July 6, 2016 Mile 1038.3-1062.9 24.6 miles Earthcake is up first again; her footsteps wake me. My eyes scrape open. I want to go back to sleep, I know that I don’t have to hurry to keep up today, but guilt and hope only allow me a few seconds before I am sitting up in my sleeping bag and gathering up my midden. Guilt that I am wasting precious hiking time, hope that my calf will feel better today and maybe I can keep up. The trail slopes moderately downhill and feels easy on my calf, though it is still tender. Goat passes me, and a little while later catches up to me again. “I had to take a big dump,” he explains. I’m able to keep a decent pace for now, so we spend the morning in conversation. We talk about our bucket lists and what we’re going to do with our lives after the trail. He was a traffic engineer before traveling this ribbon of dirt, but thinks he wants a change. I was a music teacher, and definitely want a change (I loved the teaching and the music, I explain, but not all that goes with it). I think maybe I want to go into psychology and study the way people learn. I riff on about it for a while, and he seems genuinely interested. I’m going to miss hiking with him. We pass near a lake and a meadow infested with campers. Most of them have the casualness of thru-hikers (there’s an ease of motion that could be mistaken for laziness but is really an expression of comfort and safety. Weekenders and dayhikers seem high-strung by comparison, which of course is the natural byproduct of civilization. Shedding that, of course, is why they, and we, are out here), but they’re off to a late start. The sun-drenched meadow has been gang-trampled into a latticework of trails, and it is impossible to tell which one is “our” trail. Momentum spits us out on the wrong one, but the latticework paths allow us to pass through the mule’s ears and indian paintbrush that splatterpaint the dense green of the valley and reattach ourselves to the ticker-tape trail. At an incline, my calf re-irritates and Goat detaches to forge ahead. I am left alone with my physical pain and an emotional cavity. It is too beautiful a day for loneliness, so I am left with a pleasantly detached solitude instead. That gnawing hunger starts to twist inside me again, but momentum is everything. There is a road in a couple more miles—Ebbett’s pass. Maybe I can hitch to South Lake Tahoe. I fantasize about limping through buffet tables, piling up mountains of food and sitting in a soft booth where I can rest my calf and sate the beast devouring me from the inside. It seems like only a minute has gone by when I see a sign for trail magic. I’m already at the road! I follow the aromatic smell of fire-seared beef fat (even as a 25-year vegetarian, I still find that smell enticing. As I tell the carnivores that harass me with the same tired quips, it’s not for the flavor that I gave up meat.). A trail angel meets me in front of red and white checkered tables surrounded by hiker trash and shaded by portable canopies. Without so much as a hello, he hands me a paper plate full of every color of fruit and says “Hamburger, Hot Dog, or Veggie Burger?” Veggie burgers?! Oh, hope beyond hope, it’s a trail miracle. After he takes my order, he says “Grab a beer or a soda out of the cooler.” Goat and Earthcake are here, grinning from ear to ear when they aren’t masticating wildly, as well as three other hikers who I don’t recognize. There are 5 or 6 trail angels working together to provide this abundance of food. I have a couple brief conversations, mostly pleasantries and introductions, and then sit and listen as I devour my veggie burger and beer and the smorgasbord of snacks covering the table. I sit and listen, and I learn. -The trail angels have been doing this for several years now, and always bring enough to feed hikers for 7-10 days. -This year, they brought more, expecting more hikers. -This is day 3, and they are going to run out of food today because there are more hikers this year than they ever expected. I also learn that we smell bad, though the joking tone in which it is said causes no offense (besides, we know this already). One of the hikers, the only girl in the group, did the whole PCT last year. When asked why she’s doing it again, she responds “because I love it so much.” This comment infects me and will later remind me to pay attention, even during the hard parts, because I don’t know whether I will ever get this chance again. Stuffed and sluggish, I head back out into the wilderness, far enough behind Goat and Earthcake that I won’t see them again on the trail. My calf feels better, but not healed. I seem to have forgotten about hitching in to South Lake Tahoe. The trees evaporate. Low shrubs and grasses dominate and the slopes fall away to show distant peaks. There seems to be less snow than just a few short days ago. A ranger stands on the side of the trail, waiting. I expect him to ask me for my wilderness permit, but no, he just greets me and lets me pass by. With the longer lines of sight, I compulsively check for cell service. I eventually find a pocket and text my mother-in-law about tomorrow’s pickup at Carson Pass, but really what I want is to feed my social media addiction. After I spend 10 minutes staring into my phone to the exclusion of the expansive landscape around me, I wake up ashamed and begin hiking again. I cut diagonally across a long slope of grasses and wildflowers, wondering whether I might be able to catch up with Goat and Earthcake if I just hike long enough. But no, I need to take care of my calf and besides, tomorrow I am cutting back to Bishop Pass to meet my wife. Godspeed, friends. The trail just keeps cutting up and up this slope. Two large lakes are far below, so far that it seems I’m looking down at them from an airplane. A pickup truck travels a dirt road along the rim, but whatever sound it makes is swallowed up by the vast distance between us. Similarly a small powerboat on the water. I feel like a voyeur, watching people from above like this.
Finally the trail comes around the other side of the butte-like mountain and descends into a rolling forest dotted with small lakes. I find a campsite next to one of these, a lily-pad covered beauty, and set up my tent close to where a thru-hiker called Badmash has pitched his. He is friendly, but seems high and disoriented. Conversation is stilted. When I get ready to go to bed, I put my bear canister next to his. He comes out of his tent after a few minutes and asks if he can move our canisters. They are too close to our tents and he is nervous about bears because he saw one a quarter mile before the campsite. I agree and fall asleep thinking about whether I will find new trail friends or if I will be too far behind and will have to hike the rest of the trail solo.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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