pedadidact

March 9 - Day 24
Bear Creek Campground > Forks & back

The morning ride to Forks was pleasant, a gentle tail wind riding quietly upon my pegs the whole way. Wisps of clouds batted misty eyelashes over miles of replanted clear cuts, occasionally shedding a rainful tear or two. Along the path where once stood mighty cedars, those modest guardians and generous overseers of the Olympic peninsula, here the land was scoured and seeded with stubby newcomers in the name of enterprise, not unlike certain other natives of this continent. But, "jobs grow with the trees," or so the passerby is informed by numerous earnest road signs.



In the way of interesting sights there wasn't much else to see, even on the shoulder where my eyes vigilantly scanned for a nickel to make the difference towards bus fare, in case of fould weather on the return. Later an idea occurred to me, that I might perhaps have located a recycling center in Forks and solved my financial issues for life, since had I one nickel for every bottle and can thoughtlessly ejaculated onto this spattered span of pavement I could have purchased a bus outright. Nevertheless, I prayed to the Lord this morning for the providence of five cents and was expectant He would supply. This much, it seems, was low enough even for stunted limbs of faith like mine to reach towards.

On the edge of town stood a gas station with adjoining sandwich shop. Observed here as in other small-time grocers, was a conspicuous omission of price tags throughout, a sure indication that everything was majestically overpriced. No matter, I hadn't even a nickel to spare and my concerns were directed beyond the stand of nuts and sunflower seeds to the restroom. What luxuries surround us! One forgets after some time the happy glow which follows washing his face with warm water.

Coming back to unlock my bicycle, I heard a man's voice behind, asking, "Hey, is this yours?" I turned to see a Hispanic fellow wearing the most tattered pale blue pendleton. His arm was outstretched like a crooked bough. Flapping in his twiggish fingers was a solitary green leaf, in fact, a five-dollar bill.

"I would take it if it were, but I'm sure it's not," I replied with amusement, even laughing a little, like Sarai, because I knew how barren my wallet was.

"I was standing here. As you went by, the wind blew it up to me," he said. Then looking for a moment at the note and back to me, "Do you want it?"

This blessed young man must never have learned the school-yard lesson, finders keepers. Now did not seem the time for teaching him. One must imagine my glee, for this dirty, crumpled bill seemed to me a heavenly writ of Providence, signed by the Treasurer himself, and wafted along by the unpredictable wind of the Spirit. A nickel asked, five dollars received – nothing short of a hundred-fold answer to my morning petition! Immediately I told the man of my prayer and his part in the unlikely answer to it. No less joyful did he appear than myself for the fortuitous event.


We are prone to forget how valuable good weather is. The unemployed day laborer, despondently passing a shiftless roadside afternoon beneath warm Pacific skies, may rejoice at least in a bright hourly income of sunlight and all the included benefits. But let him not forget to report this wealth, for his uncle Sam shall not either, and will expect a portion of it back for the Federal coffer. Feeling I owed the government several hours for all the blessings I received the previous year, or rather, because the government felt so, I deposited a bracket of my afternoon in the Memorial Library filing tax forms online.

To be candid, I was anticipating more than mere hours would be owed, but to my utter shock there was a return due to me. All told, the sum amounted to over double what I calculated necessary to bring me home with all bills, fees, and costs paid! But I must confess to having a habit of underestimating expenses for my ventures, though with good reason: rarely have I possessed the means to fund them anyway. Were I to wait until I did, I might never start anything! Yet somehow I have managed time and again to find resources along the way. For travelers with a tight purse and firm resolve, enough to get underway is enough to go all the way. But having mentioned these blessings, now seems an appropriate time for divulging certain circumstances previously held in private, for, being matters of money, I wanted to avoid putting any sense of obligation upon my dear reader.

On extended solitary journeys such as mine two sorts of routes are generally followed. I speak not topographically but financially. First is the way of those who chart every detail saving pennies and dollars for the day when no unforeseen expense can catch them off guard. Before they go they will have it all and probably if the day ever does come, all of it have them. The other route, most often forged by persons we admire much and trust less, is hard and fast. On this trail tread rough and wild dreamy fellows who simply decide to leave that week, or hour, even. With or without apparent means they depart accepting hardships for adventures. This was nearly my route, but as things would go, my way was carried forward to the intersection of both.

Three years earlier, during a stormy conversion from some form of the Christian religion to another, great tides washed through all my relations, business, and beliefs. Billows broke over my personality, shipping a whole sea on the deck of self. Ideals and resources were dashed as a vessel on the rock of faith, sunken so completely only a soul might escape and swim. I lost everything and gained all which mattered, life preserved from bottomless depths as I clung upon only two wooden beams.

