Blistered Kind Of Love (18 page)

At this point in the story Jeff broke in. He had been out with the guys, having a good time, but as the night wore on he became awash in drunken regret. He missed his wife terribly, so he convinced a buddy to drive him home. He arrived at his front door to find the house in total lock-down. He
tried the doors, he tried the windows, he rang the doorbell, and he banged with his fists. Meanwhile, Donna, lying in supine paralysis, was afraid that the hiker riffraff were attempting to break in. Jeff finally gave up, assuming that Donna was pissed at him for returning home drunk and resigned himself to a night of punishment on the guesthouse couch. He stumbled in without flipping on the lights, and was about to lie down when he noticed a figure in the darkness.

“What the. . . . Who the
hell
are you?” he exclaimed.

An equally startled voice replied, “What! Who the
hell
are you?”

Eventually this real-life version of a
Three's Company
episode got straightened out, and everyone shared laughs over omelets the next morning. And so was born a tradition of hospitality at Hiker's Haven. “All we ask in return is that you write in our scrapbook,” concluded Donna.

We'd only planned to stay at Donna's for two days, but the comforts created powerful inertia. Plus there were errands to run, most importantly an excursion to the Sports Chalet in Rancho Santa Clarita to purchase a new stove. We found a propane-powered stove to replace our broken, battered, and utterly useless one. Back at Donna's, Angela tested our new stove while I played cards and drank beer with Casey, Toby, and two newcomers, Fish and Ryan, from Tampa, Florida. Fish, a furry, barrel-chested veteran of the AT, was full of stories and tidbits of trail wisdom. He worked as a computer salesman for eight months of the year and then took off summers to hike. He struck me as an excellent salesman, engaging and jovial. Ryan was a hiking novice whom Fish had “sold” on the idea of a PCT thru-hike. At home he was a carpenter, one with a strong dislike of electricians—an exposed wire on the job had nearly electrocuted him. And while Ryan stubbornly refused to wear a “Saufley Electric” tee shirt, in all other respects he seemed to be a mellow guy with a clear determination to keep up with Fish. Like Casey, Toby, and me, Fish and Ryan relished a good beer or two with their re-supply stops, and thus it wasn't difficult for us to waste away the afternoon in Donna's backyard.

Our card game ended when Fish excused himself to address a burgeoning project. Daris (Pansy Ass) was a twentyish Canadian solo-hiker. As one of
just a handful of single women on the trail, she received plenty of attention and enjoyed every minute of it. With dark, flouncy hair and a pleasantly round face, she was attractive in a crunchy sort of way. This made her even more of a rare commodity. Besides Pansy Ass and my own Chigger, I hadn't noticed many other attractive women hikers. Not surprising, I suppose, since dirt, blisters, and sunburns aren't typically associated with beauty.

Fish had been hiking long enough to know a good catch when he saw one and was laying the groundwork for another successful sale. Personally, I couldn't believe he had the energy to try. My sex drive had been jammed in neutral for the good part of the last several weeks. Angela and I had made up after our Vasquez Rocks blowout, but my libido continued to be beaten down by grime and fatigue. The first night at Donna's we'd vowed to be more receptive to each other's physical and emotional needs, but at this point in our trip regular sex was not one of them.

On June 5, after three luxurious days, we reluctantly left Hiker's Haven. Actually, it was I who was reluctant; Angela was rejuvenated and feeling the itinerant itch. I felt ill—feverish, weak, and queasy. But Chris and Stacey were long gone, Casey and Toby had left the night before, and we didn't want to break the record for the longest stay at the Haven (apparently over a week). Donna dropped us off at the northern edge of town and we resumed our chaparral-dominated trek, now through Mint Canyon. It wasn't long before we encountered Casey. He was in the middle of the trail, kneeling on his waffle pad with gear scattered around him, stuffing his sleeping bag. His blond hair was an eddy of misdirected waves and his face was glazed.

“Good morning!” chirped Angela.

