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North America Oregon The Nomadic Life Travel

Hitching a Ride from an Oregon State Trooper

We shyly put our thumbs down when we realized the car headed towards us had the ominous stamp of a state trooper vehicle. That did nothing to stop them from doing a u-turn in the middle of the highway and slowing to a stop just in front of me. Like an angry parent, the driver motioned for me to come to the car with his index finger and reluctantly I poked my head in to the passenger window and said hello.

“What on earth are you girls doing out here?” he asked.

We were approximately halfway between Yachats and Florence, OR. In other words, no where.

“Well, we were hiking rather unprepared and by the time we arrived at this camp site it was already too late in the day to continue hiking to Florence, and, well, all we have is some hummus and half a cucumber and need to get more food.”

They cracked a smile at my pathetic story and gave me the usual speil about how dangerous hitchhiking is before turning to each other and saying “well I suppose we could give you a ride down to Florence.” They acted as though they were going far out of their way but somehow I got the feeling they had been planning on giving us a ride the whole time.

Locked safely in the hard, plastic back seat of the state trooper car, Marian and I had the uncontrollable urge to giggle. The kind where one glance at the other person is enough to bring the laughter re-surfacing to a hilarious uproar. 

“Hey, hey, did you tell them about the drugs?” Marian joked.

Tears threatened to pour out.

“Ready?” the troopers shouted through the grate before speeding back down the snaking 101, classic rock blasting from the speakers. As we made our descent, they pointed out major attractions alongside the road and we joked that the driver should be a tour guide upon his upcoming retirement. Further down the road, the other went on about how crazy his son was for camping in the woods with nothing but a tarp.

Fifteen minutes later they dropped us outside of a Safeway and wished us luck on or journey. Safely away from them, we burst out in laughter. Besides the absurdity of our ride, I felt pleasantly surprised in the realization that the authority figures of my youth are human too.

Categories
Adventure Travel North America Oregon The Nomadic Life

Hiking in Cascade Head, Oregon

Photo Credit: Marian Mclaughlin

Neskowin to Lincoln City

Photo Credit: Marian Mclaughlin

The trail unofficially known as Phil was closed for good reason. But since our new friends in Neskowin who had dragged a plastic dining set to the beach to share a sunset pasta dinner with us had assured us it was OK to hike, we trekked on. A mudslide perhaps had strewn tree trunks and branches across the path and stream-fed weeds grew tall enough to render it invisible in parts.

On the other hand, boot and dog prints made us think we weren’t alone. Someone with a hatched (who we frankly referred to as hatchet man) had cut slits in the logs to make them passable, encouraging us to continue. However, when the dog prints clearly enlarged to bear prints my body tensed with anxiety and I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out and hitch a ride to Devil’s Lake.

Sure, I’ve been on sub-par trails and traipsed through the habitats of animals who sometimes maul humans, but I’d always had someone more experienced to defer to. My anxiety welled as I realized I was the experienced one.

I had forgotten to tell someone other than the Neskowin pair we’d known for less than a day about our whereabouts and the list of things that could go morbidly wrong raced through my mind. I suddenly felt foolish. So when the trail opened to a gravel road that cut through it, we abandoned our nature trek for the highway — too nervous from following bear tracks and tired of clapping our way up a mountain to say the hike was still enjoyable.

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Travel

How Travel Teaches Minimalism

Credit to micmol @ flickr

This time next week, all my possessions will be in boxes and backpack again as I prepare to leave Seattle. Yet, last night when I invited a few friends over for a party — all my things still happily lapping up fresh apartment air on shelves and floor space — several of them joked about how little I owned. Regardless of the fact that I moved to Seattle via airplane (and therefore a restricted amount of luggage I could bring) and with the intention of staying less than a year, minimalism and living with fewer possessions has been one of the many unexpected lessons of vagabonding.

Through traveling we learn to be resourceful. We are forced to dump our backpacks out on hotel beds and create “need” and “don’t really need” piles. When you carry your home on your back, buying anything suddenly becomes a weighted decision. Do I need this enough to carry the extra bulk? Is it worth the money I could be spending on a nicer meal or putting towards sleeping in a bed instead of a tent? Couldn’t I use my [insert item here] that I already own for that purpose instead? After enough time, most travelers, especially of the budget/backpack variety either wittingly or not become minimalists. We want versatile, multi-purpose items. We want less. At some point we realize that we’ve lived perfectly fine without most of our old possessions for X months, years, on the road, so why would we need to accumulate just because we’re stationary again?

