“I’m going to invoke the right of first refusal today” Keith says, “if a car comes by either of us is allowed to decide that we are hitching to the next hut.”
“Okay,” I agree, staring ahead at the wall of white and wind.
In a quiet moment I chance a look towards Keith only to be served with a scene of pure misery; hands tucked into armpits, walking bent over against the cold, steps cut short by a night spent in a wet tent without enough water. Though, perhaps the scene which greets me is more like a mirror, my own morale running low. The weather is unlikely to lift today meaning we can look forward to another day spent hiking through a cloud, barely able to lift our faces due to the wind and rain. This hike, at least today, is drifting into type 3 fun in which the experience is only fun told in distant retrospect.
When I hear a car approaching from the rear I feel my heart soar. The sudden excitement reveals to me how over this I am and my mind is made up. We’re going to hitch into the next hut where we can spend the day drying out and planning our next move. I spin on my heels and jut my thumb out while attempting to portray some level of enthusiasm and trustworthiness through my damp visage.
When the car rolls to a stop I can see that it is filled with the most enthusiastic and delightful group of Korean tourists and who seem to be as excited to give us a ride as I am thrilled to be hitching with them. Within a minute of being in the car they bestow us with candy and we make conversation in broken English. They are amazed that we have hiked all this way from Akureyri in this weather, calling us hardcore with big smiles. They are gracious in every way. Out the window they smile and point, delighted by everything their tour guide points out to them. When the car arrives at the Nyidalur hut we all pile out at once and share one more round of goodbyes and thank yous before moving into the hut and going about our own lives, each a background character in the lives of the others.
Walking Iceland Day 6 – Capital W Weather
A drizzle of snow tumbles from the sky amid weak sunlight and blundering clouds as we leave Laugafell Hut behind us and plod the road southbound. At least, I am plodding. Our zero yesterday, though sedate, didn’t feel especially restful and I am a little resentful of being coaxed from the warmth and into motion. After a few hours of plodding my energy returns and I can even find fun in the puzzle of rock-hopping across rivers without getting my feet wet. A puzzle that neither Keith nor myself fully manage.
The weather continues to degrade throughout the day, and what little service we were able to gather yesterday revealed more bad weather on the way. Not just the kind of bad weather that’s unpleasant to be out in, but the sort that’s dangerous. Unfortunately we have neither the food or funds to just wait it out. The season is ending, flights are booked, and sitting around at another backcountry hut wouldn’t provide any assurance that the weather would improve any time soon.
As I sit shivering in camp too cold to gather water to cook dinner properly something about this trip feels like it is ending. A feeling made all the more ominous by the press of drizzling, shivering, silencing clouds which descended upon us in the last hour of hiking. I realize now that the weather in Iceland is going to be like its own character, no longer weather but Weather. A character standing in defiant opposition to the expectations that I had for this trip. Expectations that Weather is making known were unrealistic.
This has been a cold and wet summer, so many people have told us so. And apparently mid-August is far closer to winter in this part of the world than in other regions I have traveled to. As I shiver my way to sleep I can hear Weather outside our tent lashing and rending the wind across the moon-scape terrain. I guess, I think, that that’s the heartbreak of big projects and novel dreams, sometimes they don’t work out.
Walking Iceland Day 5 – Laugafell
Zero day at Laugafell Hut, no miles hiked.
The wind roars and the building jolts as though pushed by some cosmic hand. Even from inside the wind feels powerful. A freight train perpetually barreling down upon and crashing into us with ceaseless energy.
When Keith I arrived at the Laugafell hut last night we were told by the warden on duty that snow and high winds were in the forecast for today; the final sodden straw we needed to be convinced to take a zero indoors. We were established in a small cabin and set to watching the weather blow itself into a storm. In the morning there was snow on the ground.
We spend the day just the two of us doing a dozen tiny things for every hour of waiting and watching the wilds out the window. We sleep late and enjoy a casual breakfast without the need to hurry to pack the tent away. I pad around on feet puffy and swollen from so many continuous hours of being wet. Keith makes tea only to forget about it and drink it cold like he always does. We hold our phones to the window in order to coax what little cell service can be wrung from the air.
In the afternoon Keith finds a list of ranger programs that run from July to August 15th. Today is August 19th and listening to the howl of the wind I wonder if the summer season really is over and that we might be facing a whole lot more of this weather. When we spoke to the ranger last night she told us that snow is uncommon this time of year, and then in a tone which may or may not have been Icelandic joking, that August is almost winter in the highlands. I worry in a useless circle about the weather until bored with myself it is time to make lunch and go back to staring out the window. We’ll just have to see what the highlands hold for us.
