When last we left our Three Companions they were rising with a bleary dawn (again). The second night of six was over in a cold gray fog and Lilly's paws were better, having spent all of the the night and most of the day before on medical restriction at the fieldstone hearth of Her Megalithic Doghouse, in Heathen Splendor as it were. We heated up some oatmeal and some coffee to fortify us for the trek ahead repacked our gear and planned our route for the day. Jack conferred with Lilly regrading possible field expedient booties for her paws but she demurred insisting that "we should just go, now, can't we go, now, please"? Since much of the day would be spent on bluffs, dunes and flats the Captain agreed and we prepared to hoist both pack and petard, and right smartly too I should say just for the fun of it.
Now, if you are wondering why the hell you should be interested in any of this you may wish to ponder the preceding proceedings; the Prequel here, and Part 1 of 3 here. And, as related previously to those for whom exactitude is paramount, simply more pleasant than this purple prose, or as an illuminating adjunct the reader is invited to download the KMZ file linked there to follow the journey in Universal Coordinates on Google Earth. With or without that background, having abandoned all hope as you must of an exact, or exactly linear narrative please join us below then for the middle section of our 26 mile hike along the formerly Lost Coast of beautiful Humboldt County, Cal-ee-forn-eye-yay.
Section 1; Following the shiny object to where the Heart of the Lost Coast is Found.
In the foreshadowed non-linear fashion then let us return to the night before and the day before that then off into metaphysical spaces and back again to the present of this story which is in fact the past of the moment that you read this in, obviously. The wind as usual was whipping a fine spume from the waves still agitated after the day's big blow. Captain Jack was obsessively lashing what was left of his line across the bosom of the heartless sea and Lilly and Old Lefty were holding down the Fort. Making sure Lilly's leash too was soundly lashed, Lefty lifted his grizzled muzzle to test the scent of sea and the lay of the land then lumbering free of the lee of the lean-to grumbled down the boulders on wobbly knees to check out the status of the fishing project and suss out the whims and wills of the Great Powers perchance.
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Dogged as Lilly and every bit as hopeful, Jack flipped his line and focused on the fall of his weight among the waves while Lefty in a typical stoop poked about the flotsam and jetsam. He prodded the glistening tideline hopping with sand fleas in what had so far been a search as fruitless and nearly as obsessive as Jack's pursuit of the apparently quite finicky fishes. In all these miles of combing about among the rippled ribbons of drying kelp and various species of skeletal remains spicules and spines, not yet a sign of Japanese or any other geologically recent Tsunami debris. Oh, here and there were a scrap or two of polythene rope and scrim of tiny Styrofoam beads familiar on any coast these days, but no Harley laden shipping container, no funerary urn, not one visible sign of the catastrophe on its way here, just as surely as it departed Japan for its long voyage across the North Pacific more than a year ago.
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Lefty straightened up to catch the sunset bouncing off the water and the fading vista, another wave washed another wad of seaweed ashore and, glancing down at the receding foam sucking away a few strands of kelp, there it was, an opalescent glimmering revealed in the glancing orange light of the sunset; Magic made tangible.
The Heart of the Lost Coast Found. Now Old Lefty knows a thing or two about shells, and Abalone (Abba-low-knee) ones in particular as you'll see beyond the fold, him being a somewhat uncivil engineer, perceptive prospector, amateur gynecologist, err, uh, geologist, and sometime sculptor as well.
Section 2; Of Hearts and Art and getting to the point, eventually.
As noted above, surrounding the Freudian Slip, Old Lety has some background when it comes to things, err, geological, nacreous, and artistic.
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On the left some will see an image of what a crafty hand, nearsighted eye and profound OCD can do with an Abalone shell. Named 'Yggdrasil', it is about 7.5" longwise and consumed more than 300 hours two winters ago in a dank and shadowy hovel, umm sub-optimal dwelling. It is then easy to see why the shell that came ashore at his feet was so exciting to our stolid and phlegmatic friend. |
It had two pearly white scraps of muscle clinging to the roughened center where the executioner had missed only the last tiny bits and the crabs had not yet had their chance. Ten and a half inches long and weighing in at 3.5 pounds The Heart is certainly a Trophy if not of Record size. At its thickest point the nacre or mother of pearl is more than two inches and it is decorated with several 'blister pearls' or semi-hemispherical lumps of considerable size. The colors are black and blue, purple, green pink white and red and Old Lefty's language was equally vivid. At almost the same moment, and at least as much to
his delight Jack struck Nylon, snagged on and dragged in 30 feet of line he had earlier lost much to his chagrin, then. While not actually edible it promised better things with a longer string, further casts on future flings.
