Day 40
PCT Mile Marker 1470.98 – 1486.92
Miles Hiked 15.94
My favorite is the soft paths along long-forgotten roads. Trees grow there, the grade is smooth and wide, and I don’t feel like I’m going to fall off of the mountain. Pine needles and soft earth keep the pain in my feet from getting any worse. The quiet peace in these places calm my being in ways only spiritual terms could describe. Light drips softly through the trees and pools on the ground. Splash, I think, as I step in those pools. A small child on the other side of the rain.
A nice stream lined with water plants whose leaves were three times the size of my head = time for another peanut butter sandwich with extra peanut butter.
I pulled on my old lady knee high stockings. Armor against the poison oak ahead. I’d already done some serious dance moves avoiding some earlier. In the midst of my moves avoiding it on the ground, I took a poison oak branch right to the side of my face. And I had a mini-meltdown. This was now serious business.
A minuscule gnat tossed himself around my line of sight. He just hung out there, right in front of my eyes but rarely touching me. For endless amounts of time.
Like a flickering flaw in the film of an old movie. That little black dot, or that little hair on the projector screen. And you can’t watch the movie anymore because you desperately need someone to get rid of that f-ing dot. Remove The Hair. And then when it finally goes away, you can focus again and you forget it was ever there. And then it comes back. And after the twelfth time, you seriously contemplate turning off the movie…
That was this guy. This frustrating little gnat. Capable of toppling a giant beast. Me.
For no particular reason, I started calling him ‘The Butler’.
He’d been around for probably two weeks or so. He tended to show up in wooded areas without much water. He drove me mad. He made me want to cut off my pinky finger so I had something else to focus on. I yelled at him a lot.
Sometimes I would wear a head net just to keep him a little further away from my eyes. Sometimes I would successfully smack him and he’d be gone for a few minutes, but then there he was again. He never had any company. He was a loner. I figured he just loved the color of my eyes.
Every once in a while, he would fly up my nose. Then I’d instinctively kill him. I’d exhale really hard through my nose or smash him in there and dig him out.
But then he’d be back a few minutes later. Why was he still alive after I killed him so, so many times? What did I have that he wanted? Why was he always alone? Why did I call him The Butler?
So many questions.
But he loved me.
I scrubbed myself raw and shiny in a creek, and then I didn’t feel as poison oaky. Poisony Oak? Poisony Oaky? Whatever.
The trail went up-up-up, clinging to the side of a very steep mountain. The path was loose and rocky dirt. In places, it was barely wider than my foot. In others, it was two feet wide. It reminded me too much of McSketcherson, and I refused to look down…or around…or anywhere other than where my next step was going to be. One foot and two trekking poles on the ground at all times. Three points of contact, three points of contact. Fear gripped me and I could feel the metallic tingling of adrenaline surges in my calves.
I got to the top of the hill and found two other hikers setting up their camps. I impolitely plowed through one camp declaring, “You don’t mind if I come through here and camp over there, right? Good.” And I did. Without waiting for an answer. I just marched on through, happy to be done with that mountain.
I’d been hiding my peanut butter from myself all day. I buried it deep in a secret place in my pack so I couldn’t get to it easily.
But the day was over The Butler had gone to bed and it was peanut butter time.