Wild Country Found

Campsite at mile 559 to Highway 58 (mile 566 then a hitch into Tehachapi)

Errands!! *Shakes fist angrily at sky*

The amazing thing about errands is that they exist in an elastic place outside the normal time-space boundaries. Insofar that a trip to the post office, grocery shopping, laundry, and checking into a hotel can consume the majority of a hikers day. Compare this to the three hours it would take a normal person.

Luckily for us we have Victor, Keith’s friend from high school who has a car (a car!) and is kindly willing to help us run our errands and take us to lunch with his friend Rosa. Yay Victor! Yay Rosa, it was lovely to meet you!

With Victor’s help we’re able to hop back into the normal time stream of errands running. Meaning that by 4pm Keith and I are in our hotel room, our packs exploded across the floor along with our groceries as our laundry spins along happily in the washer downstairs. More than expediency this accelerated errands trip has bought us a blissful day of doing nothing tomorrow. Something we haven’t had since Big Bear and which I’m looking forward to immensely.

Campsite at home late mile 537 to Campsite at mile 559

Today was almost entirely uneventful. Nothing terribly much happened while we walked 22 miles up and over a set of small desert foothills. But, the day wasn’t bad, or even boring either. I don’t want to give you the impression that it was a negative experience, it just was. In the same way that you probably don’t recall much of your day two Thursdays ago. Some days in your life just happen and they lack any real import, some percentage of your life is made up of unremarkable Thursdays. What I need here is the written equivalent of a shrug.

So while this day may not be an often told story, it was wonderful in it’s own, more simple way. Today we continued the work that we began yesterday – climbing up out of the Mojave basin and into the low foothills. Hills where they farm wind, hills that rise from a valley where they capture the sun’s energy. This land is a study in heat and thrashing wind. But covering these broad brown rolling hills are thousands, millions of tiny wild flowers. We traverse through an innumerable volume of these flowers. Bright yellows and oranges on slender green stems. Purple as puffballs in clusters or else a fountain of bells atop a riot of green leaves. This day encapsulates something I very much love about thru hiking. Which is that while the daily activity is largely the same, the experience can vary wildly.

Hiker Town (mile 518) to campsite at mile 537

Today we’re walking across the Los Angeles aqueduct. 15 miles of walking straight on top of, or directly next to an underground river that pipes water from the eastern side of central and northern California right into the heart of LA. It’s very flat, it’s very bright and most of the time it’s very hot. However, our sojourn over a rain soaked peak yesterday has bought us a relatively cool crossing in the tail end of that same storm. Still, the sun out here is oppressive. It feels like it’s roasting you even though the air temperature never climbs above 70 all day. The entire walk is done across a flat plane that drops gently away towards the horizon before rising up again as hills that conceal gentle mountains to the south and granite behimoths to the north. As such, there is no shade and one feels as though they’re walking both on top of the world and simultaneously at the bottom of a bowl. That lack of shade is even more apparent given our late start. Seriously, everybody else on the trail thinks we’re crazy for starting most days at 8-9am, but we cannot manage to get up earlier consistently. But this morning especially I slowed us down.

After our freezing day yesterday I woke up with wildly swollen hands and feet. My rewards for so many hours spent soaking wet and without any food or drink. Sort of an interesting endurance event, but not one that leaves you feeling perky the next day. By the time I’m done mincing and moaning, putting my legs up the wall to try and reduce the swelling in my feet, and doing my normal morning routine it’s well after 9am and finally enough is enough and it’s time to hike.

Dottling along the dusty road that will comport the majority of our trail today I think back on something a fellow hiker said last night while folks sat around complaining about the various body parts that hurt – a favorite hiker activity. They said, “you’ve got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.” It’s a phrase I’ve always hated. It’s contradicting waffle that doesn’t mean anything. Getting comfortable being uncomfortable is just returning to your prior stage of comfort, you’ve missed the point. The phrase should be: discomfort is part of every growth experience, it’s not something that can be avoided. But that’s not quippy enough for a coffee mug so we’re stuck with people babbling out three old cliche.

Anyway, I’m thinking about this as I stare at the ground in front of me – my head lolling in response to the monotony of the day – because I am very uncomfortable. Mostly my feet, which waver between almost painful pins and needles and something kinda like numbness. It’s not great. And I’m just sort of trying to decide if this experience is what people mean by getting comfortable with discomfort. It’s not an experience that I’m overly familiar with, which leaves me questioning many of the more challenging moments of this trip. Am I growing? World I even know it if I was? After all, I grew up in a world in which the first 22 years of my life we’re relatively scripted. Go from school to school getting good enough grades to get into a nice respectable college, from college the goal is basically the same except now those good grades get you a nice job which you can use to buy the rest of the American dream. It’s not that hard, or at least it wasn’t for me. What’s hard is knowing what you really want in life. What’s harder is not knowing what you really want in life and the possibility that it’s all passing you by.

