Chapter 11.
Monday, August 21, 2000
It wouldn’t be hard to make the boat since it would be coming at three this afternoon. Or four. There was no point knowing what time it was early this morning. Tossing and turning, I avoided looking at my pocket watch until 8:05 and didn’t make any further moves to get up until around nine.
It was a relief to think that we probably would sleep tonight in our own beds, but there was a lot that had to go right today for us to get there. This was no time to stop worrying!
After sleeping in, when we started moving at about 9 and thought we would play cards.
It was dead calm. There was only an occasional flutter of the tent. The sky was clear. Perhaps the boat would not be late after all.
“Dad, let’s play ‘Go Fish,’ that’s what I wanted to make the cards to play in the first place.”
“OK, but I don’t know how.” But I did know how, I just couldn’t remember which particular game ‘Go Fish’ was.
It was fairly simple. Each player was dealt seven cards and spent the game trying to make pairs of the same number and same color. You’d ask, “Do you have a red six,” and if they did, or if they didn’t but you drew it off the top of the pile, you had a pair to lay down and could play again. Otherwise, it was the other player’s turn. I found it easier to line my cards up on my knee than to hold them in the regular way. Katy held hers in the regular way but I could only see through the paper to the suits, not the numbers, and didn’t spend much effort trying to do that.
After a strong start, Katy fell behind and the end score was my 15 pairs to her 11. She was OK with this.
Then I suggested that these would be good for solitaire. “Have you ever played cross?” I dealt out five cards in a cross, and a Jack happened to fall in the corner. “You use the five in the cross as feeder piles counting up and go down in the corners in suit. The challenge is completing it on one pass through the deck.” As with most solitaires and other card games, for that matter, it was more luck than skill. I finished a pass through the deck without making enough progress for Katy to even know the basic play. “You’re not supposed to do this, but I’m going to go through again.” She started to catch on. After four times through the deck, we “won.”
“We should laminate these,” Katy suggested.
“We’ll put them in the scrap book.”
We could play Accordion, but I don’t think there’s room in the tent.
The cards were stacked; they were all there; we put them away.
Katy had snacked on Fruity Pebbles so much that we had run out. She had another can of Vienna Sausages for breakfast while I had the last bag of Lucky Charms.
Packing
At 10:15, we started packing. I gave directions on how I thought it should go, but there really wasn’t that much to it. It was obvious that you had to pack things like the tent last without having such a thing dictated by me.
In last night’s bathing, we had managed to finish off one water jug and use about half of another. I filled up one of the canteens to finish off the second one, but Katy took a drink and disapproved, “Plastic Water!” she said, “Can I empty this out and fill it up at the faucet?”
“Yeah, OK.” I was finally resigned to the fact that it had been a mistake to bring any of that old Y2K water, especially since we weren’t cooking ‘just add water’ meals with any. We should have brought one full canteen for the crossings and refilled it from the faucets for the hikes. Of course, going in, there was no way to know that they wouldn’t announce at arrival on the pier that the water in the campground wasn’t potable or that there wasn’t something else about it that, though safe for drinking, made it still undesirable. Or if the faucet in the campground would even be working or if there would be a faucet in the campground at all.
Now in full sunlight, I searched the grass for my lost contact lens and found nothing. “All told, we probably have about a 20% chance of finding it,” I muttered again. It could be down in the grass in which case it’s just a matter of finding it, or it could have lodged high up, then blown on to another place in another gust and so on until it’s who-knows-where. I hope it’s in the ocean!”
My pack was to contain the trash and dirty laundry; Katy’s everything else.
Katy cut a slit across the top of the first empty jug and we transferred all the trash into it then put the whole jug into the trash bag and rolled it up into a compact block. We really didn’t have that much trash, just a gallon or so in volume, even counting all the crushed cans and things. OK, that was ready.
The dirty clothes bag looked larger than my whole pack. I dumped it all out, lined the pack with the bag, and started neatly folding the laundry and putting it back inside. In the end, everything fit, the trash getting additional compression in the lower compartment.
