August 17, 2016 Mile 1298.6-1328.8 30.2 Miles In the middle of the night a great crash and thump drags me violently out of sleep. “What was that?” I cry. It came from uphill a short ways, maybe a couple hundred feet at most. “I don’t know. That was loud.” says Altitude. I can tell he’s frightened too. “Was it a bear?” I ask. Even though I have my food in a bear canister, I haven’t bothered to put my toothpaste and other scented items into the canister because we aren’t in an area that requires it yet. But there are still bears out here, and now I’m afraid that one of them is on their way to our camp. Yak speaks up. “I think it was a tree.” For a moment I don’t understand, but then I do—the tree fell over. It matches the sound profile I heard. The cracking of the trunk as it came over, the crashing as branches broke off against other trees on the way down, the powerful thump as the body of the tree hit the ground. In California, trees have been dying at an unprecedented rate over the past decade. I’ve read stories about it and mourned our forests, but to experience it firsthand in the middle of the night unearths a deeper layer of sadness. I sleep in a little more than usual this morning. 6am. The others are still asleep, and the forest is so silent that every rustle of fabric seems amplified as I pack. I try to pack carefully at first, but it only makes everything take longer, so finally I pack with noisy aplomb and hustle out of camp. Seven miles in I’m running low on water, but there’s a horse trough. The water is cold and gushing from an aluminum pipe, perfect water for a morning that is already hot. I plug in a podcast and begin to cruise. I am high energy and low comfort, as my toes are still being scraped and gouged by my shoes. I am not interested in staying present today, I just want to ignore the pain and make the time pass. It works fairly well. Before I know it I have blown by another ten miles. It’s hard to focus on anything but my feet, and that’s the last place I want to put my attention. It feels like there’s nothing but trees today anyway. It’s time for water again, so I make my way down a spur trail toward Little Bear spring. There’s a deeply eroded channel, but no water that I can see. I am almost completely out, and thirsty. The water report says there’s water here, so I continue down the trail following a ledge above the dry creek. I’m not sure how far I should go before I give up and turn around. What if there’s no water here? Can I make it another 13 miles to Soldier Creek? What if there’s no water there either? My podcast has me in a bit of a daze—this is the first time I’ve listened for more than about an hour, and it’s a little numbing. I’ve discovered Dan Carlin’s Harcore History, and the episode is a hypnotic deep dive into the ancient greeks. Fascinating stuff, but it’s like watching TV—I’m barely present in my own skin. It takes me away from the pain in my feet, but it also takes me away from the forest. I’m startled back into my own skin by a nide of pheasants exploding from under the ledge. The burst and flurry of wings—seven birds—nearly stops my heart. Seeing that they are only birds, I continue on, and five more noisily thwap away. I freeze again, beholden to a primal threat-detection system that doesn’t care for logic. I calm myself quicker this time. I barely flinch when a third brood of the birds erupts from below. A couple seconds later I see the water, flowing from a pipe. Of course there is water here; that’s why the birds have chosen this hiding place. My exaggerated sense of human importance makes me forget that water does not exist to serve my needs. Full up again, I start the climb back uphill to the main trail. I get almost all the way to the top again when I realize that I’ve left my hiking poles behind. It’s the podcast. I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing. I sigh and curse myself for my idiocy, but there’s nothing to do except turn around and hike down again. I don’t turn off the podcast. When I return to the PCT I am in a funk. My feet hurt, this forest seems boring, I haven’t seen anyone all day, and I’m not even halfway done with the trail yet. I’m starting to doubt whether I’ll ever finish. An hour later I meet two gristled and grizzled old men on the trail. One is tall and has a grey beard and is carrying a shovel, the other is shorter with sandy brown hair and has a pair of hedge clippers. “How’s it going?” the one with the beard asks. “How’s the trail ahead?” “It’s been pretty good,” I say. “Have you had to climb over any blowdowns?” I try to remember, but my mind has been somewhere else all day. I don’t think so, and I tell him that. “There’s a few coming up,” he says. “We need to come back with a tree saw. You’re kind of late in the season, aren’t you?” “Yeah, I had to start late.” “You should really flip up to Canada and finish southbound. You probably aren’t going to make it to the border in time.” Nothing makes me madder than people telling me what I should do. The truth is, I’ve been thinking about flipping—hell, I’ve even been thinking about quitting—but now I have to see it through. Proving people wrong is perhaps my greatest motivational tool. I hike on, and just after they get out of view I remember a log that I had to step over earlier that day. Oh well, they’ll find it soon enough. Hoot and Chocolate Milk fly by me from behind. I must have passed them somewhere. Only a few minutes later, I find them sitting next to a post: the PCT halfway point! We all take pictures of each other. They break out some scotch in a Smartwater bottle and pass it around. I haven’t had strong spirits in months. It’s stringent, but it also tastes of camaraderie. I feel included in their celebration, and I am grateful. We stay for a while, eating snacks, writing in the trail log, reading the other entries and looking to see if we can find the names of friends who have already passed through here. My feet are destroyed, and I decide it’s time to perform some more invasive surgery on my shoes. I cut big holes in the fabric where it has been rubbing my feet. In the middle of the process, Hoot and Chocolate Milk continue on and we wish each other well. Like always, I wonder if I will ever see them again. They are much faster than me and seem to keep strange hours. After my shoe surgery, I feel much better. My pack is light, I’ve got a little scotch burning in my belly, and my feet are free of pain for the first time in days. So what if a little sand and gravel work their way into my shoes? I’m covering ground like a speed skater, sometimes even breaking into a light jog on the easy downhills.