Vladimir Nabokov described life as “a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” Mary Oliver asks us “are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”

I have no idea if I’m willing to get uncomfortable enough to turn my brief crack of light into a life.

Campsite at mile 493 to Hiker Town (mile 518)

Before the trail, when I would while away hours at my desk job dreaming about traveling long miles by foot, I always pictured the changing landscape like a gradient. A gentle slide between Point A and Point B, the land slipping from the desert into the Sierra into NorCal and on and on until Canada. But like so many things on the trail I’ve been proven delightfully, surprisingly wrong. Instead of my imagined slide from one ecosystem to the next the land through which we’re traveling transforms by leaps and bounds, backwards steps and new discoveries.

Today felt nothing like the desert and more like Washington. The cold grey morning gave way to a cool day, all old trees and moss, clouds racing fast fast through the dense bush, piling in until visibility is less than 100 meters. Then it starts to rain. At first just a light sprinkle, not enough to warrant pulling out our rain gear. But up and over a small pass and suddenly we’re scrambling to pull on jackets and pack covers, tucking phones and electronics into inside pockets. And then we do the only thing we can do; walk. Climbing higher into the wind and rain. Like a fever that has to get worse before it can get better we climb into the storm. The rain turns to sleet accumulating on the dry ground. Sleet bounces off the dry brittle desert plants, making a sound like television white noise. With the visibility reduced to a bubble only 10 meters wide and the sound of television static filling the air one could be forgiven for thinking we’re walking through a badly tuned television station.

With no phone for distraction I’m forced to be present in the cold. Without the aid of the sun I’m surprised by each meandering turn of the trail. Without the warmth of the desert we forgo food and ice cold drink. It’s too cold and wet to sit, it’s too cold and wet to want to stop.

13 miles of rain soaked hiking on a trail that never seems to get anywhere for ducks sake! The PCT is a cat and I am a mouse, beholden to the mood of the trail, forced to play the switchback game until it feels ready to release me. I try and go somewhere else in my mind. I imagine a hot tub in a warm winter cabin, replay the scene in aching detail. A plush robe. An immense swallowing couch. Warm Belgian waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. I’m almost but not quite warmed.

And then quick as you please the desert is back. From one side of the road to another the rain is gone. Up and over a small hill and we’re in the sun, warm wind drying my shorts. The desert warms my body, making the whole cold afternoon feel like it never happened. All around us are hills that ripple with golden grass. Above the clouds do amazing things with the light, the kinds of things you see in biblical paintings. Rays of light and clouds so immense you cloud almost imagine something is up there, orchestrating the splendor. Down from the hills, far below the fabulous clouds we walk into a little town that feels like anywhere America, and I guess it is.

Casa de Luna (mile 478) to campsite at mile 493

Have you ever been so sore and tired that it’s actually hard to sleep? I have, more often than seems reasonable, like I ought to know better by now. But I don’t, and I’m wrecked and so I toss all night. My left knee zings pain down my whole body when I try and straighten it fully, meaning my midnight pee run is done in a stooped hobble. I’m cold and then hot, the wind blows and my over worked body cannot get comfortable. Does a wrung dish rag ever look comfortable?

I wake hungry to a 7am sun, already late by hiker standards but it feels indecently early to me. Who told the sun it could wake me up after such a sub standard night of sleep. Around me other hikers mumble about free coffee and so I extract myself from the tent and hobble forward on tender feet to investigate. It’s not so bad as I’d feared, my body that is. The coffee is terrible – though that doesn’t keep me from drinking four cups of the weak brown liquid. I’m grateful for the warmth, the caffeine, and the fact that I didn’t have to make it. In the daylight Casa de Luna is even more bizarre, like a grandmothers attic exploded over a front lawn, with disheveled hikers milling about in their over priced gear, eating pancakes and drinking coffee from titanium mugs.

Hours later we’re finally on the trail and as I watch folks pull away from us up the first climb I wonder why I’m doing this. Why I do any of this. In high school it was early morning drives into the mountains and spring breaks spent sleeping in a friend’s car all in the name of snowboarding. In college it was 5am pool sessions where I self-consciously taught myself to swim away from onlookers, with the plan to turn a second knee surgery into a half Ironman finish. Then as a young professional it was 4am alarms on the weekends, marathon and longer days of hiking and running outside before returning Monday morning to slumpel over my desk. It’s easy to be flippant. A dismissive declaration that I’m just wired this way. But I think it’s more than that.

