Canoe Journey! Imagine me, happy and free, fully inspired, wood through water, fueling and cooling my fire

Canoe Journey is so awesome.  I feel like being on Journey is my real life and this other life (work, bills, etc.) is the "work" that allows me to live the life I want to live, as fleeting as the annual tribal journeys may be.  I love being on the canoe so much, the people, the views, the clarity, ahhh.  I have some shoulder/neck issues, and they are so relieved by hardcore paddling: it's like physical therapy, the right muscles being used the way they were meant to be used, none of this desk/computer crap.  I also feel like I my body was born to do this, as if I am awakening something in my genes.  I'm really glad I'm going back out there after working today and tomorrow too, because I think I would cry if it was already over.


We pulled from Potlatch to Brinnon the first day and it was for real hella crazy exhausting.  An article about our first day landing:

 http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20100713/NEWS/307139988/windy-welcome-for-skokomish-pullers-as-tribal-canoe-journey-begins

 I was on the only canoe that made it that day that the article talks about.  Ed Green, the skipper in the article, is the skipper of the canoe I am on (he is really safety-conscious and experienced, and here is proof so my Mom doesn't worry).

The second day we landed in Port Gamble (I have seen no article about that: ha ha).

And here's an article about yesterday's landing in Port Townsend:

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20100715/NEWS/307159995/0/news/tribal-canoe-journey-travelers-come-ashore-at-port-townsend

Pre-Journey

It's nice and hot here in the Pacific NW!  It's about 90 degrees this afternoon here, but it should be cooling off soon.

I just had a nice conversation with my grandfather this afternoon.  I had a dream last night with all four of my grandparents over at my house for a party.  I was telling Grandpa that at one point in my dream, I was making him smell my sauerkraut (in awake life, he had been making apple cider vinegar, so that's the connection there).  That dream also included coyotes and buffalo so I was definitely busy in my sleep last night.

I was also telling him about Canoe Journey, which starts on Monday.  I'm getting packed this weekend and also, I am going to be sanding the cedar paddle that the skipper of the canoe (Ed) made for me yesterday:

Here's a map of where the Canoe Journey is going this year:

http://paddletomakah.org/routemap.pdf

The route I am going on starts in Skokomish and it's a pink line out of the Hood Canal on the map.  We will then join up with other canoes coming from other places and head out westward across the northern coast of WA to Neah Bay on the Makah Reservation.

I'll be going back to work for a few days in the middle of the journey (I wanted to have some vacation time left for a trip to MN).  I'll be on the journey July 12-14 and 17-19.  The 20th will be a (serious) rest day.   It's supposed to be about 70 the whole time on the journey, so that is wonderful (not too hot).

Indian Pipe

Today I was speaking with my mom on the phone while I was walking through the woods.  It may not seem like I'm fully embracing the solitude of the forest if I talk on the phone while I traipse through the wooded paths, but since I am so far away from her, it's actually the perfect place to talk with her.  We were discussing the oil spill and related deep thoughts of the children in her fourth grade class, when suddenly I looked down to see...Indian Pipe!

I am not sure that I have ever seen it before, but I have read that it is really rare and needs to parasitize a fungus for its nutrients, because it doesn't produce its own chlorophyll.  It is a beautiful plant! Go symbiotic organisms go!