June 24, 2016 Mile 725-750 It’s a cool fresh morning as we all pack up together. I slept like a champ. I’m strong and energetic in a way that I only seem to find in the cool, clean air of the mountains. We all depart separately, but the morning is spent leapfrogging one another in detached camaraderie. Maybe this is my group. Maybe we’ll camp together right to the end. Except I’m not continuing through to the end. I still have to jump back and complete the sections I haven’t done. And take a week off. By the time I get back to where I leave off, I’ll be a couple weeks behind them. That sucks. At the first water source, I untie my green bandanna to wipe off the dirty water bag so it doesn’t drip down my Sawyer Squeeze filter and contaminate the clean water. Most of the morning’s group shows up while I’m filtering. I quickly fill up four liters—probably too much, but this part of the Sierra isn’t as flush with water as it will be in a couple days, when we reach Whitney and join up with the John Muir Trail. I’m already learning to plan my water carefully. Too much water, and I have to carry unnecessary weight. At 2.2 lbs per liter, four liters makes a big difference in the feel of my pack and my energy levels throughout the day. Too little water carries the obvious problems that come with dehydration if you don’t have another place to fill up, but even in places with plenty of water it’s a drag to stop and filter every couple miles. Luckily, my momentum stays with me this time, and I quickly put another couple miles behind me. The trail turns east and teases the edge of a long narrow meadow. I want to go explore the meadow and see what I can see, but I also feel the pull of the trail. I’m in a hiking mood, not a wandering mood. I drive on. I start to sneeze, and I blow my nose alongside the trail. I reach back for my green bandanna to wipe off the remnants of my snot rocket. Crap. It’s gone. I must have forgotten it while I was filtering water. Hopefully one of the hikers in my group picked it up and will return it to me when they catch up. The trail crosses directly through the meadow, which curves gently out of view on either end. I start another big climb. Granite abounds again, this time in stacks of rounded yellowish rock. I’m no geologist, but this granite looks older than the glaciated silver granite of higher elevations. Bony trees and logs are sculpted with the deep gouges and gorges of a desert canyon. Desolate and striking. At the top of my climb I see the first hiker in miles. He’s sitting in a gap that opens out to a view of the eastern desert. He’s talking to someone who isn’t there, and I’m confused for a moment. Then it hits me. Cell phone coverage! I haven’t talked to Lindsey since she dropped me off five days ago. I probably won’t talk to her again until I exit Bishop pass in another week or so. I find a place nearby and give her a call. “I didn’t expect to hear from you for another week!” “Yeah, I just found a small spot with service. I miss you.” “I miss you too.” Then she starts asking me to make decisions about my health insurance, which we’ve had to change since I left my job. She’s just trying to make sure I’m safe, and I have left her to deal with everything without me (which is unfair to her, and for which I am grateful), but the rapid-fire with which she describes the problems and the options is overwhelming to the mellowed, decision-free state of mind I’ve settled into over the past few weeks. I’m annoyed, in part because I thought we had already made these decisions, and mostly because I have to bring my mind back into the civilized world. We get into a small tiff. I try to express the zen state of my mind and how I shouldn’t have to deal with these insignificant details. It sounds lame to me as it comes out of my mouth. Lindsey is taken aback by my annoyance and parries with the quite reasonable point that this is stuff that needs to be dealt with. I try a new tack: yeah, but does it have to be the very first thing that we talk about? I haven’t talked to you in days. Lindsey counters: I don’t know when I’ll get to talk to you again, and I just wanted to take care of it so we could talk about other things. I feel misunderstood. She feels unfairly attacked. She’s right of course; we do have to deal with it. And although it takes some effort on my part to concede the point, I get past my hurt feelings and we solve the problem. But the argument puts a strain on the rest of the call. We talk for a little while longer before we hang up, and then I start to worry about the strain this hike might put on our marriage. Before I leave, I feed my Facebook addiction for a bit. Three more hikers, none of whom I have seen before, show up and stick around for the cell coverage. Camel, No Shit, and Zippee haven’t caught up yet. I depart the gap feeling more lonely than when I arrived. In the early afternoon, I stop for lunch in the middle of a long series of wide downhill switchbacks. The soil is gravelly, and stocky trees are spaced out evenly enough to provide long views but still thick enough to block out everything except for the trees themselves. It’s a strange combination that feels both safe and solitary: I am completely isolated and alone, but I can also see far enough to know that there are no imminent threats. After lunch, I hike in solitude for miles. I know there must be many other hikers out here, but I haven’t seen any for hours. I’m starting to feel lonely again when I reach the junction for a water source. A dozen hikers fuss with packs, discuss upcoming features of the trail, and munch from zip lock baggies of various snack foods. I am acknowledged but not necessarily greeted, and one of the hikers points the direction to the stream where I’ll get my water. It’s a flat quarter mile to the stream. Another hiker is just leaving as I arrive, and he tells me where to go to avoid the yellow jackets that are swarming around. I fill up my foldable bucket and carry it back to the junction. Only three hikers are left when I return: Rafiki, Josh, and the hiker who I met at the water source, whose trail name is Seacrest. They are friendly, and a couple miles later I catch up to them again as they are finishing dinner at a trailside campsite. A bold chipmunk harasses us as we eat, hoping to discover or steal a morsel of food. I finish my dinner and tend to some new blisters I’ve developed as they go off a short distance to soak their feet in a nearby stream. I can hear boyish shrieks of delight just past my view as they plunge their feet into the fresh snowmelt. I hurry my dinner and join them. As they depart, Seacrest tells me they’ll probably camp at Chicken Spring lake. That’s still a few miles off and I’m pretty exhausted, but it seems like a good place to aim. The last leg of the day takes me uphill again. I reach a junction with a few hikers saying goodbyes as some of them head down a side trail for a resupply. Only one of them is continuing on—the girl in the distinctive Panama hat that I saw at Kennedy Meadows. I hike the next uphill behind her and she quickly leaves me in the dust. It’s getting close to sundown and I’ve already hit twenty-five miles for the day. A bowl-like meadow tips out to the west, and the trail crosses near the top of the rim. I hike just a short ways up a side trail to the eastern rim—it seems like the view should be spectacular in this light. It doesn’t disappoint. I snap a few pictures and then notice a girl eating dinner nearby. She asks me where I’m planning on camping tonight. “Probably Chicken Spring Lake,” I tell her, “but I might stop sooner. I’m really tired.” “There’s another campsite under that tree if you want.” I think about it for a few seconds. “Yeah, if you don’t mind some company.” The campsite is close to hers, but someone has constructed a small rock wall between the two. Mosquitoes come out as soon as the sun is down, so we both climb into our tents and talk through the wall for while. Her name is Breanna (which I quickly forget and try to remember on and off for the rest of the night), trail name Sprinkler (due to a mishap near the Tehachapi wind farms that I won’t describe), and she’s from Wisconsin (the childhood home of John Muir, she reminds me). We talk for about an hour. I’m enjoying the conversation, but I’m tired and this is the longest continuous conversation I’ve had in weeks so I tell her somewhat abruptly that I need to go to sleep. She seems a little taken aback and I’m immediately worried that I’ve offended her. One of these days I’ll learn to communicate like a human being. It would also be nice to remember people’s names sometimes. But these are worries that I’ve lived with for a long time, and they form no barrier to a rapid descent into sleep.
2 Comments
Sprinkler
9/22/2017 04:18:24 pm
Ha! I wasn't taken aback at all. I just assumed I had been yaking away...and it was definitely hiker midnight.
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Nick
9/22/2017 04:26:29 pm
Haha, glad to get that cleared up a year later!
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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