Create Your Own World - Friday, May 2

Sally and I truly believe you create your own world by how you react to people and events. If you treat people with respect and kindness you create a world of kindness around you that people respond to in kind. It is hard for someone not to laugh and smile with you if you are laughing and smiling. And when they respond, you have just created your world of happiness and kindness.

Sally and I took an early morning walk around the block at Bill and Sue's to see how her ankle and foot were coming along. Not well. Still painful to walk on. We deliberated about options and what actions we could take for the next few days while waiting for healing to occur.

Somehow we decided that I should go hike a 90 mile section of the trail while she convalesced at her sister's house for five days. This would entail driving to Wrightwood, CA to drop me off. Along the way, although a bit of a detour, we would drive to the town of Big Bear Lake and pick up Sally's meds at the hostile where we had the Caldwell's mail them. We had hoped to have hiked to there by now, but being a bit behind due to the injury we would pick up the meds before she ran out.
It is a 6000' climb up to Big Bear Lake from the LA basin along a windy, twisty road. Once in town we found the hostile and saw to getting our package. They have received a lot of packages this year, so it took a bit of digging to find the meds box.
Finally located I picked it up and it felt eerily light. A quick glance at the tape holding the box shut showed it to be amiss. When I opened the box there was nothing inside. Someone had gotten into the box and stolen all the meds.

Sally was badly shaken. A combination of frustration over her injury and now this had her in tears. We checked with the Post Office, but because we did not pick up the box, the hostile agent had, there was no recourse.

A kind woman saw us dejectedly sitting in the car and leaned in to talk. She sympathized with us offering support, then told us of the Walgrens in town and to go talk to them about getting them replaced.

On the drive to Walgreens Sally said, "there is a reason this happened. Something good will come of this today. Just you watch."

At Walgreens the kind Pharmacist assured us she would do the necessary work to get it taken care of, but it would take a few hours. With time to kill, we thought we would drive to the PCT trailhead just outside Big Bear and see if any hikers needed rides into town.

Sure enough, as we pulled into the trailhead parking lot an obviously grubby PCTer named Sock Pot came walking out. We offered him a ride to town which he gladly accepted.
On the way into town we asked if he had seen our friends Far Out, Coyote, Crotalus and Grasshopper. "Why yes", he explained, "they are about a half hour behind me!"

We dropped Sock Pot off at the hostile and headed back up to the trailhead to get our "group". We stopped and got a 12 pack of Budweiser for them. Sure enough, they were waiting at the trailhead for us, along with about 6 additional hikers. Glad we got a 12 pack!
A happy reunion followed. Eventually we loaded into our car and another and made our way back to town. If the meds had not been stolen, we would have left town without seeing our friends.

We enjoyed dinner and a trip back to Walgreens and to Vons for some last minute items. "Big Red" one of the additional PCT hikers was riding with us. He lives in Mammoth Lakes and does search and rescue there. We began to compare notes and soon realized he and I had met In 2009 on a rescue in the Sierra north of Yosemite. As we talked it turns out I had talked with him for about a half an hour while the body of a climber who had fallen was being discovered. Small world! I pulled out my iPad to look at pictures from the rescue and sure enough, I even had a picture of him. We laughed and laughed at the coincidence.
And all this would not have happened if the meds were not stolen!
We bid everyone goodbye about 8 as it was getting dark and began the 2 hr drive to the trailhead at Wrightwood where I was to be dropped off in the morning. We arrived about 10:30 and parked in the trailhead parking lot. We put the back seat down in Sue's Toyota, laid out our sleeping pads, unstuffed our down quilt and soon were sound asleep at the end of an amazing day.

You do indeed create the reality of your world through you interactions, attitude and deeds.