About 15 miles + lake walking
I’m awake at 3 AM, and the campsite when I leave the tent,
glaring white headlamp swaying, is spooky. I pee quickly and zip the tent door
behind me, snuggle into Granite’s back. I rubbed his upper back and shoulders
before we went to bed, and now he’s in a deep sleep. But I’m awake, edgy. I
don’t know how long it takes me to fall asleep.
I have an intention of walking by 7:45, but the morning is
chilly and I’m tired from the restless night. So it’s a bit after 8 when I set
off. Granite will follow later, and probably catch me easily. But if not, I’m
meeting him at a lake in about 4 miles.
The thing that gets me about backpacking is the cleanliness.
Now matter how serene and awe inspiring the mountains, after a few days I start
itching in my own skin, wanting a shower.
So now I have lots of small ways that I clean up on the trail,
so I can stay out longer. I wash my feet in a stream a couple of times a day. I
wear deodorant. At the end of the day, I rinse my arms and lower legs and neck
and armpits and face with water, and where I can I jump in. I floss. I wash out
one pair of underwear with a small amount of Dr. Bronner’s soap in the evening
(far from a lake or stream) and then strap it to the outside of my backpack for
a few hours to dry in the morning. With two pairs of underwear, I always have a
clean set.
I bump into a herd of boyscouts this morning, a few minutes
after I left Granite. They’re lying about and I walk through them and head up
the trail. They snicker at my underwear, which I had totally forgotten. I burn with embarrassment.
The day is warming up. I know there’s no huge climb today, so
the smaller climbs seem tougher and longer than I expect. But finally I arrive
at the little lake where Granite will meet me.
It’s actually 2 lakes, one reedy and covered in lilly pads, and
another further back. I drop my pack near the trail where Granite will see it
then walk ahead to explore the shore of the far lake. It’s quiet and the sky
above is bottomless blue with perfect clouds drifting along. Granite arrives. I
ask if he saw the boyscouts and he confirms they’re headed this way.
We settle on a rock and watch a salamander under the water.
It’s too cold for swimming so we just sit.
We pack to leave as a gangly group of boys is arriving. I tuck
away the panties and we hurry past them.
3 miles later we come to another couple of lakes, and we head
to the far one which looks especially nice.
We arrive to find a couple of fisherman, which makes me less likely to go swimming. But we circle around the lake, jumping from boulder to rock to boulder, till a rocky shoulder blocks the fishermen’s view. I strip down to underwear and get into the water, but I only go to mid-belly because I’m freezing. Then I lie on a rock and let the sun warm me, chatting lazily with Granite.
Getting back on the trail involves another round of rock hopping
and takes a while. Granite wants us to finish 15 miles today to reach a campsite
found in the guidebook that looks promising, but our 2 lake trips mean we won’t
get there until late.
Long climbs eventually give way to an even longer descent. I
always think the descent will be easier, and at first it is. But then over a
couple of miles, it becomes more and more painful to go downhill, my feet
aching and burning with every step. I take weird, awkward steps, trying to
relieve the pain.
We finally get to the bottom of the hill and arrive at a
cascading, powerful stream, beyond which is a parking lot. It’s the end of
Section 9.
We drop our packs and pull off our shoes and drop our feet in
the icy water. Granite pulls his out after a moment, but I find a little
outflow and tuck my feet against the rocks and keep them submerged even as it
starts to rain a little. Eventually I snag a rain jacket and move my feet to
the deeper, churning water. I hold them there until the ache of the cold turns
to numbness, then I hold them there longer.
We have walked 156.2 miles. Which means we’re more than halfway
done with our trip—I only got 4 weeks off work and we didn’t want to rush to
finish the full 500 miles (and probably couldn’t have, honestly). So we plan to
complete 300 miles.
John Muir talks about how the wilderness creates a kind of
immortality. Granite read it aloud a few nights ago: “Life seems neither long
nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the
trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”
I don’t know if I feel that immortality. But I have had minutes
stretch into hours climbing a hill. Days on the trail feel incredibly long—each
a small lifetime—but also flash by, slipping from my grasp too quickly.
There is so much physical discomfort on this trip—body aches,
heat, cold, exhaustion—but there is also something so calming and purposeful
about walking in one direction every day. I want time to slow down, to live out
here for months instead of weeks.
It is 5 PM when we leave the cascading stream and head on. We
have another 5 miles to go to get to camping—more than 2 hours, most of it
climbing.
We talk. Granite is a good storyteller and he tells me the last
third of Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson, which we got on audiobook for a road trip
but I never finished. Then he tells me about different theories on the origin
of sex. Then we are through the worst climb and he asks me for a story.
I tell him the complicated fairytale I dreamed up on our last
backpacking trip, when my shoes weren’t fitting and my feet were blistered and
I needed to distract my brain. I tell the first 2 chapters, then he helps come
up with a third.
And amazingly, I’m so lost in the fairytale that 2 hours
disappear and we’re crouched at a mosquito-riddled stream scooping up water and
then carrying our load up a quarter mile to our campsite.
It’s 8 PM when we make dinner, and then after it’s too quiet to
sleep. We always sleep by streams, but now it’s silent forest and I am wide
awake. So is Granite. We take Nyquil—or rather, whatever Nyquil makes that
helps you sleep without including a cold medication—and eventually we fall
asleep. But it’s a fraught, uncomfortable sleep.
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