At Soldier Creek, Hoot and Milk are pumping water. “What, did you run?” Chocolate Milk asks. “Zigzag can move it!” “How did you catch up to us so fast?” Hoot echoes. “I feel good, man! Can’t wait to get to town.” I only need a liter, so I’m done first. I start off down the trail and Milk yells out “purist!” Then they’re both yelling “purist!” over and over. I have no idea what they’re talking about until I see there’s another shorter use trail that cuts off from the spring to the other side of the trail. I laugh and it feels good. I could wait for them, of course. We could maybe all hike together and I wouldn’t have to be alone out here anymore. But I need to go into town for a resupply, and that means hitching, and hitching is easier alone. Maybe we’ll see each other in town. The downhill ends, and with it, my burst of energy. Now I’m feeling the almost thirty miles that I’ve put in today. I’m on a long flat section of alternating timber stands and meadows. The trees have signs of ownership on them; lumber companies who think that they have a right to lay claim to the earth. Maybe it’s better that way. At least companies can be regulated. If it were open to all people to take what they need, the tragedy of the commons might lay waste to it all. Still, I can’t help but feel that using nature’s mysteries for profit is a gross abuse. The last mile is uphill. If it weren’t for the promise of town food, I would lay myself down right here and sleep for a hundred years. Every step takes a force of will. Even with the promise of town food, I need to stop and catch my breath every twenty steps or so. Let my heart slow down, let the oxygen get back into my brain. I’m woozy, headachy. My gut is devouring me from the inside. All of a sudden I’m out on the road. Good thing, too, because it’s getting darker and no one picks up hitchhikers at night. I stick out my thumb and wait. And wait. Fifteen minutes. Thirty. I’m almost ready to give up and camp in the trees when a black firebird with peeling paint pulls over. The woman in the driver’s seat tells me to throw my pack in the back, and we are racing away toward Chester, a small town to the east. She drops me at the best western. I get a room, order a pizza, and call Lindsey. I eat most of the pizza, take a shower—I can’t get all the dirt off my feet—and climb into a warm, clean bed. As I drift into sleep I think to myself, “maybe I’ll take a zero day tomorrow.”
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I remember the very first time I heard Mason Jennings. I was in grad school in Flagstaff, and my girlfriend Lena and I were at her apartment, hanging out with her brother. Jay is a fantastic guitarist and was as passionate about good music as I am (but often with different tastes), had just discovered Mason a few days ago while walking crossing campus. He had already shared the music with Lena, and they both loved it and wanted to share it with me.
We were all disappointed to find that I didn’t like it. It wasn’t that it was bad music, I just didn’t enjoy the way his voice scooped up to so many notes. It reminded me a little of Tom Petty, except with more scooping and less polish. They played three songs, trying to convince me. I don’t remember what the first two songs were, but the third one was Big Sur, in which the harmony gets “stuck” on a chord that builds tension for over a minute and then accelerates toward a climax. That was fun, but it wasn’t a particularly clever trick—it was just a dominant seventh chord. Any musician who knew their music theory would recognize it. And the vocal scooping still grated on my nerves. We were all frustrated that I didn’t love it like they did. Lena and I may have even fought about it. I don’t remember for sure. Fights were becoming increasingly common between us then and sprawled into every imaginable subject. We often couldn’t remember how they started. Luckily for me, Lena continued to play Mason’s music while I was around, and Jay set to learning several of his songs on the guitar. The scooping stopped grating on me, then it became something to teasingly mimic, and eventually I was surprised to find it had become familiar and almost intimate. At that time, my relationship with Lena was in the process of falling apart, and I felt a resonance with the darkness underlying his music. It became a comfort to me—there was someone else out there who understood what it was like to feel sadness and beauty at the same time. By the time Lena and I finally split up two years later, Mason Jennings had earned himself a place in the pantheon of my favorite musicians. Mason is a folk musician and balladeer. His songs are simple—Ulysses and Jackson Square, for example, both have three chords repeated in the same pattern for the entire song—and yet his songs don’t feel tedious, repetitive, or simplistic: in Jackson Square the narrator falls in love with a woman and tries to care for her as her mind falls apart; Ulysses is a pensive and thoughtful search for wisdom in a world that doesn’t make sense. So often in Mason’s music, the music itself takes a back seat to the lyrics. He has technique to spare, but he uses it to create a mood for his poetry, never to show off. The music provides a cushion for emotional truths that would be too hard to bear without it, or sometimes to give an undertone that changes the meaning of the lyrics. I need to pause here for a moment, for fear that the reader will presume it is all sadness and darkness. Here there is also joy and love, and even humor. What sadness he brings to bear is based in empathy, but that empathy is also joyful, as in Lemon Grove Avenue (which happens to bear the same name as the street where I spent my childhood). It is hopeful, as in California Part II. It is tender, as in Ballad For My One True Love or Grow Old With Me. Above all, Mason’s music is human. It seeks. It desires. It reaches out to connect with other humans and reminds us that we are all part of one experience. *** from Ulysses: Loose green tea and a bonsai tree, underground apartment, Check my email, wash my clothes, while my rice is cooking, Oh jesus christ, how I hate making phone calls, So I lead a lonely life. (this song is a great example of utilitarian lyrics completely transformed by the underlying music) from California Part II: I tell you what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna lighten