Day 99 and On – Stealing Home

Sleeping in a room with a single stranger is harder than sleeping in a room full of strangers. My roommate at the Treeline Hostel in Alma is using our room as temporary housing while he searches for a permanent place. He is very settled in. It sort of feels like his room. I stay up late writing. When I go to my bunk, the room is dark. No, wait, my roommate is looking at his phone in bed. I undress in the light of the cracked-open door and slip into my bunk. There is supposedly a white noise generator in the room, but I don’t know where it is and I feel awkward about asking him to turn it on. I can hear him breathing, and he can probably hear me. A suppress a fart. Life in a hostel.

My roommate gets up at 6:30 for work. I get up too because I can’t lay in bed longer than that. Rummaging through the kitchen I find enough ingredients to make pancakes. They are surprisingly good even though they are puffier than I prefer. They are slightly burned, so that makes up for it.

Colorado

In the morning, I empty the hostel dishwasher and clean the kitchen. Nobody awakens. I read a coffee table book that shows pictures of Colorado 150 years ago and today. I learn that mining formed Colorado. People built roads, towns and railways for that one purpose. I learn that this state was inhabited by the Ute people and before that, the Ancient Puebloans. I am a shallow man, skating over hundreds of years of doings by serious people.

I roam around town, looking in the windows of closed shops. Alma is an overflow village for the tourist Mecca of Breckenridge. It has the feel of a town that is trying to change to survive. The hostel owner takes me into Denver because he lives there, and the middle of the week is a slow time for the hostel. We chat passionately about the problems we see all around us. When we reach a mutual state of despair, we arrive at Zach Weston’s apartment. Zach is my host for the next few days. I will be reunited with my friend and nemesis, the truculent giant marshmallow air mattress in Zach’s apartment.

Zach’s place (Denver)

First though, we go to a Rockies game!

Rewind. First I drag Zach to a multimedia Van Gogh exhibit that opens September 30. September 30! Today is September 9. The exhibit is still being built when we inquire about it at the venue. Luckily, the ball game is just up the road a mile. Zach gets credit for the save.

We both realize a life-long desire. We witness the national anthem singer stop stone cold in the middle of an a cappella rendition of the song when he forgets the lyrics. The crowd mercifully tries to help him by singing the next phrase: “o’er the ramparts we watched”. The singer does not follow the crowds prompting. Instead, the camera man filming a close-up of the performance, informs the singer of the next line. We are beside ourselves with our good fortune at another’s expense.

The Rockies (dismal this year) actually are about to win the game but lose it in the ninth inning. After the botched anthem, the outcome of the game seems fitting. Still, it was a fun time.

Zach is a generous host. At my request, he introduces me to hip-hop music – a genre I don’t understand and don’t appreciate. After his introduction, I think I see where my tastes fit into the hip-hop spectrum. We go to the theatre and see The Card Counter. I am glad to have seen the movie with him, because it is a movie that Patti would not have enjoyed.

In Denver I buy thrift store clothes to wear on the train – two whole outfits for $30. I buy enough food to survive for the three days to Orlando. (Unless you have purchased a sleeper and can eat in the dining car, train food from the lounge car is many times worse than trail food.) I figure out the buses required to get me from Zach’s neighborhood to the train station. I buy a used book (Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen), some paper and a coloring book for the train ride.

The ride home

Union Station is an eclectic collection of old and new elements. The architecture and furniture remind me of an older day, but the space is now highly commercialized like a shopping mall courtyard. However, since the shopping is located on the periphery of the main hall, it does not overpower its charm.

Unfortunately the train to Chicago is packed. It is late in the day when the train pulls out, so there is really not much to see. Since I have a rider next to me, I sleep poorly because I cannot lay down across an empty seat. In the morning, I retreat to the lounge care during the day.

Chicago Union Station

It is clear from the view out the window that I have left the West. Nebraska maintains an uneasy alliance with the high plains of Colorado, but Iowa knows nothing of the mountains. The Midwest is eminently suitable for human habitation and we have bent it to our will. Every acre of flat ground is under cultivation. We roll into the gritty train yards of Chicago. My train, the California Zephyr, is a little late getting into Chicago, but there is plenty of time to make my connection to the Capitol Limited bound for Washington DC. I am grateful, because Chicago’s Union Station is a pleasant and remarkable place, and I want to sit there for a while and stretch my legs.

