Blistered Kind Of Love (3 page)

“Dude,” I thought to myself, “you can do this . . . just throw down a strong
cojones
elixir and scamper right up to the peak of K2. Or kayak your lazy ass down the 2,750-mile Mekong River in China. Or get your manliness in gear with a little help from man's best friend by dog-sledding 150 miles to the North Pole.”

I pondered these options one by one. I'd recently read
Into Thin Air
, by Jon Krakauer, and a quick review of the story convinced me that I wanted no part of a 29,000-foot peak—especially not one described as “a mountaineer's mountain . . . high, technical, mean.” And while I'd done some kayaking in the past, I recalled that it hadn't taken much more than a portly dragonfly to tip over my kayak. This sort of boating résumé didn't exactly qualify me to be the first ever to conquer the Mekong “from source to sea.” How about dog-sledding? I sure did like dogs—but I didn't like the idea of minus twenty degree temperatures and a landscape so glaringly white that I couldn't remove my glacier goggles.

There was one choice, however, that maybe wasn't so impossible: hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. That might be feasible for a mere mortal. It sounded easy enough—strap on a backpack and put one foot in front of the other. After all, it was just walking.

A whole lot of walking; 2,655 miles of it, in fact. Some quick math indicated that this path to validating my Y chromosome would require hiking twenty miles a day for five months over some of the most isolated wilderness in the U.S. That sounded like a trip better suited to a descendant of Daniel Boone than someone actively invested in the amenities of modern life. Five months on the trail would require many sacrifices—twenty weeks without Direct TV, web surfing, or automated coffee makers. One hundred and fifty nights and none of them spent on the couch with chips, beer, and a ballgame. Over four hundred dried, dehydrated, and downright dour meals. Quite daunting, really.

At least I had one thing going for me—I'd been raised in the 1970s by parents who still believed that they were living in the 1960s. This gave me three distinct advantages over my peers: a wardrobe rich with tie-dye; a “family” van with a bed built in the back (I'm told I was conceived on this bed); and frequent opportunities to commune with nature. When my brother Chris and I were still at an early age, my parents would pack us into our earth-toned 1971 Dodge for weekend excursions. These trips often took us down Highway 1 to Big Sur, where my parents had bought ten acres of undeveloped land from an LSD-entranced local for $100 an acre and built a small
cabin overlooking the Pacific Ocean. There, Chris and I spent our days scrambling in and out of steep wooded valleys and along a creek that teased its way through the roots of oaks and redwoods. Eating dinner on the pint-size cabin's deck, we'd watch the ocean slowly suck the sun out of the sky. When the sun had set and the moon started to rise, my parents would hike down the hill to their swinging bed, which creaked below twisted oaks. Back up on the deck and snug in our sleeping bags, Chris and I would slowly drift off to sleep under star-speckled skies.

Several months after first reading about the Pacific Crest Trail, I could barely recall my initial “I'll prove I'm a man, you puny magazine writer” response. But thoughts of the trail still lurked in my subconscious, occasionally bursting forth. Then I read Bill Bryson's story, chronicled in his popular book,
A Walk in the Woods
. Similarly drawn to a long-distance hike, Bryson attempted to tackle the Appalachian Trail (AT), which stretches 2,100 miles, from Georgia to Maine. To do this, he had to overcome numerous obstacles, including a complete ignorance of backpacking and a large, flabby behind.

As unprepared as Bryson was to thru-hike (a term used to describe an end-to-end hike of a long-distance trail such as the AT), the hiking partner he recruited was more so. Steven Katz, referred to simply as Katz, was a middle-aged burnout whose years of partying like a nineteen-year-old had left him soft and directionless. Within hours of starting the AT at its southern terminus, in Springer, Georgia, Katz was wildly jettisoning provisions from his pack in a desperate attempt to keep up with Bill, who we can confidently presume was not setting any speed records. Bryson and Katz were unable to complete the Appalachian Trail–in fact, they covered less than half of it—but nevertheless their story was inspirational. If these goofballs could hike over 870 miles, then I was pretty sure I could, too. Additionally, Bryson's account of the continuing invasion of the East Coast wilderness by strip malls and theme restaurants was a painful reminder that I shouldn't assume that our
nation's backwoods would always be there for my enjoyment. Better to see them before they disappeared.

