rain | 300 Hikes

Hikes 27 and 28: Nurse Ratched and the Chief

July 17, 2011

The slow and arduous melting of the snow drove me to abandon my hopes of heading for the Cascades, and I instead traveled west to Tillamook Head. I can’t say the decision offered much respite from the elements. The forecast called for rain, but I, against my better judgement, ignored the warning and followed the siren call issuing forth from the ocean. Initially I faced little more than a drizzle. The bees seeking refuge beneath the plants did nothing to quell my enthusiasm and I journeyed forth.

The curling vines gripped and pulled, gripped and pulled, hoping perhaps to prevent me from going any further, but I pressed on, convinced that the weather would hold. Their tendrils wrapped around my ankles but were hardly a match for my determination.

As I continued I felt the clouds thicken and descend. What once covered only the sun began to touch the tips of the trees and climb towards me with ever increasing speed. I walked, I walked, but still it approached. Surrounded by gaping holes caused by nurse logs and fog filling both the forest and my eyes, I felt myself being dragged down to the fearful machines as the whirling and clicking of cogs lowered me deeper deeper into the industrial depths.

Walk on, Friends. You can’t go back now.

I became a tree.

Wet and weary I approached the viewpoint. I stood towering above the sea, feeling as insignificant as a raindrop. How I might fall from the cliff and be absorbed into the eternal ocean, forgetting the self-imposed division that separates me from you! But for now I must remain. Stay as you are, dear Reader.

Tattered prayer flags hung from a tree that overlooked the water. String by string I watched them unravel.

As the day came to a close, the fog won. I stood and watched the last of the trees get devoured by the unstoppable onslaught and huddled in my tent, only hoping to avoid being dissolved. It rained. I slept. It rained. I dreamed. It rained. I woke. I could have stayed in my sleeping bag and withered away, but again I say, walk on. I hiked. I hiked. I hiked. I drove.