Treading in the wreckage of a prior life, I gathered what scraps remained and made ready to sail from society. Nothing was more desirable than to drift several months and think matters out. But there was a minor difficulty. The trade wind of travel is cash and my raft was riding heavy with too few sails. To get the rig slipping I jettisoned whatever was left to spare. To the used market went precious camera gear, rifle, anything of relative value to settle lease, close accounts, and glean sporting goods stores for bare minimum. My remaining currency, perhaps $200, was deposited safely in fabric vaults sewn 'round the Bank of Levi, with five convenient options for withdrawal. Thus broken down and lifted up, I would set off into the greenest horizon. However, one week before departing for Seattle, a heavy-winded phone call blew all of these plans off course.



Over the line came the concerned petitions of my parents. Not only were they shocked by the news of this strange spiritual transformation and of what seemed to them a reckless abandonment of normalcy, but their ever-balanced personalities – both in constitution and checking – were unsettled with the business end of it. Simply put, they had granted me venture capital a year earlier to transplant my roots across the country and sow a little commerce in fresh soil. Now, just seven days before setting off with ticket in hand, I was asked first to make good on their loan. Life suddenly wilted.

I might argue, they had never stipulated any certain time-frame for returning the grant. I had figured somewhere in the next several years would do. But of all times, the present seemed the worst possible for them to ask it back, and in full. This was making bricks without straw! Why could they not allow me forty days to wander the wilderness, to worship God and afterward return? Then I could begin restitution of their promised milk and honey. Perhaps they thought I would die on the mountain and would prefer their golden calf now. In an instant my Decalogue of dreams was cast down, cracked like a tablet in two.

No doubt, it was my own fault I was in this bondage. In former times of famine I had bartered my freedom to Pharaoh, purchasing his plenty with my person. But who would have dreamed of the years of leanness and enslavement that would follow! Before me was a dilemma, whether to honor father and mother or to escape across a sea of red ink in defiance. Where was Moses to let me go? I sought out every avenue of deliverance but there was none. Quiet as a lamb led to the slaughter I returned to California to present myself a living sacrifice, choosing rather to suffer with these people than to enjoy the pleasures of debt for a season. After all, "the borrower is servant to the lender." Bereft of nearly all property, following six years independence from their roof, I was humbled and heartsick, as if told by Christ, "Put down thy mat and lie." Lie I did, once again, in the bedroom of my youth.

More than two years passed in San Diego working between two worlds, that of practical exigencies and of my desire to "get on with it." Just what it was I was getting on to, I couldn't guess; it didn't matter so long as my way lead up to mountain paths and forested roads, a thread of beach now and again. Perhaps at the end something else would appear. The trip became synonymous in my mind with a new start, a clean leaf to write upon, a break from old associations of life; an opportunity to flex against long-held fears of solitude and the uncanny attraction of the same.

Ears rang at all hours with the siren song of rugged and romantic places. In the stove of my chest burned a vestal yearning like coals through the night, glowing red and undying for the hope of travels without steel tethers of schedule. I wanted to practice my rustic fetish for simplicity, several centuries late, in places too remote to take notice of a few hundred years. If nothing else, I hoped to feel as though I was being independent and proactive, snatching fireflies from the great darkness of banality, doing such things as gray men list in their death bed regrets.

One must die if he would live, so I buried myself in work believing I would some day be raised in the likeness of a free life. Then I would shout from rooftops, "O Debt, where is thy sting?" Between multiple jobs, sometimes seventy or eighty hours a week, beginning at 3:00 AM, often finishing close to midnight, I pecked away at a hill of dues, the bird against the boulder, learning small bills do not quickly move mountains of deficit. Twenty dollars here, fifty there, doing their work like so many waves wearing against a bulkhead. Years passed together like elongated days, one and then two, wearisome with mourning. But at the dawn of the third I ran with the rising sun to find the stone rolled away. On the morning of my 25th birthday I handed over the final check to my mother, leaving behind in my tomb little more than some linens neatly folded.

Before earth had spun her course three times, I had shouldered what to me was a burden worthy of Atlas, almost twenty-five thousand dollars into the gaping maw of that devouring hole, the vortex of loans and suburban life, until the sum was blacker than banker's ink. With a fresh sense of freedom and a good bit more personal – if not financial – stability, I was ready to resume in earnest my former plans to head North, plans which had by this time metastasized into a consuming mass, a worm-hole of its own capable of absorbing all sorts of anxieties and pent-up griefs.

This is not to say Christ, my Savior, was not the final resolution in all things, my abiding peace and center of gravity; but I ventured this trip might be His un-ordinary means of providing escape into a new form of living, something like taking the needle clear off a skipping record so that it can be reset where the music is more clear. In this way a parallel had developed. While I had thrown cash into the hole of debt, I was piling hopes of meaningful experience or transition into my long-anticipated journey, praying for my life to fantastically exit into a different part of the universe. How dearly I hoped to arrive at the end in some rejuvenated and structured form of useful existence! New atmosphere, super-human. Only a cosmic movement seemed able to get me there.

