Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail (10 page)

It’s the one decision you have to get right from the beginning, and I had gotten utterly neurotic beforehand about it. Yet, I still ended up screwing it up. I’m normally a 13 ½ so I had ordered Vasque Size 14 low cuts. But the minute I tried them on, they had felt snug. I checked the REI website, but 14 was the largest size they offered for Vasque shoes. Like many hikers, I thought REI was the center of the hiking universe. If they didn’t have size 15, then I assumed Vasque didn’t make Size 15 shoes. This would prove to be a grievous blunder.

I had wandered with my backpack all over the beach in Florida in that pair of size 14 shoes. One day I’d think they were big enough; the next day I’d change my mind. Not until the day before I left did I make a final decision to wear the Vasque Size 14’s.
Maybe they’ll stretch
had been the final tiebreaker.

Now here I was in the worst of the desert heat. The temperature in the sun was well over 100 degrees. But the ground surface temperature was probably in the neighborhood of 140 degrees. It was like a modified version of walking on coals, and turned hikers into kangaroos. But instead of my shoes stretching as I had hoped, it was my
feet.

It was becoming more and more clear that I had a serious problem. I was alternating between one and two pairs of socks, trying band-aids, mole skin, duct tape, elevating them on breaks, you name it. For good or for bad, I was even trying different ways of taking steps. But my feet honestly felt like
a furnace.
This was alarming. Hot and moist are the perfect breeding conditions for blisters.

Actually, all kinds of people were having foot problems. One girl picked up the name Blister Sister, and another guy was called Dead Man Walking due to the blisters ringing his feet.

“It’s knees that knock people off the AT,” hiking veteran Too Obtuse said. “But feet are what knock people off the PCT.” However, it wasn’t my
feet
that were the problem. They had held up fabulously on the AT. It had to be the
shoes.
And I sure as heck wasn’t going to find any size 15 trail shoes in any of these backwater trail towns.

I took a side trail to the tiny resort of Warner Springs, hoping for a miracle. I ran into several hikers, in an air-conditioned restaurant there. Afterwards, as several of us were limping through a parking lot, St. Rick noted, “Gosh, mates. We’re supposed to be walking to Canada, but people can barely make it through the bloody parking lot.”

Trout Lily and I headed out of Warner Springs in the late afternoon, hoping to make several miles before dark. After several miles, we came to the banks of Agua Caliente Creek.

“Looks like a perfect place to camp,” I said.

But Trout Lily was dubious. “I don’t know if I should keep goin’ or stay here,” she said.

“There’s a climb out of here,” I said. “You might get stuck on a ridge.”

“I haven’t done enough miles,” she muttered. For all her scintillating qualities, she seemed to be genuinely insecure. I left her alone and intentionally set up my tent well apart from hers.

By the Book
showed up at dark. As his trail name might suggest, he was one of these people who had delved into every imaginable minutiae of equipment and trail planning. One nice thing about having Trout Lily around was I knew he’d train his total attention on her, and I’d be spared a seminar on all these mind-numbing topics.

This was a phenomenon I’d see over and over along the trails. By the Book was a pudgy, non-descript, middle-aged man with ruddy cheeks and the least likely possible suitor (with the possible exception of me!) of Trout Lily. Yet he was on her like a metal to a magnet for the rest of the night until she finally pleaded fatigue and went to sleep. There’s something about the trail that demands the release of infatuation with members of the opposite sex, even when lust is out of the question. It was up to the precious few women out here to put up with it. Many, of course, played it to their advantage, and Trout Lily could do that with the best of ‘em. But sometimes it apparently just became too much for them.

The very next night, after a big group of males plus Trout Lily had hiked twenty miles and finally gotten to our intended campsite, Trout Lily simply announced, “I’m going on.” Everybody seemed to get the message, because nobody offered to join her. There wasn’t much of anywhere for her to camp, according to the map. Indeed, when she did finally camp her tent blew down several times during what turned out to be a miserable evening. But at least it got her the hell away from us!

The British have a core contradiction in their character. As an island nation they can be annoyingly insular. Yet that same island nation had once ruled over the greatest empire the world has ever seen. Centuries of this have made the British both competent in foreign affairs, as well as arrogant. They really do understand foreign cultures better than most Americans do. And it drives them crazy to have to perennially play second fiddle to us daft Yanks.

