August 17, 2016 Mile 1298.6-1328.8 30.2 Miles In the middle of the night a great crash and thump drags me violently out of sleep. “What was that?” I cry. It came from uphill a short ways, maybe a couple hundred feet at most. “I don’t know. That was loud.” says Altitude. I can tell he’s frightened too. “Was it a bear?” I ask. Even though I have my food in a bear canister, I haven’t bothered to put my toothpaste and other scented items into the canister because we aren’t in an area that requires it yet. But there are still bears out here, and now I’m afraid that one of them is on their way to our camp. Yak speaks up. “I think it was a tree.” For a moment I don’t understand, but then I do—the tree fell over. It matches the sound profile I heard. The cracking of the trunk as it came over, the crashing as branches broke off against other trees on the way down, the powerful thump as the body of the tree hit the ground. In California, trees have been dying at an unprecedented rate over the past decade. I’ve read stories about it and mourned our forests, but to experience it firsthand in the middle of the night unearths a deeper layer of sadness. I sleep in a little more than usual this morning. 6am. The others are still asleep, and the forest is so silent that every rustle of fabric seems amplified as I pack. I try to pack carefully at first, but it only makes everything take longer, so finally I pack with noisy aplomb and hustle out of camp. Seven miles in I’m running low on water, but there’s a horse trough. The water is cold and gushing from an aluminum pipe, perfect water for a morning that is already hot. I plug in a podcast and begin to cruise. I am high energy and low comfort, as my toes are still being scraped and gouged by my shoes. I am not interested in staying present today, I just want to ignore the pain and make the time pass. It works fairly well. Before I know it I have blown by another ten miles. It’s hard to focus on anything but my feet, and that’s the last place I want to put my attention. It feels like there’s nothing but trees today anyway. It’s time for water again, so I make my way down a spur trail toward Little Bear spring. There’s a deeply eroded channel, but no water that I can see. I am almost completely out, and thirsty. The water report says there’s water here, so I continue down the trail following a ledge above the dry creek. I’m not sure how far I should go before I give up and turn around. What if there’s no water here? Can I make it another 13 miles to Soldier Creek? What if there’s no water there either? My podcast has me in a bit of a daze—this is the first time I’ve listened for more than about an hour, and it’s a little numbing. I’ve discovered Dan Carlin’s Harcore History, and the episode is a hypnotic deep dive into the ancient greeks. Fascinating stuff, but it’s like watching TV—I’m barely present in my own skin. It takes me away from the pain in my feet, but it also takes me away from the forest. I’m startled back into my own skin by a nide of pheasants exploding from under the ledge. The burst and flurry of wings—seven birds—nearly stops my heart. Seeing that they are only birds, I continue on, and five more noisily thwap away. I freeze again, beholden to a primal threat-detection system that doesn’t care for logic. I calm myself quicker this time. I barely flinch when a third brood of the birds erupts from below. A couple seconds later I see the water, flowing from a pipe. Of course there is water here; that’s why the birds have chosen this hiding place. My exaggerated sense of human importance makes me forget that water does not exist to serve my needs. Full up again, I start the climb back uphill to the main trail. I get almost all the way to the top again when I realize that I’ve left my hiking poles behind. It’s the podcast. I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing. I sigh and curse myself for my idiocy, but there’s nothing to do except turn around and hike down again. I don’t turn off the podcast. When I return to the PCT I am in a funk. My feet hurt, this forest seems boring, I haven’t seen anyone all day, and I’m not even halfway done with the trail yet. I’m starting to doubt whether I’ll ever finish. An hour later I meet two gristled and grizzled old men on the trail. One is tall and has a grey beard and is carrying a shovel, the other is shorter with sandy brown hair and has a pair of hedge clippers. “How’s it going?” the one with the beard asks. “How’s the trail ahead?” “It’s been pretty good,” I say. “Have you had to climb over any blowdowns?” I try to remember, but my mind has been somewhere else all day. I don’t think so, and I tell him that. “There’s a few coming up,” he says. “We need to come back with a tree saw. You’re kind of late in the season, aren’t you?” “Yeah, I had to start late.” “You should really flip up to Canada and finish southbound. You probably