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.
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.
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. **
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.
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.
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.
The SDTCT runs close to the US-Mexico border. As such, it seemed only right to raise money for an organization doing humane social justice work in this area. Border Angels, a non-profit organization that works to reduce the number of deaths on the US-Mexico border. If you have the means to donate I strongly encourage you to do so.If you appreciate my writing on this blog, consider it a favor to me to donate to this fundraiser.
This morning I feel like I am moving backwards. Every time I pack something away it’s on top of something I need and then I have to reverse course and start over. It’s perhaps unsurprising that I am the last one out of camp, walking up the cool canyon that lays beneath the morning shade. The tendon pain in my left foot has receded to the point where I am no longer worried about it. But in its place the bottoms of my feet throb. Such is part of thru hiking and so I walk on.
Unlike my foot, my mood has not improved much over night and as I make my way up the first gradual climb of the day I find myself thinking of ways I could leave this hike that wouldn’t be my fault. Maybe a rock fall would break my arm. Or maybe just a small bite from a rattle snake. Or maybe a severely rolled ankle in one of the gopher holes that litter the fields we so often walk across on this route. I wish I could say that my brain felt like it was on my side today, that I felt well and truly better, but I can’t. Rather, it feels like one side of my brain is arguing with the other and I can’t stand it anymore. I am growing tired of being awake with this runway brain. I feel like a building that has burned from the inside, leaving nothing but sparking wires and blackened timber.
As the track rolls out of the narrow canyon and onto a broad valley dotted with cholla cactus and manzanita bushes I realize that I have service. I pull out my phone and start to text Starman. I want to tell him how hard this hike is, how my meds aren’t keeping me stable, how my brain feels less and less like a safe place to be. I want to tell him I wish I could come home. But I settle on “this is hard, I miss you,” then put my phone away. However, my phone soon buzzes, the message from Starman reads “I miss you too, I can’t wait for you to come home.” In those three small words, I miss you, something in my chest cracks open and sobs rip from my throat with only the vast silent desert as witness. I am trapped I think, as I cry-hike my way across the valley.
The sun so far above presses me into the valley bottom like I am an ant walking across a giant open palm. The others are ahead of me and I find I don’t care where, I am content to be relieved of the niceties required of socialization. I simply walk and attempt to tune out from my brain. “Isn’t this what you wanted?” I ask myself. “Isn’t this what you’re out here to get?” To be worn down, to grind my body into the earth until it disappears, to be forced to listen to my thoughts without the distraction of music or podcasts or people or work. The pain becomes me and I surrender to it. I wanted this, brought it upon myself and now I will see it through. As much as I want to quit I know I will regret it if I do. So I walk. On tender feet through campgrounds of clean-smelling tourists in their gleaming RVs. I walk. Tear-stained and salty through narrow sandy canyons below the hiss and rumble of cars on the highway overhead. I walk. Across flat fields full of short grass and hard-packed soil.
I walk until I am past the last highway I could hitch a ride from. I walk past my last out and find myself seated in the sand amongst the group in the shade of a large bush. Lunch time. Today we get to town and because my food bag is still somewhat full I treat myself to soup and a sandwich for lunch. This basic meal is a luxury and I savor it as such. I listen to the others with their funny stories, letting their words wash over me and away. I don’t want to be in my brain anymore but instead let the words of these people cover me until I find I am laughing along side them. I could sit here forever, I think. In the good, calm shade. Laughing and sharing. I could stay in this moment forevermore and be happy and held and safe. But that’s not how time works and soon the others are packing up around me.
We string out along the hard-packed jeep road and begin the climb that will take us up and over a ridge to the Sunrise Highway where we will hitch into Julian. We couldn’t have picked a worse time to start an exposed climb as the hottest part of the day is quickly approaching. The heat is relentless. A thousand fevered hands pressing onto every inch of my body. Any breeze, a kindness. This is the kind of heat that feels dangerous, intolerable. The road climbs steeper and steeper, undulating along the side of a mountain and occasionally, but not nearly often enough, proving a small sliver of shade into which we can squeeze ourselves. Squatting in the red dirt we complain about the heat, the climb, the pain in our feet. The saving grace of the day is that it is still early and even at this slow pace we will be able to make it to the road with enough time to hitch before sunset. The group hops from shade patch to shade patch, the only person who doesn’t seem to be suffering is Audrey who matter of factly tells us they were made for the sun.
The good, the bad, and everything in the middle. All things end, and at long last we crest the top of the climb and the world opens up around us. From here, round-topped mountains march away in ridge lines toward the inland sea where this whole thing began only a few days ago.
The last miles to the highway slip by in an easy downhill, the afternoon cooling as the sun arcs to meet the horizon. When I hit the road it is to find the others gathered on the shoulder waiting for a hitch into town. Relief covers me like a soothing blanket allowing me to breathe fully again. I am still less than half way done, still held firm by the talons of this hike. But I made it to Julian, and perhaps with enough food and time I will be strong enough to make it all the way to the ocean.