The uniformity of the terrain lends itself to introspection. We hike past a town called Green Valley and that more or less tells you everything you need to know about the scenery. Well, less because from the top of an innumerable ridge I can see down into the Mojave desert. All baked flatness and waving wind mills. The PCT is taking us west, towards the narrowest crossing of this real desert. Thank the heavens for that. I’m more of a dessert person than a desert person. But as with all travel on foot, our approach is glacial and indirect, allowing me to turn my mind from the future and point it inwards. Or rather, away from the imposing natural world and towards the wild and often wonderful human animal.

Because while it’s appealing to disect ones inner workings and motives, the truth is I’m far from the only person out here hiking the PCT. Or thru hiking this year. Farther still from being the only person who has undertaken a journey that has their friends and family impressed and, honestly, probably just a tad worried about my sanity. Why am I doing this? Or why are we doing this? What is it about humans that sets us in motion towards the unknown and often painful process of adventure and learning. We’re questing curious dissatisfied little creatures, humans. We like to believe in impossible seeming things and hair brained ideas and then head out and put them to the test. It’s one of my favorite things about us.

Think about the first person who decided to ride a horse, that’s a rediculous choice. And then once everybody saw that one person do it, we wanted to try it too. Or walk on the moon. Or jump out of a plane with a parachute. Whose bright idea was it to take animals who wanted to eat us and turn them into our best friends? Eat a banana? Run a four minute mile? Humans are such funny, creative creatures who want to see what happens when we push an idea a little further and a little further. Until what? I suppose that’s a lot of gravitas to put on a thru hike, when framed against the human desire to explore. I’m just waking to Canada, after all hundreds of people do it every year. But viewed in a larger context, it makes me wonder to what extent we believe something to be possible. And what could happen if we, if I, could think something possible without needing to see it done first. What could I accomplish then?

Hiker Heaven (mile 454) to Casa de Luna (mile 478)

“You’re the carrot” Hulk shouts at me. “You can’t rest, you’re the one keeping us hiking fast. The carrot on the stick method works better if the carrot doesn’t stop for breaks.”

Slowly I comprehend what he’s going on about. We’re all making the push from Hiker Heaven to Casa de Luna today, 24 miles with nearly 6,000 feet of climbing. And since Keith and I are in front after lunch we’re now the carrot. Or really, I am since I’m the one who sets the pace when we’re hiking.

So now me, Keith, All American Austin, Mayhem, Hulk, Lite Brite, and Loner are pushing to Casa de Luna – a trail angels house where they allegedly serve taco salad to hikers and make everybody wear Hawaiian shirts. This very plan was something we all said we weren’t going to do when the subject came up yesterday on the porch. Comical. Our failure at moderation is comical. But, as is so common on the trail everybody has been swept up in the fervor of everybody else’s silly idea so here we are and I’m the carrot.

Fine then.

We set off down the hill, I’m in the lead and I silently resolve not to let anybody pass me. If I’m to be a carrot on a stick then I’m going to be damn hard to catch. We hurry around the bend and immediately recognize two hikers, stop to chat. Then I have to pee and before I know it Loner is on our ass and Hulk is right behind. We take off and I know that I’m not fast on the downhills. I’m always worried I’ll hurt my knees and so I mince my way on the descents. But I know if I can just hold on until an uphill we can drop the guys. I’m a member of a small minority of hikers who actually prefers climbing to descending, and I use this to my advantage this afternoon.

The trail this afternoon is a series of moderate climbs and descents. Up one ridge and down the back. Up another ridge and down the back. Three, four times, I loose count. It’s all the same rolling ridges and scrubby manzanita that we’ve been hiking through, but with the afternoon sun just right on the reseeding ridges the view is spectacular. Overhead we’ve had on and off again clouds all day, sort of threatening rain, but just kidding because we’re still in the desert.

One hour since the ridge with everybody and I’m getting hungry. But Loner is only a hundred meters back, he keeps gaining on the descent and then we drop him on a climb. Two hours since the ridge and I’m definitely hungry now, but I want to win. Loaner is close, Hulk right behind and I don’t want to have pushed so hard just to be passed three miles from the road. I know it’s arbitrary and pointless and that I’ll pay for my lack of calories now with sore muscles but damnit I want to win.

