Blistered Kind Of Love (30 page)

Later that afternoon, after much dry and dusty hiking, we arrived in Burney and checked into the Charm Motel. It was an ironic name, considering that Burney itself lacks any recognizable charm. Basically, it's a strip-mall town along Highway 299. After settling in and checking bus schedules, we bummed a hitchhike the eight miles to Burney Falls State Park to retrieve our re-supply package.

Throughout our trip we seemed to get a disproportionate number of rides from people who were intoxicated in one way or another. We'd already risked our lives with Tim, the psychedelic in Julian, as well as the Twizzler-eating drunk girl in Idyllwild, and now we rolled the dice with a tipsy cowboy and his front-cab booze-mobile. I don't know whether our experience speaks more to our desperation to find a ride, or the fact that someone needs to be majorly buzzed to think that picking up two dirty, scraggly hikers is a good idea. Either way, this cowboy wasn't shy about his drinking. We'd been in the car all of three minutes before he pulled over to a mini-mart to grab a six-pack of Mike's Hard Lemonade for his thirteen-year-old son and a twelve-pack of Bud for himself. Thankfully, and graciously, they waited until after dropping us off at Burney Falls to resume their father–son bonding. In retrospect, I probably should have called the police on this guy the second we reached
Burney Falls, but we were appreciative of the ride, and given what we'd seen of Burney, for all we knew he could
be
the police. So instead, we stopped briefly to admire the 129-foot Burney waterfall cascading over moss and rock into a large blue-green pool and then proceeded to the camp store.

Seated on wooden picnic benches outside the store, surrounded by a forest of beer bottles, were Casey and Toby, Catch-23 and ol' Crazy Legs. Toby was sporting a long, thick beard that nearly engulfed his face. His hair was long and shaggy. Casey had thinned out considerably; his cheekbones were now prominent, enhancing the intensity of his green eyes. Only his calves, meaty as ever, had been unaffected by generalized trail thinning.

“Holy shit,” said Casey when he saw us. “Where did you guys come from? Duffy, man, you are one skinny dude.”

“I was just thinking the same about you.”

“I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY
, all I know is that the next few months are going to change my life.” These words had been scratched with a hurried hand in the trail register at the Mexican border. I can't remember what I wrote in that first register (I'd been hurried, too), but that unknown hiker's entry remained with me as if imprinted on the insides of my eyelids, so that sometimes, when I laid down at night, it was the last thing I saw before drifting off into exhausted slumber.

My life
was
changed. I was changed, although I couldn't quite figure out how or when it had happened—or even exactly what it was that had happened. Perhaps I walked a little taller, and a little stronger. Thru-hiking hadn't turned me into an über-athlete or anything, but like my feet, I was becoming tougher. I think I was also gaining a better perspective on my life, something fairly typical among long-distance hikers and anyone given nearly limitless time to ruminate.

I once read a newspaper article about thru-hikers in which a young man was quoted as saying, “Even if you are with your best friends on the trail, you are ultimately by yourself as you walk. Many hikers get homesick. But most grow into the mountain quiet, and as they walk, experience remarkable clarity, recognizing exactly what counts for them and what does not.”

A smoky haze blurred the neon lights. Fallingwater, Drip, Crazy Legs, Catch-23, Duffy, and I were bowling in Burney. In between turns, Fallingwater amused himself by picking out the spelling mistakes on the bowling alley's menu while Drip munched on “Bufalo” wings. Duffy grinned like an imp. The simple pleasure of playing a game seemed to bring out the children in all of us and we stayed as late as the establishment would allow, sharing trail stories and wondering what lay ahead. Interestingly, we never talked much about our “real” lives but rather left them to hover in the background like ghosts. Maybe this was because we didn't want to think about going back, or maybe it was because we were in the process of reinventing ourselves, and real life would never be the same anyway. Most likely, though, it was because our trail lives were so immediate. Our feet and the earth beneath them—these things bound us together and seemed so much more important than the identities we'd left behind.

I think this is part of the reason that long-distance hikers adopt trail names. So far from home, first and last names and the lives attached to them can seem distant and irrelevant. The trail is an equalizer such that it doesn't matter if someone is a minister or a stockbroker, a teacher, an engineer, or an artist. More important is your hiking style (fast, slow, gimpy, or agile), your gear (heavy or light, homemade or brand name), your sense of humor, your generosity of spirit, and identifying physical characteristics. Names like Cantaloupe (for the girl who ate a lot of them), Hazmat (for the guy whose rain suit made him look like he worked for the Department of Transportation's Office of Hazardous Materials Safety), Casino (who won big at roulette in South Lake Tahoe), Charity (for her effort to raise money for one), the Abominably Slow Man (which speaks for itself), and of course Crazy Legs, helped create community and showed a recognition of the fact that not only were our bodies in transit but so also were our souls.

“Hey Lodgepole, check out Drip's nasty gutter ball.” Crazy Legs was shimmying in his bowling shoes as he laughed and pointed.

“Foxtail, if you finish those wings, you best be moving your tail to get some more.” Duffy eyed the near empty basket of chicken in front of me.

