Etna, Shasta and Beyond

It is fairly unusual to find myself eating chocolate-covered almonds, sitting in a plush leather chair, with my feet propped up in a vibrating massage machine rubbing away at my calves and sore feet. We don't usually get that kind of treatment after a hot 17 mile day. But the day we walked down from Castle Crags into Mt. Shasta ,CA (at about mile 1,500 on the trail) that is precisely what happened.We had been walking around Mt. Shasta for a long time. It is a 75 mile wide volcano at its base and towers to 14,100 feet at its prominent, rock and snow-covered peak. It is pretty formiddable. I heard one local say that you could fit something like 15 Manhattans just inside its base and even the tallest of tall sky scrapers wouldn't manage to come near it's almost 3 miles in height. For some reason, the PCT doesn't manage to get on top of this beasty, but it does take about 250 miles to get around its broad, hulking base. On a regular year, any thru hiker gets an almost entire 180 continuous view as they walk around the mountain. It seems to be a constant pivot point and direction marker for near to 2 weeks as it hovers in the distance as PCT hikers make their way north to Oregon. This year because of the fires and smoke, we could only see it for brief periods of time as it loomed in the disatnce against murky skies. Anyway, after circling Mt. Shasta and crossing sev! eral northern California logging sites we came to Interstate 5. We slept just a half mile before I-5 and could hear the busy traffic rushing by as we cuddled in our tent and hoped no one got off the interstate and saw us camping on their property. So we got off early the next morning and hit the interstate. Now, after hiking 1,500 miles, hitching had become pretty familiar to us. But normally we were used to popping out on some back road and anything from a Frito-Lay truck to a 32 Ford to a "soccer mom" van would pick us up. But this was a BUSY interstate with cars zooming by at 70 mph. As swarms of semi trucks peeled by and blew my hat off in their wake, Rose and I figured that this was going to be a tough hitch. Notoriously truckers don't seem to pick up hitchhikers and everyone else was racing by way too fast to seem to care for a bunch of tired and weary hippies. But just as we sighed and were about ready to sit down and wait for a hitch on the cruel and fast paced median by the I-5 off ramp, a trucker pulled over in the midd! le of the ineterstate. Rose and I, surprised but thrilled, grabbed our packs and shuffled on over to the giant semi as fast as we could scurry off the ramp. We clambered up into the cab of the truck and there was a long haired hippie named Murray driving barefoot with a scrawny pug hiding underneath his legs just behind the pedals under the drivers seat. One of the first things he said was,"I had to put on my pants to pick you up." From this I gathered that he spent most of his time as a trucker driving up and down the west naked and barefoot. Somehow, this seemed like a shocking revelation. I had always pictured truckers as good old boys who wore bow-legged jeans and belt buckles. But I guess it made sense that if one were to drive for 12 hours straight they might want to be comfortable and thus naked. After the few seconds it took to catch up on that thought, I surveyed the truck we had just now hastily entered. It was surprising spacious; it had a bed in back and some blue ruffled comforter strewn across it. Upon more careful observation, we saw there was a curled up body under the comforter and the trucker's claims t! hat "My wife will kill me for picking up hitchhikers" became a little more immediate as she rose up out of her bed just behind us. Apparently his wife had decided to ride along with him along with his dog and this was entire famliy affair. Usually, Murray said, his wife didn't like him picking up strange people off the road, but he figured she was riding along this time so somehow now it was okay. (Whatever his logic, we weren't gonna argue - we were just happy to get a ride). Either way she seemed a bit shocked when she stirred from the bed to find us right next to her in the truck cabin hurling down I-5. After sorting all that out, We told Murray where we were going and he dropped us off at the exit for Mt. Shasta. We hopped out of the truck in a hurry because he had just pulled off in the pullover lane and traffic was still daring by us. So as fast as we had jumped in, we were out of the truck and transported down the road. as the truck pulled away, Rose looked down at her pocket and realized that, in the hurried exit as dropped out of the truck, her cell phone had fallen out of her pocket. Now this random trucker was driving away with it and we had no idea how in the heck we'd get it back. We didn't even know what trucking company he drove for and even if we did, would we have called them and asked for "Murray the naked driver with the quivering pug dog." It seemed like a long shot and that we'd proably never see the phone again. So, facing that reality, we decided to cut our losses and head into town to get a hotel. We were both tired and need a rest. So with that we checked into a hotel at 9 am (darn it, if we were gonna pay for hotel, we were gonna get our 60 dollars out of it; which after 27 hours in the same room we thought we sure had succeed doing as much).We spent all day cruising around town and it was one of the best zeroes we hav e taken on the trail. We ate a gigantic brunch at the locall diner, went and saw the movie "Wall E", did our resupply at a local grocery store, picked up our maildrop and even got to go to a midweek Bible Study at a local church. All things that might be commonplace to a normal population of working day citizens were each spectcular and rare events to us! Every cold yogurt in the grocery store was like a trip to Sea World, every second of the movie like a live circus, and evry minute of the church service like a revival at a Billy Graham crusade. Well, maybe that is a little exaggerated, but the point is that the little mundane things that people do and experience every day are a big deal to us because we have so little exposure to them when alone in the woods with fawns.So it was a teriffic time. The next day before heading out we thoguht we'd stop by an old friend's house. Three years ago, just before leaving for Africa, Rose and her mom took a spontaneous road trip up the California coast. Somehow this landed them a few nights at the Shasta MountINN Bed and Breakfast. This little establishment was run by a fellow named David Knowles who totally out did himself...

