A Trip Home and Sonora Pass to Truckee

I haven't been sure of how much of my life outside the trail should go on my blog, but this blog is how I'm recording my life right now, so here it is:  I got off the trail for nine days, half of July 3rd, half of July 12th, and the eight days in between, to fly to my family's house for a siblings union.  I say "union" and not "reunion," because we went to meet our oldest brother Kevin for the first time.  Growing up my father was married to my mother, who had me and my sister.  He had previously been married to Delois, my brother Sather's mom, and we thought that she and my mother had been my father's first and second wives.  Actually, they had been his second and third, and he had also had a son with his first wife, Rosemary.  Kevin was raised in Wyoming by his mother and her second husband, who adopted him, and he didn't know about us growing up either.  He recently married a great woman named Karrie, who encouraged him to contact us, and we all arranged this meeting before I started the trail. 

We met where we three younger siblings grew up, so we could show Kevin and Karrie around.  My brother Sather lives near there so we all stayed at his house, and he arranged a lot of the weekend for us all.  Here are just a few snapshots and notes from the weekend:   


Larry Flynn's children, oldest to youngest - Kevin, Sather, me, and Ivory (and Ivory's daughter Delilah)

My brother Kevin and my sister-in-law Karrie

My brother Sather's son, Riley

One thing that we did was to take Kevin and Karrie out to see the house we grew up in.  We weren't sure who was living in the house now or how we would be received, but when we told Rebeccah, the woman watering plants in the yard, who we were she just said

"I was wondering when you would show up!"

She took us into the house and gave us a tour, and all of our mouths dropped.  We had grown up in a house never finished, and she had completely remodeled and decorated it beautifully, and made it look like something where characters in a television show would reside.  I was in such shock that I completely forgot about showing the house to Kevin, and simply ran around snapping as many pictures as I could. 

This bears no resemblance to the house I grew up in.

We grew up pretty rurally, but there is one store about 2.5 miles from the house, and the couple who own it are good figures in the community.  I remember my mom telling me that Jeffery Margolis had brought her a bottle of wine when she had each of us daughters, and he also recited a poem at my father's funeral.  He got choked up when he saw Kevin, as Kevin bears such a striking physical resemblance to our father. 

Visiting Everybody's Store, owned by Amy (front left) and Jeffery (in back in the cowboy hat) Margolis

We had dinner with the Copelands, who I can only describe as my second family.  We've celebrated major holidays with them as long as I can remember.  We had both my father's funeral and my sister's wedding at their house, and they moved out of their master bedroom into an upstairs one so that my mom could live with them for a year in between my father's death and my sister's moving out to California to buy a house.  Tom was my first skipper commercial fishing, in Southeast Alaska in 1997, and once drove to Seattle to get me because I'd had a breakdown.  Merrie can do anything from tow your truck out of the mud to sew you into your wedding dress when you break the zipper right before you're about to walk down the aisle - literally, I can not imagine a crisis she can not handle.  I haven't lived in Whatcom County for many years, but I still consider them the center of my world.

Visiting the Copelands, who are my second family - Merrie (orange shirt) and Tom (grey shirt, next to Merrie) are in the middle row.

My sister-in-law Asa did my hair in what she called the Game of Thrones style.

Our crew for the weekend (minus Riley) - in back is Ivory, Sather, Kevin, and Me, and in front is Karrie, Asa (holding Delilah), and Delois.

It's hard to sum up the weekend, but I'll give it a shot:  Firstly, it was intense but very positive overall.  We all really sincerely liked Kevin and Karrie, and while a weekend is nothing compared to all of the years we've spent apart, I have hopes that we'll develop real, strong relationships.  Secondly (and Kevin mentioned something to this effect), it was really crazy for Sather, Ivory, and I to give someone a tour of our early lives, and I think that we all learned from it. 

After the weekend Allegiant didn't fly back to Reno until Thursday, so I spent a few days catching up with the Copelands and with Sather's family, writing my last two blog posts, and eating everything in Sather's refrigerator.  On Thursday my sister-in-law Asa drove me buy some groceries and catch my flight, and after a couple of hours I was back in Reno. 

