SUMMARY:  Up here in the mountains at Lava Mountain Lodge, there are no churches, but we certainly enjoyed a peaceful Shabbat (Sabbath) rest. Yes, there were a few chores—laundry and sorting food—but mostly just lying down resting and reading the Bible. I enjoyed reading stuff from Ephesians, where Paul (who wrote it) was praying for his fellow believers in Ephesus, “that you may know…what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe…that he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man…and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.” Yeah! That’s exactly what I needed to hear as we head back to the CDT tomorrow.

I wish I could say that the fire crews got a break today, too, but no. Just south of us, on the other side of a ridge, the smoke got seriously ugly—great billows of orangey brown. The guests here were all watching it and taking pictures. Fortunately, the wind is blowing it away from us. Now to bed, and the trail tomorrow. Lava Mountain Lodge has been absolutely wonderful!

DETAILS:  We decided on a zero here–it’s so cheap to rent the little cabin, and there is good food, too.  So I lazed in bed for awhile, then went up to the store to get some breakfast (the restaurant is open lunch/dinner).   No problem putting together a great breakfast of muffins, breakfast burritos, juice and coffee!  When I went to pay for it, wow!  Two other thru hikers walked in, looking like they had been run over by a truck, with sort of a glazed look on their faces.  When I heard what happened, I could understand why.  I think they were the two hikers we saw early in the morning yesterday.

One of the hikers is named “Zorro” because he’s from Spain.  Yesterday, they were on the CDT alternate trail, which they said was indeed very bad and overgrown.  Zorro had just pushed his way through a bunch of bushes and finally got out in the clear (the other hiker guy was up ahead of him).  Zorro said, “Then I heard a crunch and crash in the bushes behind me.  I turned to see what it was, and it was a GRIZZLY BEAR, running right at me!”  He said he instantly threw himself to the ground, facedown and he said, “I pray ‘Oh God forgive my sins’–I thought I was going to die.”

The grizzly ran….right OVER him!  It left claw holes in his pack and muddy tracks!  And then it kept running as fast as it could, out of sight!  Zorro said he just lay there for awhile and finally got up, very grateful to still be alive.  As he was telling me about all this, he actually did turn quite pale, and I could see that even just thinking about it was still scary for him.  His friend was equally concerned.  But Zorro said this will not stop him from finishing the CDT!  Go, Zorro!   But I privately said to God, “THANK YOU again that we did NOT have to do that alternate route!   It could have been Fixit or I getting run over, instead of Zorro.”

(Note: The story of what happened…”Zorro got run over by a GRIZZ!!” was soon spread far & wide in the “hiker grapevine”!)

Since I had the whole day off from hiking, I alternated between doing “chores” and just lying down to rest and read the Bible.  For lunch, Fixit and I each ate a big hot fudge sundae.  Yum! And being able to read the Bible was a big help, too.  At night, in our tent, I always read a little bit, but am often so tired that I don’t read much.  Today, I could read as much as I wanted.  Awesome!  It was a wonderful Shabbat (Sabbath rest).

But about an hour after lunch, the fire across the river and down to the south took an ugly turn.  Great billows of orange/brown/gray smoke rose high into the sky, and were being fanned by the wind–AWAY from us, fortunately!.  At the laundry room this morning, I was talking to another guest, a lady who said the USFS will not allow their fire crews to go IN to areas where there are a lot of “snags” (dead trees) because of the danger that the snags will fall on them.  And so much of the forest here is “snags”, that the crews are very limited in what they can actually do, and are mostly just dropping water etc. out of helicopters, while the guys hang out near buildings to protect the buildings, should they be threatened by the fire.

The general attitude of the locals here is to show strong support and gratefulness to the fire crews.  Yesterday when Fixit and I were eating dinner, a bunch of fire crew guys came in, looking very tired and very dirty (hmmmm, just like us thruhikers!) and they devoured the BBQ dinner and a couple of beers, before heading back to their staging area.  The Lava Mountain Lodge has a “Thank you Fire Crews!” sign out front.

Fixit and I had the BBQ dinner again tonight (it is great!) before sitting on the porch of the cabin awhile, then  going to bed.  We feel like we are ready to tackle the CDT again tomorrow!