The Last Northbounder John Keller
Tina Seeley At Red Meadows Lake Second miracle of my second to last day of the trip except this wasn’t a miracle for me; rather, it was a miracle for Tina Seeley. I talk about Tina Seeley in the Most Unexpected Interaction with Other People section. When I wrote about her in this section of the document, it hadn’t dawned on me that I had already described what had happened. I wrote a few hundred different words here, describing what happened. Should I throw these words away? I’m sure any editor would delete this redundancy, but I thought I’d leave it in as an example of how a different day of writing results in different writing … It had been a long, 22 mile, 2731’ climb up to Red Meadow Lakes. There was very little traffic on the road, just me, the afore mentioned ATV rat pack and one other car. I planned to eat lunch at Red Meadow Lake because the southbounders had told me that it was a beautiful place to stop and it was just on the downhill side of that long climb. When I arrived, that one car that had passed me was there and a woman was standing next to that sole car. I sat down on the picnic bench next to the lake and invited her over for lunch. She accepted my invitation and started munching down on ¼ of my Safeway megameat deli sandwich with extra horseradish sauce. She introduced herself as Tina Seeley and told me that she had come up to this location to consider her future. Particularly, should she return to this area from her current residence in Sarasota, Florida? I had brought my “The Line” talk (see The Profound section below for a discussion of “The Line”) with me and told Tina Seeley about the concept. I think she drove all the way up there to hear this talk. She needed to hear it. I don’t know what Tina Seeley decided, but what are the odds that we would meet as the only two people at Red Meadow Lake to discuss her future?
Wire Cutter on Montana 278 This is a minor miracle and I had totally forgotten about until I transcribed my journal notes where I had written:
another miracle. I had broken my rear derailleur cable while flying down a hill on Montana state highway 278 on day 19. I had been lugging a spare cable all the way from Denver (okay, they don’t weigh all that much) so I was prepared, but it took quite a while to do the repair on the side of the road as cars buzzed by, traveling close to the speed of light as those Montanans tried to get from point A to point B in this vast, western state.
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