Category: Thru Hinking

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SDTCT – Day 4

Mile 58 to mile 77

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.

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SDTCT – Day 3

Mile 38 to mile 58

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.

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SDTCT – Day 2

Mile 19 to 38

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.

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SDTCT – Day 1

Mile 0 to mile 19

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.