Blistered Kind Of Love (27 page)

Leaving our scenic lookout, we returned to our daily rituals—hike, eat, hike some more, admire the scenery, eat again, hike again, and so on until sundown. As we neared the cannibalistically infamous Donner summit and Highway 80, however, our predictable pattern was disrupted. Suddenly, instead of admiring the serenity of the scenery, we found ourselves people-watching and counting articles of trash. Tufts of toilet paper peeked out from under leaves and rocks (clearly not buried in the requisite six-inch-deep cat hole), while candy bar wrappers, soda cans, and used Band-Aids lay alongside the trail. I'd heard an occasional thru-hiker admit in a whisper of feeling excited at the sight of trail trash, because it meant civilization, junk food, and a can of beer (or two) was only a few miles away. I couldn't subscribe to that; I love a beer as much as the next girl, but those tufts of toilet paper made me gag. I couldn't be too high and mighty about the issue, however; unless my own trash bag was within convenient reach, I rarely picked up litter. Not like Amigo (one of the Naked Hiker Day participants), who claimed to regularly hike out other people's used toilet paper. Now there's a man who stands by his convictions.

Although our trip to Donner summit led through pine-scented forests, meadows drizzled with flowering lupine, phlox, alpine everlasting, and daisy, and past igneous rock blanketed with red lichen, my most vivid memories are of trash and people—lots of people: trail runners, dog walkers, Boy Scouts, church groups, families, tourists with expensive cameras, solo-hikers, hikers from all walks of life. And then the unmistakable roar of traffic.

Interstate 80 is the only four-lane road to cross the four-hundred-mile-long Sierra Nevada Mountains. Here in the mountains we found a maze of
exit ramps, train tracks, and traffic lanes. To bypass the four lanes of rumbling, roaring, thundering freeway we used a dank, graffiti-inscribed tunnel.

Safely on the other side, I stopped to cook dinner under a canopy of pines while Duffy ran to the trucker's stop to use the rest room and check our handheld email device.

It started to rain, and I tried to protect our chicken and broccoli Lipton noodles from dime-size droplets. I also tried desperately to refrain from eating it. I must have stared at the creamy pot of starch for ten minutes, stirring it with a big spoon as it bubbled on our stove. “What the hell is he doing over there?” I thought. “Either we got a lot of email or he's doing something unspeakable to that toilet.” Despite that unpleasant thought, my stomach continued to roar and churn with vehemence. But after our recent food fight I didn't dare sneak a mouthful. Eventually, I walked away from the noodles and paced the trail, trying not to look like a starved dog doing laps in his kennel. The minutes leading up to Duffy's return were interminable, and when he finally arrived I thrust the pot and ladle into his hand saying, “Dinner's served—let's eat!”

After dinner, we continued four miles into the evening, climbing away from the din of the freeway, the trash, and the crowds. As we climbed, the forest grew dark. Long shadows of white fir intersected our path. We were finishing up the twenty-fourth mile of the day and beginning a descent to a grassy meadow when we spotted a shingle and stone cabin behind a row of trees. As we neared it, we realized it must be the Sierra Club cabin mentioned in our guidebook, one of the few backcountry shelters available to hikers along the PCT. Curious, we pushed open the creaky wooden door that led into a cluttered room. Empty wine bottles held half melted candles. Sinister-looking hooks dangled from the ceiling, which, judging from the trails of mouse droppings over the wooden countertop, were used to keep the rodents from stealing food. I climbed up a ladder to a loft, where musty mattresses were stored overhead on exposed ceiling beams. Downstairs, Duffy tinkered with the wood-burning stove.

The dark, musky smell gave me the creeps, and I went outside for fresh air. A carved wooden sign labeled the rustic shelter as the “Peter Grubb Hut,”
built in memory of a man who died at the age of eighteen from sunstroke. Duffy's head appeared out the second floor window. “Let's stay here tonight,” he suggested eagerly. “We'll sleep on the mattresses and won't have a lot to pack up in the morning. We can get an early start.” The stained mattresses were a little ill-used and institutional for my taste, but I was too tired to argue—or to hike the additional miles to make not staying in the hut worth it. Duffy must have sensed my disgust. “I'll find clean ones,” he said, referring to the mattresses. “I promise.”

Back in the dusty darkness, I lit some candles, hung my pack from a ceiling hook, and then sat down at the wooden table to sign and read the hut's journal. A note from Crazy Legs caught my eye.

“Y'all better hurry up because it's getting lonely up here. Stop reading and start walking.”

I missed those guys and wondered whether we'd ever catch up to them. One of the difficult aspects of being part of the thru-hiking community was that after you made friends, your footsteps usually dragged you apart, some going faster, others slower, until what seemed like an unbridgeable distance grew between you.

“Chiggy, come to bed.” Duffy was already nestled under our green sleeping bag and brown fleece blanket on a mildewed mattress upstairs. I barely slept a wink that night as scratching and scurrying noises emanated from every corner.

To math teachers across the nation, thirty is just another number. But to many of us trapped in the ethos of a youth-centric culture, thirty comes on like a death sentence. Rational minds recognize that not much changes between twenty-nine and thirty, but it's a turning point nonetheless. No more excuses—when you hit thirty, it's for real.

I'd been wary of thirty. I wasn't sure that I was ready. Was I strong enough? Would the burden overwhelm me? How much of the journey would show in my face? Would a thirty's-worth of sun, wind, sweat, and dirt age me?

But then again, thirty is an achievement. And no true achievement is made without a little pain. You can run from it, hide from it, or deny it, but really, as a thru-hiker as in “real life,” you haven't reached maturity until you get there.

At the time, I was still four years away from turning thirty years old. But on the seventy-first day of our journey, I struggled with a similar milestone—the thirty-mile day—and let me tell you, it hurt like hell. But I became a stronger hiker for it, and all subsequent thirty-mile days, like birthdays, were a little less painful—and a little less celebrated as well.

We hadn't planned on doing a thirty that day. Sierra City was thirty-four miles away and we figured we'd be there for breakfast the following day, perhaps after a ten-mile morning hike. But by noon we'd cranked out twelve miles and the thoughts of cold beer, a shower, and a bed lured us onward.

Our descent toward Sierra City was steep. I knew that every step we climbed down would be matched by a more arduous climb up the Sierra Buttes on the other side. Bulging out of the mass of deep green trees across the valley, the Sierra Buttes looked like the naked humps of camels.

Contrasting with the green horizon, the ground beneath my feet was brown, covered in pine needles and cones. Occasionally an oak sapling pierced through the deep duff as it struggled skyward. Soon the trail turned from dirt to jagged dark rocks, which sounded like chips of pottery as my feet skidded over them. Evening was approaching, but the ambient air remained hot—hot enough that the pine needles were baking, filling my nostrils with sweetness.

The thirty-miler, I learned, is not only a physical test but also a mind game. To keep thoughts of quitting, insecurities, and fears at bay for thirty exhausting miles takes mental stamina and somehow, when physical energy wanes, cerebral energy does, too. I'd recently heard (on my portable radio) that as survivors of the Holocaust get older, their ability to bury painful memories weakens to the point where many find themselves reliving events they'd hidden deep in their subconscious. I found it interesting that the physical changes of aging affect selective memory. I think that a thirty-mile day can do something similar to the mind, bringing to the fore things you'd rather not think about because you don't have the energy to hold them back.

That evening, while Duffy strode a hundred yards ahead of me, my mind
was besieged by worries big and small. I worried about my credit card bill. I worried whether the extra jar of peanut butter we purchased in South Lake Tahoe would be enough food to stave off Duffy's starvation. I worried about whether I was making my parents sad. I worried about what I'd do with my life after the hike was over. I worried about whether Duffy and I could survive the trials of the trail ahead. I worried about whether I was a good person or not, and I worried about the forest around me and about the greater Western wilderness it represented. Would it still be here for the next generation? I worried so much my head ached as much as my feet.

From Jackson Meadows to Milton Creek, the PCT meanders across 2,880 acres owned by the largest private landowner in the state of California—the Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) timber company. Growing on this private land are the biggest and oldest Douglas fir trees in the Tahoe National Forest. Remnants of old growth forest, some of these trees are six hundred to eight hundred years old. Regardless, the Milton Creek area could be logged by SPI at any time. Still, I harbored hope that SPI would protect the old growth trees and the aesthetic continuity of the PCT because it was the “right” thing to do. But such protection isn't guaranteed, especially given the fact that the language granting the PCT an easement through SPI property preserves the company's right to grow and harvest future forest crops. No one, according to Tim Feller, a district manager for Anderson, California-based SPI, said it would be a pristine trail from Mexico to Canada. Indeed, logging near Milton Creek began in 2002.

As we hiked in SPI territory, we passed many old growth trees. They were drenched in lime-green wolf lichen. Adrenaline and peanut butter carried us down to a green bridge over the creek. At about 8:30 that evening we crossed over that bridge and into long-distance hiking adulthood. We'd done our first thirty-mile day, but we didn't linger.

With Sierra City so close, we decided to push another four miles. During those last four miles, my feet throbbed like they did on our first day. My
hamstrings tightened like rubber bands stretched near breaking point, and my hands grew cramped around my trekking poles. The sun went down as we passed through the Wild Plum Campground and then the surrounding residential neighborhood. Dogs barked when they heard me stumbling over broken pavement, and Duffy glanced back to make sure I was still standing.

Finally, at 9:30, we reached the center of town, which consisted of a post office, a general store, and a few motels. We didn't have energy for bargain-hunting, so we stopped at the first motel we saw, the Sierra Buttes Inn. We celebrated our first thirty-miler with a beer, lukewarm showers, and a soft bed, where I elevated my swollen feet and rested my weary, worried head.