At seven-thirty on a Sunday morning, rswfire sat in his Jeep in the parking lot at Cape Blanco, the ocean laid out beyond the windshield and Humbug Mountain standing off in the distance. He said up front that the view would not be a great one — he could not get out of the vehicle, and he would explain why in a minute. So the frame stayed interior: a man in a parked Jeep on the southern Oregon coast, the water held in reserve just outside the glass, talking to whoever had been following the journey. He named the newcomers directly and told them they might not find this one interesting, and that if they stayed, they would want to get caught up, because that is how he rolls. The playlists from Kentucky to Oregon were there. He said he is proud of them, that they are entertaining on different levels, and that the early ones might be a little triggering, because he talks about a lot of deep stuff and does not hold back.
The morning had a piece of business to it. Two videos had failed to reach the channel, and rather than skip the gap, he reconstructed it. Two days earlier he had gone to Cape Arago for the first time — an all-day event, driving in through Brookings, then Gold Beach, then Port Orford, then Bandon, out to the cape and back. He had tried to share it. The phone ran out of space. He moved files to his laptop without realizing the upload was still running, and it failed. The compiled video was deleted, the way he always deletes them, because they eat space and he keeps the individual clips anyway. Those clips are somewhere on the laptop. He noted he has not actually looked at any of his clips in eight months, so that day is probably lost footage.
The video before that had ended on what looked like a cliffhanger. He said it was not on purpose — it was just where the video naturally ended, and he had known he would need to compile and upload and had a lot to do. He had genuinely expected to post something a couple of hours later letting people know he was fine, that everything was well. That did not happen either. Then came yesterday, a travel day. He was over at Humbug — the mountain he could see from where he sat, the one he says he loves so much — and his core muscles were bad enough that he did not do much. He kept the day documented anyway. That video had been uploading all through the previous day and still had distance to cover when he drove up to the parking lot this morning. Cape Blanco's lot, where everybody comes, has really good internet. He noted, mid-sentence, that it had probably finished while he had been talking.
He had settled into the new campsite when he arrived — right next to the one he had before, except this one does not flood. Good setup. He planned to get firewood from the Rangers at some point and have some campfires, and said he thought it would be really nice there, especially in that spot. He was claiming that campsite for whenever he comes back. That is the one he will try to get.
Then he stopped himself. He noticed he was starting to stumble with his words and said, let me be very direct about this. For seven or eight weeks he had been hiking ten miles a day. Day one of that stretch was Humbug — three miles an hour going up. He does not think the ascent is what did it. He thinks it was the descent, because it seems so easy to just go down, and he did not know at the time that going down activates different core muscles. Something on his right side. And the next day he did not stop: he went to Cape Sebastian and found a secret beach he rappelled down to with a rope. The day after that was Pistol River, his first time. All of it wonderful. All of it while his body was giving him very clear signals to slow down, to let it heal — signals he did not act on for seven or eight weeks, until it became clear he really had to listen.
He had arrived at Cape Blanco with a plan built on that clarity. Two weeks on station. He had expected to spend most of it resting in bed and working, starting a new project with his client, and he described himself as having been kind of resigned to that being his life for the interval. But the estimate revised itself as he spoke. He actually thinks he is getting better a lot faster than he thought. Still sore — but he can see it: give it another day or two and he is probably going to be fine. And from there he closed the loop that had been running underneath the whole morning. He did not just transform his mind over this journey. When he got to Oregon, he transformed his body. He said he is very proud of that, that he hopes it inspires, that he hopes they have a good day and a good week. And he said he would keep updating them.