Tentsite (569.4) - Tentsite (587.5) | Mileage: 18.1

The alarm goes off at 5:20 because FarOut said the sunrise is excellent from up here but I slept poorly and the wind is still wild and all of our stuff is covered in red dirt. An orange red glow shines through the fly and it would be such a waste to hike way up here and put up with all the wind just to sleep through the sunrise so I pull my legs out of my quilt and scooch over to the zipper and shove my mostly clean socks into my untied shoes and wrestle with the wind to unhook the fly. The middle is still clasped and the whole thing is whipping around wildly like those inflatable men outside car dealerships so I kind of tumble out head first and hook the corner back on the guy line. And then I stand up and turn around and look out at the horizon and it’s the most mundane sunrise I’ve ever seen. No pretty clouds, no brilliant colors, just a plain gray sky with a faint rainbow above the opposite hill. The photos are better than the reality I swear.

So I walk around for a minute and pee behind the Joshua trees and it splatters my feet because I’m still getting obliterated by the howling gusts and I stare at the misshapen tent and decide it must be an engineering masterpiece to still be intact and stuck in the dusty earth and then I unhook the clasp and get smacked again and again across the back while fumbling with the zipper and then I crunch in the tent and tug the fly back into place and flop onto my pad and hide my face and go back to sleep.

It’s sunny and warm and still and quiet in the tent. The quilt is down around my waist. Katie’s saying something and the ridges in the yellow pad under my face are filled with dirt and sand but I don’t care. My eyes and my head and my body are so heavy. So comfy and calm at last. I roll away from her and the sleep takes me.

Katie’s moving around a lot. The hot is getting too hot. The puddle of drool under my cheek is harder and harder to ignore. But my brain isn’t ready so I lie there and think I must weigh several tons.

But now it’s time to go. That’s what Katie’s saying. She’s gently rubbing my back and I feel her face close to me but my eyes are closed. They must be swollen shut I don’t think they can open.

But they do. I lie there and rub away the grime. The tent is empty except for me and my quilt and my pad. Katie’s dirty legs are standing on the other side of the open mesh next to our stuffed packs. Somehow she already packed up everything that wasn’t me.

I deflate my pad and start to roll up my stuff but the tent is a microwave and I’m so hot hot hot in my leggings and fleece I think I might explode and I freak out and the partially rolled quilt unrolls and now I have to do it again but I can’t BECAUSE I’M TOO HOT. And Katie says relax buddy just put your shorts on first so I take off the thermal sleep clothes and finish packing up in my underwear and feel slightly less combustible. But my brain is still a thick fog and it’s hard to pack up the tent and put on my sunscreen and tell Katie how many bars I need to make it up the hill. So mostly I stand in the little circle of shade under the Joshua tree and squint at nothing through my double glasses.

Katie’s off and chugging up the trail all peppy and awake like and not even grumpy about my pathetically slow get ready process and I follow behind in slow motion trying to take pictures of the yellow hills and the multiple generations of wind turbines. The climb is hot and hard. And we’re carrying so much water and food I think my shoulders might dislocate or collapse or invert or worse. There’s no shade so I mostly think about the water in the side pocket I can’t reach and the UV radiation making free oxygen radicals swimming around my body that will give me a billion freckles if not skin cancer in about 30 years.

We pass three youngish looking people with full packs drawing on clipboards. Maybe they’re training with one of the wind energy companies? Or some kind of students?

I’m moving better now. Finally awake and emotionally stable and getting into a rhythm. Katie turns 25 tomorrow and we talk about aging and identity. I usually find birthdays somewhat scary and depressing because they force you to reckon with time passing (and granted I still have two months of being 24), but I think I actually feel ready for this one. 22 and 23 and 24 came faster than I thought they would, and for a while, I felt like each label was misaligned with my experience and maturity. But I feel like a real adult now, with an amalgamation of odd experiences but still stuck smack in the middle of the wild dreams and uncertainty and fear of regret that seems to define your 20s. I keep catching myself already wanting to say 25 when someone asks my age, which is crazy because 25 has always marked the beginning of something in my head. Only a few months ago I kept catching myself saying 23. Katie agrees with this (actually feeling 25 years old), but she definitely seems less chill and down to think about it which is super valid because we’re currently speeding through her last hours of being 24.

This leads to a long conversation about my quickly dissipating fear of turning 30 and childhood models of female adulthood being limited to very heteronormative wifedom and a motherhood and the shocking lack of any queer princess movies (no wonder I hated all of them) and finding role models who are 10 or 20 years older than us and finally being excited to be better and older and cooler. We think these are pretty compelling ideas and decide it would probably be a valuable enterprise to start our own podcast on queerness after the trail where we spitball ideas back and forth like we always do and maybe grill some friends like we like to. Probably should have also majored in Gender & Sexuality Studies but alas I did not see the value in that (or really want to think about it) when I was 17.