In the facebook era I'd gotten back in touch with my old friend Josh, who I hadn't seen for almost 20 years.  His mom Laurie had taught me to ride horses and had sold me both of the horses I'd owned, and Josh and I had spent years running around in the woods as kids.  Josh is living in Reno, where he works as a civil engineer.  He picked me up at the airport, and we hugged.

"Has it been 20 years?"

"No, but it's been close - 19 since graduation."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

He took me to his house, where he lives with his lovely wife Jackie and three rambunctious sons.  We sat up late into the night talking about our childhood, and where we had lived after and what we had done, and the weekend I had just had, and hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.

Josh holding one of his sons

It is incredibly strange to find that someone you played with as a kid has a kid of his own who is fully capable of holding a conversation with you.

Josh's wife Jackie, as the family gets ready for the day

It was fun to see Josh a successful adult, but a bit unnerving too.  I kept wondering - should I be an adult by now? 

The next day I caught a public bus down Highway 395 towards Bridgeport.  I was happy to find that the bus would drop you off at any point along the way, so I could get off where Highway 108 headed west towards Sonora Pass.  I was even happier when, exiting the bus, the car behind us turned onto Highway 108 and stopped.

"You a PCT hiker?"

"Yeah, are you going to Sonora Pass?  Seriously?"

I ran to the car and Marie and Harlan, a couple from Eugene down to do section hikes, drove me right back to where I'd gotten off the trail: 

Sorry, but I just think the "no squirrels" symbol is hilarious.

To say that getting back on the trail after nine days was hard would be an understatement - it was really, really tough.  Just going back to hiking physically after taking nine days off was tough, but it was also tough mentally.  Everyone I'd hiked with was far ahead of me and I felt behind, and the terrain was getting deserty again after the High Sierras, and I had no enthusiasm for going back to the desert. 

I don't know why I find rocks so interesting - these kinds are so different, but they're right next to each other...

There was still snow in some of the higher spots.

This is my sister-in-law's name.

Asa, this is your lake.

The Marines have a mountain warfare training base on the highway between Sonora Pass and Bridgeport, so I'm thinking they must have planted this flag as part of some sort of exercise. 

I slept next to the road here after hiking what was first definite 30-mile day.

I haven't seen a lot of signs explaining the PCT along the PCT, but there was one here.

I think it's trippy the way the fluorescent yellow moss grows in circles like this - what is it about the tree's physiology that causes it?

I didn't go into South Lake Taho, where a lot of hikers rest after the High Sierras, but the trail ran right by a small store on Echo Lake and I stopped there to resupply and to have a milkshake and some wine.  There I met Bill and Simon, who were there from San Francisco visiting Bill's family's cabin near the lake.  They had come down to the lake to throw a stick for the dogs and I of course fawned all over the dogs, like I always do.  Bill owned a couple of cafes in San Francisco and Simon had worked for him for years, and they were good friends.  They decided to adopt me for the night and took me back to the cabin where they fed me steak tacos, gave me a room, and even gave me one of the dogs to sleep in the bed with me. 

Bill, me, and Simon

They dropped me off at the store again the next afternoon, and I didn't make it very far that night but started making miles again the next day. 

The north end of Echo Lake, with it's hoi polloi vacation houses

Lake Aloha

Lake Aloha

Dick's pass

The snow on Dick's pass

My camp site on the north side of Dick's Pass

Walking along this ridge, I saw something that I wouldn't have believed if someone had told me.  I saw what appeared in every way to be a wolf.  It was too far ahead of me to get a picture of, but it moved like a wild animal and was simply too big to be a coyote.  When I reached the end of the ridge, another hiker named Cartwheel was sitting, waiting for a girl in his group who was behind me. 

"Did you see some kind of a dog?"  he asked.

"Yeah, I saw it," I answered, "it had to have been a wolf - you saw how it moved."  Cartwheel had been close enough to it to get a picture, and he showed it to me.  "Look at the size of that thing," I said, "what else can it be?" 