Walking Iceland Day 4 – The God of Chips
I pray to the potato chip gods above as I shove another handful of chips into my mouth. Trying, hoping really, that I can calorically jar my legs back into functioning and allow me to finish this climb from the verdant Icelandic lowlands up to the barren highlands.
When I planned out the mileage for this hike I knew that 15 mile days was at the upper end of my physical fitness and now, four days in, the fatigue in my legs is well on its way to making itself known. But beneath that soreness is one of the things that I love specifically about backpacking. That so often the only way out is through. Whereas a bad day at the gym can easily be cut short, having a trail-side meltdown doesn’t get you any closer to being back at your car. Or, as is my present situation, to the southern coast of Iceland. In fact, if I were to bail on this project right now I’d still need to hike 45 miles back to Akureyri. And then I’d still be on the wrong side of the country for my flight home next month. It’s neither a practical option nor one I am close to considering. No, what I need are potato chips, a protein bar, and some water before I pull up my big person hiker pants and get to huffing it up this hill.
My calves burn, my hamstrings ache, and I continue walking uphill, forever onward. I am a small ant crawling across the great face of this planet, eyes on the ground, counting my little ant steps. Then, seemingly all at once the riotously green valley I have hiked through over the last two days vanishes into a monochromatic moonscape. There is literally nothing but rocks and dirt and low-slung clouds as far as the eye can see.
Then, comes the wind.
Rolling across the ground, silent without trees or even grass to break its path. Pushing into me in great gusts of flung sand. And somehow, despite the vastness, the world shrinks in on itself. To a dark undulating moon-scape capped with low flat clouds. Across and beneath I tread on my little patch of earth. My feet hurt, and my legs are tired, but I have committed myself to finding my way across this country which has captivated me for years. So I keep walking; after all, the only way out is through.
Walking Iceland Day 3 – Falling Water
We wake to a morning of patchwork clouds and harlequin farms and turn our feet to the south and walking. We walk past the end of the pavement, past the last house, past the end of the road, past innumerable sheep roaming freely in the hills. And for all our passing we are never passed in return, the day sliding silently by without cars or fellow hikers.
At 3pm, as the sun sluices through gaps in the tumbling clouds our road turned trail tilts beneath my feet and the climb into the highlands begins.
The once broad glacial valley begins to pinch in on itself as water pours from the hills in a torrent. At one point I spy no fewer than 17 waterfalls plunging down towards us.
The definition of falling water is present in all its imagined permutations and I try and invariably fail to capture them with my camera. The sun scatters itself across the vibrant green hills as the clouds chase each other across the sky.
Our camp tonight is just above the collection of all these waterfalls on the banks of a torrential river. Tomorrow we continue our climb into the highlands from where all this water began its fall.
Walking Iceland Day 2 – First Steps
Glacier carved with broad sloping sides, the valley leading south from Akureyri is a hallmark of a prehistoric time when ice covered this land. Cut through with tributary valleys it is easy to imagine great heaves of ice roaring and rumbling their way towards the icy waters of the Greenland Sea. In these moments the land talks to me, whispering its forgotten days, before man, before witness. It echoes the ache in my own chest, the desire to know more, to see behind the roads and signs and into a land which more than one person has told me is full of nothing. But I know that can’t be true, isn’t true. I know that Iceland holds so many stunning vistas and secret beauties and my step this morning is buoyant at the thought of it.
The anticipation pulls me onward while my anxieties drift towards the back of my mind, reluctant to be shaken loose. I’m a little bored during our 20 mile road walk today and I wonder if I’ve grown tired of thru hiking already and what that says about me and about this trip. The tendonitis in my foot is bothering me and I worry that I won’t be able to make it through the hike, that my body will fail my ambitions. Though I suppose the anxieties that come with setting out on something big and new and uncertain are natural. It has taken so much just to get to the starting line of this trip, and now that we’re here there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to finish this hike, something true of all thru hiking.
I’ve been yearning for the exploration of this trip, even the difficulties that come with stepping off the beaten path. But it’s harder to envision happiness than disappointment sometimes. It takes concerted effort to focus on the good and the now and the person that I get to share this experience with. But I’m trying to become that person who sees the good more readily. And in writing this post I’m doing just that.
