June 21, 2016 Mile 672-702 I wake about 5am. Last night Zippee asked me when I wake up because she was afraid to disturb me, but I told her I’d be up before sunrise. I think maybe she planned to hike with me, because when I get ready to depart she asks “You’re starting without breakfast?” “Yeah, I usually hike until a little after sunrise and then stop to eat.” I’m not trying to be anti-social, I just figure she’ll catch up when I stop. But maybe it comes off that way. I’m a natural at breaking rapport, and I often don’t notice until later reflection. The trail is still following the eastern edge of the mountains, and I glimpse the lights of small cities in the valley below. A light, dry wind reminds me that I’m still in the desert. I pass three tents in the darkness. The light gradually emerges, and I stop in a clearing next to the trail to make breakfast. Three people pass before I finish boiling water, then another two as I’m mixing it with the oatmeal, then Zippee comes by. I smile and say hi, but she’s guarded. I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m avoiding hiking with her. If I want to hike with other people, I’m going to have to learn how to talk and behave around them. I see her again at a water trough, and we talk a little more easily, but we continue hiking separately after we finish filtering. I pass through a forest as the day gets hotter, and a rattlesnake slithers toward me on the trail. It seems unconcerned by my presence and slides off the trail and around me, holding its rattle aloft. I’ve entered a burn area, with a few husks of trees placed across the slopes like tombstones in a cemetery. I slowly climb uphill. At the top of a ridge, I get my first view of true Sierra: snow-capped granite peaks that extend into the distance. Part of me is excited—I love the Sierra like a 6-year-old loves Disneyland—but most of me is hot and tired, and I feel a little guilty that I haven’t hiked the whole way here. I stop near a dirt road and eat lunch with a view. Seventeen miles already, not too bad. At this pace, I might make it to Kennedy Meadows tonight. That would make for my first 30-mile day! I decide to go for it. The trail winds down around a long bare canyon. Only one or two bare trees appear over the next few miles, so I use my umbrella to slough off the worst of the heat. My knees begin to ache on the endless downhill. Near the bottom of the canyon, I find a bit of shade and people napping. A large granite boulder under a tree has a young couple. A trio is stretched out on sleeping pads in the shade of a couple bushes. It’s that part of the afternoon where the world seems to agree it’s too hot to hike, but I just haven’t gotten into the rhythm that everyone else seems to have hit. A water source I was depending on turns out to be dry. I stare at my map in shock. It has to be over 100 degrees, the next source is miles away and I am down to a few ounces of water. I have no idea what to do. A couple nappers rouse themselves nearby. They tell me to head downhill in the wash—the water reemerges in about two hundred yards. I’m relieved. Sure enough, two hundred yards downhill a small stream emerges between the bushes. Several hikers are already here, napping in the shade and snacking on energy bars. After I fill up, I start a long flat section. Pine trees appear again, and clumps of small bushes. Grasshoppers leap and click and rattle ahead of my tromping feet, yellow jackets wind through the air in purposeful paths beyond understanding, and small beetles cling to my clothes one at a time, each lifting off just in time for another to come and take its place. One particularly obnoxious bug seems to enjoy biting my elbows about every forty steps. I swat at one or the other elbow to try to kill the damn thing, and am successful about half the time. I’m hopscotching with a couple. The girl is carrying a silver umbrella just like mine, and I comment on how useful it is in this heat, and the guy jokingly grumbles that she stole it from him. A short while later, the three of us reach a branch of the Kern river. It’s just a small stream here, but it looks ripe for a swim, or at least a sit—it’s only about a foot deep—, and we all strip down to our underwear and jump in. I’m low on energy, which makes it difficult to talk. I’m awkward for a bit, but I try to chat with them anyway. I’m glad I do. They’re friendly and I relax quickly. Jim is on his second through-hike (the first being the Appalachian Trail), and Danielle has just joined him recently, after she finished her school year as a Montessori teacher. As a former teacher myself, I find it easy to talk to them. However, our conversation is interrupted when Danielle jumps up and shouts that there’s a snake in the water. We all jump up and I see the snake coming toward me. I’m trying very hard to get both feet out of the water—a difficult feat in the middle of a river—and it comes right up to my leg and almost seems to sniff it while I’m trying madly to get away from it without hurting myself on the rocks. It turns downstream and slides away through the water. We decide we’ve all had enough of the river and pack up and head on. I hope to see them again at Kennedy Meadows. Despite the snake attack, the river was refreshing, and I feel cooler. I hike into the early evening, out of the river canyon and out into a large basin filled with knee-high bushes and tiny pink star-like flowers. This must be Kennedy Meadows, but I don’t see anything that looks like a town, just an abandoned cabin disintegrating nearby. The town must be behind that rise up ahead. I cross the 700-mile marker and take a picture. I feel guilty again: I missed the 500-mile and 600-mile markers. How does this possibly count for anything? There’s a tradition that the hikers who are relaxing at the Kennedy Meadows Store cheer for arriving hikers to celebrate the end of the desert. How am I going to feel when they cheer and I still have desert to finish? The trail cuts around a hill and down into a sandy wash with tall bushes crowding the trail. It’s difficult to pick out any trail, as footprints go in nearly every direction. I push through and eventually find one of several trails all heading pretty much the way I think I’m supposed to go. I am so tired. All I can think about is the food and beer that is waiting for me at the Kennedy Meadows Store. Plus, there should still be a ton of hikers there. Maybe I’ll find a good hiking partner or even a small group to hike with. A couple pipe gates later I reach a paved road. I turn right. A hiker comes down around the bend. He tells me that today is hike naked day (that’s true, I had just forgotten), and that I’d get some really big cheers if I walked up to the store naked. I laugh and consider it, but I’m not really one to try to draw a lot of attention, and I don’t know much about this town. I don’t want to piss off a bunch of locals or get in trouble with a police officer hanging around. I decide against it.
It’s another quarter mile to the store, uphill on asphalt which seems much harder on my tired, blistered feet. I turn a corner and there are people everywhere. A large patio area has at least forty hikers. Twenty more are milling about between the store and the 15 port-a-potties that frame a dirt lot. I can see a TeePee and at least thirty tents in the trees behind the store, and it looks like they go back a lot further than that. I hike up the dirt lot toward the patio, expecting the congratulatory cheer, and nothing happens. Nobody notices that I’m here. Perhaps that’s as it should be. Maybe I don’t deserve accolades for finishing the desert, since I haven’t actually finished the desert. Still, I’m a little sad. When I do finish the desert later, there won’t be anyone around to congratulate me, and this moment is a moment I’ve dreamed about. Worse yet, the store is closed. There will be no hearty meal or beer tonight. But I’m also proud—I hiked 30 miles today. That’s no small feat, especially with the blisters and the heat. I find a campsite near the back of the lot, next to a dirt road. Nearly every possible space is filled with a tent. I set up, and Jim and Danielle show up while I’m cooking dinner and they take a spot across the dirt road from me. We agree to grab a beer together the next day. I go to sleep to the sound of noisy reveling hikers, but I sleep straight through the night with no problems—I’m completely spent.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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