July 29, 2016 Mile 630.8-651.3 20.5 Miles The plan: meet Lindsey at Walker Pass campground today, then take a week off trail. It’s her dad’s 70th birthday (her mom is throwing him a surprise party), and then next weekend we have tickets to Outsidelands, a big music festival in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. I’m looking forward to a week of luxury: real cooked meals, liquids that aren’t just variations on water, a bed (as it will turn out, sleeping in a bed will be almost impossible for me and I will pull a blanket down and sleep on the floor more than once), even a hot tub. My alarm goes off at 5am again. I’m enjoying this early waking—I might even continue it when I get out of the desert and I don’t have to worry about slowing down or stopping in the afternoons. I pack up quickly. It would look like a mess to anyone who didn’t know, but I have a spot for everything in my tent, and I could probably pack up with my eyes closed. It’s so routine now that I can focus on the environment around me, like how cool it is this morning. In fact, I realize, I even pulled my sleeping bag over me last night. That’s the first time I’ve needed it in a week. This heat wave is finally breaking, it appears, just as I’m getting ready to leave the desert. Good timing. I’m not sure whether the campground will have water, or what time Lindsey is going to pick me up, so I fill up to my full capacity before I leave—7 liters. This is the last day I’ll have to carry this much weight for a while, I think with relief. From Bird Spring Pass, the trail makes a climb up and around a gully in the south-facing slope of the mountain. The sun emerges while I am in the shadow of the eastern shoulder. It lights up the Mojave from the mountaintops downward. A smear of brown smoke covers the horizon. Is the Sand Fire still raging, I wonder? The trail continues out of the other side of the gully and the heat picks up, but not as bad as it’s been. The air is still cool, which is good because the rest of the climb is switchbacks in full view of the sun. The trail follows just below ridge for a while—craggy cliffs, spiky yuccas and knotted pines hang over the trail. Through the gaps in the rocky ridge it looks like the top of the mountain is covered with shady trees. I want to be there. Finally the trail passes up through a gap and I’m there, out of the barren and in among the trees and plants. The tree cover continues for a while. The trail winds up and down through a series of valleys perpendicular to its northern trend—first it follows a rim as if to go around, then descends along one wall when skirting the valley becomes untenable, climbs diagonally up the other side, then repeats the whole thing through the next valley. The day is getting hot, but manageable. I make good time. I stop for lunch, but otherwise take no breaks until I reach the campground at around three in the afternoon. It is empty: no cars, no people. There are picnic tables underneath rusty pergolas. I drop my backpack at the closest one out of convenience. It won’t provide much shade, but it’s better than sitting in the unfiltered sun. There is a grocery bag hanging from a peg on the side of one of the pergola’s posts, and it looks like there is something solid inside. I go to take a look, and sure enough, there are two beers and two frozen bottles of water. Is this trail magic? I’m not sure. I’m a little worried that someone is going to return to their campsite and find that I’ve plundered their beer, but it seems unlikely. I pop open one of the beers and drink it, then quickly finish the second one too. I read my book for a while. Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami. He’s one of my favorite authors, and usually I completely lose myself in his dark dreamscapes, but today I can’t focus. I reread the same paragraph seven or eight times without retaining a bit of it; my brain is too busy spinning out thoughts. Instead, I stare out at the landscape. There’s a bizarre-looking Joshua Tree right next to the campsite—four trunks in a cluster, each growing at improbable angles like a wind-tube-person at a car dealership. Beyond that there are layers of mountains around a valley to the northwest. I’m looking at a different view of the same valley I saw weeks ago after Lindsey ferried me from Agua Dulce to Walker Pass, and my mind spins forward along the trail to remember a succession of lost friends: Shoes, Zippee, Jim and Danielle, Sprinkler, Earthcake and Goat. It all seems so long ago, but it’s only been a month. I try to read again, and fail again. I am too distracted, with nothing to distract me, and all I can do is stare out and think about how bored I am. I am disappointed with myself—why can’t I just sit still and enjoy the solitude?
After an hour or so, a white pickup truck pulls up. A family gets out. A mom and a young boy, maybe eight or nine years old, walk down to the pit toilets. The dad comes over and offers me a beer. I crack it open as he asks me about the trail, how long I’ve been out, what animals I’ve seen. I’m grateful for the beer and grateful for the company and I tell him about my hike so far. His wife and kid come back and the kid runs off some steam while we chat. Before he leaves, the guy offers me a couple more beers and a bottle of cold water from an ice chest in the back of his truck. I gratefully accept. Within a half hour, I’ve finished the second beer. I’m up to five beers. I try to read again—it’s the only thing to do—but I’m buzzed and more distracted than ever. I stare at the Joshua tree again, for a long while, and it seems like it’s writhing slowly, but there is no wind. I begin to question my sanity. Hours. Now it’s getting dark. Somehow I’m still buzzed. Is Lindsey okay? What if the car broke down? Or maybe she can’t find the campground. There’s no service here, so no way to find out what’s happened. I start to wonder if I should set up my tent to spend the night here. Maybe in the morning I can hitch into a town with service and find out what happened. It gets fully dark, and although I’ve used my headlamp to try and read again I still can’t seem to get beyond a paragraph before my mind wanders off and I’ve forgotten how the paragraph started. It’s frustrating. A car pulls into the campground, driving slowly. I can’t see beyond the headlights, so there’s no way to know if it’s Lindsey. It could be a serial killer. Alone without the ability to contact anyone is a vulnerable feeling. There’s nothing for it except to step into the light when the car comes slowly up around my loop of the campground. The light reflects just enough to tell that it’s our Subaru. I am relieved. Lindsey stops the car, gets out, and gives me a giant hug. It’s only then that I realize how bad I must smell. And we have a long drive ahead.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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