SDTCT – Day 8
Mile 140 to mile 153.7 (the end)
By the time the others start stirring I have already spent an hour watching the sky lighten through the window of Sasha’s parents house. At this point in the trip it’s not even remarkable that I’m barely sleeping, it has become the norm. As I start to pack away my things I take solace in knowing that today is the last day of the hike. Tomorrow I will be home and I will sit in the stillness and quiet of my own company, allowing the tension and exhaustion and pressure to slide from my shoulders. It doesn’t have to be fun, I remind myself. You can still do hard things, I remind myself. Only another 13.7 miles to the ocean. 13.7 miles and I will be free.
Since we are staying at Sasha’s parents house tonight we will slack pack the last section of the SDTCT, leaving the majority of our gear behind and only carrying what is needed. Despite this, the packing process drags on as people debate what to bring and what to leave and Sasha wrangles day packs for people to use. Finally at 8am we take the urban equivalent of a hitch, hopping into two Lyfts which take us back to where we left off last night.
Arriving at the trail freshly laundered and showered feels incongruous with my aching body. But then again, thru hiking is a deeply absurd endeavor so why should this trail feel any different. We set off down a gently winding path that runs alongside a small creek. Almost immediately some folks announce their boredom, put in their headphones and hammer off down the trail. But this morning I don’t want to be alone, I feel no need to push my body through these last few miles. The remaining miles to the beach will take us about five hours and for the first time on this hike I am content to let them slowly melt away.
I walk off and on with Liza, Pilar, Kelly, and Riley. We tell stories of childhood and awkward first dates. We decide that Riley is indeed the coolest of all of us and that Liza is the official cult leader of our hiking group. Everything is uproariously funny, drenched in the glow of the last day of a hike. The trail continues to wind through a shallow canyon past parks and below housing complexes, beside industrial areas and below bridges roaring with morning commuter traffic. But almost always on dirt, a fact for which my throbbing feet are grateful. Mile after mile slips away unnoticed and I am content to let them go. Unlike other hikes where I have used the last day for reflection, today I keep myself occupied with conversation. I have neither want nor need to spend another day ricocheting around the walls of my own skull. I want to be here, in this moment, and then I want to be done.
The trail dumps us out at the side of a busy road as though we are too-tan aliens deposited from another planet. This new world we have found ourselves on is inhabited only by rumbling glinting speeding beasts who wish us nothing but harm. Amid the noise and bustle we make our way to the taqueria directly on track at mile 150 where we eat thoroughly average Mexican food.
And then, as though by magic and kindness and luck and wonder I am hiking through a muddy wetland just a mile from the beach. The sky has grown grey, the air damp from ocean spray.
And then I am there.
The scene is not a jubilant sun-soaked dash to the finish but instead something more subdued and powerful in it’s finality. One last sprint across a busy road. A short flight of stairs. I am standing on a shallow beach which gives way to startling blue water that fades into fog like the end of the world. I am standing on the finish line. For all the tourists and hiking partners on the beach I might as well be alone. I made it. It didn’t break me. But something inside me has shattered. I spent eight days hiking and laughing with these people while crying hidden away in private moments. I saw the best of the hiking community while being reminded yet again that thru hikers are not kind to weakness and uncertainly. There is no fault or blame, only a wild, undulating ride through heat and brush and strife. I made it. I can do hard things. I am free.
Later, after we have snapped photos and played in the icy waters of the pacific, I am laying in a tattoo parlor. A tattoo of a jack rabbit jumping over a barrel cactus is being inked onto my skin. The needle piercing flesh reminds me of the pain from the innumerable scratches covering my legs. Only less. The heat from my rising skin reminds me of the brutal sun at the Salton Sea. Only less. I nearly doze off while the artist works, as though I have grown so accustomed to discomfort that this tattoo cannot phase me. I have forced myself to walk through pain and tears, through the loneliness of an endlessly screaming brain and now I will brand that experience into my very skin. I will carry this with me forever, pierced into my body, into my very core. Proof that amid more than a year of raging metal illness I still had the resilience to do something hard. I am trapped and I am free. Tomorrow I go home.
** Thank you for reading this far, you’re my special favorite. Wild Country is going back to it’s regular schedule of posting every other Friday; watch this space for a new post in two weeks. **
SDTCT – Day 7
Mile 117 to mile 140
Tomorrow will be the last installment of the SDTCT blog. As always, I would love if you consider donating to the Border Angels fundraiser.
For three hours I am deeply, perfectly asleep. When the others start to make moves at 5:30am I am rudely dropped from a floating cloud back into my body with it’s scratched legs and aching feet. As with each previous day I feel older and more tried upon waking. But today is the penultimate day of our hike, today we reach San Diego, today I remind myself , that this hike is not about having fun. So I get up.