up, I’m gonna throw a box of books and my beloved guitar into the back of my truck, and try my luck in California. from California part I: California, I hope that it wakes you, from all of the darkness that I couldn’t break through, ‘cause I’m gonna miss you, like I miss the ocean when I go to sleep. from Darkness Between the Fireflies: Honey I’m sure, you’ve been in love before, Many other men have held high places in your eyes, But jealousy has got no use for me, The past is beautiful like the darkness between the fireflies. from Grow old with me: I met an old man who was not quite an old man, said he was an old boy, And I will make a toast, and believe and bet you, that I will be the same old man, Not the kind with a lost soul, who can’t put down his toys, Honey there’ll be absolute peace in my heart and resolution in my soul. from Crown: (about an affair) I don’t want to be together, I don’t want to be apart, I don’t want none of this love for you honey, deep deep down in my heart. from If you ain’t got love: Someday soon, you and I will both be gone, But lately I can’t help but think that the love we feel will live on. I wrote those lyrics down from memory. His songs have sunk into me deeply. *** On the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, Lindsey and I went to see Mason Jennings at Yoshi’s in San Francisco. It’s a small venue, usually used for jazz and dinner, and there were only about 20 tall tables in two arcs next to the stage, so the atmosphere was intimate. The Iraqi insurgency was at its height after eight years of war in that country and ten years in Afghanistan. Much of the news at that time was about the increasing casualties and endless tours of service. Near the end of the concert Mason sang The Field. The narrator is a mother who has lost her son in war. Here are the complete lyrics: Every step I take takes me farther from you Every move I make reminds me that I'll always love you Since you were a child we built our lives around you How am I supposed to live in this world we made without you? Sometimes late at night I go the field Is that where you are? Are you a shooting star? Can you say my name? Darling can you hear me? Tell me where's your heart now that it stopped beating? It's right here, it's right here, it's right here When you joined the war we were so proud of you You seemed so grown up, living life the way we taught you Then your first letter came, it sounded nothing like you It took all my strength to keep myself from running to you Sometimes late at night I go the field Is that where you are? Are you a shooting star? Can you say my name? Darling can you hear me? Tell me where's your heart now that it stopped beating? It's right here, it's right here, it's right here And it will always be until the sun dries the ocean And you will always be my little one If I was the President, if I was that man I would walk out with those kids, out across the sand If I was the President, if I was that brave I would take a shovel then dig each child their grave If I was the President and my world turned black I would want no victory, I'd just want you back I don't want no victory, I just want you back *** I’ve been going to Mason Jennings concerts for about 15 years now. Sometimes his shows are packed, other times they are nearly empty. When they are nearly empty, there are always many of us who know the words to nearly every song. I tend to prefer his earlier songs, but sometimes one of his newer songs finds its way into the list that I consider his classics. He has dealt with agoraphobia, depression, and anxiety, and for a while he considered quitting his music career altogether. I am grateful that he didn’t. August 16, 2016 Mile 1284.3-1298.6 14.3 Miles It was a noisy night. Freight trains sliced the night into ribbons. Loud-mouthed drunkards trampled on the shreds that remained No matter: by 6am, sleepy as I still am, it’s clear that I won’t do any more sleeping today. I climb out of my tent and I’m disappointed to find that Hawkeye has already left. I was hoping to talk with him some more today. Perhaps I’ll run into him tomorrow, perhaps a hundred miles from now, perhaps never again. That’s trail life. I walk over to use that rare luxury—flushing toilets—and find Ed making his tea on a railroad tie at the edge of the lawn. Altitude comes by a little while later and the three of us chat until eight, when the restaurant opens. We move our conversation inside, where we can have some coffee and order obscene amounts of food. The food takes a long time, but we’re almost grateful for it. It’s a good excuse to just sit around and not hike. Who knows whether Altitude and Ed will have the same pace as me; this might be my last chance at conversation for a while. After breakfast I go to use the payphone to see about getting my resupply. It’s an old pacific bell phone booth with a colorful sign leaned against a tree nearby: “Greetings from Beldentown.” I pick up the phone and immediately realize that it isn’t working. Hard to tell if it’s a decomissioned relic from a bygone era, or if it’s temporarily broken, but either way it’s useless to me In the restaurant I ask if there’s another phone around. The bartender lets me use his wireless; he has the local trail angel on speed dial. While it rings I wonder whether she’ll even be able to bring it today. She answers and tells me she can be here in fifteen minutes. The trail angels amaze me. They always give more than I could ever expect. When she arrives with my package she tells me “It’s a good thing you called when you did. I’ve got to leave town in a couple of hours and won’t be back until the day after tomorrow.” I try not to think about what a disaster that would have been. Ed has done the math, and in order to finish by September 30th, we’re going to have to do 31 miles every day for the rest of the trip. It’s more than I can reasonably sustain, and have to resign myself to finish sometime in October, if the weather will let me. I thank her for bringing my resupply. My thank-you feels feeble, but I’m slow-witted in towns and can’t think of what else to say. After she leaves, my food slowly fills up Yogi Beer’s bear canister. It’s about 11am, so I decide to have an early lunch from the store; ice cream and potato chips. Ed tries to convince Altitude and I of the merits of flipping. I’m not ready yet. I’m afraid I’ll lose my momentum