September 26

Awoke to the feeling of nothing special; another morning, typical routines stash the tarp, fold up the tyvek, strap the bedroll to the pack, and the worst is to bear the incision of the cold by finally getting out of the sleeping bag and stuffing it away at the bottom of the pack. Another morning, arising from a grove of spruce, their roots like knots tied to the soil. The incessant throat chatter of the god damn squirrels. Last night battling with a renegade mouse from the territory of my food bag tired, sleepless delirium between destroy the creature/accept the creature. Crush it. Let it race across your sleeping bag. Falling asleep was my way of sidestepping this ethical quandry. Just another morning; I was cold, I was hungry, I was stiff, I was alone. Hiking out of the spruce grove, along the edge of an avalanche track, the brittle sedges stained by a layer of crisp frost, the sun still not giving the crease of the valley any of its glow. All of this, eventually, a matter of predictability, of fine tuning yourself to what patterns you can see emerging: the all too cold mornings, the slowness of the sun to give heat, the angry hunger, the rocks stabbing at the bottoms of your feet bruising them, the high waterless ridges and the late season dessicated springs, the fleets of clouds threatening and taunting you, the inevitability and futility of climbing up just to go back down. All of this, however, marked by the muscular fluidity of hiking, the mind bending space of a granite chiseled horizon, a three dimensional real world that shifts as you move. The profound satisfactions of a warm beam of light or a cascade of sweet water spilling through a jumble of rocks. Another morning, except that the trail just stops, it doesnt go anymore, it dissipates and fades into a wash of gravel along the side of a road. That quickly, it ends. You walk down the road, take a shower, board a bus and thats it, youve entered another world. The other one has vanished.

At the border, I made the following thanks:

Four bows in each direction, hands pressed flat together, eyes gazing ahead, focused softly. A bow to the south in thanks to whatever mountain deity has permitted me to travel safely across the ranges. To each river that I have drank from, the water that has always been a gift. Thanks to each high pass that offered glimpses into those remote granite kingdoms and to the companions that helped me cross the high country. A bow to the south is a bow to the doug fir, American dipper, fireweed, manzanita, Clark's nutcracker, foxtail pine, chamise, mules ear, ponderosa pine the whole range of species who greeted me and kept me company.

A bow to the north, from where the big snows emanate, in thanks for allowing me to slip through the hills before winter has closed them down. Thanks for allowing me to witness this turning, this cycle, this transition the great die off of autumn and winter. The clots of ice in the springs, the squirrels dropping cones down, the fireweed gone skeletal brown. A bow to the north acknowledges the onset of harsh conditions, the reality that my time has ended here, that the Cascade winters are truly inhospitable. I bow to the fact of deadly weather by leaving the high country.

A bow to the west, towards the massive geologic activity of the Pacific Rim that has given birth to these ranges. My thanks to the Pacific Plate and the Jaun de Fuca Plate, great and stiff fields of cooled basalt, for colliding with our splendid continent of granite and my thanks to the after effects of subduction, intrusion, uplifting, eruption, cooling, metamorphism, all the eons of time and tons of pressure the torment of underground fires the Sierra rises high because of your work.

And finally, a bow to the east, the direction of home, where I am soon headed and where I began as a kid, where I was forged. My thanks to a family who supplied me with a spirit strong enough to be swallowed in the belly of these mountains, a family to whom I owe everything. My thanks to the lakes, the maples, the morraines the bitter autumns, the boggy summers all the elements that made sense to my skin, especially the wind. My thanks to a league of friends that have poured themselves into me. My thanks to Crystal, whose independence and fearlessness revealed to me what the full potential of alive we can be. Her strength has been a fuel for me. A bow to the east, my home, to where I am headed.