If humanism is a religion, then Union station is surely one of its cathedrals. The sound of footsteps is amplified by the live stone surfaces of the building’s interior. Human voices rise and mingle in space below the high vaulted ceilings. In this building you are someone and no one. Your presence is amplified and suppressed. This building was made for you, but you are not worthy to stand in it. I sit upon one of the carved wooden benches wondering how many thousands have sat in this same place. For more privacy, I go to the corner of the main hall and sit on the floor where no one needs to walk and where I can survey the whole room while I eat something from my bag of food.

Sardines on a cheesy jalapeno roll and gummy worms taste good everywhere. (No, really they do!) However, I feel like a cold draft beer might be the finest complement so I take the stairs up to Canal Street.

In the sunlight, I look around at a lot of closed office buildings. This does not look promising. A man asks if I need help finding something. A place that serves beer? Sorry, the only place is the 7-Eleven one block over, but could I help him out. He is hungry. Amazingly, I did not see that coming. The man is clean, well-dressed and shaven. “Sorry,” I say, “I can’t help you.” “How about some money? Anything will do,” he persists. I tell him that I don’t carry money with me. Of course, that is a lie. I have money, but I just want to get away from him. I walk back into the train station.

What happened to me out there? I have a full bag of food in my hands and at least eighty dollars in my pack. I could have shared something. The deacon of St. Matthews just failed one of the most basic tests of faith. I am mortified. Jesus just asked me for food, and I turned him away. My basic, reflexive response is selfishness.

I board the Capitol Unlimited with about a hundred people. Amazingly, I manage to get a seat by myself. I should be able to sleep better tonight. I read Out of Africa. It is about Isak Denesin’s experiences as the owner of a coffee plantation in Africa in the 1930s and 40s. Her descriptions of the African people and their tribal cultures are so very interesting. I doze off. When I awaken, I have crossed the continental divide of this trip: I have passed the middle distance on the route of the middle train. There is no turning back now – all rivers flow toward Florida.

Washington DC Union Station

Union Station in Washington DC reflects its environment as the nation’s capitol. It’s gate entrances are utterly ugly and degraded, it’s main hall is beautiful and its ticketing hall has been converted to look like a shopping mall. The conversion is not an improvement.

My train to Florida is the Silver Star. The coach cars are squatty with smaller windows. I share a seat with an old lady whose speaks French on the phone with seemingly every single member of her extended family over the first 4 hours of the trip. The conversations are extended by her habit of saying “Huh?” at the end of every single first line of a conversation. So the poor person on the other end of the phone has to repeat every opening line. It would go like this:

“We had to take the dog to the vet, because she stopped eating.”

“Huh?”

“We had to take the dog to the vet, because she stopped eating.”

“Has she started eating now?”

“Yes, thankfully.”

(pause)

“Jeremy started piano lessons last week with Paul who lives next door.”

“Huh?”

“Jeremy started piano…” And so on.

I retreat to the lounge car and have a two-hour conversation with a woman who is recently widowed. She is uncomfortably frank about the details of her life before and after her husband’s death, including her failed attempts at finding a remotely decent man since then. I smile and nod before suggesting she find a widower to date. This seems to be an epiphany for her, because she did see a man who was a widower. She liked him, but he broke it off because to him, relationships were a source of pain. Should she call him again?

Anyway, that is how it goes on the Silver Star. The track through South Carolina and Georgia is so rough, I feel like the train is trying to buck me off. Maybe it’s just me. I am ready to be home. Even though my ticket is for Orlando, I decide to get off in Winter Park – one stop before Orlando.

Home

I disembark from the Silver Star at the quaint train platform in Winter Park. I call Patti and tell her where I am. She is still 30 minutes away so I collapse on the grass near the entrance to the platform parking lot. In Winter Park, I am probably breaking some kind of city ordinance by laying on the grass. I want someone to challenge me. Instead, everyone that passes averts their eyes. I am hiker trash. I am not surprised.

Will I return to the PCT if California lifts its ban on the National Forests? Honestly, I don’t know. All the hikers I know except the Wander Women have told me that they are not going back. Either they can’t afford it, or they don’t want to be surprised by another closure within weeks of returning. These are both good reasons for not going back.

However, there are also good reasons to go back if the forests open. Now is the best time to complete the trail because I am in good hiking shape and I because I don’t want to put my retirement goals on hold for another year. Finishing now makes for a better story, too.

If I don’t go back, this will be my last post. Keeping this blog has been incredibly rewarding. I hope that you have enjoyed my story as much as I have enjoyed telling it. If I do go back, the story will continue.

Thank you for all the encouraging words. Thank you for all the material support They meant more than you will ever know.

Doolittle