and I won’t be able to finish the trail. Besides, finishing in Northern California seems less exciting than finishing at the Canadian Border. My pack and my belly are full. It’s time to go before this turns into a zero day and I get sucked into the Belden vortex. Thirty-one miles a day. There’s no way I’m going to do that, but it sure gives me a sense of urgency. Altitude is ready to go, too, but Ed isn’t quite. We wish him good luck and tell him we hope to see him on trail. We hoist our packs, heavy again, and set out over the bridge. Strangely, a clock is posted on the green metal trusses, like a reminder to visitors that they are exiting the timeless town of Belden and heading back into the real world. Not us, though. We cross the road and make our way back into the wilderness. It’s a long, hot climb. Altitude and I part fairly quickly after we start, so I am left with the contemplation of my body. The tops of my feet are in pain again; it seems that whatever surgery I did wasn’t enough, and they are rubbing hard just above my big toes. My ankles feel a little stiff, but that improves as they warm up. My calves and thighs are tight and achy, but nothing I haven’t felt for most of the summer. From my hips upward, things are better—not relaxed, exactly, but not tense either. The only exception is my spine, which seems a little tight and is tired of carrying this heavy pack up this long hill. The heat is enough to add a layer of fatigue on top of what is already there. I stop at streams to dip my hands and splash my face. It feels amazing, and I marvel that I haven’t been doing this the entire trail. The trail seems like it should be a filled with mental presence and living in the moment, a contrast with the constant hustle of civilization that constantly drives from moment to moment, always looking ahead and never staying present. And there are certainly more moments—peaceful sounds, attention-grabbing wildlife, unexpected vistas—to drag you out of the constant goal-driven life, but trail life requires attention, too, and it’s easy to get caught up in the drive for miles and the goal of the next vista, the next town. It’s easy to overlook the simple pleasures like a cool stream or the wind blowing in the leaves. If we want to be present in anything in life, we have to make it a choice. When I make it my habit to look forward to the next vista or the next wildlife encounter, that habit stays with me, and when I get to that vista, I’m already thinking about the next vista instead of enjoying this one. Likewise, if I make it a habit to complain about the heat and the climb, my habit energy will find something to complain about at the top of a peak with a spectacular thousand-mile view. Better to find something amazing in this moment. If I truly want to enjoy that view, I need to give equal care to this moment, in the heat of the day on a grueling climb. At several points along this climb, my heart rate feels uncomfortably high. There is no shade that isn’t infested with poison oak, so I just stop and stand in the sun, waiting for my heart rate to drop. I don’t ever wait for very long, so it spikes back up as soon as I start climbing. Too much coffee, perhaps. I’ve noticed this happens every time I leave a town, and I have coffee in every town. I’m gaining a new appreciation of how my body works and what affects it, simply because my mind has the space and presence to notice. I pass a snake in the trail. It moves off slowly in the heat, reluctant to stir from its nap. A man in his fifties and a woman in her eighties come down the trail. They move slowly, but it’s a slowness born of intentionality, not a doddering slowness. I am impressed by the old woman’s fortitude. We are at least four miles up a difficult slope in searing heat. Round trip, that’s a minimum eight miles on difficult terrain; it’s likely they’ve gone farther than that. I hope that I am as hale in my eighties. I enter a the trees and blessed shade. It’s still warm, but a rest in the shade feels much better than a rest in the sun. Better yet with small waterfalls and cool moss. A couple southbound thru-hikers pass through, some of the first I’ve seen. They seem reluctant to talk, as though I am of a different species. Later I will learn that although I see them only rarely, they run into us northbounders fifty at a time. I might have someone five minutes ahead of me and five minutes behind me and not see them for most of the day, but a southbounder sees every single one of us. Answering questions and making friendly conversation could take them the whole day if they didn’t set some limits. Near the top of the climb I run into Hoot and Chocolate Milk. “I expected you guys would be long gone by now,” I say. “We slept in,” says Chocolate Milk. “Then we bummed about and played frisbee golf until about noon,” adds Hoot. It sounds like fun. I find myself wondering if they know how far behind schedule we are. But I don’t know how hard they hike—maybe they’ve got more miles in them than I do. My question is partially answered as we start up the hill—they hike fast! After 5000 feet of elevation over 14 miles of steady uphill hiking, I’m ready to be done. I crest the ridge. Someone has written “Wow it’s about time” on a silver diamond blaze, and I feel it. I’m ready for some downhill, too. I stop a short distance later and make camp near a southbounder called Yak. He’s beating his socks against a rock to get the dirt out of them. I set up my tent, lay out my things, and start to make dinner—he’s still whipping his socks against the rock. We chat between the percussive thwaps. He’s from Virginia, section hiking down to Tuolomne Meadows. After that he’s going to meet his girlfriend. He seems deep in thought, like he’s carefully considering every word he says to me. At first he seems stand-offish, but after a minute it seems like he just hasn’t had a conversation in a long time. I know the feeling. He mentions that he has a lot to figure out before he finishes his section hike, but he doesn’t go into detail. He seems both self-assured and depressed, like he has a major dilemma but takes full responsibility for solving it on his own. It’s the sort of demeanor that I notice most often in veterans—a lonely self-sufficiency, like the weight of the world is on their shoulders but they refuse to share the burden with anyone else, even insofar as to discuss it.