We hit a relatively flat area with a nice tentsite in a grove of trees, so I detour us under the canopy for a cathole and sunscreen and a snack. I’m excited about podcast topics and feeling energized for the first time all day but Katie’s hot and grumpy and frustrated about the sun and the late start and how few miles we’ve done. But the older scraggly chatty guy we saw just before Tehachapi appears with a blond woman he introduces as his daughter who’s thru-hiking but has been off trail since Julian (the very first town you hit less than a week in) for a mystery injury. So Katie has to smile and pretend to be chatty even though I know she’s simmering because she’s in a bad mood and finds this man irksome. So we say see you up the trail even though there is no way they catch us and return to the sand and the sun and the unrelenting incline.

The day is pretty unremarkable after that. The trail dumps us onto a wide dirt 4x4 road that winds up and on for miles. We give up waiting for it to end and sit on the dusty slope in the shade of a tree and eat an apple with peanut butter while swatting at little flies. There’s service so I call my dad while we walk downhill in the sun. I’m hungry and frustrated because the sun and the slow miles so Katie says we have plenty of time let’s just take a break and I lie down in the matted grass at what must be a small tentsite and stare up at the fluttering leaves. It’s nice. I think we should do this more except I’m dreading the moment when I have to stand up and move again. Katie scrolls FarOut for a while because this part is dry and we have a 20 mile water carry tomorrow. And then it’s time to move so I do.

Somehow there’s more uphill and the miles crawl.

We hit the last stream of the day and Katie’s filling the last three dirty bottles and I’m still sitting on the side of the trail in the shade because this is usually how we delegate chores. I’m licking the last of the chocolate oat goop from the long handled titanium spoon with the polished bowl and I lean forward to stand up and my thigh shoves the long handle hard into the roof of my mouth just behind my last molar on the left side. I’m standing there in shock inspecting the damage to my lip with my tongue thinking maybe I need the emergency dentist, the horrible clatter of the handle against my teeth still echoing in my ears, but there’s no flesh on the spoon and I don’t taste blood so I think thank god it’s been five months since I got my wisdom teeth out and we hadn’t eaten with the long handled titanium spork with the polished bowl because the corners of the tines are sharp as fuck and definitely would have gotten stuck in the roof of my mouth. And that was that. Neither Katie nor the guy with the mismatched shoes packing his bag next to me notice.

Five ish miles to go. That’s almost two hours. Ughhhhhhhh I’m still hungry and just want to be done.

We wind down down down around the forested hillside until it empties into a meadow full of little purple flowers. The shiny white turbines tower high above us with their clean lines and powerful dignity, emitting a regular thwumping hum. I nibble at my GoMacro bar, savoring the little chocolate bits. The hills are starting to glow and I know I should slow down and appreciate it, but I really just want to get to our site and stop walking.

An adorable red Gila monster sits in the trail and I wonder if it’s okay because it lets me get way too close with the phone camera. But it’s a nice distraction.

And now we’re dropping down down down through the trees and we should be close but it still feels so far. I step over a wide blowdown at the corner of a switchback, but Katie slips and stabs a a jagged branch stump into her thigh just above the hem of her shorts. You know it’s been a long day when there are tears. But we’re so close now I say and she nods against my shoulder and we’re moving again.

I spend the next 30 minutes scanning for flat open areas in the desert brush, thinking maybe that’s the site. But it never is and we walk by each of the cleanings which, upon closer inspection, are always full of little plants and rocks and non-human animals. We turn the corner and dense green growth comes into view. This must be it. Green always means water and tentsites and people. And it is.

We walk through the green tunnel peering at the sites. Our pace is finally casual, the steps unhurried. I’ve been staring down at the the dirt all day, but I’m certain this dirt is prettier than the rest. We hit the last site walk back to a private clearing on the left side. A narrow path through the trees forms a sort of hallway that opens into a little little room. A group much friendlier than us must have camped here recently because we can see the footprints of at least three tents crowded up next to each other and encroaching onto the grass.

I lay out the Tyvek and take off my shoes to sit and eat, but the mosquitos smell food and I squirm around, unable to fend them off. So we pitch the tent instead and leave both sides open to feel like we’re still outside and Katie inflates our pads while I pack away our stuff on the outside. We add the arugula and the vegan bacon bits to the pearled basil couscous we tried to soak for lunch that never got soft and it’s delicious. Like a salad almost. And it’s still light out and the air is calm so we talk and lounge around and I’m warm and comfortable and there’s even time to write. This is the life.