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.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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