I’m about halfway into dinner when Altitude arrives with his boyish enthusiasm and lightens the mood. Yak seems to draw further into himself, but occasionally emerges with a chuckle at something Altitude has said. We enjoy a fantastic view of the sunset and then retreat into our tents to sleep before it is fully dark. August 15, 2016 Mile 1257.4-1284.3 26.9 Miles School started today. It’s strange to know that the rest of my world is returning to work, and I’m out here playing. Guilt arises, but I push it out. Teachers are asked to be altruistic like no other profession: low pay, low respect, always asked to do more, rarely given enough resources, buying supplies with our own money. As a high school band director, a lot of this was magnified. After-school rehearsals, football games, and competitions kept me working seventy- and eighty-hour weeks. I loved the kids, but I don’t owe anyone. I reject the guilt. Despite the pain in my feet, despite the sore muscles, despite the hunger and the thirst and the fatigue, I feel better than I have felt in years. I’m sleeping more, with less stress than ever. I wake at five, and Yogi Beer is up right after me. The morning is cool, but it feels like it will get hot in a hurry. We follow the rim of these cliffs we’ve camped next to, and at the first junction with a dirt road, find a box of books. Someone has created a little library in the woods, and there’s a note to tell us they are free. It’s the sort of trail magic that would be right up my alley if I weren’t already carrying two books. The morning is spent winding through mountaintops. Thick chaparral switches abruptly to pine forest, then back and back again. Yogi Beer disappears behind me after a bit, and eventually I stop for breakfast at an abandoned dirt road. Halfway through my oatmeal, a hiker arrives. “Hullo, can I join you?” He speaks with a Londoner’s accent and looks to be around my age—a rarity out here. “Yeah, of course. I’m Zigzag.” “Ed. Nice to meet you.” We fall quickly into an easy conversation while I finish my breakfast and he makes tea. Ed tells me about hiking the Te Araroa, a long-distance hike that spans the length of New Zealand: “It’s less maintained, but the days are easier. You get to stay in huts most of the way.” He tells me his trail name is Mr. Tea, and then he tells me why he dislikes trail names: “It’s fine if you’ve done something that deserves a nickname, but I don’t like this forced, everyone-must-have-a-nickname bullocks.” He tells me he’s worried about finishing the trail in time: “I think I waste too much time making breakfast and tea in the morning.” A younger hiker comes by, probably in his early twenties. Strange that I didn’t see either of their tents as I was hiking. I must have been in a trance. He asks us whether a town coming up, Quincy, will be easy to hitch to. Neither of us have any idea. By the time I’ve packed up and start again, I feel I’ve found a good friend in Ed. I hope we run into each other again. As I depart, he starts to brew a second cup of tea and Altitude starts to make breakfast. Most of the morning is a blur. I’m lost in thoughts about my career and trying to decide what’s next. I can’t sustain the high school band director schedule anymore—I don’t like who I was turning into, or how little time I had for things I love. I don’t doubt that I could learn another job and be good at it, but most entry-level jobs won’t pay my bills. Maybe I should go back to school, I think. As wonderful as that sounds, I can’t justify more debt for a job that I’ve had no experience with and that might turn out to be a terrible fit. This circular dreaming and thinking eats up most of the morning with no resolution. On breaks, Yogi Beer passes. When I’m hiking, I pass him. We’ve worked up a jocular conversation going that is broken up in time, sometimes by an hour or two. He’s a fun-loving, easy-going guy, and I feel bad that I initially pulled back from him. I don’t want to believe it was because of his missing eye, but the alternative explanation isn’t much better: I let the judgment of others affect me. That first night at Donner Pass, the group I was with gave him the cold shoulder, and although I tried not to ever be unpleasant to him, I definitely didn’t make myself available in friendship. Now that I’ve gotten to know him a little, I wonder whether if their judgment was based in anything more than appearance. At the last big uphill before a plunge to Belden, we start hiking together. We enter a forest filled with Aspen and lush undergrowth and wildflowers. A creek runs through it. I haven’t seen a forest like this since before Lake Tahoe, maybe even since Yosemite. It’s surprising to find it here, and to realize how much I’ve missed it. We stop for lunch together where the trail crosses another creek. Shortly after I sit down, I realize that there’s a garter snake about a foot from my leg. She’s searching for a way up the bank. She’s harmless and moving in the opposite direction, so I don’t bother to move, I just watch her. A month ago, I would have jumped up with a huge rush of adrenaline, but now that seems like a gross overreaction. I feel completely comfortable with her here. Strange how the wilderness changes us. Yogi and I sit and eat and talk with long pauses between sentences. He tells me about his life in a biker gang, which he left long ago. He casually drops that his ex-wife shot him in the face—that’s how he lost the eye. He doesn’t add a lot of information, just lets it sit there, and I don’t want to pry. He talks about his current long-term girlfriend—a college professor—with genuine tenderness. Whatever rough life he led before, he seems to have left it completely behind.