“Rotten morning,” Casey replied. “Never should have left Donna's. Now I gotta go catch Gimpy.” Toby had been nursing a sore knee since Idyllwild and had acquired yet another trail name.

“Good thing you got a head start last night.” I couldn't resist.

“Morning is not my time.”

We continued on, leaving Casey on schedule for a nine o'clock departure, or, as he said, “a right-on-time departure.” As we started a several mile climb to Sierra Pelona Ridge, my nausea increased and my hip belt seemed to tighten its grip on my midsection. As we approached the ridge, Crazy Legs stormed up on us from behind. We hiked together for a while and Casey described his thru-hiking inspiration; Brad Pitt's portrayal of Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer in
Seven Years in Tibet
. With yellowish scruff sprouting on his face, Casey looked somewhat like the unshaven Pitt in the movie. Later, I watched the film for a second time and was struck by a line from a letter Harrer wrote to his son. In Tibet, Harrer said, “People believe that if they walk long distances to holy places it purifies the bad deeds they've committed. They believe that the more difficult the journey, the greater the depth of purification.” Perhaps this line captured a quiet agenda for not only Casey but all of us aspiring thru-hikers. Of course, Casey would never have admitted that thru-hiking could have such a philosophical purpose; he was too much of a joker. Instead, he probably would've morphed the quote into something like, “I believe that the more difficult the journey, the greater the required depth of intoxication.”

At the gusty exposed ridge of Sierra Pelona, I started to experience some gusts of my own. My stomach was perfectly executing the quadruple lutz over and over again. Swallowing some pride, I told Casey to move on ahead and begged Angela for a break. She sat, guidebook in hand, and read, “From here we have a view south to the Vasquez Rocks and east to Mount Gleason, Williamson, and Baden-Powell.” All I wanted was a view of the ground. I tried to rally myself for the descent, but a quarter of a mile in, I was figuratively out of gas while literally full of it. We laid our space blanket underneath the shade of a manzanita and I collapsed in a heap of fatigue and bloating. Angela wasn't sure what to do. Most of the time I was the one pushing us along; now the roles were reversed. She seemed very concerned, and I loved her for that. Feebly, I told her to go ahead. She looked at me, incredulous, and informed me that there was no way she was going to leave me here in the center of the trail—to die.

Two hours later, I awoke to find her sitting cross-legged above me reading a section of
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
. I was feeling marginally
better, but the rapidly inflating gas bubble in my gastrointestinal tract was troubling my every movement and I was in need of some maintenance of my own. By this time my diagnosis was becoming clear. My mind flashed back to our hellish trek up Whitewater Canyon to cow-dung-riddled Whitewater Creek. There I was, lying in a foot and a half of water, gulping it by the mouthful. I was fully clothed, boots and all, and cool water was soothing my dusty throat while our PUR-Hiker water filter laid useless on the shore. Now it looked like I was paying the price for my indiscretion.

I rummaged through Big Red for the med kit and found what I hoped would be the remedy. I gulped down two Flagyl tablets and we moved on. I was pretty sure that I'd contracted giardiasis, and feared that the worst, and runniest, was still to come.

Giardia lamblia
is a teardrop-shaped unicellular creature that alternates between two forms, trophozoite and cyst. The trophozoite is the active side of this schizophrenic beast. It uses five flagella to locomote through the small intestine of its host and to attach to the bowel wall. Under the microscope, the two nuclei of trophozoite sit adjacent to each other and resemble two large eyes. Once these quick and crafty creatures have set up camp in the intestine, they begin to reproduce like crazy, splitting into two
Giardia lamblia
over and over again. The newborns are released back into the bowel and as they move through it, they undergo a dramatic personality change. The flagella retract and they develop an environmentally resistant exterior. Transformed into sedentary cysts, they passively follow the path of crap and water until they can find another small intestine to awaken in. As cysts,
Giardia
can survive for weeks to months in water of just about any temperature, patiently awaiting ingestion by an unsuspecting bovine, beaver, bear, or backpacker.
Giardia lamblia
doesn't seem to bother the other critters, but for some backpackers the result, one to three weeks later, is
boom
, and
toot
, and uh-oh, “beaver fever.” Fevers and fatigue are common early symptoms in those affected by giardiasis, although in some people there is no warning at all. Cramps, sulfuric burps, and explosive vomiting and diarrhea come on suddenly.

