Journeys Afoot in North America
Part I, Early Walks
Early spring of '69 a mountaineering friend and his family invited me into the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. After an interesting exercise in Volkswagen stuffing we drove to the South Rim where my son joined us. It was cool on the Rim but summer below until a storm drove us wet and cold into a cave. There a fire restored the glow.
The pools of Monument Creek were still and deep. When we reached the river below, Big Red's roar commanded like a rock concert. I saw rafts bucking like wild horses. My friend taught me that, out of paste, teeth may be brushed with soap. And his daughter presented a good-luck walking staff as our short trip ended.
Back in San Diego my son and I visited a favorite haunt of his, Cuyamaca Park. There he wanted to jump down to a pretty place by a waterfall, and I let him. But it was too far; he hurt himself, and I sprained an ankle jumping down to get him out. Oddly, his stitched jaw was to heal quicker than my trivial sprain.
There was an urge in me to walk along the Pacific to see how the water met the land, but the ankle was tender. I waited. When it still didn't heal I visited friends in Santa Barbara to wait some more. Then favoring the ankle as much as possible I started anyway.
Hugging the coast where sea otters bob in the waves, State Highway One was so lovely I didn't much care if three days passed without rides. Early mornings were foggy and I'd lie snug in the sleeping bag until the sun got up. At San Simeon the wind was strong; I didn't walk up to the Hearst castle. As Big Sur approaches, the seascape changes to high cliffs and jagged headlands. In many camps the crash of surf was my bed song.
At Santa Lucia I heard the sound later learned to be characteristic of the far North, a gasoline engine chugging to produce electricity. This land is too wild for private utilities or the Rural Electrification Administration to put in a power line. The family I stayed with told me they'd shot a mountain lion from their porch the summer before.
As I got closer to San Francisco the motorists hailed me like a hero. The evening Berkeley was reached I left my pack with friends whom I'd known from Colorado and strolled late about the richness that was People's Park. By morning the National Guard had closed it off; then hell broke loose in the streets. There was rock throwing and jeering by the People, and some clubbing by the police. The kid on the roof may or may not have thrown a rock. But they shot him. And everything became very quiet.
The day of his funeral my friends had talked me into discussing with university staff the possibility of a job. On campus I saw many wearing gas masks. They knew something I didn't, for on return we were hit by tear gas, participating ruefully in the first aerial bombardment of an American city by its own forces. I knew the stuff from basic training in the Air Force when we had to enter a gas filled tent and recite our name, rank, and serial number before getting out. Now I'd forgotten the numbers and the experience rounded off a little of my squareness.
Before leaving Berkeley I was informed by a physician that permanent gout had been induced in the ankle by walking on it, but after two weeks more limping it was well. The friends took me as far as Point Reyes. If the sea god's name, Daruma, is written in the sand and he rushes in to erase it, it must mean he's angry. I have no anger but there is this ache. To ease the parting I told them I was an inspector walking around the North American park to be sure it was in order, but promised not to evict anyone except for gross abuse of the land.
Somewhere near Russian River the inspector was refused entry to a grocery store because he carried a pack. Then another will get my custom, and the forest thickened. One camp was under tall redwoods on a bed of big shamrock clover, called oxalis . At a cleared pasture I saw three deer rushing down to the sea. A little later they tore back, preferring, I suppose, the wood's thunder.
Before Fort Bragg a man offered a ride and lodging with his family. He reclaimed huge timbers from condemned bridges and built houses with them. Massive structures, I saw a picture of one that looked like a ship. After venison for breakfast we went into the woods to search for redwood burls (growths from the trunk that will sprout new trees). I found one to his twenty but had better luck with poison oak, although unaware of it then.
Walking through Fort Bragg I stopped at the hospital, where pinkeye was diagnosed for my hurting eyes and antibiotic given. It was a sixteen mile day then to an abalone beach for camp. On waking, a tiny slit was left open in one eye and my face was unrecognizable in the mirror. I had to get help.