During the long pauses in our conversation, I notice my respect for him growing. Difficult lives happen because of habits and traits that cause us to self-sabotage, and we usually don’t realize that we ourselves are the cause. If we’re lucky, we might see one of these traits every so often, and if we’re brave we can make an attempt to change it, but change is difficult and making it stick takes discipline and courage. Social pressures aim toward stasis, so the people around us encourage us to stay the same and resist change, even when the same is bad for everyone and the change would be good. Yogi Beer somehow transformed not just one or two of his habits and traits, but what I imagine must be his entire personality. He has left behind a guy in a biker gang who had the sort of relationship that ended with him getting shot in the face, and changed into a caring, friendly guy who has found self-sufficiency and joy in the wilderness. I can only imagine what a feat of will that must have taken. I can also only imagine that being shot in the face and surviving would prove to be a pretty good impetus to make a change. Near the end of our lunch break, I mention something I saw on facebook when I had service last night: Lassen National Park is requiring bear canisters now. It seems that a blonde-colored black bear has been aggressively stealing people’s lunches. In one case he went so far as to pull a backpack off of a hiker’s back! I have to call my wife when I get into town and see if she can send me my bear canister again. (I don’t realize how close I am to Lassen Nat’l Park. It’s only a couple days away, and the canister would never get to me in time). “I’ve got an extra canister in my garage,” Yogi says. “I can have my girlfriend bring it up with her, and you can mail it back when you get to the next town.” He’s finishing his section hike in Belden, where we will arrive this afternoon, and his girlfriend is going to drive up from the town of Paradise, about an hour down the hill. I’m grateful for his offer, grateful for his unfettered trust. Over the past five days we have only spent an hour or two in conversation—I am effectively a stranger still. Eventually we leave lunch and start our climb down the hill. Between the ever-rubbing sores on top of my feet and now the pain in my knees, I have to slow way down. At a promontory I have cell service, so I let Yogi use my phone to call his girlfriend. After that, I tell him not to wait for me anymore. There’s food and beer down below, and I wouldn’t be a good friend if I held a fellow hiker back from that. He swiftly disappears from view. Seven miles of switchbacks. From the aspen forest, to chapparal, to live oak and tons of poison oak. I pass a group of hikers heading up, and they seem exhausted. I must still have a long way to go. My feet are sore, my knees are pinging with every step, but there’s food, and there’s beer, and I can’t stop now. It takes forever, but I finally find the bottom of the switchbacks. A fright train blocks the way. It’s stopped on the tracks and it stretches as far as I can see in both directions. I’m not sure what to do here. It seems like a bad idea to climb under it with a backpack on—what if it starts moving? I decide to climb up the ladder at the end of one car and climb over the train. While I’m up there, I grin and imagine that the train will start moving so that later I can tell the story of how I had to jump off a moving train. Alas, it stays still long after I climb over and hobble away toward Beldentown. I find a small paved road and follow it east, parallel to a broad river. It’s the the Feather River again, this time the north fork. Between me and the river are a number of old, faded tents and big bags of garbage. It reminds me of nothing so much as the homeless encampments of San Francisco and Berkeley. I immediately regret such judgment when I see people packing up their tents. They are aging hippies, with Jerry Garcia beards and flowing Woodstock skirts. And the garbage, I realize, is all contained. Not destitute and rejected, then. It appears I’ve stumbled into the remnants of some sort of music festival. As I approach Beldentown, the bustle increases, but not the hustle. No one is in a hurry, not even those who are packing up. At what appears to be the middle of a long two-story motel, Yogi Beer sips a beer on bench. I drop my pack next to his and wander inside to get one of my own. The entryway goes straight into one end of a dimly lit saloon. It stretches spaciously to my right, with large glass doors ahead that lead out to a balcony overlooking the river. I can see some people here, but my eyes are too unaccustomed to the low light to make out any detail. To my left off the entryway is the small convenience store that I need. I walk in and grab a beer from the cooler, pay, and go out to join Yogi. Even in towns, time passes strangely on a thru-hike. Yogi Beer and I sit in kindred silence, sipping our beers and watching the festival folk pass in and out. Some look like they are checking out of the hotel or their campsites, some look like they’re just wandering, just passing the time. It seems like we’re there for a while, but I haven’t even finished my beer when Yogi Beer’s girlfriend shows up in a small car. He introduces us and she hands me the extra bear canister. I take down his address in my journal and give him my gratitude, promise to send it back at the next post office. And just like that he is gone, another temporary friend in a temporary world. All our relationships are fleeting, and we have such a short time to visit. Grasping on is useless. What time we waste in judgment and fear. August 14, 2016 Mile 1229.6-1257.4 27.8 Miles I notice that my moods are following a pattern: Cheerful and eager in the mornings, peaceful and relaxed in the afternoons, lonely, depressed, and sometimes frightened in the evenings. I often forget how much of my thinking and emotions are controlled by neurotransmitters. We like to think of our mind and body as being different from one another, but really, they are so tightly pressed together as to be two faces of the same coin. I seem to be more in touch with my moods in general, which I’m certain is the result of being more in touch with my body. I scan myself constantly: for aches and pains, heaviness in my muscles to check for fatigue, tightness in my joints, rubbing from my pack that might need adjustment. It’s only natural that I should be more aware of the changing nuance of my breath, the coursing of adrenaline through my muscles, the serotonin in my belly. Emotion is a physical sensation, and that awareness allows me to separate from it, consider it rationally. Sitting meditation turns down the volume on the mind, and one becomes aware of how it connects with the body. Hiking meditation seems to come from the opposite direction: focus on the body long enough, and eventually you become aware of how it connects with the mind. It seems to require solitude, however—the mind has to be focused on the body, not on conversation. These ideas turn themselves over during a short climb, then as I wind over the tops of mountains. Layers of mountains are partially obscured in all directions