Day 60
PCT Mile Marker 1747.90 – 1771.00
Miles Hiked 23.10
My Two Month Trail-A-Versary.
My crazy journey started two months ago.
It’s only been two months?
It’s also been such a long, long time.
I rolled the thoughts around in my head as I squashed a mosquito on my bicep. I left her mangled body there, a warning to all the others to steer clear. It totally worked for about thirty-five seconds. Then I guess then they stopped caring about their fallen comrade.
They had Hiker-Hunger.
Same as me.
I could eat so much food. Anything. Just give it to me. Anything gluten-free.
It was a long but gentle climb into the Rogue River Wilderness, and it was Turtle’s turn to clear the spider webs out of the trail with his face.
A lovely climb for me.
The plants were green and the air was heavy with their sweat. Humidity is picking up these days.
I came across a small path to a cabin just off the trail. A little cardboard sign that just read ‘Magic’ was stuck to the trail sign.
I followed it to the cabin and found a cooler inside with soda, grapes, beer, and little chocolates.
Lovin’ the trail magic out here!
I signed the trail register and had a root beer and a chocolate. I filtered water from the old-fashioned hand pump outside and set off again into the blasting, humid heat.
Huckleberry bushes slowed me down. I stopped to pick a few here and there, sweetness popping in my teeth.
Trail-A-Versary Celebration.
Then massive black lava rock flows. The trail was filled in with red cinder. So stunning and beautiful. Red strips on black canvas.
So hot.
And Slippery.
Toss a million billion greased rolling pins out the length of a football field, and then try to walk across it with a thirty pound pack.
I had no idea which way I was going to slip. Left? Right? Forward? Back? All of them all at once?
Who knew?
How could you prepare for it?
You couldn’t. I couldn’t. Just had to focus and take it agonizingly slow.
But it was fantastically beautiful and I took so, so many photos. Every turn was the most artistic, beautiful piece of trail I’d ever seen.
But after the thirty-seventh flow, I’d seriously had enough.
And then it was over and I was at the road.
And shortly after that, there was finally water. Ther had been no water for how many miles? Fifteen? Something like that.
My ankles hurt so much.
I lay in my tent after dinner, staring at the sky and wondering if maybe I’d be satisfied with something less.
Like, maybe I wasn’t a thru-hiker. Maybe I wasn’t one of them.
Maybe I was only a section hiker.
Only Truckee – Canada.
1608 miles
As that thru-hiker told me once…
It’s okay if you only do that little bit.
Don’t worry, it’s still respectable.