They then cast back their thoughts toward the life whose one durable accomplishment had just been tossed up at their feet as they cast those forward toward the Megalithic camp. 50 years or more this magnificent mollusk had munched away at algae, kelp and slick grasses, growing round and fat in slow flattened spirals from fish scale size to become at the end some otter's dinner upon its own pearly shell plattered. Riddled with boreholes and infested with barnacles and other nefarious burrowers, clinging for decades with just one foot and no arms at all to breaker bashed boulders this was pure determination in calciferous form. Old Lefty, who can relate, will do it proud and feels blessed by the Gawdz Themsevs to have been there just in time to catch Their Celestial Pitch. Unfortunately though, together with the various other little gems and trinkets and chachkies that kept finding their way from beach to pocket to backpack, despite the constant consumption of stores the load never seemed to lighten, or so he says.
And speaking of things artistic and internetual, rather than getting more promptly to the point and back onto linear time, let us cast our minds back for a moment to John the Reputed Leprechaun of Part 1, he of the best address and bright eyes just round la Punta mas Gorda in the cabin under Windy Ridge. A fascinating aspect of telling this tale in installments and naked to net-dom was made clear upon publication.
Various readers pointed out various details, improving the eventual product, and one in particular pointed out an article in the San Francisco Chronicle regarding said John. Very interesting reading and a nice story, it is illustrated with images of his driftwood sculpture, inspired by the flotsam on his doorstep and patiently crafted with simple tools. Lefty is, and suspects you too will be deeply impressed with this work, an example of which I have taken the liberty of showing here.
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Places like this, wild and raw if not altogether remote these days, places where wind and sky and sea and stone all meet together as a Council of Powers contending for mastery, evoke in most people some degree of abstraction, some attempt to appreciate the Self in true proportion to the Greater World. Places like this arouse the spirit and beg for expression whether in form or words or color of music. The stories of these places beg to be told to be shared and to intertwine with the world outside. For some who may never see these places or this one in particular anyway, this Story may become an emissary for the place itself. And sometime soon whether this year or next, this place in particular and others like it from Alaska to here and later to Hawaii too may desperately NEED a larger constituency, one that knows the views and names and faces and so in a way the Place itself. Sure as death taxes and willful ignorance, Kuso Arashigakuru! (
Koo-so Ah-rah-she-
gah-koo-roo!), there's a shit storm (or; Shit, there's a storm!) a comin' to the Left Coast, all hands on deck.
Now, as it please the Court better we'll get mercifully back to the point and back onto the trail (eventually) with our frustrated fisherman Captain Jack, Lilly the not quite so Lightfoot-ed but truly Sturdy Pooch, and Crusty Old Lefty the wretched and unrepentant as they head 5 miles South on the second morning with a not too bad wind at tail and back out of the North for Spanish Flats and camp at Big Creek beyond. Not to be confused with Big Flat Creek mind you, which in fact is neither very big nor at all flat and over the next ridge, but the other one, with the black bears, big field of boulders and both Speed and Speedo hikers, really. Fluorescent tiger STRIPE Speedo hikers, but that bit's down the page some yet.
Section 3; Back on the trail, Lilly Mushes like a Champ.
So, speak of the Devil, as we made our final preparations three khaki short clad and graphite hiking pole wielding SHLoaCA (Speed Hiking Ladies of a Certain Age) came round the point in a phalanx like avenging professional Valkyries dressed by L.L.Bean and late for a meeting, hell bent on hiking the entire coast from Mattole to Usal, all 52 boulder strewn miles and 9500 feet of ascent in six days, one day less than our far, far less sartorially elegant, temporally linear or supernaturally empowered Party of Three had allotted for half the distance and none of the climbing, sheeesh! After a brief chat we happily relinquished our magnicicent and expedient accommodation to these admirable persons, they obviously needed it after having schlepped from the trailhead to our second night's campsite in half a day and pondered as we departed, and not for the last time, questions of dress and tempo and whether a person always looking at their feet would ever see much beyond just the trail.