“You know, I think I’ll give this pack back to Scott (Owens) when we’re done with this trip. I’ve had it for three years, since we crossed the Grand Canyon. If some of us do something else like this, I’ll rent one, they’re not that expensive, and that way I can try out various kinds. If we start doing a lot of backpacking, I’ll eventually know what to buy.”
But, I always came away from these trips swearing that I wasn’t going to major in backpacking anymore. This was true today as well.
We picked our lunch rations out of the remaining food and Katy packed the rest of the food into her pack with our “clean” (that is, full of sand but otherwise clean, more or less) clothes. I’d only worn my shorts for sleeping, for example, so considered them clean. My blue jeans had been dirty enough to launder Friday evening but I'd continued to wear them and had been getting them dirtier and dirtier since.
We dragged the sleeping bags and pads out and tried to shake some sand out of them into the dead grass. The two ladies behind us were making some packing motions too. “It’s hard to believe we can carry all this stuff out,” I yelled over.
An answer something like, “We carried it all in,” drifted over on the wind, which was beginning to pick up now a bit.
We rolled up our bags and struggled to secure them to the packs. This was the hardest part for me. I was carrying my sleeping bag in the bottom loops of the pack, which weren’t quite big enough to hold a bag in the first place. In addition, my eight-pound Sears Special sleeping bag that I’d had since 1975 was bigger and heavier than a proper bag for backpacking would be. As with the test hike and the motel re-load, I ended up straining and swearing at the thing to get the straps started to the point where I could get enough purchase on them to pull them up tight.
There was always room for improvement in these operations.
I resisted the urge to say, “Hurry up, we’re burnin’ daylight.” Even though this was true, I had allowed ample time for each stage of the return trip, and 50% margin beyond that. And the boat might well be late.
I found the camping knife that, for years, had had a nine or ten inch piece of string tied to it, for what purpose I couldn't recall. I untied this and retied it into a glasses strap. Now that I was using the glasses, it was my single-string eyewear (so to speak). If I lost or broke these I was out of luck. I had traveling vision, but just barely and wouldn’t enjoy any sightseeing without them. I wished again I’d thought to make a hat clip before leaving home too although loss of the hat would be less of a disaster. The string had some nasty knots in it, but I was able to remove or work around them. It wouldn’t look fashionable, but it would work fine.
We started attaching Katy’s pad to her pack, but then I realized it wasn’t full yet and this wouldn’t work. We finished up the daypack, stuffed it in the top then were ready to finish up the outside. We put our pads on with the “Duncan” markings on the outside to help us identify our stuff in case there was confusion. Now all that was left was the tent. I went around and started pulling up stakes. The fly detached, Katy dragged it out in the grass to dump the dirt out. It took us both a couple of tries to get it adequately empty, as always. Poles out, we rolled it up and attached it to my pack. We were nearly ready to go.
I made another, final search for the missing left contact lens in the same areas of grass as before, but now under different sunlight. Still, nothing found except some miniscule pieces of trash and camping equipment from prior occupants. Katy picked some of this up and put them in her side bags. That lens was probably a kilometer away by now, or a hundred, and who knew which direction. It was unlikely that it could have found its way to the ocean but far from impossible.
Our packs were both ready, they were both much lighter than before. The one untouched water jug was sitting there ready too, I ripped off the piece of duct tape that said, “Duncan” on it, folded and stuffed it in my pocket on top of the map.
I helped Katy get into her pack then got into mine. Katy said goodbye to the “grim reappear” plant. We looked around the site one last time, saw nothing left behind, I picked up the water, we turned our backs and walked up the trail, downwind, for the last time. It was ten until noon.
Hiking to the Pier
We passed the YCC mess tent. Nobody else was in sight in the campground anywhere. I left our last jug of plastic water on one of their tables. We continued out to White Dirt Pinch Pass where we met Andrea coming in.
“Oh I’m glad I caught you, the boat is going to be early, probably two to two-thirty.”
“We’re on the way.”
We had her take our picture together with the campground in the background. She went on in to alert the other campers.