The inspiration was there, but unfortunately there were still quite a few barricades between the Pacific Crest Trail and me. My active enrollment in medical school and relative lack of financial resources were among these, but were trivial compared to the question of who would hike with me. I certainly had friends who would have loved to share my beef jerky and fig bars, but the problem was that they were all too busy with career-building nonsense. And there was no way in hell I was going to conquer 2,655 miles of desolate, mountainous, rattlesnake-infested wilderness on my own. There I'd be on the first night, securely wrapped in a minus ten degree rated sleeping bag with a knife protectively tucked under my parka, then along might come a gust of wind to rustle my tent and conjure up images of the mysterious finger-chopping witch in
The Blair Witch Project
. Moments later I'd be racing madly through the desert, stabbing at darkness. No, hiking alone wasn't a very good idea.

I am pretty sure that my dream of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail would have remained just that if I hadn't started dating Angela. For the first time in my life I'd met someone with whom I wasn't afraid to make a commitment. Sure, hiking the PCT was only a five-month commitment, but it felt like much more. Five months together in the wild would greatly, and perhaps unnecessarily, challenge our relationship. I was prepared to accept the risk. Was Angela?

Angela wasn't very outdoorsy. She grew up in the New York City suburbs, and her parents hadn't owned a van with a built-in bed or sponsored activities like tie-dye or communion with nature. In fact, given her upbringing, I got the sense that she considered a run in our local city park a hard-core backcountry experience. But what she lacked in practical experience she made up for in spunk. From the moment we found William Gray's book in my boyhood cabin, the idea of a trek mobilized her infectious energy and
adventurous spirit. I was amazed at her voracious appetite for long-distance hiking books, and was shocked when I discovered that she'd begun to save money for the trip.

At first I thought her interest was based primarily on the romantic notion of escaping the rigidity of her life. But as the months went by and we moved beyond the “honeymoon” phase of our relationship, talk of a trail adventure persisted, as did Angela's hunger for a new set of technical texts on backpacking. Contrary to my fears, the more Angela learned about my quirks and the inconveniences of living in the outdoors, the more committed she became.

Later, I was inspired by the strength she displayed in handling her parents' disapproval. Rationally, I didn't blame her parents for withholding support; they hadn't met me, and as far as they knew I could be as wacky and irresponsible as a high school dropout following the Grateful Dead. Emotionally, I harbored some resentment, primarily on Angela's behalf, but also because the conflict made everything else more complicated. There was a bright side, though: As I watched Angela struggle with conflicting loyalties and emotions, my own concerns about school, money, and finger-chopping witches became less overwhelming. Things would work themselves out. For better or worse, we were going to do this.

I'D TRIED ALL THE LOCAL
supermarkets and health food stores, but none were selling corn elbows or corn spaghetti. According to Ray Jardine, long-distance hiking guru and author of
The Pacific Crest Trail Hiker's Handbook
, corn pasta is the ultimate power food. Jardine and his wife, Jenny, have hiked the Pacific Crest Trail three times and once held the record for the fastest complete hike: 2,655 miles in three months and four days. With this sort of résumé, I wasn't about to doubt their dinner choices, a fact that resulted in me spending many futile hours searching for corn pasta.

Of all the things we had to worry about while planning a five month hike, organizing approximately 1,260 trail breakfasts, snacks, lunches, and dinners was—while intimidating—at least something I could control.

During the eight months prior to our departure, it seemed that most of our weekends were spent planning and shopping. “What do you want for breakfast during week two? Energy bars or Pop Tarts?” I asked Duffy on one of the many Saturdays when I found myself wheeling our huge shopping cart down the aisles of our local bulk food club, which sold three-gallon jars of mayonnaise, four-case packs of V8 juice, and big-screen TV-size boxes of Pop Tarts.

Monday to Friday, I worked as a writer for an advertising agency in Philadelphia. I'd worked there for nearly four years and really liked it. I also enjoyed my little single-girl's apartment and stopping at the corner café every morning for a cup of coffee. Life was orderly and predictable. But while iced
lattes and an occasional icy beer were nice, my new shiny green ice axe was so much more exciting.

An ice axe is a lightweight mountaineering tool shaped like a conventional axe but with several key differences, including a point at the end of its shaft called a “spike,” and, at its head, a long serrated blade called the “pick” and a blunt, spoon-shaped “adze.” Due to the snowy and icy conditions often encountered by hikers in several mountain ranges along the Pacific Crest Trail, ice axes are considered to be mandatory equipment. This is especially true in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, where the PCT climbs a series of difficult mountain passes ranging from 10,000 to 13,200 feet above sea level. Even into late summer, Muir, Mather, Forester, and other passes can be covered in knee-deep snow and glassy ice—meaning we'd have to keep our axes in hand and, if we slipped, be ready to perform ice axe self-arrest.