PCT day 88 - mile 1984 to mile 2001 (BLYC, Sisters, TA Eric and Nessa)

"Early settlers travelling on wagon trains to the Willamette Valley used the Sisters as landmarks, calling them Faith, Hope and Charity. More recently they've been rather unimaginatively identified by position: North, South and Middle. Such prosaic names belie a dysfunctional family of volcanic temperament. A look at the names of adjacent peaks reveals that there are three sister but only one husband; also a little brother and a wife (presumably his but with this bunch who knows?) and a bachelor. We're talking a hotheaded group that spent thousands of years throwing fire at each other and generally misbehaving until the entire lava-littered landscape is a record of family violence". (A book about PCT I picked up at BLYC and totally forgot to note who the author was).

Where do I even start with describing what happened today, it had totally unexpected and out of the comfort zone vibe.

First I walked twelve remaining miles to Big Lake Youth Camp where in the especially designated for PCT hikers building we could wash our clothes, take a shower, recharge our devices and prepare food. There was also a hiker box and we could join the community for a free breakfast, lunch or dinner. Since I've arrived there around 11am I decided to hang around until 1pm when the lunch was being served - we had a vegetarian stir fry with tofu and rice and a home made cookies for dessert. The community had a religious vibe to it, but there wasn't any preaching or patronizing talk involved - only a song before the meal, which was kind of cute.

I did all my chores there, hiked out of the camp at 2pm, reached the 2000 mile marker (yay!) and the Highway 20 just after 3pm - it took me over half an hour to catch a hitchhike but eventually a car with a group of older ladies, day hikers stopped and gave me a lift to the town called Sisters, right in front of Dollar General where I was planning to resupply. I've done it quite quickly and (I know I say it a lot but this time it is true) I totally bought too much food. Then I went to get some money out of the cash machine as my bank decided to change my debit card to a new one even though current one is still valid for two years, so I have less than a week now before it will get inactive which might cause all kind of issues as I'm not flying back until end of August. After that I had a quick burger and fries at McDonalds and went to the edge of town to catch a hitch back to the trail.

Again it was slow going, no one wanted to pick up a single hiker late in the afternoon standing next to (what I later found out) a homeless community area. But after an hour a car stopped and Eric offered me a lift back to the trail. On the way there we started talking about PCT and how him and his girlfriend spend his their second date doing trail magic, that he used to go to Big Lake Camp and hiked few local sections of the PCT. I said that I would probably stay in the area for the night but all the accomodation was just too expensive - and Eric one of a sudden offered me to stay in his house. I said yes but then immediately my security breaks kicked in and I started to have doubts about it, because what if he was some kind of evil person? I didn't express that though. Eric must have sensed my doubt, he said that it was up to me and he could still just take me back to the trail. Then he called his girlfriend Nessa and told her he might be bringing me over for tonight and I could see her smiling and waving to me on the screen. Eric started to tell me who he was and what he did for living. I had to basically entrust a complete stranger at this point but then again he had to do the very same thing, taking it all into consideration I decided to go with it.

We arrived in Eric's wooden cabin in the middle of the woods ten minutes later, there was no other houses around. He explained to me that he grew up in this area and his parents were still living few miles away, that he is a firefighter and self taught tree surgeon. He was taking care of the house for his parents friend for the last couple of years, he showed me around it and inside the 70s RV truck standing next to the house and said that I could sleep here if I wanted to but first he would have to move his rifles out of the bed. I said that it would be cool.

Then we sat at his back porch talking, had a soda and soon after his girlfriend Nessa arrived with some groceries. She was working as a social worker in Sisters, she met Eric three years ago on a drunk night out in the local pub. They were both in their mid forties, Eric said that he has never hosted a hiker before but he always wanted to, just that the circumstances were never right. Then I had my second shower of the day while Nessa started to prepare dinner for us. We ate a grilled steak (Nessa bought the grill for Eric's birthday not long ago), a salad grown in their garden and whole artichokes they seemed to be connoisseurs of. Nessa lighted a joint and offered me one but I denied and told her the story about my glissading accident.

We ended up drinking few more beers, watching the full moon rising over the horizon and talking almost until midnight. Eric was a metalhead and a horror/end of the days movie fan so we had a lot of things to chat about. He told me about dive bars in Portland I could go to if I decided to visit there, that his favourite band was Tool and that since he met Nessa even though she wasn't that much into heavy music, they went to over hundred metal concerts together.

He was divorced and had a fourteen year old son, who used to live with him until last year but then he decided to move out and live with his mother for a while, she also lived locally with her new partner and was still in good relation with Eric. We spent over an hour talking about technicalities of fires and to be honest I found it fascinating. Eric was fighting fire for over 25 years, he worked his way up to a managmental position and he was even at this very moment on the radio with his headquarters ready to head out at any time if an accident happened.

We wrapped up our conversation around midnight and I went into the RV, put my sleeping bag on now clear from the rifles bed (Eric hasn't even shot one of them yet, but he was considering shooting coyotes stealing chickens from his coop) and went to sleep.

Eric's and Nessa's house and RV: