Blistered Kind Of Love (33 page)

All too soon I was on Highway 89 again, being blown back and forth by logging trucks for the remaining seventeen miles to Mount Shasta City. I entertained myself during this monotonous trek by counting cars and trucks moving north and south. I wondered if Kimmo and J.B. had discovered this scintillating form of entertainment.

Things were much more civilized for Solo-man in the peaceful town of Mount Shasta City. Round Table Pizza and the Mount Shasta Inn saw to that. Lying on a queen-size bed with remote control in hand, I tried to call Angela but couldn't get through. I was lonely and missed her. Hiking solo was a fine novelty for several days, but without Angela I'd quickly lost interest. I'd assumed that I'd move faster without her, that the miles would fly by as I pushed myself to see how far and how fast I could go. But for the most part I'd dragged along. The crazy notion of thru-hiking seemed senseless without her there to share it. Together this hike had meaning; alone it didn't.

All this made me wonder about the motivational construct of solo-hikers. How does a guy like Brian Robinson, who hiked the Triple Crown (the three longest National Scenic Trails—the PCT, AT, and Continental Divide Trail) in the calendar year 2001, stay motivated? Robinson, a forty-one-year-old systems engineer known as “Flyin' Brian,” hiked for 300 days and 7,400 miles, and did virtually all of it by his lonesome. During his ten-month Triple Crown, Flyin' Brian averaged more than thirty miles a day through twenty-two states. Along the way he went through seven pairs of running shoes, suffered from frostbite
and Bell's Palsy (temporary facial paralysis), hiked through snow up to his hips, and climbed an estimated one million vertical feet. Why did he do it?

“I did it because I needed a challenge,” Robinson says. “I wanted to do something I could be proud of for the rest of my life.” I can identify with Brian's need to challenge himself and do something memorable. But the isolation? I couldn't handle it. It would be too lonely and the payoff wouldn't be great enough. Scaling Mount Whitney, dodging rattlesnakes, and running through hailstorms—all of those adventures would still be memorable if they were experienced on your own, but to me they were much more meaningful when shared.

While the appeal of solo-hiking had worn off, the reality was that I still had many solo miles to cover. My dilemma was this: My initial goal had been to hike the full length of Sections O and P (183 miles) before meeting Angela in Etna. But at this point to do so would require hiking a hundred miles in less than three days without a guidebook (I'd traveled out of range of the pages I'd photocopied from Toby), without motivation, and through an extended heat wave. It wasn't going to happen. I needed to find a map and design an alternate route.

In the morning, my first stop was the Mount Shasta City post office. The hiker box was virtually empty, but there was a message from Amigo in the trail register.

“Lodgepole, I have some news for you—Foxtail has left you for
Douglas Fir
. She told me that she was
sycamore
of you and needed a new
manzanita
.” Good old Amigo, how did he maintain such cheerful creativity while hiking? And what was he doing moving in on my woman?

Amigo's note mobilized a thought that had been percolating in my heart and mind for some time. While eating breakfast at the Black Bear Diner, I resolved to set aside a few minutes to visit a jeweler. I'd been carrying an engagement ring with me since Campo, and I wanted to be prepared in case the perfect opportunity presented itself. Maybe at Forester Pass, or on top of Whitney? It hadn't seemed right, though, not perfect; we were always in a rush, or too tired, or too dirty, or Angela had a large piece of freeze-dried
chicken stuck between her front teeth. Even if the perfect opportunity for a proposal had arrived, we would have been celebrating it with a ten-dollar stainless steel circlet from Miller's Outpost. I wasn't sure how well that would go over.

At the local jeweler, I was educated on the four C's of diamond picking. All of you marriage-age males out there are probably familiar with this simple guide to choosing the perfect diamond. It goes like this:
C
for “cost,”
C
for “costly,”
C
for “
c
ut the crap, it doesn't cost that much,” and
C
for “you
c
an't be serious, it doesn't really cost that much, does it?” Or something like that. I never really got past the cost part. I am not really a good impulse shopper, so I didn't purchase a ring that day. For the time being, I would have to keep carrying the excess piece of Miller's Outpost baggage. The thought of a marriage proposal would continue to be a nebulous one, at least for now.

My next stop was a bookstore, where I found a copy of the guidebook and jotted down as much Section P information as possible. I bought a map and hatched a shortcut that I hoped would get me to Etna in time to meet Angela.

My brilliant scheme was to follow Forest Service Road 40N30 along the South Fork of the Sacramento River from Lake Siskiyou eleven miles up to the PCT. This route would save me fifteen miles of trail, not to mention the hassle of a hitchhike to Castle Crags.