David treated Rose and her mom with such extreme kindness that they would remember him even a few years later. With that fond memory, Rose looked him up and made a call and without a moments hesitation he remembered them as if they had just stayed with him and freshly checked out. Instantly, he told us to come on over and that he could take us back to the trail. Apparently Rose and her mom had made as strong as an impact on David as he had on them, and with all the coming and going of countless guests he still knew their names and their stories.So we made our way over to DavidKs beautiful old white historic farmhouse in the middle of downtown Mt. Shasta. Upon arrival he greeted us with warm hugs and showed us around his immaculate lodging. This place was complete with a perfectly green and manicured garden, a hot tub, massage tables, and comforters so thick and heavy with fluff that they could have killed a man when dropped from a height. This felt like a get away for the Queen of England. David, still cleaning the luxurious rooms from the previous night's guests, plopped us down in his living room fed us and promptly encouraged us to put our feet in his high class leather massage machines. So there we were sitting in his bed and breakfast getting foot massages. David popped in and out of the room next door to make sure we were taken care of and in the conversation it came up that Rose had needed to buy a new pair of shoes. Her old hiking shoes had gone about 1,000 miles and were well overdue for a change. M! entioning it in passing, we were just making conversation but apparently David saw it as a place he could help. Dacid popped out od the room again and we continued to sit and get pampered for a few more minutes, allowing him to finish his innkeeper duties. Then David stuck his head back in the door, holding the exact pair of shoes that Rose had wanted from the local outfitters (but had been wayyyyy too expensive for her to buy). He held them up and announced, "Hey, I had these lying around the house, I thought they might fit you." As we gazed on these baby blue brand new women's shoes in size 8.5 (the very ones Rose had put on hold a day earlier, hesitant to buy them because they were a little out of our price range) we wondered how it was that David- a single man- happened to have women's hiking shoes just lying around his house. Somehow he had gone to the store, taken them off hold and gought them for Rose while diverting our attentions with his delicate pamperings. ! This man, who Rose hadn't seen in 3 years, just outright bought us a pair of shoes and offered them to Rose as a wedding present. After rendering us speechless with his generous gift, David bought us lunch AND dropped us at the trail, thus saving us from the possibility of another hitch back on the interstate.Just after being dropped off at the trail to walk north, we met some folks who had walked southbound and they were getting a ride back to the place we were going to in 25 miles. So, thinking we could walk south down into town, rather than walking north away from it, we jumped forward with them and hiked back to Mt. Shasta. The next day Dacvid picked us up, fed us again and took us back to the trail. The second day at his house (and he thought he had aseen the last of us :) I found myself drinking soda and sitting in an automated full body massage chair that pushed and throbbed on all the places where my backpack had created stress with its 35 pounds of weight. This was even more ridiculous than the foot massagers of the previous day. As the chair shook and wiggled my body I closed my eyes and felt like I was being rocketed into space with the G-force of the Apollo 13 leaving the ground and taking off into the atmosphere. The chair continued to rock and vibrate and toss! me around while tranquil background music played and created a soothing atmosphere. This, I supposed was how David relaxed to get away from the drain of a days work. It was nice, I have to say, but I still think nothing can replace the human touch of my wife to get the knots and kinks out of my back. The vibrating space chair, however, was something novel that I probably would never experience again on this PCT hike.David, took us back to the trail for the second time and we were off to walk another 80 miles to the next trail town of Etna, CA. Rose and I rolled out a couple 25 mile days through the grandeur of The Trinity Alps. Rocky ledges and high cliffs (though not as "Alp-like" as anything in Switzerland) made this easily one of my favorite portions of trail. Steep, breathtaking views off narrow trail winding high across ridges made of loose talus gave it an extra push from the mundane into the extraordinary. We thereafter came to the Etna summit and caught a ride with a Forest ranger as soon as we hit the pavement. Within a couple of minutes, we were transported to the small but quaint town of Etna, with an elevation more than three times the number of people that lived there. This was pretty much a one-horse town. Or at least it hadn't yet gotten a stoplight, a McDonalds, or a Walmart. This made it all the more endearing to me and it was consequently nice not to be overwhelmed by the hub bub of a metropolitan sprawl. Even the Pharmacy in the middle of town (located a convenient block or two from either end of town) had class and personality.This was a 100 year old brick building that still had an old-timey soda fountain. Now for the baby boomers out there I know you remember this. Before Coca-Cola came in a can spat out by a machine, there was syrup. And the syrup got dispensed out of a bottle and then mixed with carbonated water that sprayed from a marble and brass fountain. This tradition, once commonplace 50 years ago, has since been mechanized and industrialized and streamlined with robots, factories, and chemicals. But to this Generation X kid, this was a pleasant remembrance of days gone by when things were a bit simpler and slower. It was nice to step back in time to Etna, CA. After cooling down with some Sherbert and some orange cream slush floats, we checked out the post office and tossed about our options for lodging in the town. Debating whether to stay at the local Etna Motel or the B&B we were in the middle of weighing the options between the two when an older retired pastor climbing back into his red T-Bird noticed my bright yellow shirt. Besides the color, he was attacted to the logo scrolled across my chest which read, "To walk by faith." Being a pastor, he recognized the reference from the New Testament and boldly looked at me and said...