Greetings from the Road: Day 5

Wow. And I thought Santa Cruz had a lot of hippies. It is totally, amazingly beautiful here so I can see why people come to live off the land. I must say I am very thankful for basic modern amenities and thankful that Jason recently transitioned from an outhouse to a composting toilet at the Octagon, his pad about 15 miles outside Garberville in Humboldt County. Funny because the Octagon, as Jason pointed out, is actually a hexagon but who's counting. The super best part of Humboldt County however is the cool black, plastic Casio digital AND analog watch I found on the bank of the Eel River Wednesday.

The best part of my day today though was spent sitting under a giant fir tree perched on an old wooden skid 20 feet from the Octagon. While Addie napped, I cracked the door so I could hear her and then sat on my flat, read Harry Potter, and peered at wild turkeys through my binoculars. Later when Addie woke up we sat together under the fir and played with sticks, bark, moss and pine cones.

Addie is just so amazing and I've been in awe of her this whole trip. She cracks me up everytime she takes a gigantic bite of a banana, so large she can barely close her mouth. And how she says "more" when she wants another bite. I've also learned that Addie can understand so much more than I had imagined. We can tell her not to stand on the furniture or not to touch the food in Jason's open pantry and she'll obey. And how I can ask her to find me a pine cone and she'll go pick one up. She amazed me the other day when we asked her to find the wooden block with the duck and she was able to sort through a small pile to find it. What is perhaps even more amazing, is that it was the caretaker at the b&b in Santa Cruz that showed me this. I guess it does take a village.