travel

Pacific Crest Trail

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Backpacking

It’s just what my family did. My parents went backpacking on their honeymoon, and when I came along they weren’t about to do something as silly as wait for me to be able to walk by myself before getting on the trail again. I was three the first time I hiked a substantial portion on my own – 7 miles up Mt. Hood to Paradise Park, carrying my own little backpack (which contained nothing more than my sleeping bag).

Dreams

I’ve wanted to hike the PCT for as long as I can remember. I met a couple of through hikers the summer between high school and college, and they were instantly my heroes. That was going to be me, once I was done with college and had the freedom to take five months out of my life for this. I almost did a portion of the trail the summer of ’14, but I got a job at the Portland Japanese Garden instead. In some ways I was relieved because I wanted to do the whole thing all at once anyways.

Quarter of a Century

I learned that the PCT had been officially completed in 1993, the same year that I was born. From this came the idea that I’d hike the trail in 2018 to celebrate both mine and the trail’s 25th birthday at the same time. I lived frugally (as I always have), and I saved up every penny I could for the coming adventure. I biked and I ran and I hiked; I would be prepared for this trail.

Plans

Nothing goes according to plan. Ever.

The Roof

January 1, 2017. Being me at 23 wasn’t easy; I’d already nearly died in September after spending all summer dizzy because of weird ear issues. Then less than 24 hours into 2017 I fell off of a roof and broke my back. In case you wondered, those medical bills are not cheap. All of the money I’d worked so hard and so long to save…. I’m glad I had it to sustain me in 2017, but now here we are. It’s 2018, I still want to hike the PCT, but I can’t afford any of the fancy gear I’d hoped to buy on top of a plane ticket down to the border with Mexico and the cost of mailing myself the food and other supplies I’ll need along the way.

Not to mention, I broke my back. It healed remarkably fast and remarkably well, but L1 and L2 are weird shaped and missing 25% and 30% of their original height forever. A year ago today I wasn’t allowed to lift more than 10 pounds, and while that restriction has lifted, I do still have to be much more careful about carrying heavy things than I ever had to in the past.

Solution

DIY, minimalist backpacking, and upping the intensity of my Physical Therapy exercises. I’m borrowing a friend’s copy of Ray Jardine’s Beyond Backpacking, and I’m going to make this work some way some how. Because my feet are itching, so it’s time to scratch that itch on a 2,650 mile long trek.

After all, what better way to celebrate the fact that I beat the odds so spectacularly? I broke my back at 23, but I envision beginning year 25 of life stronger than ever. Picture the Gracetopher: April 15, 2018, officially a quarter of a century old, standing on the border with Mexico, broke-back kid with a backpack anyways. Hiking northward towards Canada.

Old Friends

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So, Paris is awesome, and I’ve wanted to go there for quite some time, but the real carrot of the trip was friends. The first few days of my trip I spent my time with two amazing people who happen to be my housemates, another amazing person who goes to my university but with whom I haven’t spent enough time, and a former fellow UP student who I hadn’t seen in over a year. The first three I will obviously be seeing again in the fall, but Andrew actually lives in Germany now, so I probably won’t be seeing him for quite some time.

Then several days after my friends and I had to part ways, I saw someone even more exciting! (though perhaps I shouldn’t say that, he always did have a big head as it is, no need to make it even bigger). Any Glenwoodians reading this may remember a certain skinny dark-haired Finnish boy who graced our town with his presence between about August 2010 and June 2011. That’s right. Emil Bulut. I tracked that kid down. I think I’m actually the first Glenwoodian to see him in two years…. It was pretty freaking awesome!

It’s of course always interesting though…. people change in two years…. not always a lot, but enough. If he hadn’t have been looking for me as well, I may have passed over the tallish dark haired guy sitting outside…. But he was looking for me, and despite a change of hair and glasses, I quickly adjusted, and we were (more or less) back to old times.

Talking about two-year old gossip from a small town high school in Iowa while you’re in one of the biggest cities in Europe…. Well, that is one way to give yourself a massive head-trip.

Me with my old friend Emil and my new friend Juho

Me with my old friend Emil and his friend Juho

I Miss Peanut Butter

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Never have I ever felt more American than now that I am finally someplace outside of the states.

I am not particularly patriotic. Many things about American culture kind of disgust me actually. I don’t trust our government, and I’m not always the biggest fan of the military. I spent a good deal of my teenage years believing that if I had been born in Europe my life would have been much much better.

I was however born in Portland, Oregon, and have since spent half of my life in Oregon and the other half in Iowa, and nothing that I do will ever change that. Even were I to move to Europe, I will always love the mountains and forests where I was raised, and I will always miss peanut butter and apple pies. Nuttella and crepes are amazing, but I didn’t eat any of either until I was 19 years old; no matter how great they taste, they will never have the sentimental value of food I grew up on.