The SDTCT runs close to the US-Mexico border. As such it seemed only right to raise money for an organization doing humane social justice work in this area. Border Angels, a non-profit organization that works to reduce the number of deaths on the US-Mexico. If you have the means to donate I strongly encourage you to do so.If you appreciate my writing on this blog, consider it a favor to me to donate to this fundraiser.
I start the climb out of Borrego Springs before the sun has cracked the eastern horizon, priding myself on my early start. However, as soon as the sun makes its way over the ridge I know I didn’t start early enough. The temperature rockets skyward even at this early hour. This morning we are climbing on a real bona fide trail as we gain more than 3,600 feet in a little over four miles. The sun paints the rocks a warm, glowing pink and I think, not for the first time, that I do not find the desert beautiful. The trail winds through a Seussian landscape of house-sized boulders and scratching plants with their curled fingers clawing at the sky. Just past the summit of the climb is our second water cache and we press ourselves into the bushes in search of shade. My cohorts gush about the beauty of the desert while all I can see are rolling scrubby mountains shot through with sandy washes and covered in reaching, splayed vegetation. They say there are three types of people, mountain people, desert dwellers, and river rats. In that case I am a mountain person surrounded by 11 desert dwellers. We hike on.
The afternoon is one long descent towards another highway and I allow the group to pull ahead. My brain feels too full, chattering with itself, making up stories and playing out imagined scenarios. There is already too much going on between my ears and I feel panicked at the presence of other people. My mood feels like it is perpetually falling down a flight of stairs and I am struggling to right myself amid the tumbling. Toward the bottom of the climb I find most of the group posted up for a snack and smoke break in the shade of a large bush. I stop long enough to shovel down some snacks before I head off alone.
I imagine they think I’m weird. Or that I don’t like them. That I’m a loner, antisocial, a freak. My brain is too full and today none of the voices are on my side. I can’t manage the niceties of being social and yet not doing so makes me feel like I am somehow failing at this hike. Why would I come all this way to hike through terrain I don’t even like if I’m not even going to hang out with the people I came to see? It makes me want to cry, just as so much does these days. But I don’t, I can’t. I’ve never been much of a crier, something which at this moment I’m frustrated by and grateful for. After all, it’s not easy to hike when you’re crying.
A few miles after I pass my group I see Ashley, a woman who started this hike on the same day as us and who has been flitting around us like a serene humming bird. She is sitting on the side of the trail in some deep shade all by herself. I am so envious that my knees almost buckle from the wanting. To be alone, I think, I would give anything to be that alone. But I know the group is just behind me and so after a quick chat with Ashley I press on, pushing myself harder and harder down the shallow descent.
My legs churn and my feet ache and my brain starts looking for a way out. When I get home, I tell myself, I’ll have one single afternoon before Starman gets home from work where I can be totally alone. Somehow, I’ve reasoned, being alone will stop the roiling current in my head. Somehow if I can just be alone, if I can just make everything stop then maybe I won’t be so very tired and so very wound up at the same time. And then, I do something I have never done before on a thru hike, I pull out my phone and look for flights back to Seattle. Or, I would have, but there is no service out here. And so I hike on with my head too full of thoughts and my body weighed down from the inside with this exhaustion that has followed me for the better part of a year. On throbbing feet that ache with every step I march into camp and set up my tarp with the others.
Over dinner that night I laugh and joke and listen to the others tell hiking stories as we eat our dinners out of our tiny pots. In the darkness it is easier to be social, almost effortless. Like it used to be. It only occurs to me now, after a day of being disappointed in myself, that my meds still aren’t right and that my brain is still running away with me. But there is less than nothing I can do about it now and so I return to my little home under my tarp and prepare for bed.
The SDTCT runs close to the US-Mexico border. As such it seemed only right to raise money for an organization doing humane social justice work in this area. Border Angels, a non-profit organization that works to reduce the number of deaths on the US-Mexico. If you have the means to donate I strongly encourage you to do so.If you appreciate my writing on this blog, consider it a favor to me to donate to this fundraiser.
Sometime between waking up and making my way to the campground’s vault toilet I realize that my left foot is going to be a problem. Perhaps it is unsurprising that going from solely strength training with almost no cardio to walking nearly 20 miles a day will fuck you up. What is less surprising, to those of you who know me, is that I totally knew this and then did it anyway. Ah well. I made this mess and now it’s my special pleasure to get myself out of it.
As the camp packs up around me I pop some Tylenol and attempt to stretch. Though at some point under the warming sun I concede hope for a painless day and hike out at the back of the pack. In a former life I was an ultramarathoner who messed up their foot in exactly the same way. Which, while embarrassing, means I don’t have to worry that this is a stress fracture or something that will do anything but hurt until I stop, rest, and stretch in copious amounts. But for today I take careful steps, even though I can’t walk with my heel on the ground, in an effort to keep my gait as even as possible so I don’t end up with two messed up feet.
As I hobble behind the group I wonder at the idea of grit, of tenacity and resilience. In my life I have been told by a fair few people that I have a lot of all those things. But it occurs to me now that those kinds of traits only come from getting yourself in a dumb situation and then being forced to get yourself out again. Take hiking, of any variety, you don’t simply get to stop when you’re bored or tired the way you might in a gym. No, you have to walk your ass back to the car. Or, in my situation, to the ocean. Minimum I’ve got to make it to Julian before I have any chance of hitching anywhere. So then it’s walking for me.