When we woke up to dead calm this morning, I had suspected that this might happen but hadn’t been brave enough to hope as much.
“What probably happened,” I explained to Katy, “was that the boat left Oxnard early expecting it to be a rough pick up on San Miguel. Since this was a pick up trip rather than a drop off trip, they would have more flexibility in departure time and not as many people to load up, so they could get away early. Then, it turned out nice like this and they showed up early at San Miguel but didn’t have any trouble loading after all, so now they are going to be early getting here too.”
Viann was supposed to be at work. She and John would leave as soon as she got home but they wouldn’t be in Oxnard much before 6:30. We could pull in as early as 5:30 at this rate. Still, there were too many unknowns and we had no communications. There was no point in worrying about that yet, or maybe ever. After all, if we got in before they got there, we’d just occupy ourselves somehow until they did arrive.
What if they have trouble or a wreck or something and don’t make it to pick us up, I worried to myself. There were too many separations of reality here to be getting ulcers over this sort of thing. Nothing was perfectly safe, there was more risk in the boat trip than that, but nonetheless I’d be fine once we were on the boat, no matter how it went (within reason). I was really fine already right now. We were, after all, doing something.
We passed the kiosk and the ladybug post for the last time without noticing either. Some YCC trash was sitting there waiting to be trucked off.
“This is like Mars with grass,” Katy observed, remembering something we talked about earlier in the weekend.
“Yes it is. Mars with grass.”
A truck passed, we had to move out of the road.
“So,” I asked, “what was your favorite part so far?”
“The frogs,” she was excited, “the ladybugs, the beach… but really, just talking in the tent was the best part.”
We continued in silence, another truck passed pushing us off the road again. No other hikers were in sight either direction. It wasn’t a race this time.
We passed the turnout in the landing strip, were passed by another truck then reached the horse gate at the powerhouse. We walked off into a corral; having missed the trail somehow, came back to the gate and rested. I noticed the gnarled, bent trees of the ancient windbreak seaward from here. Oh, there was the path; other hikers were turning down towards the pier. We followed.
We passed the bone on the trail. “The last hiker,” I said, out loud this time.
There was nothing new in the literature box at the kiosk on the root of the pier. We walked off the cliff and out onto the wood planks. Other campers were already waiting on the beach below. I noticed a platform and ladder down on our right for the first time. Some equipment was stacked there.
“Do you want to leave our stuff here and have lunch?” I asked.
“No, I want to take our stuff out to the pier.”
We walked out to the end and took off our packs right where they had been set Friday. It was ten to one; the hike out had taken an hour.
Lunch
We pulled the daypack out of the top of Katy’s pack and the full canteen out of the bottom and re-secured it. This was the configuration in which we would travel on the boat, the two backpacks below and the daypack and canteen above.
Then we walked back up to the ladder at the root of the pier, climbed down onto the sand, acknowledged the other campers there, and continued on about three coves south to a place with a little shade and a log to sit on for lunch. The last hundred feet were along the cliff. If the tide were any higher, we would have to wade. As it was, I sprinted between waves. Katy took off her shoes and socks and followed in the surf a few minutes later.
Lunch consisted of Vienna Sausages; we each just took our own can this time and dealt with them on our own, crackers, and pear cups. We both had Golden Graham Treats (kind of like ‘Smores, it said on the package). This was the first time I’d had anything but bare rations while on the island. We fought off flies.
The kayakers passed us on foot, exploring for themselves the little coves and inlets, and went on over some rocks barefoot to next the beach. We had seen the kayaks waiting on the beach. This confirmed that they had decided to give up on their expedition and were returning with us today.
After cleaning up our lunch trash we slowly headed back toward the pier. The waves were lower; I was able to walk a leisurely pace on the wet sand. Katy waded out to her knees, giggling in the cold water.
“I want to climb that sand dune,” she said, indicating a pile of sand nearly the height of the cliff on the other side of the pier.
“Go ahead.”
“Here hold my shoes,” she handed over her shoes and the other things she was carrying.
While she jogged ahead, I followed at my regular pace. Andrea was sitting there near the ladder with another camper, her legs buried in sand.
