Pct day 119

October 5

Shelter Cove to Maiden Peak Hut

I got to Shelter Cove Resort in the morning. The restaurant was closed for the season. But they still had plenty of RV visitors so the store and espresso machine were still up & running. I talked to some nice dogs, one pair of cuddly cocker spaniels that I wanted to squish into my sleeping bag. I met some southbound hikers. Drinking beer at 10am. One guy was staying in a cabin. When I saw the weather report, I asked how he felt about sharing a cabin. He said he’s married with kids so he wanted this time to be alone. That’s cool, I can understand wanting solitude for some private day drinking.

Later I found a letter he’d forgotten in the bathroom. He was stoked. “I would have been in trouble with my wife if I’d lost that,” he told me. But still not grateful enough to let me rent half his room. Dammit, and the price was just too high for me. It’s not meant to be. Because really, if I’m going to start staying in cabins and hotels every other night, I should just call it done.

I guess I’m really coming to the end. Oh, that just made me cry.
But I have to try my 24 hour hike before I’m done.

The weather forecast looks brutal. What’s that snowflake looking thing? It’s going to fucking snow next week?

And then I remembered about the cabin. Maiden Peak Ski Hut. It has solar panels and a wood stove. I didn’t have to sleep in the rain. 

I still dawdled around the resort too long, charging and downloading and caffeinating. Chilly rain spluttered all afternoon. Finally I forced myself back up the hill. I walked in a cloud the whole way. Literally, the air was saturated with visible water vapor. Like a bathroom full of steam from a hot shower, except this steam has icy fingers that seek out exposed skin and suck out all warm. I was grateful for the uphill to keep me generating heat.

The cabin looks like a proper house. Plenty of table space and an upstairs loft. Not a lot of firewood. I got a fire going with a couple pages of used Yogi guide and minimal kindling. The kindling is the key. When we were kids, my sister and I had to go out to the woodpile to get firewood for the wood stove. Get kindling! My mom would yell after us, every single time, like we might forget. The wood pile was so far away, and the wood was always covered with slugs and spiders. Child abuse, right? Kids today have it so easy.

Wood stoves always remind me of my family. I remember when I lived with my sister’s family north of Seattle. She and I would get home to a cold house and get under blankets on the couch. We’d wait for her husband to get home and start the fire. Not that we couldn’t do it, but he really liked starting the fire. So my sister and I would read our books and fight over blankets and complain. “When’s Dave gonna get home and light the fire?” Maybe Dave didn’t really like making fires that much, but we were always happy to see him when he got home.