by a shadowy haze that emanates a bruised purple in the pre-dawn light. Dried-out mules ear and sedge grasses adorn the ridges where I weave my way north. The mules ear makes a scratchy sound when the breeze stirs it. This aimless weaving continues for a couple hours after the sun rises. The haze evaporates and I can see mountains for miles in all directions. I start a gentle downhill and find myself among chapparal. Bushes with bright red berries line the trail. They look delicious. I’m certain they can’t be safe to eat, but damn, they look delicious. I haven’t had fruit in so long. The slow descent continues, the bushes grow taller and thicker like hedgerows around me. Someone has recently cut back the bushes to a sidewalk’s width. I’m grateful for trail workers—this brush would be hell to push through, but as it is, it’s an easy stroll. The downhill grows steeper, little by little, and it seems like I’ve been descending for hours. Trees rise up—pines, mostly, but occasionally oaks. The dry dirt cedes some ground to fallen leaves and needles. The switchbacks begin, and I get my first view of the valley. The Middle Fork of the Feather River has cut a deep valley between the mountains. I can see my fate: miles and miles of switchbacking downhill, then miles and miles of switchbacking uphill. All to get to a point that is probably only a half mile away. Someone should really install a zip-line here. It takes me hours to get to the bottom. By the end, my knees are complaining and my feet are screaming. The tongues of my shoes have been rubbing skin off above my big toes with every step. For hours now, the pain in my feet has been my only focus. It’s a sort of anti-zen, where every thought fades away in the face of obsession. An arched bridge spans the River, and I stop on top to stare into its deep, rocky pools. It’s time for lunch. I hobble over the bridge’s wood planks and down a short steep side trail to the river’s edge. A man in his sixties is just starting to pack up a gravity filter. The bulk of thru-hikers fall into two categories, it seems: twenty-somethings (of either gender), and retired men. I often wonder why there are so few retired women out here. Is it a generational thing? Were young women not taught to adventure outside, and therefore they never got a taste for it? Or is it something more elemental: For example, do older women feel more connected in their community, and are therefore less willing to leave those connections to go on a long adventure? I guess the answer will be apparent forty years from now, when today’s adventuring twenty-something women are retirement age. I am surprised and grateful to find another person here since I haven’t seen anyone since yesterday afternoon, but he is already leaving by the time I have opened my backpack. I am left alone with the the river, pain, and a bag of peanut M&Ms. I try not to eat too many while I wait for my refried beans to cook, but it’s hopeless. My stomach feels like a gaping wound and peanut M&Ms are the only balm I have. My shoes and socks come off. I try to wash some of the dirt out of my pus-filled wounds, but it’s tattooed in there and it hurts like hell to scrub. Next step: surgery. My Swiss Army knife is razor-sharp and virtually unused. Scissors seem like the right tool for this job. I pull out the laces from my shoes and fold back the tongues as far as I can. Where the tongue meets the shoe, the material is folded and sewn together—this is what has been rubbing and scraping the top of my foot. I hack mercilessly at the fabric and do my best to remove the offending material. My beans are ready, and I settle in to a hot meal and a good read. A good book—hell, even a bad one—always makes me feel less alone. The book I’m reading is inventive and interesting, if not exactly great literature: Hegira by Greg Bear. It’s a combination of sci-fi and fantasy where a small group of people is exploring their world and slowly discovering that it was created by an advanced civilization that has disappeared. “Boo!” I nearly jump out of my skin. It’s Yogi Beer. He laughs. “Jesus, Yogi. I almost shit myself.” “Ha ha. Where did you camp last night? I thought I’d be able to catch up with you.” “I’m not really sure. A little before Duck Soup Pond, I think?” “I’m gonna jump in the river. You want to join me?” “Um.” Why not, I think. It’s a hot day and I could take a longer break, do something a little different than just hike all the time. Maybe I can wash out the sores on my feet. “Yeah, sounds good.” I get to the river first and find a small pool that’s about waist deep. Some of the rocks are covered with black moss. Yogi goes a little further down to jump into a deeper spot. I get in up to mid-thigh and start to splash the frigid water on myself bird-bath style. It feels so good and so, so cold. Some of the black moss is getting on my legs, and I wipe it off. It smears off red, like a smear of blood. That’s when I realize. Leeches. Hundreds, thousands of tiny black leeches. The rocks aren’t covered in moss, they are covered in little blood-suckers. I smear more of them off and thrash through the water to get away from them. That’s enough of the Feather River for me. Leeches notwithstanding, the dip in the river is good for my spirits, and the climb back up the hill is easier. My feet feel a little better with that fabric removed, and the forest is prettier on this slope. A few small streams intersect the switchbacks, and I run my hands through their water just to feel the cool wetness run over my skin. For the first time on this hike, I pull out my headphones and start to listen to a podcast. I’ve avoided it until now, because I wanted to experience the sounds of nature. But all of this alone time is starting to wear on me, and I just want to hear human voices. I choose a podcast by meditation teacher and therapist Tara Brach. It’s about our need for independent will, to choose our own life path and make our own decisions. Yes, I think. That’s right. It seems like most of my anger and resentments are related to fear of losing my independent will, when I feel like people are telling me what to do. With Tara Brach’s wisdom and my mind spinning off in new directions, the climb seems to pass quickly. I’m back to big views and fir trees, and I hike west for a long time, well into the evening. At sunset, I find myself at Lookout Rock, a promontory with a 200-degree view to the north. It’s sublime. There’s even cell service here, and I get to talk with Lindsey while I eat a dry dinner in my tent.
I drift off to sleep about 8:30, but I’m startled awake again an hour later when Yogi Beer comes rustling into camp in the dark. After I determine that he isn’t a bear come to eat my food, I roll over and fall back asleep, content to have the safety of some company. The past few years have seen increasing intensity of wildfires in California. To anyone who has been paying attention, this has been predicted for decades by climate scientists. I remember hearing about desertification and forest death when I was still in grade school. Climate deniers have started blaming poor forest management, and it seems like a lot of of people are blaming PG&E. It’s neither.
