Septemebr 16

Hello to you all,

It is raining here in Skykomish. The streets are wet, the fog levitates above the hills, and the freight trains run every couple hours on their way to Seattle or Chicago. I am now over half-way across the state of Washington. Less than 200 miles from Canada. I made a successful hitch-hiking trip 300 miles up Oregon in a single day and landed safely in the residence of my friend Mike Rogers, who lives in Portland. After some relaxation in the city and an intestinal sickness that laid me out for several days, he and I headed out onto the trail together. Mike covered over 150 miles with me, keeping up with my steady pace of over 20 miles a day across some very harrowing terrain. We walked through the thick damp forests of the Columbia River, around the base of a major volcano, and through a high alpine area of active glaciers and packs of mountain goats. After Mike hitch-hiked home to Portland, I spent the next 8 days completely alone in the mountains. I got a heavy snowfall at six thousand feet, trudged through driving snow with dirty socks for mittens. I walked through fifty miles of a patchwork of clearcuts (private logging land), making myself sick on the many blueberry and huckleberry bushes that thrive in disturbed (ie. logged) areas. I entered the north Cascades, which are proving to be as difficult as everyone warned, sometimes climbing over 6000 vertical feet in a single day in cold rain and damp fog. Tomorrow, I will keep hiking into an even more remote region and will probably remain alone until I hit the Canadian border. This intense amount of solitude has allowed my an opportunity to digest the huge scale of this experience, reflect on all that has happened, and to really strive through the difficulty of this final section. In these last 190 miles, I can expect worse weather, colder nights, and steeper climbs. And then, I will be home, back in Wisconsin. With friends and a bed and hot food. I can't wait.

All the best, Bill

September 17

The trees are ghosts. The hills, invisible. Dew hanging from tips of fir needles. Above me, the drone of a jet liner sailing six miles above. I am alone.