Day 21
PCT Mile Marker 1265.4 – 1272.09
Miles Hiked 6.69
Aidan hiked out with me for a while. It was afternoon and I didn’t have any real plan on where I was trying to go for the day. The boys came too and were so, so happy to roll around in the stickers and grin their faces off.
We got to a creek and Aidan pampered me for the last time. A good once over with suntan lotion and bug juice.
When he turned around to go back to the car, it was like Day 1 without him all over again.
Super lonely for a while.
Too much water and a beer. I lugged it all 5.5 miles uphill. Ug. Plus a six day resupply of food and other consumables.
Double Ug.
Food is heavy.
I met another thirty-mile-per-day hiker. That’s amazing. I don’t know if I ever even want to try that.
Or maybe I do.
I don’t know.
There was no undergrowth, and the branches started twenty feet up on the trees. The trunk forest opened up to mind-blowing vistas with shimmering lakes and range after range of mountains fading out into the wild blue.
The trail itself was trashed. It looked like I just missed a huge storm. I felt happy.
I did my stretches, drank my beer, and set up camp as the sun set and the cold set in.
I sat in my tent and listened to the forest.
Complete Silence.
Complete Serenity.
Eventually I realized that I was straining so hard to hear something…anything…that I wasn’t going to sleep.
I put in my earplugs and donned my cold weather clothes and slid back into my comfy, lovely sleeping bag…