The problem, though, is that wolves don't live around here.  I've told the story to a few people, and I've heard two possible explanations.  The first came from Mrs. NoHurry, who told me that coyotes, wolves, and domestic dogs can all interbreed and produce fertile offspring.  She said that coyotes in the area have a lot of wolf and domestic dog mixed in, so that I probably saw a coyote that was bigger than I would think a coyote should be because it wasn't a pure coyote.  The second possible explanation came from another hiker, who told me that it's been in the news that a single wolf migrated far south of the nearest wolf populations to the north, and is currently cruising around California looking for a mate.  She said that he's been radio collared and is being tracked, and I googled the story and she was right - here's a New York Daily News article on it.  I guess the chances are slim, but if that wolf happened to be cruising along the PCT between Echo Lake and Truckee during this time, then I saw him. 

Apparently this is a ski area, and that fence is to keep skiers on the east (far) side of it.

I still can't get over seeing ski resorts in the desert.

What is this plant?

Sometimes the trail runs along a ridge and you get the view all around.

After a few more days I reached Donner Pass.  This is Donner Pass as in The Donner Party, which I think every American has heard about, but maybe not people in other countries.  The Donner Party was a wagon train migrating to California in 1846.  There were incredibly heavy snows that year, and they were trapped in the mountains for I think several months.  About half of the party died, and those who survived did so by cannibalizing the corpses of those who had died.    

Donner Pass

I came off the trail and the boyfriend of another hiker, who was waiting there to surprise her, gave me a ride into Truckee.  His name was A.J. and he had recently become a firefighter, which I found really interesting.  I might be too old, but I think it sounds like a great job.  A.J. left me at the post office where I picked up my fuel canister, and then looked for a place to eat lunch.  The main street was full of tourist restaurants, but I found a Mexican restaurant on a side street that was reasonably priced and full of locals.  I ate a huge plate of food at the bar, and then went out back to return a call from the unemployment office.  It turned out that someone had reported this blog to them, and I was kicked off of unemployment and would even eventually have to pay back the money that I'd collected since starting the trail.  I'd done the required weekly job searches consistently but hadn't physically been in Portland, and I was completely busted by the blog.  I staggered back into the bar, reeling, and sat down.  How could someone do that?  Who could be cowardly and mean enough?

Sitting to my right at the bar was a friendly local lawyer named Kirk, and when one of the other locals paid for his lunch and left before he even realized it, he retaliated by paying my tab.  Sitting to my left was a couple named Sarah and Oscar, and after Kirk left I started chatting with them.  I told them about the phone call I'd just had, and a tear fell. 

"My god, who would do that?"

"Do you want to come home with us?"  I nodded. 

We drove to their house and dropped off my pack, and then we drove to Donner Lake.  Oscar took off around the lake on his bike, and Sarah and I paddled across it on paddleboards.  Sarah stood effortlessly on hers, a small cooler in the stern and her dog Gila perched on the bow.  I stood up for about 30 seconds, but that was all I could do.  I even fell in once from a kneeling position, but the water felt good.  We reached the opposite shore where their friends were gathered, and we all introduced ourselves. 

"We heard what happened, so sorry - who would do that?"  Sarah handed me a beer.  The sun shone on the lake.

"I don't know," I said, "but I guess it's the definition of a first-world problem."  Everyone laughed. 

We all got together for a barbecue in the evening, and in the morning I went back down to the lake and sat on the shore with Gila while Sarah and Oscar took the paddleboards out.  I wish I had a picture of them on the lake because the outdoors is their place where they're both most alive, but at least I have the one below: 

Sarah and Oscar

I honestly don't know what I would have done if these two hadn't adopted me for the evening.  They just somehow made it OK.  Yeah, someone out there is mean enough to turn me in to unemployment and that person caused me some serious problems, but far more people are kind enough to help me. 

Oscar said that Truckee was not the worst place in the world to get stuck and they invited me to stay another night, but I found that I was able to take the positive energy they gave me and turn it into a renewed attack on the trail.  They drove me back to the pass, and I hugged them and thanked them and set off more determined than ever.