I want to win, but also I want to see what I can do. I didn’t want to do a 24 mile day after a 9am start, but now that we’re going for it, the thrill of crushing myself with effort is exciting. Maybe everybody who takes on a thru hike is the kind of person who likes to push their limits – occasionally to the breaking point. It’s what, so far, has made this hike fun 90% of the time. Even on the shit days, even on the long days and boring days and hot days, the chance to see if I can do this hike is fun. It also doesn’t hurt that when you spend two hours climbing a hill your brain rewards you with a euphoria-inducing rush of endorphins.

With just a few miles to the road I know we’re going to be first. So now it’s time to accelerate. Yes, we’re going to win, but now it’s about seeing how fast we can get there. I’m grateful Keith is willing to put up with this, and fit enough to do so. We jettison water in an effort to lighten our bags and I start laughing at the whole thing. Like we’re some kind of Nascar pit crew, except it’s just us and we’re participating in one of the slowest activities ever. Still, it’s fun and funny and that’s the whole point. We might win the rush to the road but you can’t win at thru hiking. Nobody gives out a first place metal in Canada and odds are your friends and family will lose interest in your hike long before you do. It has to be fun, and today is it.

Over another ridge and I can see the road. We’re going to make it before the others, before my random time goal. 24 miles in under 10 hours, including a lunch break. The last 15 miles in six hours. I’m the fastest vegetable known to man! I’m going to get taco salad for dinner!

At the road a kind lady gives me an apple and I nearly inhale it. My legs are tingling from the effort and I know I’ll be sore tomorrow, but I can’t help grinning like an idiot. 90% fun, this is definitely fun 90% of the time.

Zero at Hiker Heaven – no hiking

The Saufleys and the volunteers who run Hiker Heaven are kind beyond reason. They offer everything a hiker could want – laundry, wifi, showers and loaner clothes, a place to stay, a kitchen to cook in, and a trailer to relax in, they’ll even drive you the 1 mile into town if you don’t want to walk. If you stay there, give them $20/night per person. These sort of amenities are not free for these folks to run, show your support with your wallet if you can.

Acton KOA (mile 444) to Hiker Heaven (mile 454)

It’s been one month on the trail! Well, plus one day, but give me a break, I’ve been busy ya know? Anyway, I want to start a monthly series where I examine what I’ve learned on the trail.

1. Saying “the old white guy with the beard” or “the young white guy with the beard” describes 70% of the hikers within your immediate proximity. Diversity on the trail is conspicuous only in it’s absence.

2. Hiking with your partner is awesome! At least for us. I think this largely comes down to both of us really wanting to hike the PCT, as a couple and more importantly as individuals. We can share gear and motivation, and having your person on trail keeps homesickness at bay.

3. Pack weight isn’t as important as you’ve been lead to believe (within reason). While I do believe that your bag should be as light as you can comfortably get it, I’d say if your base weight is 15lbs +/- 5, you’re fine. We’ve seen people with bigger bags cruise past us, and folks with UL dream kits struggling to crack double digit days. Far more important is familiarity with hiking and overall fitness.

4. Digging a cathole is still my least favorite part of hiking. For those who don’t know, a cathole is a 6-8in hole, 200 feet (70 steps) from trail, water, and camp, that you poop in. Yep, in nature even humans bury their poo. And while it’s not the biggest of annoyances, it certainly makes one appreciate indoor plumbing.

5. Trail angels are a national treasure. Be kind to them and appreciate these complete strangers who are helping you achieve this bizarre goal.

6. Sour gummies are bomb dot com! Haribo or nothing. Also, resuppling is strangely stressful.

7. When you visit Carmen’s in Julian you’ll see strawberries and hearts painted on the deck. These were done by a 2017 hiker trail named Strawberry, who died while hiking the trail last year when she tried to ford a swollen river in the Sierra and was swept down stream. The PCT has a lot of safe guards, but it is not a venture that should be taken lightly. People can and do die on the trail and developing your skills as outdoors person should be high on your priorities pre trail.

8. You don’t need to be an experienced backpacker to succeed on the trail – but it greatly helps. Little things like knowing animal tracks, how to anticipate flow patterns of spring rivers, how to self arrest with or without an ice axe, and personal knowledge such as how many miles you can go on a liter of water given the current temperature are all things you can learn on the trail, but you’re better off knowing them ahead of time. Luckily the trail will still be here next year, and in 10 years thanks to the wonderful folks at the PCTA. I’d encourage novice hikers to develop backcountry skills before starting the trail, you’ll be happier for it.