The problem isn’t poor forest management. In this decade, an estimated 129 million trees have died in the state of California alone (source). The massive effort it would take to purge California forests of their dead trees is prohibitively expensive and would require a mobilization of manpower and resources that is completely unrealistic. Besides, what would we do with all those dead trees? The loss of that biomass would impoverish the soil of nutrients, leading to more tree death and more wildfires. Why are trees dying? Drought and Bark Beetle infestation are the major factors, and both are results of human-caused climate cancer (ibid). The problem isn’t PG&E’s equipment. A spark might start the fire, but the extent and devastation of these fires is due to the amount of fuel and the fast rates of burn and spread. Those are the result of dry, dying, and dead forests. PG&E’s equipment is out of date and dangerous, true, but in healthier forests the resulting fires would be contained more easily or might not catch in the first place. If PG&E were to magically fix all of their equipment tomorrow, we would still have a tinderbox problem waiting around for a spark. The problem is climate cancer. And it’s only going to get worse. August 13, 2016 Mile 1203.8-1229.6 25.8 Miles Wow, that was one of the best night’s sleeps I’ve ever had. I am energized, refreshed, ready to cover some miles and see some scenery. I am stoked! The morning is bright and quiet. I’m sure I’m the only person awake today, a suspicion that is partially confirmed when I come upon a dirt parking lot only a half mile from where I camped. A chihuahua and an Australian shepherd yap at me ferociously. Their humans look up blearily from sleeping bags snuggled together on a tarp in the dirt, next to a car. The humans scold their dogs lazily and apologize to me. No worries, I assure them, and I mean it. For the next few miles the trail parallels a dirt road. There are tents and cars along the way, people camped in varying states of disorganization. One site is scattered with beer cans and half-empty bottles of liquor. Another has five lawn chairs organized in a half circle, two of them tipped over. There are probably twenty such campsites here, nestled among the trees along the top of the ridge. What I don’t see is a single human. The sun is up, the day is beautiful, and there’s not a single early riser to make coffee for the group and enjoy the stillness and beauty of the morning. I’m a little disappointed in the human race; they miss out on so much life. To the east, the slope plunges down to a series of lakes. They look so serene and colorful, and part of me wants to go visit them, take in their charm for a while. But I have miles to tick off, and that steep slope looks like it would be brutal to climb. No, those pleasures will have to wait for another time. A motorboat is cutting a wake through the largest lake. The buzz of the distant engine calls attention to the enormity of the quiet around me. Did people ever exist? And where are the birds Eventually the trail turns to the west and climbs down into a valley. Down, up, down, up. I must go through five different valleys, each deeper than the last. I am surrounded by a dry forest all the way down and I can occasionally catch a view at the top, but usually I just see more valley walls around me. A sign proudly proclaims “A TREE 8”. I chuckle. I can see plenty of trees right here. After several hours of solitude, a runner surprises me. He’s out for a 16-miler and we chat amiably for a minute before he has to press on. I’m impressed—16 miles! Then I realize that I hiked that much yesterday, and I considered it a short day. When he leaves, I feel more alone than I did before I met him. These long days without company are difficult. It’s not so much about needing someone to talk to, it’s about feeling isolated and cut off from other people. I hike in and out of several more valleys and eventually come to A-Tree Spring. The A-Tree is just a tree with a big ‘A’ carved into its trunk. It’s not even cut particularly well. There are people here—four with motor bikes, four with mountain bikes. They are just finishing up getting water from the spring, and one of them tells me it’s safe to drink without filtering. Someone has stuck a V-shaped rail into the spring and water pours steadily into a small pond like a zen fountain. Leafy trees form a pleasant arbor where I set down my pack and lay against it for lunch. I eat entirely too many peanut M&Ms while I wait for my instant mashed potatoes to cook. I want to ration them out until my next resupply in Belden, but I’m hungry and I’m tired and I have no self-control right now. I go ahead and filter the water anyway. People are constantly telling me not to filter my water, all the way back to the Sierras. I always filter anyway. They often seem like they will be offended if I choose to filter. I don’t really understand it. The best reasoning I can come up with is that perhaps they want to feel trusted, and if I filter it means I don’t trust them. I guess it’s true: I trust that they believe that it’s safe, but I don’t trust that they know it’s safe. After lunch, the forest seems to empty out. Tall stands of Douglas firs jut straight up to the sky on steep slopes. The slopes are scattered with branches and the occasional log, but there is no vegetation. My feet are beginning to hurt badly. These new shoes—Brooks Cascadias—are folding in and scraping at the top of my feet, just above my big toes. On one of my many rest stops, I check my feet—the skin is raw and pink, and small spots the size of rice grains are oozing pus. I’m going to have to get new shoes when I get to Belden in a couple days. I hope they have shoes there. A half mile before I stop to camp for the night, I stop and eat a mac and cheese bowl for dinner. I haven’t seen anyone since that afternoon, and my only company now is a single yellow jacket that I have to shoo away between bites. I’m tired of being alone out here, and a little scared. This empty forest makes me feel like I’m being watched. I stop and make camp just as it’s getting dark. It takes me a while to fall asleep, headachy and dehydrated. A couple hours later I’m startled awake by something outside my tent. I yell, but it keeps rustling around out there. I shine my light out through the screen mesh. For a moment, I see an eye shining back at me, but that’s all I can make out in the dark. I’m frightened. I yell again: “Get out of here!” Nothing but more rustling. I’m freaked out. I’m certain I’m being stalked by a mountain lion. I climb out of my tent cautiously. Maybe if I’m standing up it will scare off. I shine my headlamp around, but I can’t find it.
Back in my tent, I lay down and try to calm myself. Maybe it was just a deer. Or even a squirrel. Things get amplified in the silence in the dead of night. Crack! Another branch. Not a squirrel, then. Definitely bigger. My breathing is tight. I barely dare to move, listening carefully. Snap! Crunch! I whip myself up and shine my light out again. This time I see it, ghost-white between the shadows of trees: a deer. Only a deer. Muscles unclench, breath rushes out in a sigh. I lay back down and relax. I hope I can find someone to camp with tomorrow. |
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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