Day 112: Mile 1692.0 - 1714.6

You know, I may actually be starting to see why people like these woods.

Today we woke to an actual yellow sun and a sky a bit hazy, but intimating blue. It was a cooler morning (and in general, I fear it'll be cold here in Oregon, which I don't handle cold well). The yellow held up until maybe midday, when it went back to orange and the sky, well, became confused. I couldn't tell if it was hazy cloud or hazy smoke up there--there were even suggestions of puffy cumulus higher above? I checked the weather report--we're close enough to town to get occasional signal--and it predicted a mixture of smoke and thunderstorm. So that wasn't helpful. Regardless, by the end of the day the sky was overcast with, well, something, and the wind had picked up. We'll see if it rains tonight. I hope not: our campsite is perched up on the decaying remains of a truck trail, and right now only about 3/4 of my tent is on level ground, the remaining 1/4 is dipping down off a slope, all staked into softer ground dominated by twigs and branches above (so the stakes don't get much purchase on the solid ground beneath), and I'd just prefer not to test the stability of this structure in wet soil! 

But as I said, today I started to see why people enjoy the woods. The scenery out here is actually quite picturesque once you can see it! And today the smoke haze, while certainly still present, was thinner and I could actually *see* *things*. And some of the meadows out here are really pretty, and sometimes when there's a break between the trees and you can look out at blue ridge after lighter-blue ridge after even-lighter-blue ridge into the distance, well, it's very pretty. Enough that I started to wonder, why do I not like these woods as much? And likely it's a bunch of factors, but at least some of them are just my personal anxieties: I look at this landscape and worry about finding camping spots (but don't worry: there are spots scattered about), and I worry about rain and subsequent mud (but why worry about that: you can't control it anyway), and I worry about bugs (which have been mercifully few--knock on wood). But these aren't things about the woods themselves, these aren't concerns about the trees and bushes and rocks and slopes, these are my own imposed conditionals. Let those go and maybe I can start to see the woods for what they themselves are, and hence maybe I can start to see their beauty.

Or not; we'll see how it goes as I progress further through Oregon!

I will say that there was one hill, in the mid-afternoon, that was quite impressive. Enough so that I kept trying to take photos of it (and likely didn't capture anything close to what I felt when I looked at it, but that's par for the course). I may have been partial to this particular hill just because there was a large white ball of an antenna at the top--a Doppler radar perhaps?--and those are always endearing. But that hill! Dappled in the light greens of brush, the avacado greens of chaparral, the dark evergreens of scattered conifer, the yellow of soil and stone, the deep black of basalt juts, topped in the white of the (presumed) radar dome, and all cast in faintest of blue tints (even on this smoke laden day)--it was an impressive sight! Not only colorful, but also rewarding: as my eye wandered up and down the slopes, tracing the straight lines of a presumed road, I would only see more detail, more interesting little nooks and crannies, more fascinating color juxtapositions. That hill would have alone been worth a good day, but coupled with lots of the little meadows, and with a growing appreciation of the woods, well, it made for a very good day, scenery-wise.

And it was a very good day for trail magic, for we got it not once, but twice! The first was at a saddle where someone had set out two coolers full of Shasta drinks. I got a diet grapefruit flavored one (Double Snacks originally wanted to grab one too, but then when she heard it was diet, instead opted for a flavor with more calories: root beer!), and sat on a cooler and enjoyed the bubbly. (There was even a fancy camping chair there--one with cupholders!--but another hiker was already sitting in it.) It was nice sitting up there, looking at either side of the saddle, and even getting signal and booking rooms in Ashland. The second trail magic was just a bit after that, down the hill, where the trail crosses a dirt road and there was a spread of a whole variety of snacks splayed out under a tree. And there were bananas (fresh!), and bags of pistachios, and boxes of raisins, and some bars, and fruit cups, and even drinks (V8 energy drinks, which I avoided because they contain caffeine and it was late in the day). And just below, was the lady who had set it all up--Sunshine. She came up as I was looking over the spread and started talking--she's a very garrolous sort. And I learned that she's lived most of the past few years with a tent as her home, and she's lived in a lots of places, often mountainsides to help reconnect with nature, including a few years on the slopes of Mount Shasta, and enough time up here on the slopes above Ashland that she can read the weather, although today was odd with all the smoke confusing everything, and she's spent some time on the coast where there's too *much* water whereas out here there's too *little*, and that she comes up here to chant her mantras to spread positive energy and to hope for fewer fires, and to heal, including recovering from some back problems, and oh this yoga mat here is so hikers can stretch out if they want, and oh there are these quartz stones here too which she found just on the mountain and if you hold them with your cell phone they can absorb some of the radiation. And I also learned that she's a genuinely nice person, with little malice in her heart, just trying to help out some of these thru-hikers she finds so inspiring. And I can never find it in my heart to think anything but good things about such people! 

And the banana was good, and the pistachio nuts will be great tomorrow morning!

Overall, today was a good day for hiking: we got in 22+ miles, and that without any extraordinary effort on our part. Sure there were ups and downs, but no exceptionally difficult climbs and no especially steep descents. And no really rocky parts with tricky footing. If other parts of Oregon are like this, then today a good sign: it says that if we hike just our normal way, we can nonetheless make "big" miles. And that's good: the race to Canada is on, even if it's at the back of the mind, and big miles will (of course) help that. 

And that was the hike!

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Some notes:

-- Campsite > Wrangle Gap > Dirt Road Intersection > Mount Ashland Road > Mount Ashland Ski Road > Faucet > Campsite

-- And in the morning I hiked a bit with Butt-Tape and got to talking him some. It turns out he retired recently--in 2016--from 25+ years in the Navy. These days he's doing a lot of hiking--did the AT in 2017 via a flip-flop: Harper's Ferry to Katadin, then return to Harper's Ferry and go south to Georgia--and is planning a whole slew of hikes for next year. The Florida Trail (he has family down there), the Superior Trail up in Michigan (he has family up there), maybe even the Pacific Northwest Trail. And then maybe the CDT in a couple years? Mostly he's focusing on long trails in the States for the near future, but he does want to eventually branch out internationally. Kilimanjaro is top of his list, then there's Everest Base Camp, and maybe one of the long trails in Japan too. But just listening to him talk about trails--including a trip he did last year driving from Idaho to Arizona and just stopping whereever looked interesting and doing some day hikes (which I something I've always wanted to do with the 5 driving up from LA to SF)--he's clearly much more of an outdoors-person than I am!

-- I did ask him a bit about his military service. He worked mostly in intelligence for the Navy, and he had done a 9-month tour in Afghanistan. I asked him if he thought we had done a good job in Afghanistan, if we had net helped, and he replied his gut reaction was yes, we had. Certainly on the local level that he could see; he was less certain at the provincial level, and had no idea at the national level. But at the local level, the people there wanted the same things we want--a better life for their children, mostly--and building  infrastructure like roads and schools, and introducing technologies like modern plumbing and better farming techniques--certainly helped. In particular he helped with establishing radio networks, both on the transmit side and the receive side (for the latter, he would hand out so many of the little hand-crank radios). I asked what the benefit of the radios was--roads and schools I can immediately understand, but radio?--and he explained it was a way to help bind social society together better. So many local people would often ask for news of just their country, what was going on in their own country, and radio was a good way to get that information out there. And also a way to start to perhaps convert what was a very tribal culture into one with a more national identity. I asked if he thought all of this would stick, and he was less sure of that. But overall he felt we had done a Good Thing in Afghanistan; certainly, we had done our best with the best intentions.

-- Incidentally, how Butt-Tape joined the Navy is a story. Growing up, his hometown was too small, but the next town over was large enough to have a recruiting center. And in the center was the Air Force, Navy, and Marines, with the Army relegated somewhere across town in another building. Anyway, Butt-Tape had actually spent most time with the Air Force recruiter, and had intended to join the Air Force, but when the time came he went to the recruiting center and the Air Force guy wasn't there. Yeah, he'll be out for a couple months, explained the Navy recruiter, but have you considered the benefits of joining the Navy? See the world! No thanks, Butt-Tape had said and went home. But then a couple days later, on an impulsive whim, decided, no, wait: yeah, the Navy sounds good!--and called back up the recruiter. Wait, really?, said the recruiter, but Butt-Tape was decided, and so he joined the Navy. And doesn't seem to regret the decision: he did indeed get to see the world!