9. It’s better to over pack food than under pack. Always.

10. Gently Used is the best trail name of the class of 2018. Shout out to my man Sam!

Thanks to all of you who have been reading along, I don’t always get the chance to reply to the comments I get, but I read them all and appreciate every one. If there is anything you’d like me to write about or stuff you’d like to know about the PCT let me know by commenting below or contacting me via my About page or on Instagram @KayMKieffer.

Campsite at mile 423 to Acton KOA (mile 444)

Los Angeles below and the desert above and in between we traverse a green ridge scarred from a recent burn. I’m growing tired of the desert which, perhaps I’m not supposed to say. Perhaps I’d have a more popular blog if everything was endless positivity and mindless cheer, but that bores me more than the desert does on this warm day. Perhaps you, dear reader, would rather I bestow pages of nature porn for your consideration. And yet perhaps, definitely, I’m not that person, and I’m not sorry either.

By the time we reach the Mill Creek Ranger Station we’ve been descending for miles, with another eight to go. And if we can make it by 5pm there is ice cream at the KOA. Keith wants to push for it, I do not. To rouse myself into the proper mood there is only one album that will suffice: Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky. A classical composition that describes a trip through a gallery, as the name suggests. It’s a composition that I’ve loved since Keith and I saw the penultimate performance from the LA philharmonic. At once lilting and powerful, a whimsical circus of music that would make for a brilliant Fantasia sequel. Written by a man who lived a life that can euphemistically be described as disheveled – which is to say he was an alcoholic and a glutton who resented the establishment and died young. But a genius, undeniably a genius.

The music juxtaposed against a knee jarring descent takes on a life of it’s own. Marching brass, muted trumpet follow lines of mud green plants, their leaves small in this arid environment in an effort to preserve water show more bark than in proper. The hills are green and yet not. A stray oboe – Tuleries – and a burst of yellow flowers, violently bright with the saturation cranked up too high. Tumbling brutal cellos paired with dancing piano – the shock white granite that gives way to the dark black soil of burned manzanita. Further evidence that this land relies on and is grown from fire. And always with the familiar refrain of the Promenade, taking us around and around in the special, occasionally maddening, consistently circuitous way that the PCT inches it’s way north.

Campsite at mile 404 to campsite at mile 423

I sometimes worry that I won’t remember my own life, that I’ll look back from old age and see only vague shapes and darkness. I worry that all these years will have been wasted on someone who struggles to find presence. Perhaps this is a result of having an over active brain of sorts. One that’s usually thinking about one or more things while my body navigates through the world with relative autonomy. Am I ever truly paying attention? What does that feel like? But then, conversely, what else am I doing while I walk for hours, uninterrupted by consumable media and distraction? Maybe this absence of input is why I feel most myself when hiking long distances through the mountains. There is nothing but the wild to draw my attention, and more importantly, nobody for whom I need to perform. It’s a rare thing to simply be without feeling the eyes of others. To simply look without being sold or told or influenced.

For example, today I saw a black lizard. Only this time, for the first time, I noticed that it wasn’t simply black, but flecked with iridescent green and blue. I have walked hundreds of miles and seen nearly as many of these lizards and yet only today did I notice their lovely colors. This is why I want to be out here. I want to look at everything, see it change around me slowly, by degrees. Nothing is quick when observation is dictated by walking pace. Time and scale feel not only immeasurable, but also remarkable. That any one thing could come to exist in a world as diverse and vast as our own.

How special I must be then. That of all the star dust in all the universe there came to be a solar system capable of producing a single marvelous planet on which all sorts of beautiful life exists, and from that massive spinning ball of life I managed to spring forth with sentience and a body – all of which aligned to have me standing on a hillside a cool breeze dancing over my skin. Alive, undeniably alive and able to see it all. It’s a thing of such improbability that I can only observe it in small doses. Like tonight, I can see it tonight.

From our campsite the mountains roll away in ever darkening lines, some porcupined with trees, others smooth rock. The airborne dust which muted everything during the day now provides gentle gradation when paired with the setting sun. Below and far away the lights of the inland empire blink into existence. Above and further away airplanes bound for LAX leave their fluffy trails in the sky, lit pink and orange, their altitude buying them some last rays of sunlight. I look at the scene for a long time, reluctant to pull closed the tent door. Like dropping the curtain during the last act of a play, I don’t want to miss anything.

Finally finally the last of the warm colors leave the sky, replaced by the cool blue of the moon casting it’s ghostly shadows over the dark land. I crawl into our tent, this little bubble of warmth and down. The scene has ended for us daytime creatures and we must exit the stage for the unseen nightly dramas of the bats and coyotes. Though over, I am glad to have been a part of it.