We leave the campground in a dense fog and wind our way through deconstructed suburbs, turning this way and that until we are unceremoniously dumped on the side of a busy road. I need time in the morning to warm up and Riley is kind enough to walk with me at the back of the pack. Within a couple of miles my legs are churning and we work our way up through the pack and out into the lead. The track takes us around a gravel pit, across a highway and up a hillside via a steep bushwhack that has my scratched legs screaming. From the top of the climb we hike on jeep roads and fire breaks over rolling dusty-green hills. The group expands and contracts like a many-legged inch worm searching for shade.
After so many years in southern California I find this sort of hiking to be easy if not unremarkable. I let my mind wander, past my throbbing feet, past the sweat running down my face and back, past the field trip of people behind and in front of me. I think about why I hike long distances. For the beauty and exercise, yes. But more so for the erasure that comes from grinding down my body so deeply into the earth that I am set free from a body and brain that increasingly feel like a ride on which I am trapped. It pains me to think that even out here I can no longer escape myself, my mental illness and my transness. I don’t know what to do about that. The problem feels bigger than I can handle and so I shuffle it away for future examination.
I am lost in thought when I come upon Riley and Kelly sitting in a patch of shade. They tell me that there is an alternate we can take that would get us off this dull ridge walking and would put us within a half mile of an In-N-Out Burger. The downside, they confess, is that the alternate might force us to walk along a very busy road, possibly a highway, kinda hard to tell from the maps. Fine. Fine, I say. Being this close to the end of the trail has me in both a better mood and ready to give zero fucks about anything. But sure, something other than miles of hard-packed dirt and grey-green bushes that culminates in burgers? I’m down.
We follow our original track until it hits the road and where we discover it’s a capital B Big Road. It’s a highway. Cars are moving fast, blowing by in big gusts, their speed and size feel scary and I wonder if this is a bad idea. Riley and I are again out in front of the pack and they think it’s a go so I do too. I wonder if anyone from the group will follow us, but then I realize I don’t really care. They’re all functional adults and group think has mostly gotten us lost on this hike, so I set off after Riley. Time to learn to fly baby birds.
At first there is a narrow single track trail that contours across the hills in parallel with the highway and we optimistically think we’re all set. Then we walk along the shoulder on the far side of the guard rail which gives us a little extra safety. But then, then comes a blind curve with a narrow shoulder and a big, steep hill overhead. Neither up nor through look like good options. This is what they call the lesser of two evils. Time to bushwhack. Riley and I push our way into the shrubs and my scratched legs scream in protest. My brain knows that being up on the hill is the safe thing to do but I am forced to fight my body’s natural urge to avoid pain. We pick our way up to the top of the hill while my brain sends messages of searing pain so intense that they warp back into some kind of sick pleasure. From the top of our scramble I watch the group below us hike down the shoulder, not on the safe side of the guard rail, three abreast without a care in the world. They don’t even blink when they come to the blind curve. I watch them make the same stupid, unsafe choices again and again as if they exist beyond consequences. As if this route were the PCT or AT where trail angels hold your hand and the trail is nicely marked and easy to follow. As Riley and I make our way back to the road I wonder at what it must be like to live in a world in which you think you are immune to harm simply because you are a hiker.
Still, lucky as we are to be hiking into a city, the shoulder gives way to a sidewalk and In-N-Out appears. We scurry inside, garnering looks from fellow patrons, one of whom I overhear talking about the book or movie Wild. They must think we are PCT hikers. Or, more likely, Wild is the only context this person has for understanding people like us. After all, they’re not that far off.
While we must look out of place to the other diners, to me In-N-Out feels like stepping into a spaceship. Everything is too bright and too close. The tiny bubble of cleanliness is too loud, like all the voices and dings and soda machine gurgles are pressing into me, demanding my attention. I want to stay and eat. I want to linger in this clean, air-conditioned space. I want to clap my hands over my ears and run screaming into the parking lot. But the desire for food wins out and shortly after we are done eating we leave. Following our ever-winding track which leads us down a busy road to a suburban neighborhood to a cut through a questionably public open space, then a park, then finally a winding pathway along a small, algae-choked creek. We follow this path until it hits a road and someone pulls out their phone and calls a Lyft. We are thoroughly in San Diego now and there will be no camping. Tonight we are heading back to where it all started, sleeping on the floor of Sasha’s parents house.
Tomorrow we will finish our walk to the ocean.
