The Columbia River called me.  I don’t know how or why.   I just went.  And hiked like a madwoman.  Like a woman who had no idea where the fuck she was going.  Like a woman who had something to prove to herself or maybe something to remember.  I hiked like a woman who had cracked under the weight of loss and grief.  I arrived around midnight from Maui and stayed in an awful motel just east of Portland, the kind where all the rooms reek of cigarette smoke.  I didn’t even bother turning down the sheet, just laid my travel blanket atop the bed and curled up for a few hours.  I hit the road early and caught my first view of the gorge.  It was breathtaking and mysterious and still calling so I began to make my way down waterfall alley, hike by hike as large birds of prey swooped and circled at the tree line.  The trees were burnt in places and I walked through echoes of blazes that devastated this landscape six years prior.  The forest was still reeling and growing anew at the same time.  I felt like I was in the right place.  After all, six years is not a long time.  It’s how long my mother’s been dead.  But looking at the char of some of the trunks, you’d think it just happened.  I treaded lightly.  My steps on the ground became a silent mantra.   Because I didn’t know what the fuck to say.  Or have anyone to say it to.  I took thirty thousand of them on that first day of my journey.