Tuesday, April 8, 2008

"Rest Day"

I've been asked by a couple of people what rest days are like for us here on the Walk – I'm sure they're a little different for everybody – particularly folks who don't seem to really get them (like our organizers and beautiful kitchen crew); but I thought I would let you know what we did on this last rest day, just to give you an idea of how are time is spent when we aren't walking.

For myself, and for my friends Carrie and Kathleen...our day was supposed to start out fairly mellow – as it turns out we fell for the oldest trick in the book. We three were scheduled for Kitchen Duty, but were told the night before that the Kitchen would be closed...so we didn't have to show up early in the morning. Yeah, well, thankfully Kathleen woke up early anyway and went down to the kitchen to see that it was indeed open, with Felipe inside preparing the morning meal. She woke Carrie and I up and we got down there to find that Mr. Wade had played a little April Fool's joke on us the day before. Blast you Rumble!

So, we finished our Kitchen Duty for the morning and then began the truest form of Rest Day ritual, which is...laundry. You know, many of us have only packed 3-5 days worth of clothing and so our little stash of daily wear can get pretty darn manky quickly...especially after 4 days of walking in a row. So, it's pretty common for small town laundromats to be overrun by the scurry of little walker feet scrambling for the next top loader. I have to say though, that one of the things I notice regularly is that many walkers combine their laundry with others, as well as offer to wash things for people as long as they are doing it anyway. It's a nice piece of camradarie around this common chore that I appreciate.

In this instance, Kathleen and I made the laundromat way too late to get a machine, so we took the time to head 5 miles down the road so we could pick up both a cell signal so she could make some calls – and I had discovered that I could get wireless access outside of the local gas station/quik mart. Since I am addicted to my email – this is as good as cell service for me, and I had been cell phone dark for a few days out here in Dine' Country, so the wireless access was golden.

Having finished that, we headed back to the laundry, found machines open and within an hour we had (semi) fresh, clean clothes once again.

Heading back to camp we discovered that while we were told there wouldn't be any lunch served (no April Fool's joke this time) – we saw people happily eating their lunch anyway. It had been prepared by other folks eager to make a meal happen. So, despite our missing out on preparing the meal – we needed to help clean it up, so the folks who graciously put lunch together didn't have to – and so spent the next hour or so doing that.

By this time, it was getting well into the afternoon, right around 3:00 – and so I took the opportunity to repack my bags (with the clean clothes) and otherwise get my camp scene ready to pack up early in the morning to head out.

A good portion of any rest day, at least for me, involves unpacking both of my bags and repacking them; ridding them of any flotsam along the way. Stray trash, such as granola bar wrappers or the odd orange peel find their way into stuff and can just clog up the whole process when you're trying to move quickly. It's also a good time to repair any gear, or restring a boot, or just take a look at what you have and make sure everything is where it should be.

By the time we were done with that, around 4:30, we headed over to the community center, where the kitchen crew was needed to help prepare the evenings meal. This was definitely one of the highlights of our kitchen experience thus far. We got to meet some local men and women and work in a beautifully designed kitchen for a couple of hours, helping to put together some amazing salsa and salads for dinner. Those folks know how to have fun in the kitchen and they made us all feel extremely welcome (and they played great music!).

After serving dinner, and sitting down to enjoy it ourselves – we headed back to the gas station to try to send off a couple of walker blogs that I had written. Sadly, something was up with my Yahoo server, so the pieces wouldn't send and we started back for camp. It was now around 9:00pm and definitely past our bedtime.

Heading to our tents we found out from our coordinator what time we were due to leave in the morning for Canyon de Chelly (8am) and made our way to bed.

Another Rest Day successfully completed!

P.S. - I want to take this opportunity to thank Felipe, Cousin, Mary and Wade who make up the core people of our Kitchen Staff. A small group of Walkers (5-7 people) are assigned to help them only once every ten days, but for these folks..there are rarely ever rest days when it comes to getting our food scene together – they work very, very hard at making sure things run smoothly and good, nutritious meals are provided for us. I deeply appreciate all of their hard work. Thank you!

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