She made it to Olympia. The last miles, together.

Look at her smile beneath the Capitol dome. In a photograph from October 20, Jeana looks up at the camera, the patterned ceiling opening above her. In others, she is still wearing her backpack and yellow safety vest as she climbs the marble stairs and writes in an open book. She has made it to Olympia. Her fifth Steps to Marrow walk is complete.

There is a whole journey behind those photographs. It began with a grandmother’s gratitude: Torsten Huber, a donor in Germany, helped save Jeana’s granddaughter Jada. Years later, Jeana is still carrying that gift forward, asking people she meets to consider whether they, too, might join an official donor registry and one day help someone they have never met.

Along the road, she also had to receive. Her journals tell of wet gear, wrong turns and evenings spent looking for somewhere to sleep. They tell of a little shed in a garden, a place for her tent in a barn, and freshly washed clothes folded back into her backpack. Again and again, someone made the next day possible.

In the last week, that kindness had the shape of breakfast. Jeana met Amy for the third time in two days, and Amy bought her an egg sandwich, warm raspberry rolls and lemonade. Farther along, a man from Skokomish gave her his home-packed salmon and raspberry jam. Near Shelton, another man offered a ride. Jeana wanted to keep walking, so he went on — then returned with a cold can of pineapple nectar. It brought back memories of the drink her mother gave her as a child.

That evening, an invitation first offered from the back of a family van became a cottage in the woods. Lori welcomed Jeana, and Rebecca helped with rides. There was soup, a shower and a bed. The final miles were Jeana’s to walk, but these pages make clear how many people helped her get there.

On October 15, Jeana found words for what she was receiving: “People from all walks of life reach out to support me in completing this journey.” Her full reflection is quoted below. Hope, in these stories, is something people do for one another — sometimes as simple as turning around with a cold drink.

The message kept travelling, too. On the day before the finish, Lori helped Jeana reach interviews with Lorri Tracy at KGY Radio in Olympia and Gordon Weeks of the Shelton-Mason County Journal. That evening, Lori made signs for the next day. Then came October 20, and the last 3.8 miles.

She had breakfast and coffee in the little cabin, and Lori dropped her on the route with 3.8 miles left to walk to the Capitol. It was the perfect day, cool and sunny, and a beautiful route: past Capitol Lake, up the switchbacks to the Capitol building, and then up the 42 steps that stand for Washington’s place as the 42nd state to join the Union.

Jim Kopriva, from the Governor’s office, was the perfect person to meet her. He took photographs and video, and did an interview with Bloodworks Northwest in mind: they want to use the footage to encourage others to give blood and save lives. He is going to share the information around the Governor’s office, too. He is a man of action who delivers tangible results, she says. It was the best possible outcome for the end of the walk.

Having Lori there to cheer her on covered all the emotional bases. Lori shared the story with the people around them, and one by one they climbed the 42 steps of the Capitol to congratulate Jeana on completing the fifth Steps to Marrow walk. Afterwards Lori took her out for a celebration lunch overlooking West Bay: beautiful, peaceful, satisfying. Her sister Ramona and friends were celebrating too, with hand-lettered signs of their own.

Coming off the road will take some time, she writes. The journey has been a time of focused practice: of just walking, meeting people along the way just as they are, accepting what comes and celebrating what comes. After pouring so much heart into enrolling life-saving donors, returning to the usual pace of daily life will need a gentle, intentional shift. Crossing that final finish line and heading home, she wants to honour the rhythm of the open road and the incredible connections she has made.

So today we celebrate her perseverance, and every helping hand along the way. Thank you to the hosts who opened a door, the people who stopped to listen, the friends who kept showing up, and everyone who followed from afar. Jeana has finished the walk. The hope she carried into those conversations still has somewhere to go.

First, a break. Then JBF plans to return to local college stem-cell and bone-marrow registration drives in Spokane, starting with Spokane Community College in early to mid-November. That is a planned timeframe; a date and location have not been confirmed.

Perhaps the next small beginning is yours. Find the official registry for the country where you live, learn about eligibility and what donation can involve, and decide whether to take that first step. A gift to JBF supports education and outreach; joining a registry is a separate choice.

This finish story was written by the Jada Bascom Foundation from Jeana’s journals and the final-day photographs she shared. Her quoted words are from October 15, and her account of the last day is from her October 20 journal. Photos shared by Jeana Moore; thank you to everyone who helped capture these moments.

JBF is a registry referrer, not a medical provider. Official registries handle registration and eligibility; JBF helps people find the registry where they live.

Early in the walk, Jay, the Foundation’s webmaster, had sent press releases to all kinds of media, radio and TV, not only near the route but around the country. One of the people who responded was Lorri Tracy of KGY Radio in Olympia, and toward the end of the walk Jeana kept her posted on where she was, so that they could arrange a day for an interview.

