Interesting Week

Wow, I don't know where to begin.  I guess I'm trying to separate my human interactions from my overall experiences here.  I'll give it a try.

We hitched from McMinville to Hebo (on the coast).  It was really tough getting a hitch until a redneck named Mike, driving a beat up 4X4 with "FLEE MARKET" spray painted on the windows, offered us a ride for gas money.  Really nice guy.  Throughout the whole drive he kept slamming on the brakes to point out another beautiful landmark or fishing spot.  Was an interesting experience.  We finally got to our next wwoofing spot, and met our new hostess; M.

Both Eva and I are trying to be less judgemental in our lives (she's much more successful than I have been so far), but its hard not to be.  Lets start from the basic fundamental point; M is a militant vegan.  I don't have any problem with someone being vegetarian or vegan, or even for them being militant about it.  But at a certain point its hard to look past the 'eating meat is just as bad as what the Nazis did' comment.  Its not even like she made a passing remark that may have taken a little too much exaggeration into account.  M decided the need to defend this point and build on it (from all comments she made, it is obvious she believes eating meat is worse than gassing millions of humans). 

M repeatedly made remarks how people can't be compassionate to each other if they aren't compassionate to animals.  Yet she made numerous racist comments (mostly against rednecks, but about others as well).  She also told us a story about how a 7 year old in the area found his fathers rifle and killed his 8 year old brother by accident.  But this was a good thing because it is one less redneck in the world.  I found myself thinking of all the stories my liberal friends like to tell about crazy 'conservatives.'  Here I was seeing the opposite end of that spectrum.  She claims to be as liberal as they come.  I guess it evens the playing field a bit.

In all honesty I felt more sad about this then anything else.  She has warped views of the world, but there are so many underlying issues with her that I can't help but feel sorry for her.  Now that I got that out of my system, I can move on to my amazing experiences. 

Her place was perfect for us.  It was a beautiful wildlife sanctuary.  One morning I woke up and opened the door to see a dozen elk grazing there.  She also had a neglected garden.  It was good to put my burgeoning skills to work.  Eva and I transformed the garden overrun with weeds to a beautiful garden with many different produces being grown and some neat compost piles ready to turn back into soil.  We managed this in just two days of backbreaking work.  I probably shoveled 25 wheelbarrows full of soil and 5 wheelbarrows of horse manure, plus hours of weeding.  Eva put her expert gardening skills to work planting everything.

We also managed to get a nice hike in.  Yesterday Eva and I made it farther up north.  We did a nice hike of Mount Nahkahame (sp?), trekked along the coast to in an area called Cape Falcon, then headed to Arch Cove.  It was probably just as difficult as the last hike (maybe a tad easier), yet I had no problems with it.  It was also about 15 miles with over 2000 feet of elevation (like our last hike).  I am still holding Eva back (she is used to 20 mile days), but I didn't spend the whole day complaining and I didn't collapse or pass out as we reached our camping point last night.  It goes to show that my daily physical labor and extracurricular activities are having the desired effect.  I also bought a normal sleeping bag so I didn't spend the night in freezing agony.

We are finishing up around here then heading down near Coos Bay to an awesome real life farm ( http://myrtleglenfarm.com/ ).  If we stay long enough we will be there for Llamapalooza on August 15th (its in the pictures).  We are super amped for this.