Despite her adamant insistence that her feet were "fine, just fine, lets go", it was agreed by the humans at least that to spare her paws from the excesses of her own enthusiasm Lilly would spend the day lashed by the leash to Lefty's front pack buckle. Quickly apprehending that she'd been apprehended, if not exactly appreciating her new dependency, she harnessed her will to the task at paw as like a small furry Briggs & Stratton with the throttle stuck on full she leaned into the first low rise onto the bluffs out of camp and helped haul Old Lefty's tired old butt up and and back into the trek in earnest.
It begins in a short grade of soft grasses studded with California Poppies and bright yellow daisies as the view rapidly opens to the feet of the mountain stepped back from the sea curling their furry toes into a lushly carped littoral plain bisected by the furrow of the trail. Our Guide and Lead Dog Lilly was joyous at the prospect and if her feet were still sore at all she emphatically did not care.
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Creaking joints and aching backs from weighty packs quickly eased with motion and the warming sun as thinning fog fully cleared and pelicans resumed their relentless scanning of the chop. After half a mile on what the USGS calls the Old Jeep Trail, though signs of any second wheel rut had long disappeared there, we slide back down a slippery slope onto the smooth soft sand below to scan the wrack for signs of disaster and sighs of life as well. The fragments of exoskeletal organisms, crabs, sea slippers and urchins, whelks and barnacles and mussels tell a detailed and graphic story about who is eating whom just out of sight down in the darksome kelpy forests below the wobbling interface of air and light and water users.
In those same dark forests of slanting beams a cursory search will certify every shellfish we ate and the scaly fish we still hoped to catch already had assimilated some very small but measurable scintilla of the unknown burden headed out our way and down our throats inexorably as the Pacific Plate is shoving up the continent. There, these first confirmed atomic debris from the very core of the worst of all the terrible consequences of the Tsunami and our hubris yet to arrive on this coast is the trace of radioactive iodine 131 spewed from the ruptured containment of Fukushima. The great mass of the pending flotilla is so much rubbish; tennis shoes and balls, corkboards and boots, wood and plasic mostly but not entirely free of nasty surprises in higher concentrations, we fervently hope but do not yet know. This end of that disaster is unfolding if not exactly on geological time scales then well beyond the attention span of the 24 hour news cycle and its acolytes, until the bleeding finally leads again, as ever it was. Shigata ga nai, neh?
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Am I the only person here who scents a whiff of slo-mo Karma there? Whatsover thou doest reap shall findeth a way to sow itself within thine own bellies it seemeth to me. Old Lefty is rather sanguine about such things, a Hanford Down-streamer with plutonium decay products already irredeemably embedded from a youth on and in the onrolling Columbia, what's to worry then? But, a few steps further just there, over a rise of the sand was a more tangible signifier, hopefully free of ionizing radiation sources, of the Pyrrhic battle of Humanity versus Entropy in the form of the Sea. The Sea disaggregating indomitably a modest but robust assembly of technology, order tending to disorder with some grace but undetermined provenance.
Shadow and Light Source Both
How does a part of the world leave the world? How does wetness leave water? Dont' try to put out fire by throwing on more fire! Don't wash a wound with blood. No matter how fast you run, your shadow keeps up. Sometimes it's in front! Only full overhead sun diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you. What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest. I could explain this, but it will break the glass cover on your heart, and there's no fixing that.
You must have shadow and light source both. Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe. When from that tree feathers and wings sprout on you, be quieter than a dove. Don't even open your mouth for even a coo.
From Soul of Rumi by Coleman Barks |
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Who knows how far has this thing floated, belly up and steel plate down? The shadow knows perhaps. Bindings together are coming apart, between spike and beam, nut and washer and steel from steel at the molecular level. Openings closing as closures rust open, wordlashed and sandworn wood endures for a time but will not prevail. |
The wave arrived in Northern California from the Great Honshu Tsunami of 2011 as part of one odd, red focused tendril, upper right in the NOAA image below like a wavering vein in the bloodshot eye of the Earth, a half meter high in open water and energetic enough after 4000 miles of dissipation to kill one and sweep away three others in Crescent City. Docks were damaged and destroyed in several small harbors in the region, and who knows what was swept from where. The only death, to date, in the Good 'Ol USA, but not the last of those chickens to come home to roost perhaps.