aren’t going to make it to the border in time.” Nothing makes me madder than people telling me what I should do. The truth is, I’ve been thinking about flipping—hell, I’ve even been thinking about quitting—but now I have to see it through. Proving people wrong is perhaps my greatest motivational tool. I hike on, and just after they get out of view I remember a log that I had to step over earlier that day. Oh well, they’ll find it soon enough. Hoot and Chocolate Milk fly by me from behind. I must have passed them somewhere. Only a few minutes later, I find them sitting next to a post: the PCT halfway point! We all take pictures of each other. They break out some scotch in a Smartwater bottle and pass it around. I haven’t had strong spirits in months. It’s stringent, but it also tastes of camaraderie. I feel included in their celebration, and I am grateful. We stay for a while, eating snacks, writing in the trail log, reading the other entries and looking to see if we can find the names of friends who have already passed through here. My feet are destroyed, and I decide it’s time to perform some more invasive surgery on my shoes. I cut big holes in the fabric where it has been rubbing my feet. In the middle of the process, Hoot and Chocolate Milk continue on and we wish each other well. Like always, I wonder if I will ever see them again. They are much faster than me and seem to keep strange hours. After my shoe surgery, I feel much better. My pack is light, I’ve got a little scotch burning in my belly, and my feet are free of pain for the first time in days. So what if a little sand and gravel work their way into my shoes? I’m covering ground like a speed skater, sometimes even breaking into a light jog on the easy downhills.
At Soldier Creek, Hoot and Milk are pumping water. “What, did you run?” Chocolate Milk asks. “Zigzag can move it!” “How did you catch up to us so fast?” Hoot echoes. “I feel good, man! Can’t wait to get to town.” I only need a liter, so I’m done first. I start off down the trail and Milk yells out “purist!” Then they’re both yelling “purist!” over and over. I have no idea what they’re talking about until I see there’s another shorter use trail that cuts off from the spring to the other side of the trail. I laugh and it feels good. I could wait for them, of course. We could maybe all hike together and I wouldn’t have to be alone out here anymore. But I need to go into town for a resupply, and that means hitching, and hitching is easier alone. Maybe we’ll see each other in town. The downhill ends, and with it, my burst of energy. Now I’m feeling the almost thirty miles that I’ve put in today. I’m on a long flat section of alternating timber stands and meadows. The trees have signs of ownership on them; lumber companies who think that they have a right to lay claim to the earth. Maybe it’s better that way. At least companies can be regulated. If it were open to all people to take what they need, the tragedy of the commons might lay waste to it all. Still, I can’t help but feel that using nature’s mysteries for profit is a gross abuse. The last mile is uphill. If it weren’t for the promise of town food, I would lay myself down right here and sleep for a hundred years. Every step takes a force of will. Even with the promise of town food, I need to stop and catch my breath every twenty steps or so. Let my heart slow down, let the oxygen get back into my brain. I’m woozy, headachy. My gut is devouring me from the inside. All of a sudden I’m out on the road. Good thing, too, because it’s getting darker and no one picks up hitchhikers at night. I stick out my thumb and wait. And wait. Fifteen minutes. Thirty. I’m almost ready to give up and camp in the trees when a black firebird with peeling paint pulls over. The woman in the driver’s seat tells me to throw my pack in the back, and we are racing away toward Chester, a small town to the east. She drops me at the best western. I get a room, order a pizza, and call Lindsey. I eat most of the pizza, take a shower—I can’t get all the dirt off my feet—and climb into a warm, clean bed. As I drift into sleep I think to myself, “maybe I’ll take a zero day tomorrow.”
1 Comment
Dolores
11/26/2019 04:13:31 pm
Bark beetles are devastating the trees. Fires kill them. The Maidu used to set fires around the valley that is now Lake Almanor before they headed down to the valley for the winter. Massive fires used to rage through the mountain regularly (you can read about massive fires in the early 1800's). I think the best method for healthy forests today is selective logging and controlled burns. Collins Pine has the healthiest forests in CA. The US Forest Service has the unhealthiest forests, at least that I have seen in the four surrounding counties. When they do log it's a mess.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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