It’s not just food either. Europe is in general very similar to the US: I’m still firmly within the realm of Western culture….. but it’s the small things. Things like where people live: in the Basque country at least, towns can be smaller than 5,000 people and it’s still normal for everyone to live in apartments instead of houses. Things like travel: It’s faster here to travel by train, carry-ons in the airport are limited to one bag, and said bag is smaller than carry-on size in America, and said bag is limited in weight as well as size. Things like homosexuality: I was in a library in a tiny town…. the kind of town which would be extraordinarily conservative in the US… and two guys kissed right in front of me. And not the famous cheek-kissing that you do with complete strangers – full on undeniably romantic kissing. Things like language: I don’t think I have yet met a European who is not at LEAST bilingual.

Little things. Things that in some cases I actually prefer here…. But still, things that make one realize exactly how American one is. I miss peanut butter.

Euskera: Endangered Language

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The language of the Basque Country is called Euskera, and it is currently on a list of endangered languages. It is slowly making a come-back thanks to nationalist sentiment but  is still spoken by less than a million people. Although it is the co-official language of the Basque Country, Euskera is actually spoken by less than half of the residents of the region; where I am you wouldn’t guess, but I suppose all the city-dwellers offset those of us in the boondocks.

It doesn’t help of course that dialects of Euskera are massively different, even in very small areas. There is a standardized language used for publications written in Euskera or for movies and television shows, but it is not the normal Euskera spoken by real people. When you can’t necessarily communicate with other people who are supposed to be speaking the same language as you… perhaps it is understandable that some people choose convenience over preserving a beautiful ancient language.

Despite the trouble involved in communicating in different dialects however, as little as 80 years ago Euskera was “very widespread and inescapable in daily life” (http://www.unc.edu/~sdteeter/basque.html). What happened in the past century then? The Spanish Civil War. When Franco assumed power, he banned all of the languages aside from Castellano.  When he died in 1975 and Spain finally became a democracy, the four provinces making up the Basque Country were allowed a large degree of autonomy, and the Basque language was once again allowed.

Now schools in the Basque Country are taught in one of 3 models: Model A in which classes are taught primarily in Castellano with Euskera as a separate subject, Model C in which classes are taught in both languages, and Model D in which classes are taught primarily in Euskera with Castellano as a separate subject. There are also night schools offered to give adults the chance to learn their ancestral language. Hopefully these measures can save the oldest language in Europe from extinction.

Good Thing I’m Not One of Those People…

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You know. The people who sit around complaining “Yur in ‘Murica. Speak English” Because I’ve been in Catalunia, the Basque Country, and France without knowing the languages of said countries. I do make the effort whenever possible; at least in Catalunia and the Basque Country I can speak Castellano, but the world is a massive place full of so many languages that I do not speak. I feel as though my world would be so much smaller if I only associated with people who spoke English in countries where English is the primary language. Even if I were to include all the languages where Castellano is spoken, my world would be so much smaller.

Add to that the fact that it is stressful and scary to go somewhere where you don’t speak the language, and far from being angry at people who come to the USA without knowing so much as a word of English, I have developed a great respect for them.

Pay it Forward

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When I was nine years old I happened to borrow a movie from the library that was called Pay it Forward. If you’ve never seenImage it then A) You should, but B) to understand this blog post know that the premise of the movie is a social studies teacher giving an impossible assignment to change the world, and the 7th grader who actually did it. How said 7th grader changed the world was through a concept that has existed for centuries. In this movie 7th grader Trevor McKinney creates a model wherein he does 3 good deeds, and tells each recipient to pay it forward with 3 more good deeds, the multiplication of good deeds will eventually change the world for the better.

Like I said, I was nine when I watched the movie…. so perhaps I could be excused if after briefly looking around and wondering why nobody was actually paying it forward, I ended up forgetting about it and going back to my everyday life.

Now however, the concept has ceased to be simply an idea for me. It is real, and I have been the recipient of a very generous gift that has allowed me to go to Paris!!!!! In fact, I am leaving the Basque Country this very day!

To everyone who has been part of the chain leading up to this, I don’t know you all, but you all deserve my thanks. And never fear, the chain shall not stop here.

 

Sheep Cheese!

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Perhaps it’s time I actually talk about what I’m doing here in the Basque Country?

As I mentioned in my very first post, I’m WWOOFing. WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, and it is an international volunteer program in which people are given the chance to experience life on an organic farm. I am of course acquainted with the workings of small non-organic farms in the United States since my family owns Marquam Meadows Fruit Company (see their website here: http://www.marquammeadowsfruit.com/), so it seemed natural that I should take advantage of WWOOF. I get to travel, experience a whole new culture, practice my Castellano, and learn bits and pieces of a whole new language (Euskera), all while keeping the farm life I already know about as firm footing in a new world.

I registered with WWOOF Spain and sent e-mails around to some of the farms in the Basque Country that sounded the most interesting, and eventually ended up here at Pikunieta Baserria. A farm in which we raise sheep, then milk them and make said milk into cheese. Yup, that’s right. Sheep cheese. It’s actually quite tasty, I’d definitely recomend you try some if you ever have the chance.