Her host, Lori, drove her into Olympia for it. Lorri was really moved by Jada’s story and by Jeana’s work to enroll donors who can help save the lives of patients who need a bone marrow transplant, and Jeana felt a connection with her: Lorri’s genuine interest in the Jada Bascom Foundation’s story made her comfortable. She thought Lorri did a really good job, and it went very quickly. Back in the car, Jeana texted her a few more details about how to join NMDP that she had forgotten to say on air.

Then they drove back to Shelton for a second interview, with Gordon Weeks, a reporter for the Shelton-Mason County Journal. He did a very comprehensive interview, and she was looking forward to the article, due out that Thursday. In a funny twist of fate, they had met before: she didn’t remember it, but she had met him on the road between Brinnon and the Robbinswold Girl Scout Camp, when she asked whether she could use their portable toilet. He said he had regretted at the time not asking her more about why she was walking. Lori had contacted him on Friday morning about an interview; he got the message on Monday morning and set it up right away.

She spent the afternoon catching up on her journals, totalling her mileage and following up with contacts important to finishing the walk. In the evening Lori made delicious omelettes for dinner (Jeana loves breakfast for dinner), and then Lori made signs to hold at the finish the next day, at the Washington State Capitol. They had made every effort to have the media there, and people from organisations around Olympia, and she would be greeted by Jim Kopriva from the Governor’s office and by her wonderful host, Lori. That, she says, would be a wonderful end to the fifth Steps to Marrow walk.

Her host that night was Lori, in Shelton.

She was up early to get ready for the day’s 11-mile walk, and she felt fortunate to be carrying the light pack again. She has been blessed with warmer weather than normal for this region for the whole journey: it is getting very cold at night, but the daytime temperatures have been unusually high, and she has walked in the rain only five times, far fewer than she expected. She had read that the strong El Niño now under way is bringing warmer and drier weather than usual to the Pacific Northwest, and the day bore that out. The high was 61 degrees, which made for a very pleasant walk.

She wants to highlight two women who stopped to offer her a lift on her last two walking days. Each had an adorable, affectionate little dog in the car, and each turned around and stopped to offer her a ride. When she explained that she was walking to enroll potential stem cell donors, they each took a picture of her QR code. Taking a moment to check on someone shows genuine care and concern, she says, and it is an expression of our shared responsibility for one another.

Something else happened on those last two days. On the first, she found an itty-bitty wrench by the roadside, picked it up and put it in her pocket, and when she finished the walk and Lori picked her up, she gave it to her. The next day she found another tiny wrench on the roadside, and took that one to Lori too.

It meant something, because Lori runs a program called Tools for Teens, which gives high school seniors in automotive classes the tools to begin careers in automotive repair. It is a much-needed program: the tools are too expensive for the students, but without them they can’t start their first job. It is a classic example, they say, of the bootstrap paradox.

When she finished her 11 miles, Lori was there with an iced latte; they had kept in touch by text, so Lori knew roughly when she would arrive. Then Lori drove her around so that they would know where to go for Monday’s radio interview, and to see the last stretch of the route, ending at the Washington State Capitol.

At the Capitol they stopped to look at the switchbacks of the walking path as it climbs Capitol Hill from the park below, and there they met an amazing couple, Adrian and Izzy. They were very excited by the story of the walk, and they were the right ages to join NMDP, between 18 and 35. Jeana was moved by their passionate response to the walk’s life-saving work.

Afterwards Lori took her for a rice bowl at Miso, one of her favourite places to eat in Olympia. Jeana was so tired, and ready for a good sleep.

Her host that night was Lori, in Shelton.

This was the last of what she calls her bone marrow awareness days on the fifth Steps to Marrow walk: days she spends walking around a town or a city, talking to people about how to join the national registry, the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), and why it is so important to join.

After sleeping in a little and having breakfast with Lori, they drove into Shelton, by the old railway station, where people were holding a No Kings rally and inviting everyone to exercise their right to vote. It was a very peaceful rally, with lots of people her age, and younger and middle-aged people too. Seeing all the white hair, she thought many of them had probably protested against the war in Vietnam in the 60s and at No Nukes rallies in the 70s, and had been peacefully exercising their right to protest for a long time.

She feels it’s good to share information about NMDP with everyone, so she talked to old and young alike. You never know who you’re talking to, she says; it may lead to registering the perfect match for a patient in need. The people she talked to were inspired by Jada’s story, and by the message of joining NMDP to find out whether they are the match that could save a life. One young man said he would post about joining the registry on his Facebook page, and tell people he had met her at the rally in Shelton.

She walked on into downtown Shelton to talk with others who were out and about on a sunny Saturday afternoon, speaking with everyone she could and, of course, sharing the QR code that takes people straight to the Jada Bascom Foundation website.

Then Lori called and suggested a drive. She wanted to show Jeana the turnoff to her family’s property out toward Agate, and in the end she drove her all the way out to it. Jeana was delighted to see it after so many years. It was a lovely drive along Hammersley Inlet and Oakland Bay.

