The best came last

I've arrived in Twisp, Wash., in the heart of the breathtaking MethowValley, carried along on the last day by miracles, luck, serendipity, irony. . .all the things required to make a wacky idea reach the finish line.

Great to see my pal Don, now a mountain media mogul (weekly paper, circ. 3,000), right there on the main street of Twisp where people can park and talk in the middle of main street and where there's still an actual working phone booth in front of the post office. It's been a long time, and he looks good in his natural (if way different from Seattle) surroundings. More on that later, since we've got a lot to talk about.

In preparing for this trip, I'd developed a healthy wariness of the state of Washington and its reputation for not giving much quarter to hitchhikers. Walking on side roads is legal, but "soliciting" -- sticking one's thumb out -- is not. Interstate? Stay above the entrance sign, which to me means fuhgeddaboudit.

So today with some trepidation I headed out of Spokane west on U.S. 2, for the 166-mile trip to Twisp. After a short lift a few miles west and a long wait in hot sun, a guy pulled over in a sleek, narrow-windowed sedan. A cop, it turned out, driving from a meeting in Spokane back to Coulee Dam, where he's a sergeant with the Colville Reservation Tribal police. (He also recently was a patrol officer in. . .Twisp!) Sgt. Don Redfield drove me about 80 miles through the wheat fields of eastern Washington -- where I wouldn't have wanted to be trying to snag a ride -- to Coulee Dam. He was an entertaining guy who knew everything about wheat, geography, history, you name it. He'd seen me on the way into Spokane, from the opposite side of the road, and picked me up when he spotted me only a few miles away maybe three hours later. His take on hitchhiking: It's much more common on the reservation, and he picks up hitchhikers because it's often a way to get the carless out of harm's way.

Coulee Dam is a small community (with one of the world's largest dams) reminiscent of Grand Marais, Minn. -- the hill behind down rises quickly above a huge water body, in this case Roosevelt Lake. But there's even less traffic up the hill than there is up the Gunflint Trail. It was hot. It was quiet. Nap time. Then a small red Chevy pulled over. Another cop! This one wearing a uniform of Colville (Reservaton) Tribal Corrections.

Duane McClung said he'd take me all the way to Bridgeport -- close to where Don might even be able to come and pick me up. But McClung, who's done three tours of duty in the Mideast and is heading back for a fourth, also shared his love for the place where he lives and works. He took some extra time to stop and let me take pictures at overlooks at Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams, told me that (I didn't know this) the hydro people feel threatened by the expansion of wind power, practically ordered me to pick some sage to take home, showed me the hill he runs regularly and, an avid deer hunter, spotted a deer skittering in the sage. Regarding hitchhiking: "Times have changed. People have changed." The serial Green River Killer in the northwest in the early 80s meant "the crazies ruined it for everybody."


He dropped me in the small, remote migrant worker town of Bridgeport. A few cars crawled through town; the sun had already dipped behind the foothills. I noticed the only motel in town had been boarded up perhaps 20 years ago.
Then an Audi convertible approached. "This would be nice," I muttered to myself. The driver gave me a thorough look, and pulled over. I was trying to get to Pateros, where Don said he might be able to come to pick me up. But when I said I was actually going to Twisp, he said he was going right through there.

Cloud was his name. It was Ride 18 of the journey, and proved again that patience was powerful. With the top down and the Grateful Dead on his satellite radio, we cruised up along the Columbia River and then along the Methow, as twilight followed. Cloud talked about hitchhiking with his late wife all over the world, about the lumber business he's in, and his 40 years in the valley, and how, of course, the best way to see the mountains is in a convertible. I silently added: Especially at the end of a five-day hitchhike. After 1,700 miles, hours of truck noise and heat, sore back muscles from carrying a heavy pack, and encounters with a range of people I couldn't have imagined, I'd arrived in style, convinced once again (and, I'll say it here: finally) there was nothing to fear about hitchhiking except drunks and deadlines.