This is how the travel mindset seeped in to my stationary life and I came to have nothing but a table, a futon, and a milk crate full of books in my apartment. (Minimalist or not, books are still a guilty purchasing pleasure I attribute to my parents buy-whatever-book-you-want attitude when I was a kid.) In part, I wanted to get off the road and post up somewhere for awhile so I could indulge in the aspects of a stationary life, of which not caring about the total weight and space of my possessions, own an herb garden and a nice large french press, was one. But somehow in despite of this I never really accumulated. Herb garden and french press, check, but then that was it. Once a traveler always a traveler I suppose, and sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever stop avoiding a car purchase like the plague.

Long term travel teaches us a plethora of habits and mentalities we carry with us into every day life. Seriously rethinking material possessions was a major one for myself, although I do have daydreams of someday owning a bed AND a couch… *shhh*

Categories
North America The Nomadic Life The United States Travel

Couchsurfing Beyond Travel: Getting Involved in Local CS Communities

Couchsurfers at an art gallery

Couchsurfers at an art galleryThe Seattle Freeze
“So, you’re new here?” the obviously drunk girl in front of me in line for the bathroom asked, “have you ever heard of the ‘Seattle Freeze’?” “No, I haven’t,” I replied, and as though she were purposely continuing the mystique of the question, she merely said “look it up,” and went to the next open stall.

According to a Seattle Times article (and not the drunk girl), the Seattle Freeze is a sort of “have-a-nice-day-(elsewhere)” mentality that many transplants to Seattle experience. People in the Pacific Northwest are notorious for their polite, laid-back demeanor, but newcomers to the city find it difficult to get past these initial, superficial interactions and form a circle of friends.

Breaking the Ice
My experience of moving to Seattle felt nothing like the frustrations transplants in the article and at various temp jobs spoke of. In attempt to make friends, I decided to tap in to one of the many resources for meeting people I use while traveling: Couchsurfing (CS). If it works when I’m on the road, why shouldn’t it work when I’m relocating to a different city?

I approached moving the way I would traveling and in the process discovered that although Couchsurfing generally has a reputation as a resource for connecting travelers and locals, local CS communities put like-minded travelers and travel enthusiasts in touch who, for whatever reason, aren’t traveling. “Couchsurfers are naturally curious people,” one friend theorized, “and I think you have to have a sort of open mindset to sign up for the site in the first place that makes it so easy to befriend strangers.”

How Local CS Communities Connect
Seattle’s Couchsurfing community celebrated their second annual camping trip (which I was lucky to be a part of!) a few weeks ago and more than 45 couchsurfers and friends drove out to the Olympic Peninsula for a friendly take over of 5 camp sites and to meet new people living in and around Seattle. Although some travelers joined the epic camp trip, most attendees were either transplants or natives to Seattle. Some found linking up with fellow CS-ers at home a way to cope with coming back from a long trip, while others were simply interested in making friends with other well-traveled, adventurous people. Either way, the trip demonstrated CS’s ability to be more than just a travel resource.

Find CS-ers in Your Area
In both Washington D.C. (my hometown) and Seattle (my new town), regular CS happy hour events were posted on the “groups” forums as well as other random hikes, yoga sessions, or outings to art galleries and outdoor cinemas. There’s even a CS camp at Burning Man now. Sift through community posts by location or theme, or browse events in your area. Alternatively, if you have an idea of something you’d like to do, create an event or post yourself — even if you don’t know anyone, you may be surprised by the responses you receive.

However, while Seattle has a unusally active group — with at least 2 or 3 meetups with great turnout each week — not every city has such a strong bond between local CS-ers. Maybe it’s the Seattle Freeze or high rate of transplants that pushed us towards alternative ways of making friends, maybe not. In any case, I’d like to think Seattle is living proof of the potential CS has for bringing people together, both on the road and off.

Categories
The Nomadic Life

Goats, Tajine, and Rock Climbing in Toudra, Gorge, Morocco

Old, familiar muscles in my forearms begin to wake from a long hibernation as I wrap my fingers around the porous, red limestone of Morocco’s Todra Gorge. I never realized limestone could feel so rough, but relish the satisfaction of letting it carve calluses in my fingers and the sticky ease with which I move 60 feet above the valley. My body remembers the movements but nothing about the stinging smell of smoke and the day’s first shouted greetings between souvenir shop owners fits my registrar of what-it’s-like-to-rock climb.

