Corvalis, Oregon** Season of Rain

Outside The Beanery coffee shop a rare blue sky stutters into being. It has been raining since...I can't remember the last entirely dry day. All is creek to river, bog into swamp grass, the constant dripping into a world of forests carpeted in moss in every color plate of green. The tent that has seen me through most of North America, a tornado, bullet holed in New Mexico, beat upon by drunks, and draw upon as if they were walls of a cave on those days when feet of snow locked me within my humble shelter has gone to the knife. The MSR Fusion2 four season tent, a tent I would buy again in an instant, is now sewn and seam sealed into a brown rip-stop waterproof pack cover for CrowDog, and pouches to keep gear dry. The art of all things being open to becoming something else preserves my wallet and exercises my mind. In truth, the journal pouch, roof vent for a previously purchased one man tent I used just a couple months in Mississippi and Louisana (and will now carry to the end of this journey unless I find another MSR), and a personal rain awning that mounts to my Dana Design external pack frame(CrowDog)so I can sit in a waterlogged field and write and eat with food unpuddled. It is my way of not saying goodbye to a tent that has preserved my life. Goodbyes are stacking up now. It is in my breathing, th altered cadence my heart; a subtle tug of knowing I am leaving something important behind, Kit(the travois that I pulled sine OK) will travel no further. The security knot of self reliance that I girdled myself with begins to fray. Towns that were once a week apart will now offer up hot soup within a days walk. Conversation will begin to look for me.
For a week I have lived with Dave and Jeni Wells-Whitney whom I met in Bisbee, AZ ten years ago. At that time I was living in and traveling the southwest in an Airstream trailer. Jeni and Dave were roving in their VW bus and settled into a camp beside my silver bullet. In a short period of time we braided our lives into a gentle rope that has maintained through the years by notes, phone and letters. Just as Walton's Mountain was built into the sketch of the walk so was eventually arriving at the Wells-Whitney door before I wandered to the Oregon coast.
Meals have been rich and uncounted. The hollows spaces between bones begin to fill, sharp ridges between my ribs soften. Nightly we watch Northern Exposure re-runs for the first time on VHS tapes and our delighted bodies are cemented excitedly on the couch like children. I think of walking through Roselyn, Washington where the series was filmed fifteen years ago. I think of walking without ending. Relatives have been warmly introduced, and hands of Dave and Jeni's friends have found mine, removing yet more strangers from the world. There is a great pleasure tied to being introduced to the friends of those we cherish. In this world of great music and souls truly alive yet lost in the sea of living on a globe seven billion strong I am given the hands of those that have been winnowed from the masses with love;songs that I may never have heard on my own and this alone is a reason for celebration.