Tentsite (468.2) - Poorly Maintained Boy Scout Trail Camp (489.9) | Mileage: 21.7

I woke thinking the constant buzz of the power line was rain. My quilt felt wet on the top and the fly was covered in fat water droplets that ran down toward my face. I couldn’t tell if the water was on the inside or the outside and didn’t really care to find out. People were talking outside but the air blowing in under the doors was so cold and I didn’t want to move and every time I rolled over the quilt got caught around my feet or under my hip and twisted up, exposing part of my legs or back and I had to kick and wriggle until it popped free and then I could tuck it back around me and I tried to sleep and ignore the puddle of drool on my pad and my knotted hair and my sticky body that was too hot and too cold all at once and the fact that it was morning and time to pack up and go. Katie woke up probably because I was thrashing all about and she held me against her chest like my head was a football and my shoulder was on the ground between the pads but I finally relaxed and the things stopped bothering me so much. It was definitely close to 7 by the time I stirred again and Katie seemed actually awake and asked if we should go but it’s so much effort to roll everything up and I finally felt well rested and happy and her face looked less dirty than it had yesterday and I mostly wanted to nuzzle into the warmth of her neck just below her ear but she kissed me and it was nice and her body felt small and strong and nice and we had sex listening to Nora and the super annoying British guy who had “pruned” the tree for his giant-ass tent pack up next to us. It was not our best pack up effort and by the time we were moving it was after 9 and I wore all of my clothes because we were legitimately inside of a cloud (hence the condensation) and you could watch the little wispy white bits blow across the trail in front of you.

There weren’t any views (on account of the cloud) but all the little purple and yellow and pink and white and blue and orange wildflowers lining the trail were so pretty and happy and we pulled water from a trickling waterfall three miles in and moved fast because of the cold. An older guy in a yellow tank top and neon orange running shorts and trail runners was sucking energy gels under a low hanging tree at the top of a series of switchbacks. He called the fog June gloom and said he had expected it to clear by 9 or 10 but oh well everything is wet today and he asked how we liked the trail so far but mostly he talked and told us about the other hikers he’d seen that morning and how his grandfather had a cabin in Tahoe so he’d gone on a lot of trips in the Sierras as a kid and had been a concert vocalist in Chicago. I always feel a bit dumb because of how little we contribute in these conversations but he was friendly and honestly pretty interesting and Katie compared him to Grammy Ruthie and posed the question are chatty people more interesting because they just volunteer more and are better at storytelling or because their chattiness leads to more opportunities so their lives are actually more interesting. I’m leaning both?

She walked in front and I walked in back and we talked about projecting contentedness onto other (usually older) people. I had been envious of the man and his spiffy running clothes and his pack full of fun gels and the cool foggy weather that always makes a run feel more hardcore and the fact that he was out on this trail midday on a Monday and his probably fancy car and his sweet wife and clean white shower and all the yummy whole foods waiting for him at home. Katie told me this was because 1) there is some security in age and the knowledge that things worked out even though I also envy younger people with everything ahead of them and 2) it’s cold and wet and I assume he has all of the comforts of home that I have to wait several days for. But this is a frequent bad habit of mine. Fourth year spring when everyone was gone and we had nothing going on we used procrastinate our papers and walk to the quad in the evening and watch the baby ducklings in botany pond. Old couples would walk by in their quirky Hyde Park clothes and I forgot everything about myself and looked at them and wished we would retire here and walk the quad every night and feel energized by the ideas and the ambition and fulfilled by the beauty and our companionship. It was only when we visited last October that I felt the despair and loneliness of it all being over and I realized how stupid I had been all those nights when I still had a place and the fantasy of my future was my reality.

We dropped slightly below the fog so it was a little warmer and you could see the trail across on the next ridge, but the clouds held until we hit the road. Just before the bottom, Katie rolled her left ankle and sent all three dirty bottles and the filter flying off the side of the trail but she limped it off like usual with a brief spurt of angry tears and then we were heading up the switchbacks on the other side and I was looking for somewhere to sit for lunch but it was still cold and there were more loud ugly powerlines and I wanted to get back up to the pretty flowers and the white rocks and the warm rather than waste a break shivering among the dark scruffy trees. We sat on the bank of the trail around the spikey purple petal-less flower balls and cold-soaked garlic couscous and cut the mushy spots out of the trail magic apples and ate them with the last of our crunchy peanut butter and they were honey crisps and so so good. My menstrual cup had leaked all morning but it was too cold to stop and empty it so the dark dried blood caked my upper thighs but it was already a lost cause at that point so I let it pour. We wanted to keep sitting but it was so cold cold cold sitting so we moved again and passed everyone who had walked by while we ate and there was just enough uphill to warm up and my fingers stopped hurting and the goosebumps on my legs went away and we crossed a dirt road on the top and headed back down the other side.

We’ve officially reached the point where we can’t just throw the same ideas back and forth for twelve hours a day without going insane and becoming dangerously likeminded (I guess it took four weeks) so I listened to Episode 826 of This American Life and Katie listened to the complete discography of FLETCHER. We passed two older women at a road crossing and then we were going up up up again in the sun and I was thinking about the podcast and mostly watching my feet instead of the lush green hills and we filled our bottles at a spring with a little spout and Katie fell behind taking pictures so I waited at each turn to make sure she was still coming.

We came to the Boy Scout camp just after 6 and it wasn’t so much a campground as a dirt road with one flat spot in some trees and a rotting picnic table with only one intact bench. The flat area was small and crowded and full of people we had never seen so we crashed the lone couple and a lot of fluffy grass to set up under some trees next to extremely sus piles of dirt. We set up the tent but the dirt was soft and the stakes kept pulling out in the wind so we stacked rocks and soaked the Spanish rice in the peanut butter jar and Katie set up the inside while I dug a cathole and changed my cup and Katie climbed out of the tent and squirted water so I could rinse my crusty underwear and shorts until they ran clear and then we ate huddled in our sleeping bags because the heavy wet cloud had descended once again. For an appetizer, we ate refried cranberry beans (type of bean, not the fruit) with tortillas and it tasted just like a quesadilla. For dessert we had sour cream and chive mashed potatoes and a snickerdoodle protein cookie (which turned out to be the best flavor so far because it’s coated in sugar and the texture was like coffee cake but maybe Lenny’s & Larry’s just has just quality control issues) and some chocolate and almonds from the mega bag. I tried to write but I was too cold and too tired so I went to sleep and failed to meet my daily goal of two entires and three days of photos so we are caught up by Tehachapi.

I dreamt that we were hiking through Garden of the Gods. The PCT passed right behind Balanced Rock and up along a ridge that exists only in my semiconscious imagination, but for some reason we took the freshly paved park road with the blind curves and the yellow center line that we had walked with Zayne three years before. We took a spur to the left to get back up to the ridge and at first the trail sloped up and was slippery with little loose rocks like normal and Katie pulled ahead of me like normal because she’s faster at hills but then the trail grew steeper and smoother and slipperier and steeper still until I could barely keep my balance and keep moving forward. Katie was gone and the trail was grassy and practically vertical and the ground was somehow so far below and I was perched there, desperately levering my trekking poles to keep my weight against the slope, the toes of my crampons (for navigating the grass?) dug deep into the silty earth. A hand painted wooden sign with an arrow pointing the way we had come read PCT EASIER WAY and I hated myself for coming this way and I started to lose my balance and the adrenaline made my skin tingle and realized I could force my feet and hands against the once muddy cracks and grassy ridges running down the center of the trail and slowly push myself upward. Somehow it became even steeper and I was clinging to a thin vertical ridge when I realized it was no longer the ground but resin climbing holds covered with artificial turf and I couldn’t understand why someone would install something so horrible and the thin plasticky material kept sliding around and my trekking poles were gone and then the trail was overhanging and the climbing holds were bare thick pinches almost too wide for my sweaty palms. They were all those slippery smooth plastic ones caked in chalk you’ll find at older gyms that pinch your callouses and my arms were pumped and my hands were slipping and I had no protection and the ground was so so so far away and I knew I would fall.