The oddest thing about our ambiguous artifact was the 1" thick steel plate bolted to its entire buried side. We could neither deduce, induce nor intuit its purpose but someone out there knows what this was for and maybe even where it might be from. In any case it was the most substantial castaway artifact we found and may or may not have been Tsunami related, but not too far away was ample evidence of greater catastrophies from deeper time, if you know where to look and how to see it. Just come along and you will.
Stream cut valleys etched into the two thousand foot high slopes above in sharp shadow, so steep that only birds and squirrels live in the wind stranded bonsai groves marooned in crannies and fractured crevices providing a visual counterpoint to the vast sweeping horizon of the West, we won our way up off the beach again in tortuous inch wise half steps up a steep powdery dune eight times as high as it looked round the Cape of a Grand Knee of 2350' high Oat Hill and back onto the expansive plane of Spanish Flat. Lilly by this time had decided that it was better to pull hard on her leash than to push to be let off it and the soft grass of the flats was her cue to switch into sled-dog mode. Lefty let his long bicycle legs start to swing and the Captain was soon lagging, sturdy, certainly not to say stumpy legs outgunned by the six footed symbiosis headed for the hills out in front. Mush Lilly, mush! Hush you Muskie, hush!
They all slowed down for the water crossing at Oat Creek and Lefty and Lilly took a sit-down across the stream while Cpt. I Can't Get My Boots Wet doffed his hikers and donned his waders and lofting his knickers, tiptoed deeeeelicately across the stones to rinse and repeat in reverse on the far bank. Exhausted by the intricacies of the ritual Lefty, peering into the miniature world between the flowers' stems spied the juicy ruby gems of tiny wild strawberries. Unfortunately for the Captain, it took so damn long to get his boots back on there were none left for him to enjoy. Lilly looooved them though, deeeelcious!
Leaving the leafy shadows of the shallow valley they loped up a low loop of gravelly slope back to the grass and butter colored blossoms above. Where plain meets beach is a vanishing perspective of storm scattered driftwood logs, many as much as a hundred feet long where the occasional gnarled root ball raising tentacles from heads only H.P. Lovecraft could love relieves the horizontal composition of field and wood and sand and sea. And the Stones, round round stones smooth as skulls from big as a head to the size and sometimes almost the shape and color of a sweet black Lab curled up in front of a fire were all clearly first formed then cast up there on the surface by the same means that had littered the logs about like so many matchsticks 30 feet above MSL (Mean Sea Level). The farther the rock from the Mean Old Sea, the Meaner was the Sea when it flung it up there.As Lilly and Lefty put 'er in to high gear again and Jack resigned himself to bringing up the rear, again, the trail veered away from the verge and back toward the inflection of flat to slope. Mostly buried there in the waist high grass and Pygmy Spruce the discerning eye could pick out shoals of smooth boulders, big as a Mastiff, hundreds of feet from the beach. This despite the wild swinging pace, 5 mph that the headlong mushing had achieved, coffepot and Crocks beating out a madcap rhythm dangling from backpack's back, ultimately a squandering of energy and not at all consistent with our slow is better ethic, but it defineitely was as we say in these heah pahts, Hella Fun!
Slowing where the single rut trail rises to meet an actual two rut gravel road the group reassemble on the low hill where Kinsey Ridge comes down to the Sea bearing the Old Jeep Trail on its narrow spine winding up in 9 hairpin switchbacks to the main fire road 1600 feet above and less than 3/4 mile from the sea. Down the in the valley 50' below runs Kinsey Creek up whose fire ravaged mouth we could see the scarp of Telegraph Ridge occulting the Eastern sky and see the burnt off skeletons in ess shaped silhouettes studding the southern slopes. Wading through the waving grass we were grateful four our long pants and high topped boots and glad to keep Lilly so closely leashed. This is perfect rattlesnake country and we had been well warned by other hikers proceeding North that they had all seen serpents slithering there. Moving gingerly but swiftly across the lowest sections of shrubbery we encountered the unexpected; a well kept and tidily set up a fisherman's dream house as can be imagined sitting prettily at the side of the Old Jeep Road. Certainly not set up there by a Tsunami but just as certainly set up to be taken away by one, eventually. Leaving any unseen residents to their own fate and devices we waded on through the the last half mile of the flats, wary of the wily rat-lerz to the last low rise before our last half mile on the beach and Camp and Big Creek.
