gone.
As night fell, the rain started coming down harder, and the sound was amplified by the wooden box I was sheltered in. I was glad to be inside.
I pulled the flashlight from my pack and my road journal and jotted down a few notes for the day. I wrote a little about the homeless man at the Jack in the Box and the teacher’s book. I wondered if, in time, I would become like him—rambling about things others couldn’t understand.
The teacher book.
I hated the night and the demons that waited until dark to come out. Even though I thought about McKale all day and sometimes about Kyle or his treachery, there was some power in walking that kept my demons at bay. But inthe silence and still of the night, they came out in legion. At such times, I felt like a stranger in my own mind, wandering through a mysterious and precarious landscape.
I think it was Twain who wrote, “I suppose I’m like the rest of humanity: not quite sane at night.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
I spent the night sleeping in a train caboose. I can’t imagine what the new day will bring except, of course, more walking. And more rain.
Alan Christoffersen’s diary
The world was quiet when I woke. The dawn sun had not yet climbed over the mountain, and the world was still blue and gray. The air was cold enough that I could see my breath.
I packed up my things. It wasn’t raining anymore, but the world outside was still wet, as if the rain had stopped just an hour or two earlier. I walked around to the back of the darkened drive-in and pushed on the bathroom door. I was glad when it opened.
I shaved with warm water, then filled my canteen with cold. I shrugged on my pack, then walked back out to the road.
The highway passed over a river, and below me there was a group of people unloading kayaks from a truck. No one was in a hurry. It occurred to me that neither was I. For the first time, I thought about the simplicity of my new life. No deadlines. No appointments or meetings. No e-mails or phone conferences. All I had to think about were the necessities—water, food, sleep, and occasional shelter.
The road was veiled in a haze, a cool mist that either rose from the asphalt or fell from the sky, I wasn’t sure which. After a steep climb of a few miles, I saw waterfalls cascading off the north side of the mountains. To thesouth of me was the Skykomish River. Even in my state of mind, I couldn’t deny the beauty of this country.
Around ten, I entered the city of Baring, where I ate a simple but delicious breakfast of eggs and link sausage at a roadside diner. It was a quiet day, gray and morose. If the sky wasn’t overcast I still would have been in shadow from the lush canopy of trees. The deep forest was green in moss and lichen, and even the concrete rails of the bridges were flocked with moss.
At Moneycreek campground, I stopped to rest and eat an apple, jerky, and a couple handfuls of trail mix.
The road had become more narrow and dangerous. Compounding the problem was that this city did not tolerate slow drivers. It’s the only place I had ever seen with signs threatening drivers with tickets if they had more than five cars trailing behind them. The offered solution was “shoulder driving,” an obvious hazard for bikers and hikers. Baring wasn’t a place to be walking after dusk. At least if you wanted to live.
In Skykomish, I stopped at the only place I could find to eat lunch, the Sky Deli. The next town was farther than I could reasonably walk, so I resigned myself to my last hot meal for the day. I ordered spaghetti with raguot and garlic bread. I let the food settle a bit, then headed back out to the road.
By mile marker 56, I had walked nearly 25 miles, almost all of it uphill, which became obvious even without the elevation signs that were now posted at regular intervals. I could feel it in my calves. The first of the elevation signswas at 1,500 feet where, for the first time, I encountered snow on the road.
By dusk, my legs
As night fell, the rain started coming down harder, and the sound was amplified by the wooden box I was sheltered in. I was glad to be inside.
I pulled the flashlight from my pack and my road journal and jotted down a few notes for the day. I wrote a little about the homeless man at the Jack in the Box and the teacher’s book. I wondered if, in time, I would become like him—rambling about things others couldn’t understand.
The teacher book.
I hated the night and the demons that waited until dark to come out. Even though I thought about McKale all day and sometimes about Kyle or his treachery, there was some power in walking that kept my demons at bay. But inthe silence and still of the night, they came out in legion. At such times, I felt like a stranger in my own mind, wandering through a mysterious and precarious landscape.
I think it was Twain who wrote, “I suppose I’m like the rest of humanity: not quite sane at night.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
I spent the night sleeping in a train caboose. I can’t imagine what the new day will bring except, of course, more walking. And more rain.
Alan Christoffersen’s diary
The world was quiet when I woke. The dawn sun had not yet climbed over the mountain, and the world was still blue and gray. The air was cold enough that I could see my breath.
I packed up my things. It wasn’t raining anymore, but the world outside was still wet, as if the rain had stopped just an hour or two earlier. I walked around to the back of the darkened drive-in and pushed on the bathroom door. I was glad when it opened.
I shaved with warm water, then filled my canteen with cold. I shrugged on my pack, then walked back out to the road.
The highway passed over a river, and below me there was a group of people unloading kayaks from a truck. No one was in a hurry. It occurred to me that neither was I. For the first time, I thought about the simplicity of my new life. No deadlines. No appointments or meetings. No e-mails or phone conferences. All I had to think about were the necessities—water, food, sleep, and occasional shelter.
The road was veiled in a haze, a cool mist that either rose from the asphalt or fell from the sky, I wasn’t sure which. After a steep climb of a few miles, I saw waterfalls cascading off the north side of the mountains. To thesouth of me was the Skykomish River. Even in my state of mind, I couldn’t deny the beauty of this country.
Around ten, I entered the city of Baring, where I ate a simple but delicious breakfast of eggs and link sausage at a roadside diner. It was a quiet day, gray and morose. If the sky wasn’t overcast I still would have been in shadow from the lush canopy of trees. The deep forest was green in moss and lichen, and even the concrete rails of the bridges were flocked with moss.
At Moneycreek campground, I stopped to rest and eat an apple, jerky, and a couple handfuls of trail mix.
The road had become more narrow and dangerous. Compounding the problem was that this city did not tolerate slow drivers. It’s the only place I had ever seen with signs threatening drivers with tickets if they had more than five cars trailing behind them. The offered solution was “shoulder driving,” an obvious hazard for bikers and hikers. Baring wasn’t a place to be walking after dusk. At least if you wanted to live.
In Skykomish, I stopped at the only place I could find to eat lunch, the Sky Deli. The next town was farther than I could reasonably walk, so I resigned myself to my last hot meal for the day. I ordered spaghetti with raguot and garlic bread. I let the food settle a bit, then headed back out to the road.
By mile marker 56, I had walked nearly 25 miles, almost all of it uphill, which became obvious even without the elevation signs that were now posted at regular intervals. I could feel it in my calves. The first of the elevation signswas at 1,500 feet where, for the first time, I encountered snow on the road.
By dusk, my legs
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