I am a dot on the wall of the massive, towering, rock face that all but engulfs the gurgling Dades River that long ago dominated the landscape before cutting the gorge into existance. It feels unconquerable, yet each year hordes of climbers gather to clip in to the ancient stone. Gracefully, they balance, crimp, and grip their way thousands of feet upwards to where the rock meets the sky. I set my goal lower.

My feet find refuge on a wide ledge while I scan for my next move, but call and response bleats among a herd of sheep interrupt my focus. They lethargically envelop my partner Mohammad, like an army of invading clouds, led by an elderly Berber wrapped in the traditional, hooded, djellaba, and an uncanny resemblance to a Jedi master. Before climbers began trekking here for steep ascensions, nomadic pastoralists like the Jedi followed the natural eating patterns of their livestock throughout the High Atlas Mountains. I pause to watch these representatives of modern and tradition collide before yelling, “Take!” and continue along the vertical route millennia of weather has constructed and only recently humans have attempted to conquer.

The bleating fades out, the rush of water becomes a meditative rhythm, and intuitively my body sends me higher and higher until… “Fin!” I shout to Mohammad. Immediately, a burst of claps and shouted applause from a group of urban Moroccan teenagers shatter my peaceful sense of accomplishment and I snap to attention. It isn’t just the rock and me today – it’s me and the rock above a whole microcosm of life; the quiet gurgle of glacier water competing with young children splashing each other and the muffled hum of tourist vans. He slackens the rope while I try to pretend it’s totally normal to repel down from a climb to the congratulatory soundtrack of picnicking youth who gather here each Sunday. My expression, unsurprisingly, gives me away.

My arms, pulsating strained energy, prevent my fists from closing and urge an end to the climb. I coil up the rope and my partner tosses the heavy load of gear on his shoulder to prepare for a slow shuffle down the black tarmac that runs through the gorge; the river demoted to a curbside attraction. Off the wall, we re-immerse into the activity brought on by the mid-afternoon sun; the gorge has awoken.

Categories
Adventure Travel North America The Nomadic Life The United States

Why I Want to Visit the Oregon Coast Trail Right Now

With novice-hiker friendly Camino de Santiago financially out of reach, inspiration for my latest travel daydream is a bit closer to home.

1. Potential for Long-Distance Trekking

While most sources seem to point towards day-treks on the Oregon Coast Trail (OCT), over the years the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department have developed the OCT as a route for hikers to be able to thru-trek the state’s coast. Most impressively, this project includes a set of comprehensive maps and directions for those attempting it. The remoteness of the trail varies from fairly secluded, to not at all — at times criss-crossing with highway 101 and several coastal towns. In fact, 41% of the trail is on paved roads, and not really much of a trail at all. However, there’s definitely an appeal to this as it makes  it easy to hop on and off the trail to refuel or quell that inevitable sense of loneliness on a long journey alone.

2. Diverse Landscapes

One of the highlights of the OCT is it’s unique geography.

“It’s incredibly varied. Tidepools, secluded beaches, old-growth forests, shifting sand dunes: All are part of the Oregon coast hiking experience” (from Day Hiking: Oregon Coast by Bonnie Henderson)

Not to mention an array of noteworthy sights and parks along the way, such as Cannon Beach, Rockaway Beach, and Ecola State Park, where the classic 1985 film The Goonies was shot. 1980s-style treasure hunt anyone?

3. Never too Far From Beer

Oregon and the Pacific Northwest have rapidly gained a solid reputation for their microbreweries, some of which are conveniently located alongside the OCT (a list can be found here). Happily, one of my favorite breweries, Rogue Ales (brewers of the oh-so-tasty Dead Guy Ale), is among them. It’s coastal location in Newport boasts 35 taps and a gastropub menu that will surely serve motivational purposes for the first half of the hike.

4. Watching the Whale Migrations

I’m not entirely sure why the possibility of spotting a one of the gray whales that make their Alaska – Mexico migration along the coast is so appealing — but it is. Each year in the winter and spring, whales can be seen making their migration along the coast. However, the parks estimate that about 200-400 whales stay put along the coast in the summer time, meaning that no matter what time of year it is there’s always a chance one will make an appearance.