In retrospect, I am not sure what I was thinking; perhaps all that diamond shopping had gone to my head. I walked over Highway 5 past a fish hatchery and an Evangelical Free church to Lake Siskiyou. Then I hiked along dusty North Shore Drive under droopy-branched Douglas firs and looked for Forest Service road 40N30. I looked and looked and looked some more. I ended up circling the Lake Siskiyou area and nearly all of its dirt roads and trails, for two entire days. I hiked many miles—I am not sure how many, but many—and pretty much all of them in circles. At the point when I realized that Road 40N30 didn't actually exist but instead was a figment of a mapmaker's imagination, I decided that I'd just walk, it didn't matter so much where. I hiked seven miles up to Castle Lake and then half-heartedly attempted to clamber
over a ridge where the map showed the PCT. I suppose the trail was up there somewhere, but I didn't find it; instead I discovered a nice meadow where I sat down with my diary.

I stretched out, back propped up by Big Red, and gazed at a field of long grasses, purple and yellow daisies, Indian paintbrush, buttercups, and scattered pines. The meadow was spotted with Queen Anne's lace—fine white flowers that make a slightly domed clump. Plump black bumblebees danced around the clumps, their landings causing the flowers to bend over dramatically, nearly to the ground.

To the northeast I had a fantastic view of 14,162-foot Mount Shasta, the second-highest mountain in the Cascades. On the PCT, Mount Shasta is viewed for 300 miles of trail, a testament both to the mountain's magnitude as well as to the crazy zigzagging the trail does in northern California.

“Lonely as God and white as a winter moon,” poet Joaquin Miller wrote of Mount Shasta, and I guarantee that this quotation isn't lonely; it's included in everything I've ever read about the volcano. And now it's in my own writing as well. The streets of Mount Shasta City are lined with flags that declare, “Shasta, where Heaven and Earth meet,” which just scratches the surface of the mystical feel that surrounds this mountain. Some think Shasta is sacred; others believe that lost civilizations live in the old lava tunnels that crisscross her innards. Native Americans of the region rarely dared to venture into those dark, winding caves because they believed Sasquatch, the legendary ape-man, made his home in them. From my idyllic meadow I looked at the lonely and gigantic mountain and vowed to someday climb to its peak—maybe I'd even see Bigfoot along the way.

My exploration as Solo-man drew to a close with a dip in Lake Siskiyou, a night in a grove of incense cedar and Ponderosa pine, and finally a several-mile road walk back to where I started—Mount Shasta City.

My plan was to surprise Angela at the Greyhound station in Yreka, and
then, happily reunited, we'd travel to Etna by rural bus. I couldn't wait to see her. Six days without her playful chirps, nuzzles, and pats had been extremely difficult. I needed to reconnect the umbilical cord; I hadn't functioned well without it. I was happy to retire Solo-man and his routeless blundering. This is not to say that my solo-hike hadn't been memorable—I'd hiked many miles, meandered the hills above and around a beautiful lake, and written prolifically in my journal. It was just that, much like my vision quest ten years prior, this solo experience had been all about girls. Well, actually,
the
girl, and getting her back.

THE TRIP FROM REDDING TO YREKA
was picturesque and pleasant—something I never imagined possible on a Greyhound bus. Traveling on Interstate 5 we passed red-banked Shasta Lake and sneaked under the formidable granitic spires of Castle Crags before arriving in Yreka, a town whose greatest claim to fame may be that it was once the capital of America's fifty-first state—but more about that later.

I'd never been to Yreka before, but as soon as I stepped onto its oil-stained pavement, I felt like I belonged. Yreka had a PCT-feel—it was the kind of place where people still wore cowboy hats and Wranglers and where you just might see a mule-train in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Before I even had a chance to look for my bus I caught a glimpse of a familiar silhouette. Turning, I was greeted by a hearty wave, toothy grin, and prominent ears. He was still three blocks away, but I yelled “Duffy!” and sprinted. There on the sidewalk we collided in a hug so fierce that for one ecstatic, exciting moment we forgot to breathe.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, “I thought we were meeting in Etna! How'd you get here?” I was shocked, relieved, and overjoyed. Covering 180 miles in a week had been a lofty goal and I'd figured I might have to wait for Duffy in Etna.

“It wasn't the same,” Duffy said when I asked him about his adventures as Solo-man. The freedom and spontaneity had been fun at first, but day to day, he said, he enjoyed hiking with me much better. I can't tell you how pleased I was to hear that.

Ideal hiking partnerships are mutually beneficial in that each member of the party contributes to the experience of the other and benefits in kind. Partners split decision-making and burdens; lend each other encouragement; and share their thoughts, feelings, fears, and hopes. “A good partnership,” writes Jardine in
Beyond Backpacking
, “leads to a deeper knowledge of oneself, and of one's companions, as well as a better understanding of the journey as a whole, its hardships and triumphs, its daily delights.” For couples this can be a make-or-break proposition because on-trail they face extremes they'd probably never encounter at home. This makes teamwork crucial not only for physical survival but for the survival of the relationship and the expedition.

Looking back on our rocky desert start, I was surprised that we'd made it this far. Baptism by fire can work, but it can also backfire. And, as I later realized, there may be better ways to learn how to backpack.