Time for more painting. My watercolour teacher shares my love of trees. In his class I have painted birches, black oaks, fir trees, deciduous trees, palms, trees in winter, some in summer, the gamut. Walking in my daughter's neighbourhood in Calgary I spied a tree that I had to try on my own:
It's a Chokecherry. I have a thing for painting trees and houses, I'm going to concentrate on those for awhile. In between knitting, that is.
Backing away from knitting again, this post has to do with trees. I realized I left out one of my favourite pictures from the Juan de Fuca Trail series:
After a brief foray into a hiking blog, I had to remind myself that this is about knitting.
Sometimes in knitting, one little thing will stall your internal knitting machine, requiring more energy than you have in reserve to get going again. Taize is a slow go, hence its description as a meditative knit. It would be wrong to speed through meditation, so I accept it as the pattern's inherent nature. It's called Taize for a reason.
This is Taize being tinked back seven rows. You can barely see the issue hiding on the right side close to the needles. Three rows that incorporated a few inches of poorly dyed yarn produced a white line of stitches, which as my mother would have said, stuck out like a sore thumb.
If Taize is meditative going forward, it is doubly so moving backwards.
Botanical Beach and beyond:
It was after this point in the day, about seven hours in, that I told Chuck that everything was crying except for my eyes. Another 60+ point: it felt bad at the end of the day's hike, but at least for me, by the next morning I was ready to go again. Who knows how many days that would have lasted?
Nearby Avatar Grove – Canada's gnarliest tree. Notice Chuck miniaturized on the lower right side of the tree:
All's well that ends well. We made it in one piece to meet Blogless Marsha at the hotel in Sooke:
We dubbed her Hikeless Marsha for the weekend.
Final thoughts: be prepared for high log or plank bridges, tree trunk stairs, slippery surfaces, no turning back and no communication with the outside world. But in the end, despite half a black toenail, I had no blisters, a sense of accomplishment and bravery, and physical strength that I had forgotten about. It was good preparation for our post retirement dream of a Camino trek.
One last 60+ thought. With the exception of our group we never encountered anyone over the age of 30 on the trail. Hmmm.
Parkinson to Botanical: the rain forest portion.
Dave says to me, "You look like you just stepped out of the shower!"
"I'm not sure if it's sweat or the rain."
Entering the rain forest portion we read a sign: Do not be surprised if you encounter rain. This rain forest receives 12 feet of precipitation per year. It might as well have read "Cue the rain." Plink, plink and then a downpour.
Covered in a carpet of velvety green moss, this segment was wetter and more slippery than the rain forest of my residence. Next segment: Botanical Beach and beyond.
Day two: Parkinson to Botanical Beach. We decided to change the order of the hike to experience trees and trails of every shape and texture. If you only want to do only one day of the Juan de Fuca trail this is the one to do:
After that drop off, there's a kilometer of beach rock hiking, my favourite part:
Mussel beds:
A watercolour to be:
The wildlife:
Looking back:
Next installment: Parkinson to Botanical – the rain forest.
Meanwhile, back at the camp:
From my years as summer camp staff I knew we needed to have a skit at campfire, so I morphed into the camp fairy and dubbed my mates with their hiking names. I was, of course, Lifesastitch. C was Chuckwagon for his catering duties. Lynn was Bunny Hop because, for a woman of nearly 60, she hops like a bunny on the trail whenever we hike. Dave was Achey Breaky for his audible groans and Jeff, his son, was Pass-a-Pole. Point of advice #4 – alway take a considerate much younger man on your hike to help out in difficult times. On particularly steep points Jeff would offer one hand to take one of my poles (hence, pass a pole) and the other to give me a boost. There is a double entendre here, as I was most often the last in our line of hikers and of Polish decent, so to speak.
Day one – Chin Beach to Sombrio – Leave your fear at home.
Drove to the meeting spot by the side of the road so Dave and Jeff could switch to daypacks. First bit of advice to the 60+/- crowd and those with recent broken ankles: find a friend who will maintain a base camp, enabling you to hike in and out for a series of day hikes with daypacks. Thank you, Chuck for making this happen with some fine meals, red wine and bottled water.
Started on logging road, turning onto the trail. Up we went, I'm looking off to the steep drop off. Don't look down to you right, comments Dave. Don't look down to your left, I reply realizing that we were on a high skinny ridge and what goes up must come down. Leave your fear at home.
First day highlights, Jeff at the top of the ridge:
Coming down from the top. Point of advice #2 & 3 – In certain circumstances I'd rather be on my butt voluntarily than involuntarily and gaiters are a must.
It might be steep, but it's beautiful:
Don't know what got into us. Four of us, three aged 60 more or less, came to the decision to hike the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail on the west coast of Vancouver Island. You may have heard of the West Coast Trail, the well known BC extreme trek. Well this is the geographical continuation of the West Coast, the end of one located 200 meters from the beginning of the other.
The original plan was to do the first three days of the West Coast southbound and pay the $50 fee to be boated out at the half way point. That option was recently discontinued and seven days wasn't going to work, so Bob's your uncle, as they say in Canada. A three day hike sounds so simple on paper, but this is no walk in the woods, involving scrambling, ankle sucking mud pools, leg twisting roots, slippery log bridges, bears and signs that warn you of the threat of cougars and rogue waves.
Arriving in Victoria the night before, I obsessed rather than slept, thoughts bubbling around my brain: will the bear lockers be full, will our tents hold up, worry about Dave and Jeff who have already been on the most rigorous section of the trail for two days, still have stuff on the to do list – ice, gas, Subway sandwiches for our first lunch…Tried to calm my mind by painting an imaginary watercolour but there was too much detail. New respect for long distance hikers and the amount of preparation required or do they go in with a certain amount of clueless denial? I think that could be it. Like childbirth preparation, no matter how much you know, nothing can adequately prepare you for the reality of the actual event. For heaven's sake, go to sleep, it's only three days.
This will be continued in segments, one every few days.
…I will have finished hiking three days of the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail. Hopefully. It started out as the five day plan, but given the terrain of day two, and one year out from last summer's fractured ankle that refused to heal, three days seems more do-able. However, Dave, of Blogless Marsha fame, and their son persevered with a two day start. Oh what stories we'll have. That is if we successfully met at our rendezvous point out in the middle of nowhere.
Anyone taking bets? Check in next week for the official re-cap.
And as a follow up to last week's question: butterflies or barns? The answer is barn:
Life's a Stitch 