Initially, Duffy and I had been uncomfortable with adopting trail names. In our minds, trail names were reserved for legitimate long-distance hikers. It took us close to a thousand miles to feel as if we might be worthy of them. Near Reds Meadow, we'd stumbled onto an “interpretive” side trail, where various trees were identified with placards. Duffy kneeled so I could take his picture with a fine lodgepole specimen, and as he did so a new trail name was born. It seemed appropriate—Duffy's parents had at one time planned on naming him “Big Tree,” and as our hike progressed he appeared to grow taller and leaner—more and more like a lodgepole pine. If Duffy was going to be a pine tree, I'd better be one, too; that way we could call ourselves “The Pines.” It would be fun to share a “last” name, sort of like playing house. I immediately knew which pine I wanted to be—the foxtail, because it's scrappy, living where no one would think it could. By becoming the Pines we tacitly accepted our trail life and the new identities that went along with it.

Crazy Legs and Catch-23 crashed on our motel room floor that night. The space was cramped and musky, the air scented with a mixture of earth, sweet and sour body odors, warm beer, and damp sleeping bags. In the morning we left the boys to the joys of television, doughnuts, and indoor plumbing as we headed to the supermarket parking lot to board a rural bus to Redding. It was approximately sixty miles to Redding; from there we'd catch a Greyhound bus to Sacramento, then another to San Francisco, and finally a plane to southern California for Tommy and Belinda's wedding.

Upon disembarking in Redding I had an epiphany: “This,” I thought, “is the hottest place on earth.” In retrospect, I was wrong. Forget earth; it's just not hot enough for an accurate comparison. Imagine a city on the planet Mercury instead. Temperatures in Redding during the summer months have been known to reach 115 to 118 degrees.

My sundress stuck to the skin on my back, which was dripping with sweat under the weight of my pack. Salty warm droplets ran down my arms. In the distance, the sidewalk shimmered. The air didn't move except to blow its scalding breath on my skin. We ducked into a bookstore for relief. The air conditioning was cranking but I continued to sweat.

After only ten minutes, I hated Redding. Everything about it depressed me—the blackened store fronts, empty streets, and dingy motels. Mostly I hated that it was my gateway back to the real world. It irked me that I was getting off the trail, and it irked me even more that I couldn't do it with complete satisfaction. I felt I was betraying my new self, my trail self, but I was going to do it anyway, because one of the things I'd decided was really important was friendship and being there for the people I cared about.

Poring over maps, calling bus companies, and jotting down timetables, Duffy and I made a plan. After the wedding in Pasadena, he'd return to the trail at Burney Falls and solo-hike for six days. I'd fly to Boston for Amie's wedding, playing the role of attentive bridesmaid. Then I'd fly back to San Francisco and take a Greyhound first to Redding and then Yreka. From Yreka, I'd take a rural bus to Etna, where we'd meet and get back on the trail. All told, I'd skip 180 miles of trail, a 6.8-percent hole in my 2,655-mile goal. Up until this point, Duffy and I had trekked 1,410 miles together, not hand in hand, but as a team. Now he'd be traveling without me, and in the end he would have hiked more of the PCT. I hated that idea. Suddenly I felt like a failure, and our trip wasn't even over yet. Could I still call myself a thru-hiker when this was all over? And what did it mean to be a
thru
-hiker, anyway?

In the long-distance hiking world, there are “purists,” and then there's everybody else. For a purist, a successful thru-hike is defined as a hike along any of the nation's long trails during which the hiker walks every step of the distance, unassisted and in a single season—no alternate routes, hitchhiking ahead, or Sherpas allowed. And while a pure thru-hiker is permitted to hitchhike into town, he or she must return to the same exact spot on the trail before resuming hiking. Duffy and I had joked many times about what the ultimate pure thru-hike might entail. What if you never, ever stepped off the PCT—always walked on it, ate on it, slept on it, and even pooped on it? Would that make you more of a thru-hiker?

When eighteen-year-old Eric Ryback set out on his own in 1970 to attempt the first PCT thru-hike, he scheduled just five re-supply stops at locations spaced 375 miles and twenty-two days apart. At the time, the Pacific
Crest Trail was more theoretical than tangible; for much of his trek Ryback relied on map, compass, and landmarks to help him stick to routes that existed only on paper. Soon after he completed his hike, Ryback was featured on the cover of
National Geographic
and credited with the first-ever PCT thru-hike—an accomplishment that helped the trail gain popularity and much-needed support. Still, purists (and others) discount his hike, asserting that he strayed off the trail and accepted rides for portions of it. The fact that there wasn't a physical trail for him to deviate from was apparently irrelevant. If a pioneer such as Ryback couldn't satisfy trail purists, I was pretty sure that we didn't stand a chance.

By purist standards, we were never, and never planned to be, thru-hikers. If an alternate route promised better scenery, precious water, or a chance to eat a cheeseburger, we were likely to take it. If we hitchhiked into the south end of a town, we might get back on the trail at the north end and miss several miles in between. But purism be damned, we still felt like thru-hikers. We were walking from Mexico to Canada. We slept on hard ground. We didn't shower for weeks at a time. We starved. We froze. We overheated. We limped. We even bled. And we called ourselves thru-hikers—well, aspiring thru-hikers.