When we left our home that morning we didn’t expect bad weather. We’d been enjoying an early spring for a few weeks, with intermittent rainstorms. So we took off for a drive to Arcata, on the coast, not thinking all that much about precipitation.

Our route is the Klamath River Highway - also known as the Bigfoot Scenic Byway because it passes by Bluff Creek where the famous Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot movie was filmed, and there are a lot of Bigfoot sightings in this region. You can see a bit of the highway on the left side of this river photo. You can click on that photo for a larger version of it.

Forty miles downriver there are two tall bridges. With my acrophobia… and bridge-phobia… I have actually stayed awake nights fretting about these darn bridges! But that was years ago. After I discovered EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) I learned to tap away my phobias, and now I’m learning to cross these bridges without slowing down to a chicken-crawl first. I’m doing pretty well at this!

Anyhow, not long after we cross the bridges we come to the Junction School, and then Somes Bar which is nothing more than a solitary store - currently called the Salmon River Outpost - and homes that are scattered into the hills nearby, none of them visible from the highway. We stopped there and I took advantage of their coffee bar… got myself a mocha. You know, our town of Happy Camp has ten times the businesses, people, activity, etc… but not one decent coffee house! A local woman has promised to create one but it has been a couple years in the thinking phase, so far. I recently noticed some restaurant equipment being unloaded from her truck and stored in the restaurant space, so maybe something will happen this summer.

So, back to my story - I stopped at the store in Somes Bar and then we took off down the Klamath River Highway, continuing toward Eureka, but we didn’t get very far. We were stopped at the Salmon River Road turnoff by a CalTrans employee who informed us that a landslide would prevent us from continuing down the highway.

Okay… “So is there another way around?” I asked him.

“Take the Ishi Pishi Road,” he said.

He continued to talk and my boyfriend chatted with him. I was anxious to turn around and get on my way but then realized that the man was probably bored and lonely with all that road guarding. I mean, there he was in the wilderness next to this landslide and there was nobody else around anywhere. So the guys chatted a while and eventually we turned around and drove back to the store. People outside there were looking at us. “Yeah, we got told,” I muttered… and I turned onto the Ishi Pishi Road which is on the other side of the store.

The map shows Ishi Pishi Road, which is just west of the closed Highway 96. Google tells me it is 6.9 miles, taking about sixteen minutes to drive.

We drove past a couple of hitch hikers (sorry guys but my boyfriend isn’t into picking them up) and over a bridge, then were on the road to Orleans. The road is one-lane, narrow, paved (thankfully,) but with no lines painted on. When you meet someone going the other way someone has to sidle up to the cliff and edge around - hopefully gracefully - and if you’re lucky there’s a very narrow turnout. Aside from that, there’s always the backing up option. Fortunately we didn’t have that experience and managed to get through just fine though my boyfriend was upset because I was driving. He’s a former professional truck driver and thinks he knows it all about driving! (He does, but believe me, sometimes I just don’t want to hear it!)

After a few miles on this road he was saying, “I don’t like it. I think we should turn back.”

I shuddered. I hadn’t driven more than forty miles just to turn around and go home. I wanted to go have some fun at the coast! I rarely get to go out of town - and living in the middle of a forest gets claustrophobic at times. A trip out of town is a very special event! I managed to convince him it was okay to keep going. I’d been on Ishi Pishi Road once before, about nine years ago.

“It isn’t all that long,” I told him.

Not long after we got onto the Ishi Pishi Road we were able to see the landslide on the other side of the river. WOW. That hillside came down and covered the entire road, and continued on down to the river. A very impressive mess! It happened two weeks before we got there, but nothing had been done to fix the problem. We passed a surveyor on Ishi Pishi Road. I don’t know how surveying helps… but apparently they’re being very cautious on how they’re going about correcting this problem.

The photo is by a CalTrans worker (fair use, government property!) … I found it at this article about the slide, which includes a video of the slide in progress!

After about twenty minutes (seemed like an hour) we finally got to the end of twisty, narrow Ishi Pishi Road. It curved around down the hillside into the very small town of Orleans, and we turned right to continue on our way to the coast. After Orleans we pass through Weitchpec, originally a Yurok village, and then Hoopa, a Native American reservation town. The next town is Willow Creek. In that town we went to visit a Bigfoot research and blogging friend, Steven, at his Bigfoot Books store a few miles east of town. It was the first time my boyfriend (and Bigfoot research partner) had met Steven so they talked for a long time while I looked for art books, then herb books, then yoga books… and I even got a Bigfoot book. I’ll put links to the books I bought at the end of this story.

