The morning passed quickly as I made my way to Snoqualmie. I met some trail runners, here training for a 100 mile trail run. For some reason my competitive nature doesn't like seeing the backs of runners receding into the distance. So, although I couldn't match their pace, I found myself pushing hard toward the pass.
I arrived around 1, giving me time for a meal at the adjoining restaurant before check-in. There was a brief mix-up with my resupply box, which had been misplaced, but I finally got everything. Actually, I have more than I expected. I got an extra box from the Hendersons, with a few goodies to restore my energy (pictured) and because they probably can guess how scrawny I am now (pictured). I also got a box from Jeff Boggess, the son of one of my dad's friends. Jeff started a company that makes trail butter, and he was kind enough to send me a few jars to try out (pictured). These will form the bulk of my lunches on my last push to Canada, so I am excited to give them a shot. The packaging looks great, though without nutrition info I have no way of knowing calorie content. That's a big question on through-hikers' minds. So if Jeff is out there reading and has an approximate answer, or even a guess, I would love to know. You can send it to james.shimp@gmail.com and I would be happy to pass that along on the blog and to other hikers. Thanks!
In my parents' resupply box I got an early birthday card with enough money to buy a good dinner. I headed up the street to a restaurant at the ski lodge and had prime rib. What a treat! I also swung by the grocery and the gas station nearby to get a few extra goodies for tonight and for the trail. Then back to the hotel to sit, watch an economics symposium on tv (first tv in a while, gotta ease into it), and stuff my face.
I felt like a celebration. Here at the beginning of the end of a long journey. I had purchased a cheap pack of cigars from the grocery. I haven't smoked in years, but I remember when I did.
Summer evenings overlooking olive groves. Turkish folk music and the sounds of laughter filtering up to the unfinished brick balcony of an excavation house in Cyprus. I remember seeing the evening settle in through curls of smoke. Exhaustion, and knowing in a few hours I would be up again and preparing for a day soaked in sweat and steeped in the hot Mediterranean sun. Then, as now, the days were hard and at night the body would struggle against a pressing tide of weariness. Sometimes sitting back with a cigar in hand helped the nerves, made sleep possible. Despite the blistered hands and sunburned cheeks, despite the dusty days and the sleepless nights, those were some of the best summers of my life. Simple and complete. Back then drifts of smoke hung like thin veils, and in the long evening hours they formed the only border between my world and the olive groves of Roman antiquity. I guess the smell and taste of a cheap cigar is rolled into that bit of nostalgia.
I went out behind the hotel and sat amid broken chunks of rock in an abandoned lot. With my back against a smooth boulder I had as comfortable a seat as the trail had permitted me in what is now 2,400 miles. My match flared out in a darkness that the single nearby lamp post did nothing to dispel. Once again I watched the world through a gray haze.
A small bar adjoined the hotel near where I sat. Windows, half covered in thick curtains, reflected the dull orange lamplight in a rheumy glaze. They looked out onto an empty parking lot, with only the glare of neon beer signs to suggest any life. My celebration was turning somber, and I couldn't help but notice what a ragged figure I made. Huddled in the shadows, the glow of a lit cigar reflecting sparks in my sunken eyes. A couple hurried past in the distance, pausing only briefly to glance my way. I thought of Trischmann's Paradox. "A pipe gives a wise man time to think, and a fool something to stick in his mouth." I wondered which one these late night passersby would see in the gaunt angles of my frame and the unkempt hair on my cheek; the wise man or the fool? I guess, being human, a bit of both reside there.
In the distance I could see a big rig parked beside the road. Some long haul trucker had found a home for the night. Perhaps he was inside the bar, having one more beer to help wash down the thoughts of home and family. Under the lidless stare of neon signs he would sit, unaware that a fellow traveller also sat alone with his thoughts, a stone's throw away. I finished my cigar to the sounds of cars racing past on the freeway behind the vacant lot. People with places to go. But I have places to go too. North, always north. So I limped slowly away from the boulders and the broken glass, and left that forgotten corner of America to the weeds and the rusting skeletons of artifacts long since forgotten.
I don't limp because I'm injured. I limp because I'm so used to walking with pained effort when the pack comes off. Actually, ever since I got a second set of insoles - which I put in on top of my first pair - I've been walking on rainbows and unicorn farts. My feet still bitch at the end of the day, but they are noticeably improved. I hobbled down a seemingly endless hallway, thinking what a perfect metaphor for modern life. A series of boxes, each identical except in number, each shut off from one-another, lining a long hallway with a brightly lit "exit" sign. And me, searching for my room, limping along out of habit.
Fortunately for me I have a beer and a bath tub. So enough of the morbidity and melodrama. Time to get drunk and nekkid, and to celebrate 8 more days on the trail!