The pain in my foot gnaws at me, making it’s presence known in every step. I am a fool, I think to myself. I am damaging my body, I think to myself. I am embarrassed for getting injured on the first day with all these impressive hikers around me, I think to myself. But I am also in the middle of nowhere with very little recourse and so I walk. I attempt to distract myself but this is the sort of discomfort that will only go away on it’s own terms. So I resolve myself to hurting, to walking through it and accept that things might not be okay, but they’ll be fine in the end.
In keeping with the theme from yesterday the track leads through old jeep roads and dry washes and one very cool, albeit small, section of winding slot canyon. I play leapfrog with Riley, Kelly, and Muffy throughout the morning as they stop for frequent breaks. Meanwhile, my foot finally allows me to take almost normal steps and I am reluctant to stop lest it start behaving worse than it already is. And in this way the hiking day passes. As it so often does during thru hiking. Something hurts, another chafes, the scenery is pretty and at times there are interesting people to talk to.
At the end of the day we drop from the hills into a low flat valley, cross into a small town where, according to Muffy there is an incredible taco shop. And even though none of us possess that infinite hiker hunger we eat copious amounts of food and then post up in a park to charge our phones and wait for the heat to pass.
Finally, in the growing dark we leave town and begin our climb up the other side of the wide, flat valley. The group sets up camp at a bend in the road knowing that tomorrow we must begin our climb into the mountains. I fall asleep under the clear cold sky of the desert and wait for the morning light.
The SDTCT runs close to the US-Mexico border. As such it seemed only right to raise money for an organization doing humane social justice work in this area. Border Angels, a non-profit organization that works to reduce the number of deaths on the US-Mexico. If you have the means to donate I strongly encourage you to do so.
Sasha’s father is driving us to the eastern terminus of the San Diego Trans County Trail. In the early morning light the road drops away below us and I can see the Salton Sea where it meets the horizon as an expense of flat white nothing. As though the earth fades away at the intersection of sky and brackish water. Even in the early morning, the desert here is brutal. Mountains like curtains thrown over furniture drop onto painfully flat valley floors shot through with pink sand washes. And it is these self same washes that we’ll be walking today. Gaining just under 1,000 feet in 19 miles the hiking should feel nearly flat. Meanwhile the sun makes will make its presence known in every minute of its arc across the sky. Even the flora here is suffused with it, twisting branches as much warm brown as green.
11 hikers clamber out of three cars and we all assemble dutifully to take a picture on the edge of this great, man-made inland sea. My body feels pale and soft after a winter spent in Seattle and my dysphoric brain is whispering unpleasant nothings to me. So I hide behind my camera and refuse offers to take it so that I might be in the picture. I cannot handle being in a picture today but I can handle taking pictures.
Finally it is time to walk and like a gangly field trip we head off across the sand. Veering this way and that as we make our way through the brush and into the wash that we will follow for the rest of the day. Annoyingly, the ebouliant mood of the previous three days is gone and I feel overwhelmed and edgy around this many people. Like I need to perform joviality, gain popularity, be chatty and pleasant. At the first opportunity I drop back under the guise of going to the bathroom and back here I can walk alone and talk to myself, wondering at the desert I spent so many years living near and yet never learned to love.
The group takes their first rest stop at mile four and I pause only long enough to tell them I’m going on. I have long since recognized that my hiking style is not the way most people hike. Which isn’t to say my style is the best, I think the average hikes would prefer to take more than two stops in nearly 20 miles, but I don’t. Soon Kelly catches up to me and though I only met her yesterday we fall into easy conversation. One person I can handle. One person at a time doesn’t send my panicked brain reeling.
Throughout the day I hike with Kelly then Riley, Hadley, and Muffy. As the day wears on and I wear myself out I find I can sit and chat with the group as a whole without feeling like all of their voices are clanging through my head like so many cow bells. For not the first time I notice how there are two ways that hikers typically react when faced with the inevitable discomfort of hiking. The first kind seem to only understand hiking through pain, and they talk about it constantly. As though by witnessing their own discomfort they can better understand the experience they have put themselves in. To the outside observer it seems as though this type of hiker is perpetually surprised by the discomfort that is hiking 20 miles day after day. They want to talk about their feet, how they are sore, how thirsty they are. I wonder if in their minds an ideal hike would be entirely pleasant. For in contrast to the first type of hiker, stands the second. Those who know that pain is a part of thru hiking the same way filtering water or peeing outside is. Pain is inevitable and therefore not worth commenting on. Pain need not be discussed or compared or dissected because in the end it is irrelevant—you just accept it and move on.
I have always fallen in the second group of hikers, preferring to tuck my pain away from the world. I know it is an inevitable part of life and so why would I mention it. But I wonder if this is for the best. As Pilar said today, “there is a kind of camaraderie that comes from cataloging your pain.” And I wonder if I might be better, if we all might be better if we understood pain as inevitable, yes, but also worth discussing. If for no other reason than to gain a fuller understanding of what our fellow humans are going through.
