A rainbow stood over Eel Lake on a Friday afternoon in early January, and rswfire sat on the bank beneath it with the water directly ahead of him, wind moving across the surface. He had not known this trail existed until the night before, when he found it listed in the binder handed out at orientation. The other trail — the mile-long one — was flooded and unreachable; he had tried it the day before and turned back. So he came looking for this one instead, the Eel Lake Trail, the North Trail, whatever it was properly called, and found that it did not have one entrance so much as several. He entered from the day-use area, then traced the rest anyway: the way in behind a campsite in the Hiker Biker Camp, a couple of approaches off the dump station. He never established which was the official route. He walked all of them, recorded the tracks on GPS, and followed the trail to the park boundary, where it did not end. It kept going. He noted that, filed it, and told himself he would find out how far one day.
The lizards took the first mile and a half to appear, or rather to become visible — they had been there the whole time, matched so precisely to the ground that he simply had not registered them. Once he did, the walk changed shape. He slowed to a pace that was not his, dropped his eyes to the dirt, and kept them there, because the alternative was stepping on one. Orientation had covered them: poisonous, not toxic, a distinction he turned over aloud and could not fully name the other half of, harmless unless eaten. He described them as looking like little dragons. He described them as cute. He also described what the slowing cost him — the break in flow, the loss of immersion, the fact that watching the ground the entire way is not how he hikes and not how he communes with anything. He had thought, briefly, that he'd found the perfect trail for his time here. He concluded he probably would not use it much, and left the door open in the same breath: maybe they surface only at certain hours, maybe only in certain seasons. He would find out. He wanted to see the rest of the lake.
He said he was tired, and had been tired lately, and traced it back through the chain without softening any link in it — not enough sleep, back pain, and behind both of them the bed. Fixing it would mean tearing out a cabinet and expanding the sleeping area, and he stated plainly that he has neither the skills for that nor the money to hire it done. He named it as something he has to live with. He also named his own contribution: the laptop that sits on the mattress and takes up half of a space that was small to begin with. Part of it, he said, is his fault.
The day had already been long before the lake. He had driven all the way to Port Orford to collect a package, spent some time at Cape Blanco on the way, uploaded a video. He said he was feeling good about volunteering for the state parks. Then he moved to the thing that had actually been sitting with him: whether he will be accepted here exactly as he is. He stated the condition without negotiation — he will not change for anybody — and stated the expectation that follows from it, which is friction. If none came, he said, that would be awesome. He mentioned he might pursue an actual job with the Park Service rather than volunteering. That, he said, was where his head had been the last couple of days.
Then the yurts. He was certain he would hate cleaning them, said so directly, and had volunteered to deep clean them anyway — of course he did. The list runs two phases, dozens of tasks each, and he described it as unbelievable. Training with his boss was set for Sunday. Things with her were going well. He would do it.
The pivot came out of a conversation with another volunteer. rswfire had mentioned wanting to look at Honeyman State Park, twenty miles north, working from a hunch built out of comparison — this park read to him like Humbug Mountain and Cape Blanco, and he suspected Honeyman might read like Harris Beach, where he'd spent only three days and where, he said, his heart got woken up. He named the method as he used it: pattern matching. The other volunteer told him about the ATVs and the dunes, and about how hosts dislike certain assignments there because of the noise, the chaos, people rolling out onto the sand at ten, eleven, midnight, one, two in the morning. It was offered as a warning. rswfire was already lighting up as he heard it. The volunteer registered the shift, looked over at the Jeep, looked at the tires, and came around — he realized rswfire might like it. And rswfire learned he would be allowed to take the Jeep out onto the dunes himself.
He went looking for openings and found one in February: working the store, selling ATV passes, dealing with whoever came through the door. A rowdy crowd, by all accounts. He figured there would be a lot of hot men in it, and said so. He emailed the man responsible that same day, got a reply, and set an interview for Monday — offering to close the twenty miles himself and meet in person rather than do it by phone. So the shape of the next months arranged itself in front of him: January here, drudging through the absolute hell of yurt cleaning, deep cleans included; February at Honeyman, possibly a pretty sweet assignment, though only the one month because the others were already filled. He had already asked about March and April, and had explained his terms — not the physical labor, that wasn't the issue; he doesn't want to be indoors, he likes being outside, and he wants the contact with people. Maybe a welcome desk. Maybe something else. And Honeyman is a big park, which by his pattern would mean real gates and real gatekeepers, the way Harris Beach has them. Maybe that. He said he was excited about it.