Apparently this was how Fish manifested his infection, sitting up in the tent in the middle of the night and barely peeking his head outside before a
disastrous two-pronged explosion. We heard the story the next day in Lake Hughes from poor Ryan, Fish's tent-mate. I would have liked to ask Fish about it himself, but he was too preoccupied in a hotel bathroom. I left a several-day supply of Flagyl with Ryan and we wished them the best.

A significant percentage of people—at least fifty percent—are immune to
Giardia
infection. That is, they may swallow the cysts and the trophozoites may stick to their bowel wall, but this process does not trigger any remarkable symptoms. It was possible that Angela was immune, or more likely just smarter about her drinking water choices. Anyway, she stayed healthy throughout my bout with giardiasis.

I somehow managed to drag myself behind Angela to the Green Valley Ranger Station, a nearly twenty-three-mile day. By the next morning, after a couple more doses of Flagyl, I was feeling more energetic. My appetite, however, had deserted me and I found myself making frequent trail detours with trowel in hand—so frequent that Angela started calling me a trail name that I had, at one time, found amusing.

“There goes my Trowel Boy . . . again,” she'd say.

“So funny it makes me runny,” I'd reply.

From the small community of Lake Hughes we detoured from the trail for a surreal twenty-mile road-walk across the Mojave Desert. This route, which cut off twenty-seven nearly waterless miles, had been well publicized at Hiker's Haven and most of the hikers staying there had opted for it. While the official trail skirted the edge of the Tehachapi Mountains to avoid private land, we went straight up the gut of the Mojave. Starting in the evening to avoid the worst of the heat, we took Lake View Road past Fairmont Reservoir to the L.A. Aqueduct, a concrete conduit that takes water 338 miles from the Sierra to the lawns of Los Angelites. After filling our water bottles at an open section of the aqueduct, we dropped into the valley of the Mojave, weaving our way through a scorched landscape to 170th Street. We trudged along this unlit road in the darkness, occasionally taking refuge on the shoulder as a lone pair of headlights sped by. Finally, at about one in the morning, we pitched camp just feet from the road. I popped two Imodium tablets and hoped that I would last through the night.

When I awoke and peeked outside the tent, I was startled by the beauty of the desert morning. It was refreshingly cool, and long shadows and Joshua tree silhouettes accentuated the starkness of the landscape. These “trees,” with their contorted, scaly trunks and yucca spike flowers, jabbed up and out of the surrounding sand, brush, and tumbleweeds. Joshua trees, named as such by the Mormons because they conjured up images of Joshua pointing toward the Promised Land, are the aesthetically dominating flora of the Mojave Desert. But as we abandoned the road in favor of the nearly dry bed of Cottonwood Creek, I found that there was much more to appreciate. Spring wildflowers dotted our path and lizards, antelope ground squirrels, and jack-rabbits scurried and bounded. Three pristine snow owls were spooked by our approach and lifted off from a cottonwood tree, soaring up canyon.

At the bridge over Cottonwood Creek we were reunited with some familiar sights—the PCT, the L.A. Aqueduct, and the boys from Seattle. Over a short break, I tossed a Nerf football with Casey and Toby while they peppered me with medical questions. Toby asked about proper rattlesnake bite care, the utility of the Sawyer extractor, and the type and number of antibiotics I was carrying. Casey just wanted to know if I could write him a prescription for Percocet (a potent painkiller).

We also spoke of boredom on the trail. “Do you remember Dunbar, from
Catch-22
?” asked Catch-23. “His sole goal in life was to cultivate boredom, so that his life would seem longer. He didn't want to do anything interesting or exciting, otherwise life would go by too quickly.”