-- Finally, just a quick description: Butt-Tape has a white beard and wavy sleeked white hair, but still looks young. And part is because he's trim--the trail'll do that to you--but part of it is because he still has that wide-eyed look and twinkle in his eye that I, at least, associate with youth. And maybe that's just because he's out here on the trail, doing something he obviously loves. But Double Snacks once mentioned that age is always a tricky thing with ex-military folks: they're retired, of course, but you can also retire relatively early with the military. (As in they seem to retire in their 50s, whereas I'm supposed to be hitting my peak earning power in my 50s!) So a retired military person doesn't necessarily accord--age-wise--with a retired civilian person.

-- Oh, and as a logistical detail, I should add a Hiking Style:

* Butt-Tape Style, which seems to be--if anything--to go *faster* on uphills and relax on flats. To be fair I advocated this style once in the past: on one of Kyle (Stewart's) excursions when we went up Telescope Peak in Death Valley. There is a series of switchbacks close to the end, and I opted to speed up through the climbing portions, and slow down on the flatter portions (which is roughly opposite to what the body naturally does). My argument there was explosive energy for ascents, then resting-level energy for the easier flats. Butt-Tape seems to do something similar, but he climbs much faster and lighter than I ever did, and is much more relaxed on the flats than I ever was!

Oh, and another Style I've been mulling but have yet to explicate:

* Dylan Style, which I think I only understood recently. Dylan often puts his hands on his hip belt pockets with elbows out almost as if doing a chicken dance, doing this especially as he climbs. And I always wondered why, until I found me doing it myself, and it was to push down down on the hip belt to keep it from crunching painfully against my iliac crests. By now my crests are a bit tender, so managing the weight and press of the hip belt around there is becoming an increasingly important thing. So that's what I imagine Dylan was doing: using his chicken stance to better manage that interface. And that's what I'm calling Dylan Style, which I'm adopting more and more it seems.

And finally, a Style that I forgot on my original list, and one of the first:

* Andre Style, which is to hike 10 hours a day and go as far as 10 hours will take you. Simple. And one that I should probably adopt. (I remember Dylan once commenting--this was before the big fire closures when we were talking about how to get the big miles to make it Canada--that he recommended I do two things: 1) hike longer into the evening, which Andre Style would help accomplish, and 2) take more ibuprofen!)

-- Today I met Blueprint, my first southbound (SOBO) hiker! We had the briefest of conversations, but he started on June 29th. You must be starting to meet northbound (NOBO) hikers, I said. Actually, he said, he met his first NOBO hiker on July 1st and was shocked! But that was an aberration: he started meeting the actual first bubble of NOBO hikers about a week and half after that. Still, I'm pushing to make it to Canada by October 1st, and there are NOBO hikers making it halfway through July! (Which *is* possible, by the way: Stardust was planning to finish by the beginning of August and she started "late", in May.) Anyway, I'm not sure which "bubble" I'm in anymore--it seems all the bubbles have popped and reformed into a single big bubble thanks to the fires--but it seems this NOBO crowd should start to see the early SOBOs trickling through!

-- Ok: does quartz absorb electromagnetic radiation, like from your phone? I mean, maybe? Piezoelectric quartz crystals are used in consumer electronics all the time: they are the heart of the crystal oscillators that fundamentally keep time and provide low-phase-noise clocks to everything on the chip. They're also cut to, typically, 10s of MHz frequencies. But being piezoelectric, if there's ambient radio frequency at their resonance frequency, in theory they can pick that up that electromagnetic energy and translate it into mechanical vibrational energy (this is assuming they follow that peculiar physics principle wherein often when A appears to cause B, it turns out B can also cause A, i.e., flowing current through a solenoid to induce a magnetic field, then alternately moving a magnetic material through a solenoid to induce a current). So, maybe naturally occuring quartz can indeed "absorb" electromagnetic radiation (i.e., translate it into another form), but I'm not sure at what frequencies and likely only very very small quantities of energy.