SDTCT – Day 6
Mile 98 to mile 117
Hi, me again. Can we talk about the fundraiser? You know the deal by now, human rights disaster at the US-Mexico border, Border Angels uses the money you give them to help people from dying in the desert and educates folks about immigration and employee rights. That they’re helping people on both sides of the border. I know that not everybody has the means, that’s okay, care for yourself first, but if you can afford to give, I’d really encourage you too. I threw into the fundraiser myself because I really believe this is an organization that deserves our help.
The infamous bushwhack starts at mile 109. One and a half miles and 1,500 feet of gain to the summit of El Cajon Mountain, through chest high Manzanita and chamise bush. I moved slowly this morning and by the time I reach the base of the climb I can’t see anyone from the group, only their voices above me indicate where they are. I rush to stow everything on the inside of my pack and start climbing. I feel a little left behind, and then a little stupid for feeling that. Since all my efforts were towards self preservation I’ve set myself on the outside of the group. I’d been so focused on trying to stay in a place where I didn’t feel like I was going to crawl out of my skin, that I didn’t notice I’d been drifting away. Now I felt like a little life raft tied to the back of the party yacht.
At first the climb is simple enough. I can follow gaps in the brush, making my way diagonally up the mountain bit by bit. Half way up and I’m starting to wonder what the hype is all about. Sure I’m getting scratched but it’s nothing to write home about.
Except, I soon learn, I’m not half way up. I’m not even a third of the way up but rather half way up one of the three false summits. Fantastic. Really great. Once I gain the saddle I can see the rolling ridge extending away from me. Our group of 12, which feels so large when we are all collected, is scattered across the sweep of terrain and I can finally see how very far behind I am.
The peak rises in three hulking mounds below a round summit. Only large granite boulders break the sea of dense, haphazard green brush, like a giant, warty Chia Pet. It will be my special pleasure to work my way through 1.5 miles of it. As I climb higher the easements in the brush fade away until there is nothing but persistence and heaving lunges to move forward. The Manzanita has smooth bark and hard, unforgiving branches covered in small leaves. They whip my legs and leave them stinging. No matter how I try and navigate through the brush I end up scratched. My only reprieve is when I can clamber up on a boulder and attempt to get a better sense of a path. But there is no path there is only brush. Above me I can hear the others, see them standing on the summit a rise above me. I start pushing myself faster and faster, becoming careless and all the more scratched because of it. But I don’t want to be left alone, not up here, not adrift in a sea of green leaves and dark red bark.
I nearly break down in tears I am so frustrated. But this hike isn’t about having fun, it’s not about doing something easy. And somehow this knowledge calms me and allows me to keep moving as uncomfortable as I am. Eventually the skin on my legs becomes a singular, burning sting. The pain is both part of me and beyond me, allowing me passage through the dense vegetation with a supreme lack of concern for any further pain. It can’t hurt any more and so I stop fighting it, I stop fighting anything and simply make my way to the top of the mountain where I find Audrey, Beau, Hadley, Ashley our adopted daughter, Muffy, Liza, and Pilar.
The infamous bushwhack is over and with it the only summit on the entire SDTCT. From the top we can see ridges marching away to the east, each one unique and yet similar in their building blocks: dense brush and round barrel rocks. To the west a thick haze blankets San Diego and it’s surrounding neighborhoods, blocking them from view. We’re pushing up against the edge of civilization and walking our way out of the desert.
The descent is knee-jarring in its steepness but provides one excellent diversion. Less than a mile from the summit rests an old rusted-out jeep from the days when our trail was a road and well dressed city folk came this way in their fancy automobiles for a bit of adventure. We however, put the car to a different use. Beau suggests a thru hiker themed Truck Sluts photo shoot and soon people are stripping off their clothes and climbing onto the truck. As the person with the camera I am both photographer and art director, posing, arranging, and encouraging this collection of half-dressed hiking companions. It is truly amazing how doing difficult things in the outdoors can bond people.
Dressed and back on trail the sun grows long as the miles slip slowly by. The sounds of the racing highway herald our arrival at the bottom. It is here where we see Pea with trail magic. And this truly is remarkable. There is no such thing as trail magic on a route so obscure as the SDTCT. But Pea loves this route and loves supporting the hikers on it. The group sits on a grassy berm and eats Taco Bell bean and cheese burritos in the fading sunlight as cars wiz by below us. Incredible, I think, that people would go so far out of their way just to help those of us who like to hike long ways and sleep in the dirt. I try and tuck this wonderment away in my head for future use when things grow dark and the world feels a hostile place.
