June 14, 2016 Mile 357-377 Living outside seems like it should be harder than living in civilization—sleeping on hard ground, carrying your gear all day, hot days and cold nights—but those difficulties don’t take long to get used to, and you exchange them for a number of benefits that far exceed the difficulties. For example, to watch a sunrise seems enjoyable in theory, but few people can be bothered to wake up that early more than once or twice a year. You’re tired and your mind is adapted to the harried pace of modern living, so while the slowly changing colors might help your mind to relax and slow down, it’s generally a fairly boring affair. Most people, when they go out of their way to experience a sunrise, dip into the experience like they’re sampling it between other, more exciting parts of their life. It’s almost like they’re just checking an item off a list. A sunrise while you’re living outside is different. With only a few repetitious tasks to complete each day, you stop managing a to-do list in your head, and your stress levels drop significantly. Your mind slows down, and you seek out subtlety and depth of experience rather than ever-increasing novelty for entertainment. After dinner in the evenings, you go to bed early. Because you’ve been hiking all day, you fall asleep quickly. After a few days of practice it becomes easier to get comfortable on the ground, so you stay asleep longer and get back to sleep faster. When you wake from the ambient dawn it is well before the sun and you are well-rested and free of the small pains of fatigue. Your dopamine cravings have subsided over time, so you aren’t waiting impatiently for the moment when the sun appears, you’re experiencing every subtle shift in the colors of the sky. You don’t even need pinks and purples—the endless gradations of blue-gray sky and the dark mountain silhouettes hold infinite subtlety and fascination. Such is my morning, and though I feel a light pressure on my psyche—from the continued solitude, no doubt—I am otherwise fully converted and at home in the wilderness. The morning begins with a cool climb. I am following a wooded ridge above the town of Wrightwood, deep in a valley off to my right side. I have to decide whether to add a steep three mile downhill to my hike (and another three back up), or to continue past Wrightwood to highway 2 and wait for a hitch. I haven’t yet made my decision when I realize that the junction I just passed a half mile ago was the three-mile hike I needed. It looks like I’ll be hitching from highway 2. I come to a campground with about twenty sites. Only one is occupied, by a guy with an old pickup truck and a blazing campfire. My Guthooks app tells me that this campground has had recent bear activity. The trail traces a road again, and I decide to pop over to the west side for a break with a view. I pull off my shoes and lean against a tree. I feel light and free: barefoot in the wilderness is a special kind of heaven. Far in the distance, I can make out parts of Los Angeles spreading out like a carpet below a layer of clouds. I continue on, out of the woods and alongside small reservoirs designed to capture rainfall and some small snowmelt, long since gone. I reach the highway around 11am and sit against a road sign while I wait for a car to come by. Three or four pass over the next half hour before one stops and opens the back door. A young man and woman in their early twenties are shoveling dirty clothes and snack food wrappers to one side to make space for me. I crawl in with my pack and we are off down the hill.
They tell me that the car is a rental and they are taking a break from biking down the Pacific coast in order to go visit Joshua Tree. The girl has a European accent and the boy tells me that they just met a week ago while they were biking. I’m grateful for two people that understand adventure and are willing to give a smelly hiker a ride. They drop me off at a grocery store in Wrightwood where I stock up on food, and then I walk over to a nearby restaurant where I get a veggie burger and a beer. There don’t seem to be any other hikers in town and I'm starting to worry that I’m the last hiker out here. After lunch I head over to the hardware store, which seems to be the town’s main hub. There is a hiker register that shows four hikers have come through today—one of them just fifteen minutes ago! My trail guide tells me that the hardware store will contact a trail angel to give me a ride back to the trail if I ask, but I feel bad causing anyone an inconvenience, so I walk the quarter mile to the end of town and try to catch a hitch. An hour later, I still haven’t caught a ride, so I walk back to the hardware store and ask at the counter. The cashier looks around and sees an old man with a white beard. “Hey Jim,” she calls out, “what are you doing right now? This hiker needs a ride back to the trail.” Jim is happy to oblige, but he tells me he needs to stop at the post office first. His 1980s-era stick-shift pickup looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since the day it was created, which is good, since that’s probably the way I look too. Jim speaks loudly over the noisy engine and tells me about meeting the founder of Kelty backpacks, trout fishing in the Sierra, and the history of Wrightwood. He’s a retired firefighter who now writes a column for the local newspaper. He thinks there are too many PCT hikers now, as evidenced by all the toilet paper that he sees scattered along the trail, and he warns me to look out for the southern pacific rattlesnake. It’s only a seven mile ride, but he packs in enough conversation for three days and I’m happy to hear him talk. When he drops me off at the trail around 3pm, I’m refreshed and rejuvenated. I check my maps, and it looks like I might be able to make it to Mt. Baden-Powell tonight. It looks like a big climb, and there’s a big drop between here and there. I better get to it. The trail climbs a short ways, then drops into the gap. Switchbacks cut down through thick vegetation and I cross the highway a couple more times. By the time I reach the parking lot at the bottom of the gap, my newfound energy is completely sapped. This is going to be a rough climb. Dayhikers spill out from the trailhead in groups of two and four and I have to dodge them to start the switchbacks. As I hike slash by slash up the mountain, it feels like my body is eating itself from the inside. I’m grateful for the downhill hikers—it’s an excuse to rest on the side of the trail. Soon, though, they peter off as the day gets longer. Eventually I am taking breaks without excuses and every step is a force of will. Near a campsite a mile from the top of the mountain, I notice that the wind has picked up. Perhaps camping on top of the mountain will be a bad idea. I decide it’s time to stop for the day. No blogs for the next week and a half—Lindsey and I will be crossing the High Sierra Trail off of our bucket list. I promise to keep a journal.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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