At a nearby house with Appaloosas in the pasture they sat Frankenstein's monster down to breakfast, and promised that a patrolman friend coming soon would take him back to the hospital. However, that official wasn't running no taxi; they had to threaten to carry me themselves before he relented.
This time the doctor said poison oak; a cortisone shot soon had the eyes much better. But it showed up on my feet too which required a rest until they healed. When the town librarian called back for me Fletcher's superb book on walking, the return occasioned a friendship with the last reader and her little son. Many happy hours were spent with them.
Leaving with sharpened eyes I saw that poison oak was so plentiful it formed half of some trimmed rose hedges. At Rock Creek the paved road turns inland to join a federal highway. I took the dirt road, old State One, toward Eureka, first turning down a postman's offer of a ride. Unmissed macadam, on my free-way paved in places with redwood needles and azalea petals.
There were many quail, and once I saw in the middle of the road a doe suckling its fawn. I climbed into hills and forded several brooks, meeting only a single vehicle in two or three days travel. As the dirt road approached pavement again there was a sign warning off trailers, one reason for its isolation.
Oregon has no continuous coastal route, but US 101 offered sea views around Port Orford. Then ten days of rainy weather with no lifts, except at a junkyard an old man sitting in a wreck, between puffs on his pipe, volunteered a ride. I like a joke too, so I said sure. Well, he started the wreck and took me a good mile. Don't knock it until you've walked in Oregon in the rain.
A bird once took pity on me. I was damply trudging and he didn't fly, just hopped a little. I got closer to see if he was hurt. He didn't seem hurt but hopped some more off the road. No big show like a killdeer leading away from its nest, just a series of hops until I was led to a dry spot under a tree. Was he showing a dumb human how to come in from the rain?
And Oregon seemed endless. On the Tillamook River bridge I was sacrificing with tears in my eyes to the god of waters a staff broken in despair when a drunken Welshman from Nevada, bless his Dylan heart, took me out of there. Maybe he thought I meant to jump.
In Washington luck was better, including an earnest schoolmaster who gave a ride and shelter. His manner of speech was a bit jumbled, in a heartwarming way.
Hoquiam
“I am reminded of those favorite lines
By Dr. Doolittle the African doctor
These woods are lovely dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
You see he wanted to lay down and die
But he had his mission to go.
Then there is that one about
I shall not pass this way again
So whatever I can do for man
Let me do it now
For I shall not pass this way again.
I like too Invictus
From the Rubaiyat of Kublai Khan
I am the Master of my fate
I am the Captain of my soul
But I shall not pass this way again
Is best.”
At a camp before Port Angeles I promised beachcombers to wander with them next day, but to my mind at dawn a song came about finding a yellow-haired woman and not walking alone; so I went on. Sure enough, near town I was told of two young women walking ahead of me, a blond with her black friend. Two or three miles past Port Angeles I caught up with them. They were thirteen and fourteen year old runaways from an orphanage.
The blond had been promised by a Dutch sailor that he'd marry her in Olympic National Park, and take them both to Holland. When he didn't show they had walked all night trying to get back to Seattle. Instead of rides they'd had racial insults offered them. My presence wouldn't help either; I sent them ahead a quarter mile to try some more, but it was no use.
We gave up and started back for Port Angeles. They were hungry but not hungry enough for any of my hobo sardines and crackers. At a stand on the way, however, they were able to relate to hamburgers and milkshakes. In town I put them on a bus with instructions to call my former mother-in-law in Seattle. She'd helped many Hungarian refugees; I knew she'd be good to them. It was that or run some more, to the black girl's grandmother in Bremerton.
On the road a butterfly had taken up with my arm. As they boarded the bus, yellow- hair wanted it but was afraid. I coaxed the butterfly from my brown to her fair. When it settled, she smiled.
Walking on for Seattle I found a sweet cherry tree and picked a lot to carry. Pie on my mind for sure. But rides came so slow the cherries nearly spoiled; I had to eat some and give the rest away. In Seattle the kids had not called my in-laws. I rested and fell ill while the moon- men made their step. The year was nineteen and sixty-nine.