So Apparently Twenty Years Isn’t Enough Either

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Ok… I haven’t been immersing myself in Castellano 100%…. I still write this in English for example, and I write e-mails and letters to my American friends in English. I’m also currently caught up in a fantasy novel that just so happens to be written in English. I know English. Pretty darn well. It’s my mother toung, and the vast majority of the millions and millions of words that have passed my lips have been in English.

Why then do I now have trouble remembering words? Yesterday I couldn’t remember conveyer belt (even just now it took quite a bit of brain power to remember). The day before I couldn’t remember beret…. that one took me a good 17 hours to figure out. 

I don’t know the Castellano equivalent of these words, but I can’t look them up in a dictionary if I don’t know the word in English first. Le sigh…. All the problems that arise from communicating in different languages.

Adventures With BlaBla Car

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Well, I have now been in Spain for a week… Goodness.. So much has happened! There’s quite a bit to tell about my time on the farm, but first I suppose I should talk about my adventures getting here….

When I last wrote I assumed I’d be leaving the very next day. I was trying to travel via blabla car (an online ridesharing program). I communicated with someone who was going about 10 minutes away from Bergara: I could leave in Bergara and meet someone from the farm at the bus stop there, and in the meantime only spend about 24 Euros for a 6 hour car ride instead of 60 Euros for a train ride. It sounded like an amazing idea, and I was excited to finally get to the Basque Country. 

Everything seemed perfect. I spent time with my new friends at the hostel for one last night, and then woke up early to pack and check out. In the meantime I was watching my e-mail for details about where to meet for a trip that was supposed to start at 4 in the afternoon. I sent some more e-mails to my ride… trying not to be annoying…. and I sent a message on the blabla car website… Then before you know it it was 3:30. I was nervous by then, so I decided to walk a kilometer to the nearest shopping mall. There were payphones there, and I used one to call the driver I was supposed to ride with. I spent 4 Euros on that stupid phone call, just to struggle through language barriers and learn that my ride had already left. Without so much as an e-mail to let me know that they had decided not to give me a ride. In other circumstances I would shrug and say “their loss”…. but there was not a bed for me at the hostel that night. It was a Friday, and we were crowded by people on weekend trips. I didn’t know what to do… I had no place to stay in a city I barely knew on a Friday night….. There were of course other hostels, but how was I to know whether they would have space or not? I went back to my hostel temporarily, there was at least wifi there and I could use the internet to help me make my decisions. 

I sat on the terrace stressing while around me newcomers and a couple of the people I had spent the week with started drinking. I tried the couchsurfing website, but the only replies I got were from sketchy people. I knew I couldn’t spend a night safely on the streets with the amount of stuff I had. If only I could have fit everything just into that backpack…. I considered trying to hitch-hike… but that is of course a bit dangerous. I didn’t even have my knife because it’s apparently illegal in Spain. I’m also not really that confident in my knowledge of Spanish geography. I could go buy pepper spray and a map and ride the metro as far as it would take me… But I would have to leave soon so I could find a safe(ish) place to sleep once it got dark.

I did eventually decide against hitch-hiking, and instead looked for other hostels on the internet. I found some farther from the city center that weren’t full and was going to book, when another American showed up. She had been teaching kindergarten in an international school in Germany, and her friends had apparently booked too many beds for the night. It wasn’t entirely kosher, but I paid her 7 Euros and slept in someone else’s bed after one last night of salad, wine, and simple food on the terrace.

Stay tuned for my adventures of the next day: Adventures on the Barcelona Metro. Spoiler alert: it’s even more stressful than the Blabla car fiasco.

Barcelona

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Well, I’ve been in Barcelona two and a half days now. Overall… it was a lot less scary than I thought it would be, although I did definitely get ripped off by some cabbies that first day… they saw young American tourist who speaks imperfect Spanish and definitely took advantage of the easy extra money. Since then I’ve learned to use the metro, and now I don’t have troubles with cabbies.

Also, it rained yesterday. A lot. And hard. It’s funny… Barcelona is supposed to be a sunny city to go on holiday… but I come and bring Portland weather! Except it wasn’t really Portland weather. If it were, I wouldn’t have come back to my hostel soaked to the bone. The fun thing is though, there are so many balconies here in Barcelona that I was able to half hide under them…. it kept me a little drier at least!

Speaking of hostels… I really like them. Not only is it cheaper than a hotel (by a lot), but you get to know all sorts of interesting people who are also traveling… Unlike when I drove across the US alone in a Chevy Cavalier (although even then I did make friends in Wyoming).

Tomorrow I’m going to pack in as much sightseeing as I can before leaving in the afternoon for the Basque Country where I will spend the rest of my summer tending to sheep and making cheese out of their milk.

For now, ¡Addios!