After that we went to Arcata, ate dinner, and got ready to return. On the way back we stopped at the Blue Lake Casino from which I emerged about fifty dollars richer. Here’s my casino tip: twenty dollars, twenty minutes. If you don’t win in the first twenty minutes, get out. The longer you stay the more chi is expended from your energy stores, and the longer they have to send you subliminal “spend money” messages. And don’t spend more than twenty dollars. Also, if you win anything, leave immediately. If you win you think you’ll win more and then spend all your winnings trying. Don’t do it! Take the money and run!

Anyhow, I won, took my money, and was happy that it paid for my gasoline and dinner in Eureka. So we made our way back up the hill toward Willow Creek, noticing intermittent snow flurries. I’d seen them on the way down too. Nothing big or spectacular - just a few small flakes. Nothing to even slow down for.

In Willow Creek we stopped for gas and then took off down Highway 96, the Bigfoot Scenic Byway, heading for home. Perhaps I should mention that it is a three and one-half hour drive from Eureka to the town we live near, Happy Camp. In Hoopa my boyfriend took over the wheel, and I settled back for a pleasant drive home.

As he turned onto Ishi Pishi Road in Orleans, the snow started coming down again. Before long, it took on blizzard proportions, and there we were on the one-lane mountain road with no lines on it, at night, with drastically reduced visibility due to all the white stuff swirling around us. At that point I was glad that my boyfriend, the ex-truck driver, was driving, but still I decided it was time to pray. As we drove on, the snow got thicker and started to stick to the ground. As the non-driver I was instructed to keep an eye out for deer, and was reprimanded by the nervous driver when I wanted to listen to my SanDisk - Sansa Fuze to help me calm down. Okay, no music! Prayers… probably a better idea anyway!

We finally got to the end of the Ishi Pishi Road - I was so happy about that - and turned onto the Klamath River Highway - we still had another 40 miles of cliffs and twists and turns - but at least now there was a set of lines on the road to help guide us. There have been a lot of really terrible accidents on this road, even with better weather. If you go over the cliff side it is a long way down, so to be precise, I’d have to say I was as terrified as I’ve ever been in this life. I don’t particularly like the road on a good day; but on a day when you can barely see five feet in front of you because of the swirling oncoming large snowflakes reflecting in the headlights, it was very, very scary.

Well, as you can tell, I got home safely and there was only one stretch with snow covering over the lines on the highway. As we got closer to home there was less snow falling, and that helped a lot.

On the way home I didn’t want to mention it but once we felt safe again I asked, “You didn’t happen to look at the weather report before we left today, did you?” He sort of growled at me. Neither of us had expected snow because the weather recently had been so warm and spring-like.

I told him, “I think this happened for a reason - to teach me to trust you and God more.” After all, he’d had the intuition, when we were heading out, that Ishi Pishi Road wasn’t a great route and that we should turn back. In the future, I will definitely be listening for his intuitions, because apparently they are better than mine.

…

Here, as promised, are the books I bought at Bigfoot Books in Willow Creek. It is a used bookstore and as you can see most of these are out of print but still available through Amazon.

Looks like I got a bargain on that Herb Bible! Thank-you, Steven! It is a beautiful book…
…

This month I’ve cut my food budget to five dollars a week. This is totally going to change the way I eat. Already I’m running out of things I’m used to eating. The Clif Bars, at $1.50/day, went first. Also the hard candies I was buying to entertain myself with – they’re gone, which is a good thing because I realized they were made with corn syrup which is one of the greatest blights on humanity.

I ‘m getting to the point where I may soon be able to see real life. By this I mean that by having bad food habits I’ve been in a deep canyon all my life. By eliminating certain foods I will be able to emerge from that canyon into a better environment which will include clearer consciousness, greater insights, and other spiritual gifts which at this time I have no knowledge of.

It is a tragedy of this century that food manufacturers have placed most of humanity – especially Americans – into this canyon of ignorance because of two main influences. (1) Bad eating habits based on processed and poisoned foods, and (2) Learned helplessness. By that I mean we have learned to be dependent on large manufacturing industries for our food and jobs and without them we would be helpless – and the jobs are just about gone. What will happen if the economy pulls the food off our grocery shelves too? How many of us will be able to adjust and find ways to get enough food to live on?

