Heartburn and the Tent Accoutrement

Miles 11.9

Camped at mm 57.2

Now is not the ideal time in the journey to find out that the food I packed for the next five weeks gives me Heartburn. All of it. And yet here were are. And there ya go.

I barely slept. I dreamed of mansions with slippery floors and me wearing a beautiful gown, lying face down on the floors and scooting myself this way and that with my hands, sliding around on the floors super fast while adults around me said Stand Up. I Told You To Stand Up. And I just said Wheeeee!!

Hmmm. Telling…

We got up at 4 so we could hike into the sunrise, which is totally our thing now, and Anji’s headlamp died while she was packing up. She packed up anyway and we moved on into the darkness with the light of just my headlamp. Finally we stopped and she plugged hers into a power bank for about 10 minutes, and then it was light enough to see anyway so we hiked on.

The hike was incredibly difficult. Our packs are very heavy with food, and the trail was rocky and straight up over thirteen hundred feet in four miles. It was tough going, and I had to take lot of breaks. We finally stopped to cook a nice breakfast when the people we’d camped with last night in tent city started showing up. The first was Maryln Monroe. He gave Anji her poles for the top of her tent. It turns out, since she’d packed up in the dark, she’d missed that one key piece of Tent Accountrement. Anji was so grateful she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. I took a picture of her hugging her tent pole.

We surmounted our first actual blowdown of the trip. We had to go over a log on the trail. I took a picture of Anji strattling the log.

You’re silly. She said. It’s just a blowdown.

Oh yes, but it’s our first one!

You’re silly. She said again.

She was right.

We reached an altitude of around 10,800 feet today, and it made us so sleepy. Oh, that, and not sleeping made me sleepy. Anyway, we just wanted to lie down in this field of flowers and take a nap. But of course, danger loomed in the skies, and we needed to get through the valley before the storm hit.

The valley was beautiful and long. After a while, I was wondering if it was going to end. We were getting scolded by squirrels every few minutes, and I kept thinking, what a stressful life these little guys lead. They have to get stressed out and scream at every hiker that goes through here. That’s probably 30 times a day. If he would just move 20 trees into the forest, his quality of life would be so much better.

I tried explaining this to the next squirrel. He didn’t care. He just chirred and yelled at me. The guy after that, I was afraid, would have a heart attack. The next one yelled, Get Off My Property. I yelled back, You Should Move! He ran away into the forest. I think he listened…

The meadow kept going. For six extremely long miles. I texted my husband: Do beavers poop in the water? I figured that water wasn’t safe to drink, even filtered, but wanted to check.

We sat by a rock and ate some peanut butter for a while and finally got the hell out of that beautiful valley, in moods sour as the sky.

Down down down 700 feet in 4 miles to our next water source where we found a nice campsite. I took a sponge bath near, but not too near, a small creek, carrying my necessary water to my spot in a plastic ziplock bag. I even sort of washed my hair. Joy of Joys! I did some laundry and put back on some warm, dry, dirty clothes, expecting that my wet clothes will not dry in time to wear them tomorrow.

But I can hope. And I can wait.