What money I had was now rallied to the cause of such gear and items as I thought necessary for a roll down the Pacific coast, since by this point my beloved idea, my tender child, had been nursing long enough to learn not only how to walk but how to rice a bicycle. As they say, once learned, riding a bike is unforgettable, and the idea could not be shaken. Here met the intersection of those two routes, meticulousness and heedlessness, the cross roads of my preparations.

It is true I had only the most minimal savings for the actual day-to-day expenses, perhaps enough to see me through the first several weeks of a five or six month exodus. I was counting on the momentum of everything else to carry the plot through. I had the wheels and trailer, pack and tent, camera and cookery; what difficulty would be a little rice and water? Never mind the cost of park fees or fuel, cell phones and such; to do so would endanger the initiative and impose upon the set date of departure, January 1st, the freshest, most pristine day of the year. I would go and pray, and if necessary suffer a little.

Once again I set off for the Olympic forests, but not without an array of National tangents preceding; first to Catalina Island, the womb of all my later travels; Santa Cruz and the Big Basin trees, larger than life and standing like immense red wizards in their emerald city; to Utah for revelations less quixotic than Smith's but profoundly spiritual. I crossed the country to walk in Maine woods under moonlight and deep snow, drinking the wine of dear friendship and savoring the rich smoke of an imagined life there, swirling fantasies of the future over my palate. I marked the Mississippi banks of Dubuque, Iowa, in the company of a brother, and slept a night beneath the Sears tower on a bench. In Wisconsin I measured my independence and bandaged old wounds, kissed the past goodnight and put memories peacefully to bed. But here I was beyond all these, having shot like a bolt of lightning across the Western landscape, Nebraska, Montana, Washington!

The arrival was substantial but what money had I now to pay for basic needs? I confess, none of the original crop of cash had lasted. Into the hungry belly of social visits and motor travel it had went. Yet without my asking any man or making my narrow straights known to ought besides God, once and again I was provided for. A dear friend snuck one-hundred dollars into my pack. Another did as well, and still others so quietly added to my supply, I do not think their left hand knew what the right was doing, though I did! In each case the amount was just enough or hardly more.

The day came while in Elwha, on March 1st, when my bank informed me of an overdraft. This, it turns out, was a mistake on their part. I had yet $40 in my account to see me through three more months. This feat could be carried off, I supposed, on a diet of rice, perhaps seasoned with common minerals such as one finds under his feet, granite and old-fashioned grit. What pressing need had I, anyway, of fresh plants and meats for a season? Others had fared fine in worse conditions, and besides, I brought along a bag of vitamins to last the while. Three months of grains without produce cannot be worse than three months of the processed food eaten by so many, including myself.

As already stated, by this time I had discovered and resolved the mistake of the overdraft. Unbeknownst to me, however, was that the occasion of an apparently bounced transaction had resulted in a bank statement sent to my only mailing address, the house of my parents. Bold labeling on the outside of the letter – how flattering – said, "NOTICE OF OVERDRAFT." Feeling themselves responsible to know my condition, the letter was warily opened by my benefactors and the truth of my relative paucity was known. For the second time I received a concerned call, this round not to collect an old loan but to offer a new one! New loans! However much I respected and was grateful for their willingness to lend a hand, I should never want it to be for digging a new hole, unless it is for my final grave. If I must I could relive debt but even the thought feels like a weak death.

After assuring them I had a little money and that, if necessary, I would call some local churches and ask what odd jobs might be done, I bid my father and mother love and thanks. They are dear, kind people, I thought, only different in their economics of living. Next morning's prayers included particular emphasis on the Lord's mercy to provide. I read Psalms 103 and 104, which regard my life as above animals in the Lord's sight, though only through Christ's grace for I am a beastly sinner and beasts comparative saints.

In town that morning I checked accounts to find that during the night a woman I never knew or heard of had donated to me $73 and some odd cents, the balance of a savings account prayerfully applied to this meandering young man. Little she knew that her gift would almost perfectly cover the expense of bills, food, and fuel for three weeks. Even my lost gloves could now be replaced! What would follow that, I did not know, but my faith soared with gratitude and confidence.

After three weeks had passed and the bags of rice, oatmeal, peanuts, cocoa, and fruit were low – for I had spare enough by her blessing to purchase foods besides rice – I began to wonder from what pot the next portion of oil might flow. Do not suppose I felt above work; I was prepared both to labor with my hands or with my knees, however God would supply. Presently my means amounted to $10 plastic, .55c on hand. The card might be used in town but at this rate I hadn't even change for bus fare, let alone to visit Marymere Falls, or Neah Bay to hike the coast, as I wished. It was in this case and on this day that the breeze delivered five dollars, and Sam returned the rest. From the jaws of loans I was delivered to continue my journey a free man.

___Praise God! The kindness of the Lord,
______who works in winds untraceable!
___Time again imparting to his saints for pressing needs.
___Never has His power suffered widows' cruise to failure.
___Ever does He care to fill their pots, their faith to feed.