Since I had been living by my beliefs that there was plenty to go around for everyone, I’ve been having some wonderful interactions with people. Orient was no exception. While I enjoyed getting to know some of the members of the Seventh Day Adventist community, I was thrilled to get to know Corinna.

Corinna has lived in Orient for a number of years and had heard that I needed a place to stay. She opened her home to me and even though she wasn’t going be there that evening, she let me have the run of her place. She cooked a wonderful chicken, rice and vegetable dinner for me before she headed off for the night. She also purchased a huge bag of Epson salts so that I could take a soak in her tub.

After eating dinner and soaking for an hour, I slept well. In the morning, Corinna took me to a house she had built by herself. Again I was impressed by another bad ass woman and the things she had managed to accomplish.

We shared some meaningful conversation and I found myself opening up deeply to this woman I had just met. We were both sorry to part ways when she dropped me back at the trailhead.

The stretch from Orient to Republic follows the Kettle Crest Trail. While it has a reputation of being a beautiful trail, hikers have to be careful going through a huge section of it because a number of years ago there was a large fire that burned 22 miles of the trail. As a result, I passed through a lot of opened forest. Luckily it wasn’t too hot and I was able to enjoy the widespread views through the burnt trees.

A lot of this trail slabbed around the side of a mountain, making it difficult to find places to camp. When slabbing around the side of a mountain, one side of the trail rises up and the other side drops down. There are seldom flat places to sleep unless you park yourself right in the middle of a trail. I have slept in the middle of trails when desperate, but I wasn’t crazy about doing that in an area where a bear or a cougar might be meandering down it at night. As a result, my second day out I pushed past physical comfort to get to water hoping that when I got there I would find a level enough place to camp without dead trees around it.

When I finally did arrive at Neff spring, I was thrilled that I was able to carve out a spot just big enough for my tent. I leveled the ground a little bit and moved a number of cow pies, which I had done enough times so it no longer bothered me. I was relieved to have a place where I could stop for the night, especially one that had beautiful water running out of a pipe spring.

The following day I again walked past the comfort level in my foot. I was eager to get to the road into Republic. It was the first time in a long time I had gotten rained on and I had heard there was more rain coming, A Trail Angel had invited me to spend the night on her porch so I pushed those last few miles to get to the road where she would pick me up. My body felt strong, and I was enjoying hiking even though there were some significant climbs. I experimented with putting different kinds of padding in various places in my boot to change the way my foot was hitting the ground. This helped for much of the day, but still by the time I hit the road I was ready to cry. I sat down in a little pull off, relieved when Trail Angel Mary showed up to take me to her home for the night.

I had a lovely evening with Mary and her husband, Ben. In the morning, Ben took me down to the town of Republic where I met Trail Angel Karrie, who truly is another bad ass woman. She is a fire management officer. For 44 years she was in charge of fire protocol in parts of the national forest. She would prescribe burns to help control future forest fires as well as manage the firefighters and resources. While she worked with some great men, there were others she had to fight to earn respect from. Some men didn’t want to take advice from a woman, even if that woman had years of fire school and practical experience behind her.

Republic has a lovely food co-op and I sat there for part of two days, writing, eating and chatting with some of the local people. Karrie was generous enough to allow me to camp on her patio for a few days while I rested my foot.

I spent a bit of time while in Republic learning what I could about fires, which were raging in western Washington. The Calcite fire is burning in Canada and reaches to within 5 miles of the Pacific Northwest Trail. They are asking hikers not to walk through that area. There is a proposed 42 mile detour that adds significant mileage to an already exceptionally long stretch and it’s possible that the fire could shut that down as well. There are a few other fires burning, which will also impact which route I’ll take. So as I leave Republic, I’m focusing on just putting one foot in front of the other. I’ll figure out the rest when I get another hundred miles up the trail.