roadrunner, beep, beep, remember the old cartoons? No such luck, at least not today, but hope springs eternal.

7:00- p.m. Settled in for the night, wrote this missive, thinking I might read a bit, or perhaps watch some Netflix, before going to bed at eleven, already eager in anticipation for what tomorrow will bring.

One thing I am constantly doing, throughout the day, is powering up electronics. We have a Jackery 1000, a solar power generator, and as long as I pay attention to what I’m doing, almost all of our electricity is provided by that generator. Still, it’s the paying attention part which is time-consuming and requires some vigilance.

Editor’s note: Obviously, I rounded off all of the above times. You really didn’t think I kept that structured a day, did you?

Still no roadrunner!

Goodnight you all!

TRAIL INTROSPECTION

I spend a great amount of time, while travelling, and while hanging out waiting for Bev, pondering life. This is, for me, a life-changing quest.  I was not terribly happy with the status of my life prior to leaving on this trip. I aim to change that, and a portion of the Path to Change is a potholed section of road requiring The Chains of Introspection.

I do not believe in random luck, nor do I believe in good luck, bad luck, or the whimsy of the universe. I believe that my actions, and my decisions, lead to consequences, and a million actions, decisions, and consequences later, here I am, in a 1999 converted school bus, living the life of a nomad.  The question “how did I get here” is a silly one for sure, for I got here as a direct result of everything I did in the first seventy-four years of life. It seems so obvious to me, and I wonder why so many people question how bad things have happened to them, the answer as clear as the mole on my cheek, but not to them, and that is puzzling to me . . .

I should stop right there for an addendum: Obviously, if you have MS, or Cancer, or MD, or some other debilitating disease, I do not mean to imply that your actions led you to the disease. I am speaking about conscious decisions made throughout our lives which ultimately lead to what some would call bad luck.

But this is not about them, it is about me, the person who has been a mystery, to me, for so very long.  For if I am to change, if I am to become the person I truly want to be, it is necessary for me to understand why I have done the things I have done, why I have said the things, reacted to the things, cussed and cried and moaned over the things . . . and then, perhaps, I can change those things, and a new, healthier, more likeable, and loveable, Bill, will emerge.

My long-range memory is still sound. I can clearly remember many of the actions I took from twenty, thirty, forty years ago, and I see the consequences of them, and if I’m brutally honest with myself, which I must be, I know that the root cause of so many of my downfalls was insecurity.

The thing is, and this is what makes it so difficult to change, at times, is that we don’t realize the monumental catalysts when they are happening.  They go unnoticed until they become a part of who we are at that time. It may not have been intentional, but over the span of months and years, they are an ingrained part of our psyche and our responses to stimuli.

But I don’t have that as an excuse now. I am on a mission, and the only way that mission will be a success is if I peel back the bullshit layer and get real with myself.

And, lucky you, you will get a ringside seat for this battle royal, Bill vs Bill!

I spent two hours sitting in the desert sun today, soaking up the sixty-degrees, and listening to the wind. I don’t know how many of you have spent quality time listening to the wind, but I highly recommend it.

The thing about wind is you can hear it coming, if you are finely tuned into your surroundings.  One moment it is calm but then, particularly if it is a big gust, you can hear it approaching from a distance, that distinctive whoosh coming at you like a freight train, ruffles your hair, and then all is calm again.

Scientists will tell you that wind does not actually make a sound. That whoosh you hear is caused by the friction of wind flowing through millions of blades of grass, millions of plants, millions of trees, millions of buildings, and it is the friction which causes that sound, either a whooshing sound or a distinct whistling.

My life has been like the creation of the wind sound, constant friction coming at me, barreling along with the years, unnoticed at first, so feint the sounds, but as the years progressed, it became impossible to ignore the whooshing caused by the friction in my life, until I was figuratively blown over by the result of thousands of frictions, and pinned in place, on the ground, unable to make one solitary step in a positive direction.

Today I understand friction. I understand what causes it, and knowing the causes means I am able to refrain from them, if I am willing, which I am.

Like I said, a life-changing quest.

SUBTLE COLORS

It began perhaps five years ago, shortly after Maggie came into our lives, and I began taking her out to the goat farm for daily walks. I began to tune into the nuances of color, and how limiting I had been, in the past, when I would describe something as being blue, or green, or yellow. Those words really do an injustice to the natural world.

Focus your attention on a particular landscape, then sit for an hour, and note the changes in the spectrum.  A pale green will become an evergreen will become almost a teal.  The robin’s egg blue of the sky may turn to midnight blue, if the sun performs just the right magic, and don’t even get me started on yellows.

I am really paying attention to the subtle beauty of the desert.  I walked the dogs today, around the RV park, and took pictures of the colors, colors I may have completely missed six years ago, and it was amazing for lack of a better word.  Sitting here now, at 7:14 p.m., writing this, I am being treated to various reds and golds as the sun sets behind the mountains, and as I write that, purples are introduced to this living landscape. And earlier today, driving to the store, I noticed sagebrush, but as I passed, the sagebrush changed colors, ever so slightly, to an almost purple. A trick of the eye, or was it always there?

And, I am left to wonder, if I have missed so many of the subtleties of nature, how many subtleties in my friends and family have I missed over the years, and at what cost? I do not say that in a morbid sense, nor a melancholy sense, but rather an awakening to the fact that I should never be so busy as to miss the color changes in my loved ones.