Day 4 and 5 Miles 0 PCT Mile 41 We woke up around the same time in the middle of the night and hung out for about two hours, stretching and visiting and whatever whatever. We woke up again super early and sat around for an extraordinary amount of time. Finally Anji had enough and went for a walk while I put more holes in my toenails. She saw some viewpoints and went to look Read more…
Day 3 Trail Miles: 3.5 Bonus Miles: 2.4 PCT Mile: 41 ANJI, I tried to scream but nothing came out. HELP ME. Nothing again. I was quite certain a mountain lion had its nose against my back. It was the middle of the night and I was paralyzed with fear. It didn’t move. I couldn’t move. After a while, it still hadn’t moved and I finally figured out it was just one of my bags Read more…
Day 2 11.2 miles Camped at mile 22.6 And there I was, at 2:17 in the morning, quite certain I was going to die if I didn’t eat peanut butter immediately, but I couldn’t find it and I had to pee and where was my spoon? Oh the torture of being on trail… When 5am showed up, Angie laughed. “It’s okay, you just had a peanut butter crisis. It happens.” Of course I also dreamed Read more…
Ice formations around telephone poles and in puddles looked like topography maps and there was snow on the cacti as we moved down the trail. We were on the PCT. After all the planning and calling and timing and stress and money well spent, there is no longer anything to do but walk. So walk, we did. We wore all-the-clothes because it was so cold, but then it was so hot and we were sweating, Read more…
And then it was 5am and the puppy we got last night squiggled around the bed like a little inchworm and my husband rubbed her little back. My heart melted into a warm mushy pile of goo. But 5:15 came and it was into a freezing ass car I went after dusting off the snow and scraping off the ice. Down-down-down in the darkness to the airport where I sat and wondered if the plane Read more…
The storm raged on. This may not be the best idea I’ve ever had in my life, but I’m hiking that 150 miles of the PCT anyway. Right through this storm. But it ain’t gonna hike itself. What should’ve been a 2.5 hour drive home from Sacramento was an 8 hour drive through blinding snow and sweet-talking Caltrans into letting us through on a closed road. It was icy and dangerous but the storm raged Read more…
Day 26 Miles 4.8 We slept in until 5, then took the boys to watch the sunrise over Lake Tahoe. It was our final day. We took photos of the boys climbing around on rocks and playing, just as goats. Not goats with a job to do or a long day ahead. Just goats being goats. They’ve developed from barnyard animals into Wild Beasts of the Forest. They are wary and attentive to their surroundings. Read more…
Day 25Miles 6.6We sat in a meadow, knowing the routine well enough that we didn’t speak. She sat on one end of the boys and I sat on the other, scanning each other’s horizons for danger.Sentries in a Field of Flowers.Eventually Sophie fell asleep on her backpack and I watched her, all soft and comfy on a log, curled into her down jacket.This is A Day of Lasts.We met Kimberly a few hours into our Read more…
Day 24Miles 5.5It was warm before the sun even touched the tree tops with it’s itty bitty finger tips.You sure have a lot of stuff, one older woman said as we walked by. It was the nine thousand, four hundred, and fifty third time we’d heard that from someone, but for some reason today was the last straw.We railed about it for an hour.Of course it’s a lot of stuff. Is that meant as a Read more…
Day 23Miles 8My feet were a little swollen in the morning, but not bad.So of course Jennie and I immediately wrote a song called Baby Sausage Feet.It goes:Baby Sausage FeetAre not for you to eatEverybody knowsMy Baby Sausage ToesAnd Everybody SeesMy Baby Sausage Feeeeeet! …and that is 4am humor. We hiked through the heat until we got to a stock bypass at Heavenly Ski Resort. It went straight uphill. I guessed it was an 11% Read more…