Katy ran up, encountering soft sand trouble.
I continued on to the next rocks. We were in the outlet for a stream. The surf was smashing into the rocks at the far side. It looked like I could walk out a little on one of them if I jumped up on a shelf between waves. This worked fine, but the next step was on a slight incline that was powdered with fine sand and tiny rocks. A bare foot probably wouldn’t hold this, much less my boot. Like a person forty-something, I backed down rather than trying to go on with the waves crashing off to the side.
I took a few pictures including one of Katy on the dune then set the equipment down against the wall and walked up to the brackish pond at the end of the stream. It wasn’t flowing; the water was dark brown. Two other campers were sitting on a ledge a few feet up. I didn’t go further.
Katy came down and joined me.
We started up the stream together, she without shoes, this
condition having more impact on the path she chose than her usual
judgment
would have. We passed the two other
campers, two women sitting rather close, I thought, but I didn’t pay
any
further attention. We exchanged
pleasantries as we passed. Katy was
hopping around to save her feet; I was just looking for good steps. We reached the upstream end of the brackish
pond and found nothing running there either.
It must just be a storm runoff, I thought.
Katy wanted to measure its depth; we looked around for a loose stick,
finding
one that was maybe four feet long. It
seemed plenty long for this, but in no sounding location could she
reach the
bottom with it. I touched the water
with a finger and touched it to my tongue to see if it was salty. It wasn’t as salty as I expected, maybe it
was just stagnant runoff rather than trapped high tide.
We started back downstream, taking soundings as we went. Still no luck until we got to the piles of seaweed at the very seaward end where it was obviously six inches deep.
People were moving about in the general direction of the pier. The boat must be coming; I looked around. There it was crossing the bay from the north already nearing the pier!
“Katy! The boat’s here; get your shoes on!”
I took a picture of the boat nearing the pier, and another while backing in which its name could be read on the back. It was 2:00 p.m. We retrieved our gear and walked back to the ladder. I kneeled at the bottom to retrieve my seasickness medicine while Katy climbed up, dropped the pill in the sand, then dusted it off and took it with a gulp of water. I then re-closed the daypack and joined Katy up on the platform. Most of the campers seemed already on the way out or already standing at the end as we proceeded to join them. The boat was turning around and backing up to the right side at the end of the pier as it had before.
The Jeffrey Arvid
As we arrived, the captain was ordering the usual bucket-brigade-like lineup of campers to move all the gear from the pier to the hold. I decided to go on and get on the boat to help out. Katy stayed above with our packs. About six of us handed what seemed like 50 items of gear across to the hold as the boat bobbed up and down against the pier on the swells. At length we were done; Katy came down herself with the last of the passengers.
Andrea counted up. Some hikers weren’t here yet. She had told them 2:30, she shouted to the skipper. While Andrea stayed on the pier, the boat pulled away and coasted out to an anchor buoy. The hands retrieved its stout rope and tied off. We sat on benches and watched the pier for signs of the other hikers. The kayakers were already telling their harrowing stories to some of the San Miguel passengers who had seen them off from there the day before.
“The most dangerous thing is the container ships. We don’t even show up on their radar,” they were saying.
“Heroes,” I quipped to Katy. Judy overheard and smiled.
We continued waiting.
A trashcan blew over right beside me; I held the lid in my hand like a satellite dish. Katy laughed.
“This is the main problem with glasses at a time like this,” I showed Katy my glasses, speckled with salt spray then cleaned them off, figuring that cleaning would generally be a mostly futile exercise for most of the day. “And, sand still blows in your eyes, but I guess it doesn’t hurt as much.”
There were figures coming down the pier. They reached the end. Andrea
made a sign with both hands together
over her head. The crew threw off the
buoy rope, started the engines, Vrooom!, just like a car, and we backed
back
over to the pier. Six more hikers and
their gear, including the family of three, boarded.
Andrea looked around, said goodbye to Tim on the pier, and
climbed down. We were ready to go. At 2:35 p.m. Jeffrey Arvid got
underway.