I’m just guessing – but if 10% of Americans know how to garden and preserve food and are prepared and ready to do so, and the other 90% are dependent on food manufacturers for processed foods including breakfast bars and cereals, canned foods, imported coffee and tea, potato chips, mayonnaise and other condiments, store bought bread and pasta, etc, not to forget the incredible bottled beverage industry… if 90% of Americans are dependent on all this JUNK FOOD then what will happen if your NWO overlords decide to pull all that off the grocery store shelves – or if/when the dollar is devalued to the point where you can’t afford to buy a can of beans because it costs $100 and your unemployment check was just spent on rent? And those who eat meat – who are still convinced they can’t live without it – if you can’t get that, are you prepared to go out and kill something – a rat perhaps – then skin it and eat it? I mean, bletch! I personally cannot stand the thought of eating meat and have realized that the myth that we need high protein levels to thrive is just plain wrong. That could be propaganda from the meat industry!

The point here is that if you are not able and ready for a self-sustaining lifestyle you’re likely to suffer including watching your children starve to death before you do – like those families in Africa. Do you really think the world didn’t have enough food to feed them? I think they could have been saved if it were not for greed of food barons in other lands. Surely there’s a better way to manage the food resources of this planet.

All this to say – I hope you are ready to be part of the small percentage of Americans capable of being self-sufficient and able to eat during the recession years. Are you ready? I’m not, but I’m working on it.

These days of spending only five dollars a week on food have opened my eyes to some amazing revelations. For example, food addiction. I am actually having withdrawal symptoms as I wean myself of first one food then another. It distresses me to think that the economy could get so bad that entire families would be deprived and going through the same thing I’m going through now.

Now keep in mind, my challenge here is to buy no more than $5.00 worth of new food weekly, but I still have my stored food to eat. I also have a devoted boyfriend who gifted me with three items in the past two weeks. (1) Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, (2) tortillas worth over $6.00, and (3) a bunch of bananas. I must have pigged out on the tortillas because they are gone already, and this was a big thick bag. I will not replace them. I’ve decided to eat the filling alone —- or maybe make tortillas once a week as I still have flour.

The ice cream comes in a very small pint container. I decided to eat only ½ scoop daily. The last few days I’ve combined that with strawberries that I took from my freezer. So, I have plenty to eat – but I’m not eating what I’m used to, and there’s where withdrawals come in as I’m forced to make little dietary changes. Last night I did EFT for “food addictions” and it helped me feel a lot better.

So that’s the report for now. I’ve allowed myself one $5.00 shopping trip so far and that was spent on an onion, tomatoes, green pepper, candy and … I think that was all. The candy is gone now and won’t be replaced. This week I’ll resist tortillas and go for fresh veggies … especially potatoes and carrots as I’ve now run out of all that was in my garden except for one stray carrot I found in the garden today that I’ve now pulled with glee. It is in my kitchen veggie box. Next time I make steamed rice and lentils and veggies I’ll use it.

Onward toward the light and toward freedom from dependence on food manufacturers. Wish me luck and prepare yourselves for hard times ahead, because they are coming . The American dollar is worth less all the time. Please watch this video and stay informed.

Movie produced by George at Inflation US

What do people have against hippies these days?? I am appalled at some of the derision I hear. For example, when I was working at a local restaurant last year a young woman was hired. You know how people chat while they work. One day she informed me “I hate hippies! I can’t stand them!”

She didn’t know I was one.

What venom! I guessed I didn’t look like much of a hippie that day. Mostly these days I just look like a little old lady with gray hair and too much baby fat (after five children some of us unfortunately get that way.) Well, I pretended not to be insulted and let it go, but purchased several tie dye shirts just to make it clear that I’m still quite the hippie even in my old age. I needed a little self-identification, apparently.

I guess the word “hippie” means different things to different people. To some it might refer to a dirt-bag unwashed, unkempt drug user - indulging in heavy drugs like heroin - perhaps. …Or just a stoner looking to take advantage of others. (Just a guess at what people might be thinking when they’re all negative about the hippie counter-culture movement.)

But hippies are more than that.

