2005-04-18 - 2:05 p.m.
It was spring, so it was time to move, of course.
Not that my mother ever needed a reason to move, but the fact that it was spring was as good a reason as any. Not to mention that life at the commune was getting stale and she had met a new “someone” that sparked her interest – who just happened to fit into “God’s Plan” for our future.
Don’t ask - I’m not getting into it.
I really liked life at the commune in Medford, Oregon; that is to say, I liked it all except for the diet of tofu and rye bread that we were all on for several weeks running. The “commune” got all of its food from charity & handout organizations and sometimes they had more of one thing than another. Being beggars, we weren’t choosers, so we found ourselves eating a healthy diet…a REALLY healthy diet…if somewhat lacking in variety.
The afore mentioned “someone” was none other than, Denny. A transient by winter and back-woods survivalist by summer, Denny moved into “town” during the winter months and mooched at places like communes and gospel missions and lived in the woods starting in the spring. He buried his gear in the ground in some remote spot during the winter and upon returning would dig it up, hike to a new location, and set up camp.
I think it was common for him to drag someone out to the woods that had welfare and food stamp benefits, like my mother, so he had a steady income for staple foods and additional goods, but I didn’t know him long enough to learn this part of his modus operandi.
Denny, like my mother, was also a religious zealot and as a result had scriptures written (in pen) over the entirety of his main tent. There were actually two tents; a four-man tent and a six-man tent, the larger having a wood stove. Our campsite was quite well appointed, as he had all the gear anyone could possibly use and we did things daily to make it more livable, like collect pine needles for a campsite carpet, we built a sauna, and I constructed an over from an old “C Rations” hard-cracker can. It was the life I tell ya.
I was all of fifteen years old, I think, so I didn’t give two craps about living in the woods; in my mind we were having a great adventure and I was loving every minute of it. I loved the idea of being a frontiersman of sorts and often long to return to the woods and live the simple life afforded by avoiding societal responsibility. But this is about the mercy ride that I was given, as I promised in one of my last posts – there are many stories to tell about this time in my life, but I’ll move on.
The summer was at an end, so Denny and my mother chose the logical thing to do; they decided we would hike the thirty miles to the top of Crater Lake before descending out of the mountains and back into civilization. Why not – what could be better than hiking ten miles a day with a sixty pound pack up terrain that mountain goats shunned? I didn’t see a problem with it.
I won’t go into great detail, but some highlights include getting my hand stepped on by a moose and climbing one face of the mountain that was so steep we had to lay on our belly’s and scramble up to get our feet at the base of a tree, where we could stop and rest without sliding back down the mountain. To give you an idea of how difficult the terrain was – it took us five full days.
Upon reaching the top of Crater Lake, my mother and Denny spawned another great idea; they decided to send Keith and me on ahead, to hitchhike back to Medford – seventy miles away. You don’t know Keith, do you? He was a seventeen-year-old transient that had spent the summer in the woods with us; including my dog (Cubby) it was just the five of us.
So Keith and I walked and walked and walked – we walked sixty of the seventy miles into Medford. Not one car stopped to give us a ride the entire way and I was carrying sixty pounds of gear and wearing old-school hiking shoes. The result of this fete was: PAIN.
Somewhere around the sixty-mile mark we stopped and decided that we couldn’t take any more – our feet were killing us and my back was on fire. We sat down on the roadside and hoped – hoped for God’s mercy. Many cars passed us and finally I decided that we would wait for one more car and if it didn’t stop, we would crawl off into the brush and sleep until morning.
Then the mercy ride came.
Some guy in a little Toyota pick-up stopped and asked us where we were going. We told him we were headed into Medford; he asked where our parents were (Keith and I looked a lot alike) and we told him, but he didn’t believe us, sure that we were runaways. He told us to hop in back and help ourselves to anything we found.
The back of the pick-up was a veritable smorgasbord; there were coolers full of fruit, soda, and a large assortment of sandwich fixings. Having just emerged from the deep woods and a steady diet of oatmeal, lentils & rice, we were happy to get our grub on.
The guy drove to a lake and picked up his wife and son. Before driving on he asked if we liked pizza and we answered in the affirmative…obviously. This guy and his family took us to a pizza place and loaded us up – I ate fifteen pieces of pizza. The whole time he alluded to the fact that he didn’t believe our story, but thought the situation was cool, because he had done something similar as a kid. His wife was a really nice lady and asked if we wanted to stay at their place, but we passed, as we had to meet my mother and Denny at the commune the next day. They gave Keith some weed before we parted and told him not to share it with the little guy, which wasn’t an issue – I was hard-core against drugs. We thanked them profusely and watched them drive off before striking out and finishing off the last few miles to the commune.
We arrived late that night with full bellies and the smell of pizza on our breath. You know those tofu-and-rye-bread hippies were jealous, but then they didn’t just walk seventy miles (plus). I went to sleep to the sound of bluegrass guitar that night and slept like the dead.
I still can’t stand rye bread.
