Day 50 National Park 2011
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I woke up with total exhaustion from tension and pain
from last night. I recited Great
Compassion Mantra and I felt the relief.
I felt lighter and it worked. I
was chilly, I knew I wanted and needed to get up for sunrise but I didn’t get
up until 5am. I made hot tea and drove
to the lighthouse for sunrise on the beach.
The scenic view of this morning’s sunrise on the horizon was not what I
had expected. On the moon there was a kind of a spot light and everything else
was fog. I sat and drank tea, watched
the fog and thought about Native Americans, surrounding chi, and all the drug
and alcohol. Then I went to use the
vault toilet and it wasn’t a terrible experience, not as bad as Altaire
Campground, that was enough for a lifetime.
I reflected on my
internal chatter, how this and that needed to be right. Then I connected to how this sets things up
for others to be wrong and to be corrected.
The opposite is true too. They
are both on the ends of a teeter totter.
I am still on the teeter totter of struggle. I don’t need to be right or wrong. I want to be out of it all. “Just shut up!” was what I told myself, and
then the pressure on my chest lifted.
I drove one mile back to camp. The best part about this camp isn’t the
sites, nor the light house or the beach or even the town of Bandon. The best part is the closed beach hours from
10pm-7am and during that time you can have the entire beach to yourself. It is super cold, windy, foggy but it’s just
you and that’s nice. Lot’s of people
camp here, but very few are on the beach.
I made boiled pasta and crumpled chips into it, tasted
surprisingly good. 10 am is hustle and
bustle time, all the volunteer crews were out cleaning, picking up trash,
etc.. It’s quite an amazing process to
see. There were a lot of volunteers and
they are all very nice.
I drove to old town and parked right in front of the
Cranberry Candy store. The one Harold
stressed I should go to. Everything was
yummy. They had tasters for
everything. What a dangerous place! All the kids who step in, their eyes light up
like Christmas lights. The staff was
pleasant and wonderful. It is a
harmonious place. I bought CranMarion
Berry juice no sugar for $9.75 each.
They gift wrapped it for me. The
women at the store drew me a map of where the blueberry farm is and where to go
for wifi at the café and to go to Misty Meadow for jam and honey etc..
I walked to the café and bought a cup of water for tea
for $1.15. I poured in my own
Darjeerling tea leaves. All the staff
who worked at the café had really good healthy energy and was pleasant to be
around. I was really impressed.
I chatted with my sister and realized the dream I had the
other day of family and the dog were family distress and disharmony that was physically
taking place in real time.
Today was a good down time day. I was not feeling well today. I went to Misty Meadows and bought $100.
worth of Jam for gifts. Now how to get
it all home? I felt really ill when I
was done and very tired, low and slow chi and heavy chi. So I recited Heart Sutra over and over until
I reached camp. I was glad to somehow
made it back to camp in one peace, all ten whole miles. I laid on the hammock and breathed, coaching
myself to relax into the illness. I felt
better and got up, ate blueberries, cherries, bread and eggplant. Then I laid on the hammock some more. I didn’t make it over to the blueberry farm,
I was just overwhelmed and sick.
Kim came to invite me over for kimchi, rice, hot spicy
Korean soup. I passed, I was stuffed and
I really wanted to use the time for more recitation. Kim watches and looks out for me. She watches me with curiosity on how I can be
alone traveling for fifty days all camping on my own. She finally figured out
that I make myself comfortable with things l like, hammock, tea, writing
etc… She said she missed home where she
knows how to make herself comfortable.
She always gets the same campsite each year and books it nine months out
to ensure it because this site is full every night. She was impressed on how I know how to tie my
own hammock. So I showed her the only
knot I know. She said I should look into
buying a mini camper. I can barely reach
the gas peddle of a mini van and a mini camper will be even worse.
Kim was born in Korea and was adopted and raised in
Kaui. She lived in San Francisco where
she met Harold. She doesn’t speak Korean
and barely cooks Korean food and doesn’t really like seaweed. But everything about her is Korean, how she
does her hair, how she moved her body, even her accent from Kaui is Korean
English, isn’t that amazing. She brings
bird seeds and feeds birds each year she comes here, so all the birds love to
flock here. She also brings peanuts, I
see the shells at my site.
The sound of the creek right behind my site was music to
my ears at the Humbug Campground. Here
at this site the ocean waves are right behind me too.
The fog finally cleared at noon and was sunny the rest of
the day. Still the coastal wind was very
chilly. I dashed to the light house to
watch the sunset. The horizon was
getting blanketed with thick clouds straight across. It was like five waves out and creeping in,
in the form of fog. It looked like a
tsunami wave. I felt scared, like the
end of the world. A bit of orange and
blue hint lingered and feathered the rest of the sky. Then a fog above it all grew doom on
everything in the short span of half hour and the sky grew dark grey and I got
scared and drove back to camp with very little visibility.
I got into the B loop behind a RV towing a trailer of
three dirt bikes. They found their site
and unhooked the trailer, backed the RV into their spot. They saw me waiting and two men tried to roll
the trailer off the narrow loop road.
They needed more people but they rolled it anyways. It hurt my back just watching them push. Then finally a third person appeared to help
and clear the road for cars to pass.
I went for the shower and tried a different stall. The water was lukewarm. I was once again cold and shivering. Towards the end it got warm and I stopped
shivering. As I dressed the shower drain
burped sprinkles of gutter shower water and splattered onto me. Gross!
I went to the restroom where there was an outlet to blow dry my
hair. Another woman with red shoes while
brushing her teeth spoke her internal dialogue with her mouth full of tooth
paste as if she had an audience listening to her. I politely said good night and ran.
I came across April’s father who told me he was up until
4:30am. That he had been dead for past
twenty years but he is now alive. So all
those nights of talking at the campfire way beyond quiet hours paid off and the
fears of the daughter subsided. The
father had been revived! The magic of
campfires!
I put on more layers including socks for bed, it’s cooler
tonight. I was tired and I just wanted
to go to bed. I am amazed at how
physically exhausted I felt all day.