The most important aspect of being a hippie is the creativity: the desire for inventing new modes of art and the ability to be unique enough to put those arts into form. Hippiedom also is a form of spirituality for me. It is an acknowledgement that I’m able to develop my own spiritual connection with the divine apart from rituals and set forms devised by others for their organization into groups of spiritual worship realities. My spirituality is my own alone. It encompasses nearness to the divine source through creativity.

God is creative, and so am I, so when I’m involved in an act of creativity I’m closer to God than at any other time. Plus there’s the fact that love is an expression of god-self within. For me, loving everyone was the most important aspect of hippieness, plus these realizations of the reality of God through being in nature, through aligning oneself with nature and all that is natural. To me, those are the qualities of being a hippie, and drugs and free-love type sex have nothing to do with that which is natural and pure… other than use of herbs of course which sometimes includes something as amazing as marijuana which is a very cool herb helpful in many medical need situations.

Anyhow, I don’t see why people should speak badly about hippies and make people like me think we need to hide our hippieness. I’m not going to hide anymore. Too many years I’ve been diverted from what is really me. I’ve been a hippie since the sixties. Just because I’m almost sixty years old doesn’t mean I should change and be someone else’s idea of the perfect little old lady grandma … you know what I mean?

Well, this week I was reading two different books that mentioned hippies. One was Tribal Bigfoot. I was in the middle of an absolutely awesome story about a guy who had been in a forest in Del Norte County, California when he was surrounded by Sasquatches… and then the author told of his own walk into this area. He was approached on the trail by a man. He wrote: “I hadn’t seen anyone on the trail or in the parking lot for two hours. I held my ground and watched as a derelict looking hippie walked up to me and asked what I was doing there. I was a little miffed, but I couldn’t tell what kind of weapon he might have had under his tie-died sweater and coat. He wasn’t a large man, but he smelled and looked like he’d been in the woods too long…. It was a little nerve wracking having that encounter unarmed.” (Tribal Bigfoot, Paulides, Pg. 285)

Okay, now I’m a little miffed. Are hippies so bad you have to suspect them of being dangerous? The author of the book is a former law enforcement agent who I guess has decided that hippies are to be avoided unless you can arrest them.

This morning I was reading a book of Bigfoot fiction when I got to a page that said, “We needed more scientists with real clout in the community to come forward, look at the data and see that the hard evidence was already there…. Instead we get sociopaths and rednecks and hippie cultists.” (North American Primates, Durgee, Pg. 209)

Can you see why I feel hippies are under fire from the misperceptions of prejudice?

Now I know I’m not going to change the opinions of millions who have already made up their minds one way or another on whether or not hippies are good or bad. I happen to live in a community, however tiny, where there’s a lot of drug users. I see more than my share of them. MOST of them are not old enough to have been part of the hippie movement. My neighbors are huge users of drugs, ex methies, current full-time potheads [and I should add this is medical marijuana at this point, and quite legal]… they aren’t but in their forties and not wise enough to know what being a hippie really meant. They just want the drugs, not the spirituality and lifestyle of creativity that the early hippies brought into focus.

There are a few young people hereabouts that have the beauty and spirit of real hippies, but not many. Most are completely clueless… they just want drugs. Pathetic, in my humble opinion! And there are a few old hippie artists in the community who are carrying on the mysticism of true hippie life, with love.

Hippiedom is a liberation of the spirit, an expansion of consciousness, a flight of amazement on the journey to reach forth toward world consciousness and love. To denigrate it into a ‘hey we want drugs’ thing is to entirely miss the point of what the movement was actually about.

There’s no doubt that most of us love to use sweeteners in some of our foods. I’ll admit, I love cookies, candies and ice cream. I wish I didn’t! The ice cream is something I consider especially bad for me so I go very easy on it.

Recently I did an extensive overview of various types of sweeteners that people put in their foods. I tried to include all sweeteners but I know there are a few I have yet to add to the project which I posted at Natural and Artificial Sweeteners. I hope you have time to take a look at it. The report includes illustrations and videos that I believe are worth considering.

What we put into our bodies is one of the most important issues we’ll ever deal with. I’ve used chemical sweeteners in the past and am sorry I did. Now I use natural sweeteners. My favorite is maple syrup!

Sweeteners I included in my report are:

I’m working on including Rice Syrup. Am I forgetting anything else?