On the way back they stopped at the restaurant where Lori’s daughter Elizabeth works on weekends, and Jeana enjoyed meeting her. There is nothing quite like good food and gracious company to make an evening special, she says. As Mary Poppins would say, the day was practically perfect in every way.

Her host that night was Lori, in Shelton.

Two things had happened the evening before that she hadn’t yet written about. Lori’s daughter Rebecca had helped her look at the miles she still had to walk between Shelton and the Washington State Capitol, and together they laid out a plan: how far to walk each day, and where would be a good place to stop. She was really grateful for the help, because Rebecca knows the area much better than she does.

And Lori had invited her to stay in the little cabin next door to her house for as long as she needed, and offered to arrange rides to her starting point each morning and from her stopping point each evening for the last leg of the journey. She can’t tell you, she says, what a relief it is to know where she will be sleeping at night, that she will be able to get on and off the highway safely, and that she will have a ride on Monday to a radio interview to be aired on 95.3 KGY in Olympia. It almost felt too good to be true. But it is true.

Rebecca picked her up in the morning and took her back to where she had finished the day before, on the north side of Shelton near the Walmart. She used the first part of the walk to make arrangements for the finish of the fifth Steps to Marrow walk at the Washington State Capitol.

She also contacted Drew Mikkelsen at KING 5. About nine years ago he did a story on Jada, when the Jada Bascom Foundation was helping to get Jada’s Law passed: the law under which Washington State includes information about how to join NMDP, the national marrow donor program, with each driver’s license and ID card it mails. It felt congruent, she says, to ask whether he might do a follow-up story on the work the Foundation continues to do today to enroll life-saving stem cell donors.

Rebecca had warned her about a bridge on Highway 101 with no shoulder, and suggested she walk down the on-ramp and back up the off-ramp to get around it. She was just under five miles in when she reached it, and at the bottom of the on-ramp she saw a sign: “No pedestrians, no hitchhiking.” There was a police car under the bridge, so she walked over to ask the officer about it. It was the first sign like it she had seen on the 101, and she thought it might cover only a short stretch of the highway.

He said he was a police officer, not the highway patrol, so he wouldn’t stop her from walking on the highway, but he offered her another way: a road running alongside the highway that didn’t show on her maps app. She followed his directions for perhaps a mile and a quarter, until that road became less safe than the highway itself, with no shoulder, quite a bit of traffic and a deep ditch along the side. Right there she saw an opening where she could get back up onto the 101 without too much difficulty, and that’s what she did.

She was headed for the Little Creek Casino, which is operated by the Squaxin Island Tribe. With just over a mile to go she again saw an easy way off the 101, onto a road that took her straight there. She had started walking around 10:30 and finished just before 2:00. She texted Lori that she was done and standing next to the totem pole at the trading post, and Lori called the neighbours who had offered to help with the driving. They all came out to pick her up.

Back at the house, she and Lori sat outside overlooking the lake down the hill with some very refreshing juice, and Lori offered her some lunch. She was really hungry, so the acorn squash lasagna hit the spot. They sat and chatted, and Jeana was very interested to learn about the work Lori and her late husband did over many years with marginalized seniors and people with developmental delays in Shelton. Lori continues to serve those communities today.

Before they knew it, the afternoon had turned toward evening and the sun was beginning to set. Without the bright sun in her eyes, Lori felt she could drive the short distance down to the lake, so together, with her dog Isabella, they drove down and watched the sun set behind the mountains across the lake. Jeana was glad to see it: to breathe deeply and savour the moment.

Her host that night was Lori, in Shelton.

She had a little coffee at the Waterfront Hotel at Potlatch before heading out. She had walked the first two miles the day before, so she walked them again, and with the two miles on into Skokomish she made up the 4.4 miles she had missed two days earlier.

In Skokomish she met the lovely woman from the tribal police station again, and they greeted each other before Jeana set off for Shelton. She wanted to find some breakfast before she left. There was a minimart, and then the Lucky Dog Casino, but the casino’s restaurant wasn’t open yet, so she walked back to the minimart, and there she met Amy again. It was the third time in two days; they had first met at the Hoodsport Coffee Company the morning before.

Amy greeted her warmly, they were happy to see each other again, and she offered to buy Jeana’s breakfast. Jeana grabbed what she could: an egg sandwich, some lovely little cream cheese and raspberry rolls hot from the deli, and a nice lemonade. She was so grateful to see Amy again, and to have some nourishment to start her day.

She spent part of the day’s walk making arrangements for the finish of her fifth Steps to Marrow walk in Olympia, which was coming up soon. It was a very pleasant day for walking, too: it reached 73 degrees, so the afternoon was quite warm.

Lots of people recognised her, honking and waving, ever since her stop at the Halfway House Restaurant in Brinnon; people on the road still knew her from the restaurant’s Facebook post. They have lots of followers, she says, and it was grand to have their support.

About halfway, a young man from Skokomish passed her, pulled into a driveway and honked, so she turned around and they met halfway along the highway. He gave her a pink breast cancer awareness ribbon he had got at the Seahawks game on Sunday, and she pinned it to her vest. “I know you’re doing something important,” he said when he greeted her. He didn’t know exactly why she was walking, because from the direction he had passed her he couldn’t see the sign on the back of her backpack, but he stopped to support her anyway.

Then she explained what she was doing, and he gave her his own home-packed salmon and a jar of raspberry jam. So kind, she says; she deeply appreciated his openness. His immediate response was, “How can I help her?”

Later, a few miles outside Shelton, a young Latino man stopped to ask what she was doing, and she told him. He offered her a ride to Shelton, since he was going that way and had turned around to see whether she needed a lift, but she told him she wanted to walk and thanked him for his kindness, and he went on his way. About half an hour later he stopped in front of her again and handed her a lovely cold can of pineapple nectar. He had gone into Shelton and, with intention, brought her something cold to drink. Her mother used to give the children pineapple nectar when Jeana was young, so holding that cold can brought back deep memories.

She hopes that as you come to know the stories of her journey, the fifth Steps to Marrow walk, you will take in the diversity of the people who have reached out to help her along the way: the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the right and the left politically, men and women. People from all walks of life reach out to support her in completing this journey. This, she says, is the actualisation of loving kindness.

Way back in Brinnon, walking her make-up miles up and down those lovely hills, she had met a family in a van who pulled over to ask whether she knew why the falls were closed. She knew nothing about the area, but it was the one question she could answer. A man named Joe, who had stopped twice to see whether she needed a ride, had told her that a friend of his owned the land where the falls are and had closed it during construction, because they were doing work down by the falls and some of his equipment had been stolen.

She passed that on to the van full of people, and when she told them what she was doing, a voice from the third row of seats, at the back, said, “Oh, when you get to Shelton you can stay with me.” That was Lori, the grandma of the group; her daughter Rebecca was driving. Jeana stayed in touch with Lori, letting her know roughly when she would reach Shelton. Earlier in the week Lori told her she would be having cataract surgery around then, and Jeana offered to look for somewhere else if it would be too disruptive so soon after eye surgery. “No, no, please still come,” Lori wrote back.

When she reached the very beginning of Shelton she texted Lori, who said Rebecca was ready to pick her up, and that the first exit into Shelton, where she already was, was a good place to leave Highway 101 and wait at the Walmart. Rebecca picked her up and took her to Lori’s home, explaining that Jeana would be staying in a separate little home right next door, a rental cottage in the woods. What a generous gift, she says.

She went in and visited with Lori, who was resting her eye; Rebecca is a nurse, so she was taking care of her mother. Lori’s grandson was there too, and made everyone a cup of coffee, which was very sweet. Lori had made soup for dinner earlier in the day, so they all had soup and lovely pretzel bites, which Jeana had never had before and found very good. Then they said goodnight, and she had a much-needed shower and fell into bed.

Her host that night was Lori, in Shelton.

She left the Glen Ayr Canal Resort with clean clothes, feeling refreshed. The day’s walk wasn’t very long, but she would have to add the 4.4 miles from the day before at the end of it. It was just over a mile into Hoodsport proper, and she stopped at the Hoodsport Coffee Company to see whether she could get some breakfast.

As she reached the door, a gentleman already going in held it for her, and while she took off her pack he went up to order. When she explained to the woman at the counter what she was doing, she learned that the gentleman ahead of her had paid for her coffee, and the woman was happy to give her some breakfast too. She ordered a cheese-and-jalapeño bagel with cream cheese, along with the latte that generous gentleman had paid for.

One of the staff, Amy, visited with her on her break. Amy is new to the area and came to this beautiful part of the Olympic Peninsula to start a fresh life.

She walked from Hoodsport to Potlatch and from Potlatch to Skokomish, a little under five miles, and once in Skokomish she began looking for somewhere to stay. She came across the Skokomish Tribal Police office and stopped to ask whether there was somewhere safe to put her tent.

A very nice woman there worked hard to find her a place, but most of her ideas were in Shelton, where Jeana was headed the next day. She also warned her not to stay in a tent: it was the time of year when bears fatten up for their winter hibernation, a bear had been in town the last two nights, and a pair of cougars had been spotted as well. Some of the officers were out looking for the bear as they spoke.

Just then a text came from Amy: “I have something for you, where are you?” Amy was just down the road, so she came over to the police station and handed Jeana her day’s tips. Part of her didn’t want to take them, Jeana says, but the offering was so genuine that it would have been unkind not to accept it, and she was so moved that Amy wanted to share with the Jada Bascom Foundation.

The places the police had found for her were 12 miles ahead of her walk; if that had been the only option, she would have gone and come back to walk those miles. But she and Amy worked out that there was a motel just two miles back, so back to Potlatch she went, with Amy’s help. The Waterfront Hotel at Potlatch had a little cabin free, and the Foundation covered her night there, safe from the bears and the cougars.

The nearest place to eat was 2.4 miles back in Hoodsport, so after dropping her things at the cabin she walked back to El Puerto de Angeles Family Mexican Restaurant, where they very generously offered her an enchilada meal: exactly what she needed to nourish body and soul. Afterwards a young woman picking up a to-go order gave her a ride the 2.4 miles back to the Waterfront Hotel, which was perfect. She would still have to walk the two miles back into Skokomish, but she would have made up her 4.4 miles. With dinner done, she was ready to settle in for the evening.

All along her journey, from the very first steps out of Seattle, she has found blackberries ripening on the bushes beside the highway, and she has snacked on them all the way through Washington and in Canada too. She hasn’t seen a ripe one for three days now, and a friend told her to be careful: at this time of year the bears are getting ready to hibernate, and they love blackberries. You might run into a bear, he warned her, while you’re munching on blackberries.

She woke before the sun and took a minute to snuggle down into her sleeping bag to stay warm. It was cold, though surprisingly a little warmer than it had been the night before. By flashlight she walked over to plug in her phone again, to be sure it had all the charge she would need for the day’s walk into Lilliwaup. Breakfast was the Aussie Bites, which were really good, plus a few Girl Scout cookies she had never had before, called Exploremores, and the last of the tea from the thermos. She packed up all the food and containers and put them in the bag for Morgan to take back up to the house.

The sun had just started to rise. On the porch of the little cabin there was enough light to stuff her sleeping bag into its little bag and stow it in her backpack, and to put band-aids on her toes to protect them from blisters. Knock on wood, she says, she hasn’t had a single blister yet on this walk, the first time that has ever happened on a Steps to Marrow journey, and she will stay diligent and careful every day.

She walked just under 4 miles to the Hama Hama Oyster Saloon. Many people along this stretch of highway had told her to stop there, and a sign on the door advertised coffee. As she went in she met two men who had seen her on the highway and wanted to know more. She is so grateful, she says, for the QR code around her neck, which makes it easy to share the website: they snapped a photo of it, and they went their separate ways.

The beautiful young woman behind the counter shared a coffee with her, then asked whether she would like a cup of clam chowder. The woman had seen the Halfway House Restaurant’s Facebook post, so she already knew about the walk. The chowder was fresh and delicious. Her son-in-law, Kyle, Jeana says, must visit the Hama Hama Oyster Saloon; he would love it.

Lilliwaup was 11 miles away, and it was a long day of walking. When there are no cars on Highway 101, delightful sounds rise from the woods and the sea: the growls and chirps of the seals, the calls of the gulls, chipmunks scurrying through the leaves of the forest floor and the woodland songbirds, all blended with the sound of gently lapping waves. She tried several times to record it, but it wasn’t possible with her little phone.

At 4:30 she looked up the Lilliwaup Store. Morgan, at the Girl Scout camp, had suggested the motel behind it might be open, and the store closed at 5:00, so she called to be sure of reaching them in time. A very nice gentleman explained that the motel had closed during COVID and had never reopened.

She was wondering what to do, or whom she might ask, when she walked past a big pullout and was surprised to see a couple she had met on the road the day before. They had stopped to make sure she was all right and to ask how she was doing, and they handed her a brownie and asked whether she needed anything. She explained that she had hoped to spend the night in Lilliwaup but her options looked very slim, and asked whether they knew of any RV parks that would take a tent, or any motels nearby. They invited her to jump into the back of their truck. She had just checked the distance left to Lilliwaup, 1.1 miles, so it was easy to work out how far south they took her.

Their names, she learned, are Skeet and Edna: such a lovely, generous couple, looking out for a stranger. They stopped at several RV parks, but none would let her stay in a tent. The Glen Ayr Canal Resort was 4.4 miles from where they had picked her up, miles she would have to make up on foot. She was so grateful to them: it was late in the day, she would not have reached the Glen Ayr before dark, and the highway’s shoulder there is narrower than her backpack, so she would not have been safe.

Skeet went in with her to make sure the resort had a room, and she assured him that in case of emergency, for her safety, the Jada Bascom Foundation would pay for the night. He insisted on carrying her pack up the flight of stairs to the second floor so she wouldn’t have to, and then they said goodbye, knowing she wouldn’t see them south of Lilliwaup. She thanked them again; she treasures meeting generous, kind people like Skeet and Edna on her journey.

She had been in her tent for several days and desperately needed to wash her socks and other clothes, and she needed a bath too, so it was a marvellous end to a long day of walking. As always, she was grateful to charge her phone and her backup battery for the next day’s walk. While her laundry washed, she sat on the resort’s gently rocking dock for some quiet meditation. Gratitude raises your serotonin levels, they say, and her own gratitude rose from deep within, for the chance to help others and to be helped in return.

The Foundation covered her room that night at the Glen Ayr Canal Resort.

What a long day it was. She had slept well in the social hall at the Brinnon Community Church, and alongside her morning routine she shared the names of the contacts she had been making with the Jada Bascom Foundation’s Volunteer Support Team. She feels so blessed, she says, that they are following up on all of them. You never know which contact will lead to the enrolment of a life-saving donor.

Jada’s donor, Torsten, joined DKMS because of Michaela, his girlfriend then and his wife now. In the spring of 2006 a donor drive was held in southern Germany for a woman in their region who had leukemia. Michaela wanted to join and see whether she could be that life-saving donor, and she invited Torsten to come with her. He was not that woman’s match, but all the stars aligned that day, Jeana says, because Torsten was Jada’s perfect match.

Walking through Brinnon, she stopped at the Halfway House Restaurant. They were wonderful: they fed her a protein-filled breakfast of fluffy, delicious scrambled eggs and an English muffin, and they were so moved by her story that they decided to share information about the Jada Bascom Foundation, the walk and joining NMDP, the national registry, on their Facebook page. They have 4,000 followers, so that one interaction reached a lot of people.

She walked across the street to the Brinnon Mini Market for some protein bars, because she didn’t know whether she would find any food at Triton Cove State Park. She was able to buy two little protein bars and a small bag of peanuts with money she has picked up on the road as she walks. She and the clerk carefully sorted the change from her pocket; some of the coins were so worn that they couldn’t tell what they were, and those went back into her pocket. It felt good to know she would have something to eat along the way to keep nourishing her body.

It was 11:00 before she really hit the road, but she had got quite a bit of work done for the Foundation that morning, and she felt she could still make her miles before dark. It gets dark by 6:30 now, so she had to keep a steady pace down the highway. There were steep hills up and down Highway 101 most of the day as she walked along Hood Canal.

She reached Triton Cove State Park at around 4:30 and felt she could do a few more miles. She had seen Robbinswold Girl Scout Camp on the map, and walking there would cut the next day’s walk from 13 miles to 11, so she kept going, hoping that, as at many camps, someone would be looking after it in the off-season. By 5:30 it was getting very dark. Sunset wasn’t until 6:30, but with all the trees, and the sun on the other side of the mountain, it was growing cold and dark.

Coming down into the camp, she found a sign telling visitors to see the camp manager, which was perfect, and followed another sign to the manager’s home. Behind the glass door a dog was barking, and there was a car in the driveway, so she figured there was a camp manager somewhere who just wasn’t home yet, and sat down to wait. There was an outlet on the outside of the building, so she plugged in her phone and recharged her battery a bit.

Then she heard a car door shut. You know how it is, she says, when you’re out in the woods and sounds carry so beautifully in the silence. She got up, greeted the camp manager, Morgan, and explained what she was doing. He told her that he, his wife and the dog that had been barking had walked the Appalachian Trail together, so he understood a lot about her journey; he had been in similar situations himself. He offered her one of the empty cabins for the night, as long as she treated it with respect and cleaned up in the morning. That, she thought, was not asking very much. He also showed her a place to plug in her phone so it could keep charging, which she greatly appreciated.

She laid out mattresses and set up her sleeping bag. The cabin was an open-air one: the walls don’t go all the way up to the ceiling, and the roof comes down low so that rain can’t get in through the gap, but that also means it can get really cold at night. She took a corner bed and tucked herself in with the mattresses so the air wouldn’t blow on her.

Morgan very kindly came down with lasagna, garlic bread, Girl Scout cookies and some Aussie Bites. She had never had Aussie Bites, which are full of oats, fruit and nuts, and she planned to have them for breakfast. He also brought a thermos of hot tea, and that felt so good, because it was getting really cold in among the trees so close to the water.

As she went to sleep, she reflected on the people she had met that day, and on the hundreds of drivers in trucks and cars and on motorcycles who had passed her as she walked. As cars pass, she smiles and waves, or puts her hand over her heart, or nods: a gesture of recognition to the human being inside each vehicle. It is a way of connecting, she says, and also a form of gratitude to the drivers who saw her on the road and slowed down or moved over a bit, taking caution and care of a stranger walking along the highway.

Her host that night was Morgan, at Robbinswold Girl Scout Camp.

She packed up her tent once more and got ready to walk further south, to Brinnon. Jan had given her the most amazing gift the night before: she had washed Jeana’s clothes. Jeana was down to her last pair of socks — the last pair of everything — and now her clothes were freshly washed, folded and packed away in her backpack.

For breakfast, Jan gave her a wonderful English muffin with egg salad on it and a cup of coffee, and Jeana enjoyed their visit that morning as much as she had the night before. What an incredible woman, she says: nearly 80, raising sheep and chickens, caring for her dog and her cat, and organising the fiber festival every year. Jan is committed to her community and to improving life for others.

She had been a bit worried, she says, about this particular leg of the journey. There are a lot of miles between the towns, and on many days she can’t walk from one town to the next, so she has to stop in the middle and camp out. She had been staying in her tent a lot, as she had expected, but whenever she put it up at night she was somewhere protected, and that had kept her dry on rainy nights.

The following day would be one of those days. Lilliwaup, the next town after Brinnon, was 21 miles away, and with her heavy backpack it wasn’t realistic to walk that far, so she planned to walk somewhere between 9 and 11 miles, look for a place to camp overnight and walk into Lilliwaup the day after. She would have to be very careful about using her phone, so that it would last her the next two days.

Christie and her husband, Mark, had told her they were concerned for her welfare and her safety on Walker Pass, where there is a lot of traffic on Highway 101 and only a very small shoulder. Christie, so kind, offered to pick her up that morning, and she drove Jeana 7.8 miles — quite a way — up over Walker Pass and past the point of danger on the road.

Jeana walked into Brinnon and stopped at the community centre, where she talked to a gentleman named Jeremy. He recommended that she go up the hill to the Brinnon Community Church and talk to the pastor there about finding a place to stay for the night. It was a pretty steep hill, but she made it to the top.

Although it was Sunday, the morning services were over and the church was already closed when she got there. She was about to knock at a house she hoped was the parsonage when out came the pastor — Pastor Matt — with his wife and several children. She explained what she was doing, and he suggested that she sleep in the church’s social hall. That was extra kindness, she says, because he and his family were packing to leave the next day, and still they took time out of their Sunday, already their busy day, to help her get settled in and to feed her lunch.

Then she packed her little pack and set out to make up the 7.8 miles she had missed that morning. Rather than take Highway 101 along the bay, she picked a challenging path up and down very steep hills, and she was glad she did; it was so beautiful up in the foothills. Pastor Matt had asked whether she would come to the service and talk to everyone about her journey, so she was making her way back in time for it.

The Sunday evening service at the Brinnon Community Church was uplifting. Pastor Matt played the piano, his wife sang and played guitar, and three of their sons played instruments. The music touched her heart; she felt it was a living, sacred prayer to the divine in us all. It made her feel close to her sister, Melinda, who was an ASL visual choir director for many years.

Then Pastor Matt invited her to speak about the walk, the Jada Bascom Foundation and how to join NMDP, the National Marrow Donor Program, and she felt the congregation was receptive to her message of saving lives together. The pastor’s daughter, Keziah, prepared a light supper, and Jeana settled in for the night with a grateful heart. Her hosts that night were Pastor Matt and his family, at the Brinnon Community Church.

She surely was happy to have slept inside the little shed, inside her tent, warm in her cosy sleeping bag, because when she came out in the morning it had rained, and it was still raining. It takes her about an hour and a half to pack up her tent, get all her grooming done and be ready for the day’s walk. She had her tent, sleeping bag and sleeping mat all packed onto her backpack when she saw Christie coming back from walking the dogs.

Christie invited her up for a bowl of oatmeal with pecans and maple syrup and a delicious latte before taking her to Discovery Bay to do her walk for the day. They visited about current events, told stories and talked about liner socks. One of the staff at REI had suggested new liner socks for her walk, and she loves them. Not everyone is interested in hiking apparel, she says, but Christie was, so Jeana showed the socks to Christy before putting them away.

Then they headed out for Discovery Bay. Christie explained that she wanted to drop her past the interchange of Highway 104 and Highway 101, because she didn’t feel it was safe to walk. Jeana told her she accepted her opinion as a local who knew the roads. Later she remembered that on Day 18 she had walked an extra 3.6 miles out of necessity, so she put those 3.6 miles toward the 3.0 she had missed by bypassing the interchange.

She was about halfway to Quilcene when a text arrived from Christie with photographs attached: Jeana had left her socks at Christie’s house. Christie knew how important those socks were to her walk, and she said, “Let me bring them to you, and I will take you into Quilcene and we’ll attend the fiber fair. And then on the way back, I’ll drop you where I picked you up, and you can walk the rest of the way in.” It was a marvellous idea, and that’s what they did.

The fair was great. It was very well attended, and she met so many people to talk to about NMDP, the U.S. National Marrow Donor Program, and about the Jada Bascom Foundation and the work it is doing to save lives. Christie also bought her lunch, and Jeana was so grateful, because she doesn’t always have a midday meal.

One other important thing Christie did was to introduce her to Jan, one of the women who had helped to organise the fair, and Jan offered to let Jeana put her tent in her barn that night. Christie had been magnanimous: she brought the socks back, bought Jeana lunch and helped her find a safe place to put her tent for the night.

Christie dropped her back out on the road, and Jeana walked into Quilcene and made her way to Jan’s farm. Jan raises Jacob sheep. She has them sheared and someone processes the wool for her, then she spins it — and it is beautiful.

Jeana and Jan had a lot in common. Jeana is just a bit younger than Jan, and they grew up in the same era. Their paths had been very different, but they have ended up in a similar place in their lives, which felt congruent to them both. Jan gave her tea and a snack of belVita biscuits, and the sheep all came over to say goodnight before Jeana climbed into her tent.

It was still raining when she woke up at the Sequim Bay Lodge. She got herself ready, rain gear and all, with the rain cover on her backpack, then walked the half mile to the bus stop and took the bus into Blyn, where it stopped in front of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s administrative offices.

She has a personal commitment to walk every mile, every step of her journey, and sometimes that takes flexibility. The half mile she had walked to the bus stop that morning was a perfect fit for the half mile between the Longhouse Market, where she had stopped the day before, and the tribe’s administrative offices. She is very careful to track her walking distances every day, she says, and she also uses flexibility and wisdom as she makes her way on her long-distance walks.

At the administrative offices she greeted Joan, the woman she had spoken to on the phone the day before, and introduced herself; it was a pleasure to meet her in person. Joan had really responded to her needs when Jeana was making her cold calls, and now she gave her a morning coffee and let her refill her water bottles and use the restroom.

As it turned out, she would need that wisdom again very early in the day. As she set off walking, she met a couple and asked them the best way to get to the highway. There was a staircase back the way she had come, and they pointed to a road that would take her to the highway in about two and a half miles. She chose the road, since it was going in the direction she wanted to go, and off she went. She is sure they didn’t misdirect her; she misunderstood, and took the lower road instead of the upper road that went to the highway.

She had a beautiful walk — what a blessing, she says, to make that mistake. She walked along Sequim Bay in the forest, in all its beauty and quiet. When her apps started working again, it was clear that she wasn’t getting any closer to the highway. She pulled out her compass to double-check, and sure enough, she was headed north. The maps confirmed it: she was 3.4 miles from the administrative offices, in the wrong direction.

She had never gone the wrong way like that before, but it had been quite a lovely walk. She waved down the first car that came by and explained to the lovely woman driving it that she had walked the wrong way, that she was doing a long walk, and that she didn’t really want to add 6.8 miles to the 11 miles she needed to walk that day. Though the woman was in a hurry, late for an appointment, she took the time to let Jeana put her backpack in the car and drove her back to the administrative offices.

There Jeana told Joan she had gone the wrong way, and asked whether anyone was available to take her those 3.4 miles up the highway, so that she wouldn’t have to walk them again. Joan found a man who was willing to drive her, and he took her exactly 3.4 miles up the highway and dropped her off. She was ever so grateful to the woman who had stopped to help her and to the man from the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe who made sure she was on her way.

She hadn’t walked far when she came to a town called Gardiner, where two stores stood side by side right along the highway: Nature Store and Public Gardens, and Wild Birds Unlimited. She went in hoping they might have a little food, something to sustain her. All she had had for breakfast was a protein bar her trail angels had given her a few days before, and the coffee from Joan.

Inside, she was greeted by a woman whose name, she later found out, was Christy. Jeana asked whether they had any protein bars, and Christy said, “Just a minute,” ran to the back and brought out a small package of vanilla wafers and an oat and nut bar. Then she asked Jeana whether she needed a place to stay. What an amazing gift: it turned out she had a little shed at the back of a beautiful, magical garden, and she offered to let Jeana stay there for the night.

Jeana still had 6.5 miles to walk, but she wasn’t about to turn down a safe, dry place to spend the night. Her host showed her where to put her big backpack, and with her little backpack on, Jeana walked 3.25 miles down the hill and back up again — her 6.5 miles into Discovery Bay. Christie had also told her that she would drive her to Discovery Bay in the morning. There are so many days when she doesn’t know where she will be staying that it was lovely to know, early in the day, that she had a safe place to lay her head.

Most of the route going south was downhill, so the way back was all uphill, but without her heavy pack it was a breeze both ways.

There are times, she says, when she records a journal entry as she walks, or calls folks about the business of the Jada Bascom Foundation. But much of her walking is done with a quiet mind, with the noise of the traffic, the wind in the trees and whatever is happening around her. When she is walking, she writes, she is never truly alone; she is connected to all that is.

There are also times when she feels the pain of the backpack in her shoulders, or walks in a state of exhaustion, so tired that there is nothing but walking and it takes complete focus to put one foot in front of the other. Walking, she says, is a reflection of her daily life, of recognising where she is: a scattered mind, painful emotion or physical pain, desire, a quiet mind, compassion.

Christie brought bread and cheese, fruit and carrots to the little cabin for her dinner. Jeana set up her tent for an extra layer of warmth, ate with fervour, and fell asleep protected, dry and warm. Her hosts that night were Christie and Marc.