Finding Frame

Cape Kiwanda,Oregon

As I have earlier mentioned,it is the road that measures my feet and molds the trail ahead, inspires or rejects in something as simple and subtle as the pivot of a toe. When I pass the production site of The Burning Plain I stop to ask about the distance to a store, a coffee shop where conversation can sit down outside the reach of the weather. I mention that I am considering Walking through Roslyn, Washington(although at the time it is a weak thought)as one of the last adventures within this walk--and that it is far from a certainty.
I am talking to Joe Solberg and several men that are moving in and out of motorhomes and tractor trailer cabs, part of the movie set's transportation crew. As we talk about the miles, nameless towns, states less friendly, and crazies under my belt I learn that Joe Solberg worked support on Northern Exposure, all 110 plus shows produced in the six years beginning in 1990. A N.E.(Northern Exposure)photo book appears and I am verbally taken behind the scenes, introduced to the cast, told where they now and given sketches in words on the land I will be walking through...Roslyn, Washington...Cicely, Alaska. Each question I ask helps to form the next until I am afraid that I am eating too much of Joe's ear. Joe is as patient as he is kind; his smile is inexhaustible. It is hard to learn too much about something we love. We take a few photos together, talk about what really exists in Roslyn, chug bottles of designer spring water in rectangle bottles, and I learn that John Corbett (Chris in the morning,KBHR,) is in the production being filmed a few hundred yards below us on the coast. It has been twenty two years since I have worked on a movie set, throwing football with the famous between takes. A hundred dollars a day was good money then. I would have done it for free. Standing on the tarmac pull-off next to the motor coaches I feel the familiar pine return; the want to be where energy is created, a place where a person can become anything or anyone...the knowing that a I don't have to stand in the center of the fire to feel an inner glow radiate outward.
From Tillamook I'll head northeast, back into mountains and snow. Nearly thirty feet of snow fell in the pass just after I walked out of the few feet on Tombstone Summit. With this knowledge, I turn back in to what I know. Kit, the travois that I pulled through over half of America is no longer tied to my hips. Again I will sleep with the full weight of the cold. Meal time will often pass without exercising my mouth and I may again resort to eating sticks of butter to stay warm. Regardless of the saturation of my boots I will grin past the the deep ruts worked into my shoulders as I trek 75 pounds of support in external frame CrowDog and head toward a road, a town that reaches out to me.