Local caffeination-station of the day: Big Creek Coffee Roasters
Brew Deets: They gave me lots of it.
Distinctive Feature: They are the only decent coffee within miles.
City: Hamilton, MT
Local
Product Feature: Michelle's Calendula Oil from the Florence, MT Farmer's Market that popped up off the highway out of nowhere.
I had never yawned so much in my life than on the day that I
left the gathering. Back out of the woods, I was determined to once again
discipline my coffee intake to only the top-snob quality but being in the
middle of nowhere, it looked like Missoula would be the first stop and it was
still a couple of hours away and off my route a bit. After driving through a
series of small rodeo looking towns with gaudy wooden Sarif fonted fronts,
intuition kicked in and I turned into downtown Hamilton to find a local organic
roaster. I grabbed my cup and my large camping canteen and placed both on the
counter.
“Could you charge me for however much it will take to fill
this all up?” Still layered in two weeks of un-showered wood life, it was
my first interaction back in a reality where time replaced good mornings and
warm smiles made people feel uncomfortable. But I gave the warmest smile I
could.
The caffeine was enough to get me in a singing mode but I
was already fantasizing about holing up in a café all afternoon and calling it
a day. As the highway turned into winding sloping valleys, I started to play
innovative mile-marker games to try and keep me awake and was just about to
call my mom for some road company when I drove past two disheveled figures
standing outside a lone casino of Highway 43. I’d just barely seen them before
driving past and had two cars behind me. I justified that I couldn’t have
stopped because it was a narrow road and I didn’t want to jolt the cars into
me. However, as I continued on, a guilt kept biting at me. All morning, I had
been reveling in the sensation of security, in knowing I could believe in the
support of a rainbow family outside a small window of time in the woods. If I
were going to believe in that, I would have to do my part to create it as well.
As I pulled over to turn around, my intuition swelled into a rock.
Their names were Tex and Blossom, they were sure enough
coming from the gathering and conveniently headed on my route, as far as
Portland. I had turned around to arrive just as two others were trying to tell
them that was not a good spot to hitch hike and that they should tag along to a
party instead. Not only did Blossom and I have a ton in common, from our
politics to our food choices to our parents – but we all found the same kinds
of appreciation in the scenery and Tex was an excellent detail-savvy co-pilot.
I went from my listless expectation of making it across
Idaho, to getting all the way to an hour and a half outside of Portland that
day. We all kept each other engaged in the land, constantly awed by the cloud
formations, the odd town names, the irony of “historical towns”, weird shapes
in the hills, the vast bodies of water and one another’s unique travel stories.
The couple had met in San Francisco where they are now pursuing some amazing
homeless work, and found out only after the fact that they had grown up within
a half an hour of one another in Texas. They had been on the road with their
long boards since March and Tex had endless road tips to share about camping
spots, spange times and the fact that mile-markers can be inaccurate by at
least 12 miles!
We shared pickles in parking lots and got lost on surreal,
poorly marked highways. On three different incidents, we encountered people
with car trouble. Four, if you count the strange noises my car was making,
although Tex examined it and assured me it only a loose plastic guard that
would cause no harm. On one occasion, a man’s tire had burst and Tex helped to
move his car and check it out. The next mention of car trouble was overheard by
a man who, when Tex gave him a peace sign, the man flicked off and said “fuck
your peace”. We all joked that he’d messed with some major car trouble karma.
That evening, we followed the Walloolah lake as it
transformed into the great Colubia River Gorge and finally had stop and savor
the sunset as it mirrored off the water. Shortly after, we found a pull-over
rest stop past the train tracks that permitted overnight camping and we lay our
sleeping bags out in the grass and fell asleep to a harmony of water current,
warm winds, train whistles, and wholly grateful hearts.
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| Our campsite. |
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| The most beautiful travel companions I ever could have asked for. <3 |
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