Section 4; The Thumbnail of God, wherein Jack gets the Junk Shot
At last on the last of the beach of that day we were presented with the very image again and again of the Thumbnail of God peeling back the skin of the Earth like an that of an Orange. These bulging strata are composed of pillow basalt extruded ages ago at the mid-pacific spreading center, carried across half an ocean basin and partially overlaid with eroded sediments reformed into sand and mudstones to be scraped off the top as the plate subducts below North America and that skin is slowly bent and curled, kneaded and rolled like so much stiff black taffy veined in white from hydrothermal intrusions right before your eyes. And in the distance we could see the rugged toe of Big Mountain veiling the mouth of its eponymous Creek following the economical naming conventions hereabouts.
As they made their way thenceforth, on occasion Lefty waded boldly into the churning waters to pluck off mussels who unlike the finny phantoms of the Captain's fevered fantasies, could not run away, being firmly anchored as they were to their wave washed boulders in intimate concord with their numberless relatives crowded shell by gill like molluscular Rio favelas clinging staunchly to their perilous flood prone slopes, proud and defiant despite their relative position in the food chain. And despite the ancient Chinese dictum specifying all beings edible as being only those whose backs face the sky both Lefty and Lilly ware sufficiently opportunistic and omnivorous to consume them with gusto despite the fact they have no back at all. Jack is sure they make excellent bait for his prey a little further up the chain although results to date had been disappointing to say the least, and the Wise say nothing at all on that subject at this point in the story.
And it is at just this point that Los Dos Muchachos y La Muchacha muy Bonita go round the bend again to be surprised by what they knew was there but that gave no hint at all until, all in a moment, the valley reveled itself like a Genie from a well quaffed Bottle.
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After what must have been a violent winter the quarter mile wide valley floor had been churned out of all recognition from Jack's otherwise flawless recollection into windrows of tumbled boulders braided with drying channels hiding half buried, de-barked and badly bruised fir and redwood snags washed down from the three thousand foot high slopes of the aptly and economically named Big Mountain looming above. Having been economical with their resources as well the Three hopped and wobbled gingerly across the stream and storm tailings drawn to the far side by nature, their own and that of the world as well toward an oddly angular assemblage of driftwood piled into a substantial and idiosyncratic windbreak where the trail leaves the valley for parts South. After the arduous and femur threatening passage Lefty and Lilly, old dog and young were both dog tired and immediately adopted positions of repose and contemplation well out of the stiffening and ill omened South wind as Jack began to fiddle with his gear, tying knots like the revolutionary ladies at the guillotine reading in their knitting the fates of the Nobility he maniacally knotted broken line while plotting the undoing of some cold blooded and ignoble mouth breather who had probably eaten its own offspring anyway. C'est la vie et c'est la mort, n'est-ce pas? |
We emptied our packs, gathered both wits and grit and setting Lilly free to roam at will we hiked back to the fresh water at the rather inconveniently distant source way back across the Valley to the North. Taking the longer but easier route along the sand, water purifying pump in hand we crouched down beside the stream to fill our bladders (only, inevitably, to empty them later) and looking up at the sound of muddled chatter we espied our erstwhile Valkyries coming South with the dying day at their backs and that oddly discombobulated manner that those who have pushed themselves far beyond their effective physical limits will immediately recognize. As a long distance solo self-supported cyclist, known in some circles as a rondonneur and raconteur from a time well before energy gels if not quite of movable type, Old Lefty is intimately familiar with the sensation and its severe limitations vis a vis rational analysis and gymnastic coordination, both of which would be required if those ladies were as intent upon crossing the battlefield of boulders as they seemed to be. With an abundance of chivalry if not humility he sprang into action like a crazy but remarkably nimble old monkey across the rocks to where they had fetched up beside the creek in apparent confusion at what if anything to do next, and if they would or would not make that meeting in LA next Monday maybe. In any case they were receptive to the firm suggestion that perhaps it would be the better part of Valkyrian Valor to stop right there that night given the handyness of fuel, fresh water, flat sand and the unhandyness of breaking a leg or legs which would almost certainly have been the outcome of their original intent in their present condition.
Leaving them fumbling at unbooting but seated upon firm ground and guidance we made the long slog back to camp and there proceeded to address ourselves to domestic necessities and another favorite amusement, finding humor in the discomfort and confusion of others. Oh my oh my we must be very careful of what we ask lest the Universe give us a heaping helping of just exactly that. And thus began a schadenfreud-o-fest Old Lefty for one is unlikely ever to forget. His back was to the waves propped up against a windbreak of random driftwood and Jack, who was facing North gave him the high sign to take a look. Too far away in the fading light to identify in any detail beyond their basic humanity which after all is really all that matters, we saw two oddly leggy figures coming our way with a rising thirty knot wind at their backs playing Frisbee while carrying backpacks and cavorting across the boulders.
Now, as professionals in the field of wilderness rambling both Jack and Lefty exchanged glances and raised eyebrows freighted with years of experience and a dawning incredulity. But what the heck, this is California, Land of Fruits and Nuts where you are required by Law to be whoever the hell you want to be. On the other hand, Life Flight costs thousands of dollars and having to assist someone so unwise as to play Frisbee in a gale on a boulder field in what on closing distance appeared to be EXTREMELY brief and wonderfully colorful ah, nether coverings well, really, that would be at best dumb. Lefty popped his head up above the barrier again eyeing the approaching duo like a suspicious seal had earlier eyed our fisherman from the waves, to ascertain the true magnitude of the immanent awkwardness, and YES indeed, this was going to be saweeeeet!
For indeed our soon to be new momentary boon companions were indeed a pair of very skinny and extremely white young men whose two pairs of equally slender alabaster gams alike protruded at extraordinary length from two pairs of identically brief but differently colored, one fluorescent red the other electric green, tiger stripe on black banana hammocks, micro Speedos in jungle print forsooth, putting the lie to the Captain's original and now forgone hopes regarding their potential gender. That crafty bastard Old Lefty was ideally and fiendishly positioned so that the two would have to come within two feet of where Jack sat frozen on what had been until that moment a perfectly fine log to answer Lefty's questions. He began to inquire of them at length as he had so many others along the way, not primarily to get the information but in fact exclusively to prolong the Captain's sudden and riveted bent necked fascination with the toes of his boots as the two pouches of parti-colored Lycra loomed mere inches away from his ridgidly averted eyes, limned in lissome profile against the rising Sea.
After they told of their origin in Memphis Tennessee and the image of Lefty's long dead and indomitable iron-spined six foot tall Granny Catherine, also of Tennessee leaped up in his mind to declare what she would have had to say to these young men from her long lost and beloved homeland, involving the painful tweaking of ears and being snatched bald, however that works, he too momentarily lost the gift of gab and so soon off they went up over the rise and back onto the trail, two tiny black clad butts atop two sets of legs like four inverted exclamation points we watched them disappear into the facing gale, giving a whole new meaning to the concept of 'head wind' as Jack was quick to point out before, I must admit it, collapsing into laughter.
Now, Lefty's Tulsa daughter remonstrated strongly with him upon later recounting admonishing in no uncertain terms that, growing up where they had and who apparently they were they had most likely been beaten up repeatedly just for that and had probably been at the freest and most joyous place they had ever been in their young lives in the moments before meeting us. She was probably right in fact and certainly right in principle, but DAMN, Speedo Hiking? In rattlesnake country? Really? And I had cast aspersions on mere Speed hikers. But the fact is, their freedom to be themselves and to wear whatever the hell they chose or chose not to wear equates directly to each of us, the upshot of which will be investigated in greater depth in Part 3 of 3. We admired the fire licking away at the melting sun, and licked our lips as we savored the flavors of the Captain's signature trail cocktail concocted from instant coffee, Ghiardelli's cocoa and 150 proof Peppermint Schnapps, known as the Junior Mint, a fine and civilized companion as opposed to those consuming it, and invite you back to find out in part 3 just what outfits will be worn for The Lost Coast Sasquatch Project, where TeeVee Sasquatch hunters get punked on handy-cam and two nefarious characters wearing only jockstraps, suspenders, cowboy hats and boots (and maybe Palin for President wife beater tee shirts, unless you think that might be over the top of course), armed to the teeth roam the trails on donkey back accosting unwary travelers trying in vain to find Sasquatch who has stolen their trousers. I blame the Junior Mints and myself for spoiling as well as originating that calumny but promise more and better in the Last(?) Installment, soon to come.