Today someone reading my post about cinnamon and honey weight loss tea asked whether it would be safe to use during pregnancy. I looked through my herbals and found a recipe for easing pregnancy, which uses cinnamon, so that indicates to me that cinnamon could be safe for pregnant women (and their unborn dear ones.)

From John Lust’s herbal, The Herb Book: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to More Than 500 Herbs:
This is said to prevent nausea and miscarriage. It is also for reducing labor pains and increasing milk production.
1 part cinnamon
5 parts blackberry leaves
5 parts milfoil
10 parts raspberry leaves
Steep 1 teaspoon in 1/2 cup boiling water. Take 1/2 to 1 cup daily in mouthful doses.

Note that there’s to be NO OVERDOSING… which is what I need to address concerning the cinnamon and honey diet. Though the cinnamon may be safe in normal amounts, drinking large amounts might not be safe during pregnancy. Plus, I wonder about the wisdom of trying to diet during pregnancy. This is something a pregnant woman should definitely discuss with her physician.

In addition, you should be aware that there are certain herbs intentionally used (by some) to terminate pregnancies. Here’s the list of common herbs a pregnant woman should avoid:

Angelica
Birthroot
Blue Cohosh
Brooklime
Bugloss
Cotton Root Bark
Ergot
Golden Seal
Ground Pine
Juniper
Male Fern
Motherwort
Mayapple
Pennyroyal
Potassium Permanganate
Rue
St. Johns Wort
Savin
Tansy
Thyme
Valerian
Yarrow
This information is derived from two sources, Herbs & Things - Jeanne Rose’s herbal, and Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs.

All these are likely to cause abortion to occur. DON’T try this at home! I’m against abortion in general so I’m hoping this won’t be taken by anyone as a way to terminate a life. I put the list here for the benefit of herb-using women who want to preserve their pregnancies.

This list of herbs said to ease childbirth comes from John Lust’s The Herb Book:
Althea
American Spikenard
Bennet
Birthwort
Black Cohosh
Blind Nettle
Blue Cohosh
Cannabis
Columbine
Comfrey
Common Groundsel
Cotton
European Ragwort
Flax
Garden Raspberry
Garden Violet
Goat’s Rue
Horehound
Iceland Moss
Lady’s Mantle
Pansy
Primrose
Ragwort
Shepherd’s Purse
Silverweed
Spikenard
Squaw Vine
Wild Red Raspberry
Wormwood

NOTE - some of these are mentioned on the ‘do not use’ list… I’d especially avoid Blue Cohosh! Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs says it isn’t safe to use.

And about the Wormwood - I wouldn’t use that either. I know that too much of that is a danger.

Personally, I’d stick to something simple like Raspberry Leaf Tea which is well-known to be good for pregnancies.

Jeanne Rose wrote: “Raspberry leaf tea has been used for hundreds of years by women throughout their pregnancy to ease the pains of labor, to prevent miscarriage, and to increase the milk supply. It was mentioned by Pliny in his medical botany books. For the tea: one ounce of the leaves is steeped in twenty ounces of water for fifteen minutes, strained, and drunk - at least two cups per day. The leaves are also used as an astringent for diarrhea, as a gargle for sore mouths, and as an infusion to wash external ulcers and wounds. The berries are excellent eaten during a bout of diarrhea.” - Herbs & Things, page 100.

Also, note on the list of herbs that ease pregnancy, Cannabis is listed. This is Marijuana.. which is, in my opinion, a miracle healing herb… but I recommend that mothers do NOT use it during pregnancy or at any other time. The reason is that use of Marijuana is cause for child welfare agents (CPS or DHS social workers) to take children from their mothers. Especially during pregnancy, this is a real danger. I have met a young woman who used Marijuana to ease birth pains, who never got to take her child home from the hospital because THC was found in her baby’s urine. You will notice, if you give birth in a hospital, one of the first things they do is slap a urine sack on the infant to collect urine for drug testing. YES, this is true! And babies with any kind of drugs in their system are taken away from their parents. So DON’T use Cannabis/Marijuana while you’re pregnant. It just isn’t safe. If you use it you might need my other site: Fighting Child Protective Services CPS False Accusations, and I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone.

One more very important thing! Use moderation, no matter what herb you choose, whether you’re pregnant or not. Too much of any herb can be dangerous. If you’re not certain a herb is safe, ask your obstetrician or (if you’re breastfeeding) your pediatrician.

Here are the links to the herbals I used for this post: