The Medicine Woman

Housing and healing transients from around the world.

This is the third in a series of stories and essays from the Pacific Coast Adventure Cycling Route—a 2000-mile bike ride from Canada to Mexico. If you’d like to support Dressing Like a Kangaroo, consider sharing this post with someone who’s too afraid to slow down.

Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds, 1871. Martin Johnson Heade.

"People usually stay here a while," Karen said with a proud smile as she led me up the flower-ruled driveway toward the garage. She was warning me that the house had a gravity to it. Within a few moments of arriving, I could feel the pull. Her caring, grandmotherly tone and the insistence that anyone could stay as long as they wanted were persuasive to travelers far from home. Posts in online forums advertised Karen's home as a life-affirming stop-over for touring cyclists, road trippers, and the like. 

A few years ago, a man from Mexico arrived on a bike planning to stay just one night. The next morning Karen gathered eggs from the hens out back and made breakfast to send him off. Such a delicious breakfast, in fact, that he filled himself up and took a nap on the couch. He woke up late afternoon, not enough time in the day to pack up his bike and make the 30-mile ride to Crescent City.

Karen, in her endless generosity, offered him the room for as long as he wanted to stay. Each night, he would declare that he was headed out in the morning, and each morning around 10 o'clock his socks shuffled up the hardwood floor to the kitchen bar where eggs and bacon patiently waited, still warm. Each day, like the last, until three weeks later, he finally broke orbit.

Karen and her husband started hosting travelers and cyclists out of happenstance. "I don't even think Jim can ride a bike," she said with a chuckle. He was hard of hearing, so she could be a little loose-lipped when his aides weren't in.

Twelve years ago, a Belgian couple was motor touring the country in a beat-up Volkswagen that they bought when their plane landed in New York. By some act of God, their car broke down on the main drag of Brookings, Oregon right as Karen was coming out of the pharmacy. The prolific conversationalist that she was, with a flair for hyperbole, I'm sure it didn't take long before she suggested that Jim was a stellar mechanic. "He can fix your car right up!"

Jim spent the next two months working on their car as a hobby project on weekends while the Belgians slept in the spare bed, repaying them with household chores. It had been over a decade since their last child had moved out, and Karen enjoyed having new, crazy kids around. So, she's been hosting anyone who wants to stay for 12 years now with few restrictions.

Helping around the house is non-negotiable, and as long as you maintain your usefulness, you can stay. They're getting older, and the bar for usefulness has been lowered year by year.

Karen and Jim are 81 now. Well, Karen is 81 and they claim to know when Jim was born, but neither could put a finger on his exact age. They have a big yard with flowers and a garden they've been having trouble keeping up with.

I carried feed out to the chickens and gathered eggs in exchange for the guest room. 

In the living room, a 50” television is programmed to play back photos from Karen’s camera roll when it idles, but this is the main entertainment in the house. Karen sits on the couch, and Jim sits in his armchair, and they watch the photos scroll by.

Each biker that stays with them gets a photo in the roll. The couple from Belgium made a showing sitting on the hood of their car, and we waited for a photo of the man from Mexico. It's an odd mix of disheveled adventurers, and photos of their grandchildren, but Karen seems equally proud of both.

Each photo stays on the screen for about 30 seconds, and in that time Karen will tell stories at a blistering pace before a seamless transition into the next photo. Jim has Alzheimer's, and Karen says the stories keep him sharp.

“…and that was just such a good time! You remember that, Jim?” She’d say at the end of each story.

“Uh-huh,” he’d grumble decisively.

Karen seems to really enjoy this bullet form of storytelling. She interacts with the TV like there's a game show on, and she knows all the answers. She was on the edge of her seat.

Even when Jim wasn't in the room, she'd have me sit down next to her on the couch so she could tell me about her daughter's trip to Spain in 30 seconds or less.

A few years ago, particularly nasty cold weather swept the Pacific coast at the peak of riding season stranding riders in Brookings. Lodging options are sparse in either direction. Karen claims that 27 cyclists stayed at their house one night, and she has the photo to prove it, we just had to wait for the TV to get there.

Cyclists packed the spare bedroom and the floor in the living room, and a few of the quieter ones pitched tents out back. Over the past decade, their home has become a landmark for cyclists touring the Oregon coast. 

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I couldn't get a read on how Jim felt about always having visitors in the house. He hardly gets a word in around Karen. He’s much more reserved, and he lost a piece of his tongue to cancer, so his words are a little more labored.

Jim and I sat in lawn chairs in the driveway while Karen was on the phone for a bit. We could hear her through the kitchen window, barely making time to breathe. He looked over at me and said, "She can really go can't she?" I chuckled. I thought he was talking about her chatty disposition, but he continued, "I've never met a woman who can get things done like she can." His gaze paused on the kitchen window with awe.

A couple of years ago, Karen started a small business there in Brookings, Oregon. She grows what she calls "medicine," because she doesn't want to be known as a drug dealer. She prefers the title of medicine woman or healer. That's all fine by me because I don't like to think of myself as a homeless twenty-something who sleeps on his drug dealer's couch.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm just a cyclist with sore legs who occasionally enjoys a medicinal cookie, when offered. Karen's clientele consists entirely of the elderly community in Brookings. Her medicine is for arthritis, insomnia, and sore muscles. The pantry is packed with a nearly endless supply of Cannabis treats, from cookies to tinctures. I'm sure the treats contribute to the gravity that acts on the transients who have called this place home.

I was only there for an afternoon and one night. I got up early the next morning, while dew still studded the flowers. I hopped on my bike, gave Karen a hug, and shook Jims hand. Until the very end, Karen was tempting me with offers of fresh eggs. But, the gravity of my expedition was stronger than that of the house. Small self-comforting acts struck a fear into my heart. I was terrified that if I slept just one night too many in a comfortable bed with clean sheets, I might end up like that man from Mexico, unable to escape the gravity of the house. 

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A year later, I sat down at the computer and opened up the hosting forum, Warmshowers, where I initially found Karen and Jim. Since pedaling down their driveway, I’d traveled four thousand miles and stayed with more trail angels than I could remember. But, my brief stay with Karen and Jim lingered.

There is a shroud of mysticism about the medicine woman of Brookings, Oregon. Features that are truly angelic, and so deeply human at once. I was trying to remember where exactly their home was, so that I could send my thanks. I pulled up Brookings, Oregon, and my heart sank. No results.

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