Seven Miles To Waves

Toledo,OR

Rain falls sideways, shoved by the unfatiguing arm of the wind. In minutes my legs are soaked shingling water into my boots that aim to never dry. Again rain, though variation on a theme. Yesterday was my first sunny day in a month dayly watering. At first the sun made me flinch the way a laugh does after a long sadness, the squint of it erasing cloud. Now in Toledo I stop in at the Dancing Bear Bakery/Coffee Shop to hear words spoken in a new voice. Over a bowlof chicken soup and a hot cup of house joe I give up stories while trying hopelessly to memorize smiles and the perfumed talk of women, Jodie and Shannon, two tables away. Only now do I realize that I am a song catcher of sorts, gathering cords knit into new stories so that you the reader can be here inside looking out at water falling hard against glass while you spoon noodles around and around in a bowl, temporarily shielded from this rain moved by wind while two women I will probably never see again open their unique voices, stamp their finger print of town and family just for me.
Two blocks away at the library I receive a bag of food from the Dancing Bear via Shannon so I won't go to bed hungry. She is wet and wind swept though she shines like a rumor of sun,"I am so glad I didn't miss you. If you weren't here...," Shannon's eyes are electric. I feel them as much as see them. She is gone back into the rain before it dawns on me to hug her,; to offer up some gesture that she matters, that this matters. I am staring at the computer and the clock and the computer screen, Just outside of camp I will sleep between fields odf water. Tomorrow I'll walk back and say thank you properly.
Thousands of miles after a sow bear gave me her claws to carry on this walk I still see signs that we are connected, and 'the bear' is still carved on my spoon, still watching out for this traveler. The Dancing Bear...how perfect.
In two hours of walking wet I could reach the ocean. It is not the way I have seen it. Under a bridge without a name I will make morning coffee from rain and pack up the kit that has seen me across America. Tomorrow I will put a foot in the Pacific
Ocean and turn to walk north.