SDTCT – Day 5
Mile 88 to mile 98 — (Skipped miles 77 to 88)
Look, by this point you know that I am raising money for Border Angels through this blog. We’re in the second half of the trip now and so is our fundraiser, I believe in the readership and community that has developed at Wild Country and I know you can help us reach our goal. Border angels is really on the front lines of the humanitarian crisis that is the US-Mexico border. They are saving people’s lives. And that is important to remember, you may have different political views than myself, but these immigrants are people and they deserve to not die walking across the desert just a few days away from a massive American city. If you’ve got a few bucks, it all counts.
A fitful night of half-sleep finally gives way as the first dusting of light spreads across the ceiling of our hotel room in Julian. Town sleep in a room with five other hikers never promises to be good and last night was worse than I anticipated. Ah well. What can you do. We’ll be back on trail tonight and I can hopefully get some sleep then.
To make it to the ocean before Audrey, Beau, Riley and I need to catch our flight, we are hiking out this afternoon. In my lackadaisical planning for this trip I had miscounted our days as eight hiking with a zero in Julian and last night received the rather rude awakening that this is not the case. We actually have eight days of hiking with no zeros. Well, I think, I am already dragging, what’s one day. This morning is a rush of chores and I am a rock amid the chaotic tide that is the rest of the group. I sit on the porch and call my mom as the tide goes out to coffee and breakfast. I know myself well enough to know that I cannot be civil amid company this morning, so I stay planted. Banking on our sheer numbers to conceal my absence. While the others are at breakfast I cry on the phone to my mom. About the difficulty of thru hiking while depressed. About the bone-deep exhaustion that has followed me for months. About my conflicting desire to both quit and to prove to myself that I am stronger than this hike, than my mental illness. Sitting curled on the floor of the hotel room I sob as quietly as I can until I can get myself under control, until I can hang up and not leave my mother too worried.
I resolve to take advantage of the empty room and grab a shower where I won’t have to rush so anther dirty hiker can take my place. But then Starman calls and the presence of his kind voice sends me spiraling again. Except this time I’m crying on the bathroom floor. Starman offers to help me find a way back to Seattle and through some combination of hubris and hopelessness I decline. I shower. I put on a happy face and just in time. The tide is rolling back in with the boxes full of hiker food that we sent to Julian. I tear into mine, packing things away as quickly as I can before I bolt for the door at a pace that won’t strike the others as bolting. It’s not their fault. It’s nobody’s fault. But my skin is set to crawling at the presence of so many people. Their wants, their needs, their voices burrow into my skull where they mix with the existing chaos of my chemical-imbalanced brain.
While on the phone with good, kind, logistics-oriented Starman we devised a plan to help me make it through the rest of the hike with as much of my mental health in tact as possible. I will rise before the others, hike alone when I need to, rest with the others when I can, and remember that there are only a few days left in this hike. Sometimes distraction is the solution. I will abandon the pointless endeavor to avoid media and stay alone with my thoughts. Then. armed with a plan and a dozen hours of newly-downloaded podcasts I make my way to the Julian Cafe for a breakfast date with myself and the plan to drink as much diner coffee as I can.
After breakfast I take myself back to the hotel to find the others poking at their phones and waiting out the heat of the day. At 2pm Audrey, Beau, Riley, Sasha, Pilar, Ashley our adopted daughter, and myself climb into Carrot Quinn’s van and head back to the trail. Our half day in Julian means we’re going to need to skip 10 miles of exposed road walk in order to keep on schedule. Nobody is terribly upset about that.
A brief ride down some unremarkable dirt roads dumps us at a bend in the road and we start walking. Immediately Riley pulls away and I find myself in the empty middle of the group. Perfect. The hiking is along yet another dirt road this time under the merciful shade of live oaks. But on this turn of the merry go round when my brain starts it’s jet engine whine of panic I don’t try and play the hero and just put some music on. Whether I am manic, depressed, or mixed music has the same effect; to suppose a different set of emotions on top of my own. Like spackling over a wall, the cracks may still be there but at least I can’t see them. And in this way I pass what might be the most pleasant miles of the trip. As the sun inches its way towards the western horizon I decided that this hike is no longer about having fun. Lots of hikes are fun but that doesn’t mean they all have to be. No, I decide, this hike will be about proving to myself that I can still do hard things. After a year of feeling weak and out of control, like a passenger on the runway ride that is my brain, I need to show myself that I am still capable. And if it hurts like hell in the process, then so be it.