St. Rick was a classic Englishman in so many ways. As we walked along this Saturday afternoon, it seemed like he had hiked all over the globe. Because of his rock-solid confidence, he never hurried things. I stayed right on his heels listening to his colorful descriptions of his journeys.

“Why are you doing that?” Americans often ask, about a long hike I’m planning. That is not a question that a Brit, or a European for that matter, is likely to hear. Outdoor vacations are a much more integral and valued part of their life.

“It is a source of embarrassment to me,” St. Rick confided, “that as well as I’ve always been treated over here, the way my countrymen take so long to warm up toward Americans.”

“The core of the problem,” a British guy once confided in me, “is that we just can’t quite get over the idea that we’re smarter than you are.” I told St. Rick that story.

“We have stupid people too,” he said. “We just don’t put ‘em all over television talk shows and everywhere like you do here.”

Our discussion was now becoming too abstract. But I will stick with the thesis that if outdoor vacations (they can be quite economical—Rick was a social worker in London. On the Appalachian Trail I hiked extensively with a janitor from London named English Bob) became a greater part of American culture, we would begin to understand the world better. Better yet, the world could actually shed some of their macabre stereotypes of us. All but the most jingoistic chest-pounders would probably agree that might not be such a bad thing.

The spirited conversation with St. Rick and good miles we were making had me in high spirits.
Maybe I’ve hit a turning point.
But then we reached the turning off point to the Tule Canyon Campsite. By-the-Book was noticeably limping in the opposite direction with some other guy I hadn’t seen before.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’ve got a viral blister,” he reported. “I have to get off the trail. This gentleman is nice enough to show me a way out of here.”

It had to be a coincidence, but my feet had just started throbbing within a couple hundred yards of that. I limped down a hill to what turned out to be an unfortunate campsite. The water was running, but green-colored, and we were completely exposed to the wind. My high spirits of the afternoon flagged. Perhaps Trout Lily had known what she was doing getting the hell out of this campsite and hiking on. Speaking of hell, I was on the verge of my own PCT version of hell.

Chapter 11

Renee

“T
he lesson of history,” wrote historian, George Santayana, “is that people
don’t
learn the lessons of history.”

Adults are just like children in at least one respect. When we put off problems and kick the can down the road, it only gets worse. Much worse. Yet we keep doing it. Maybe it’s just the human condition. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, though. After all, how many times had been hiking along and suddenly a knee, shoulder, or foot would inexplicably begin to generate some pain. I might pop some Advil, take a break, whatever. Sometimes, it might even hurt for a day or two. But then, just as inexplicably, it would go away. That was what I had been hoping for here.

But it wasn’t happening. On Sunday, May 5, 2009, my feet pretty much were in sharp pain from the beginning. I had blisters on the outside heels of both feet, blisters on one of the toes, and the balls of both feet had a deep burning sensation. That feeling of my feet being inside a furnace (inside two pairs of wool socks and size 14 shoes) had returned. Up until today I had been able to find somewhere—either on the balls, the heels, even on the sides to plant my steps. Now though, this incredibly short-sighted strategy was flashing red alert. I was practically immobilized.

The full wrath of the sun was bearing down on us this day. Every half hour I would stop, take off my socks and shoes, lie down horizontally, and elevate my bare feet on my backpack.

Hikers passed by making various analytical remarks (“so high, so low”) about my condition. Finally, I would get up and apply triple-antibiotic ointment, tape them up, and gingerly shuffle off. Twenty or thirty minutes later I’d be laid back low again.

On one of these breaks, a south-bounder from Israel came by.

“Can you hitch from that road coming up?” I quickly asked.

“Yes,” he reported. “There’s a whole group feeding hikers and giving them rides into town.” With that news, I jumped up and frantically began trying to hike using all legs, and as little feet as possible. It slows you down greatly.

“Hector’s down there,” someone said, referring to the Blister Doctor.

Worried that the group might evaporate, I tried hurrying. But the downhills were especially excruciating. A big group was sitting under the tent watching me limp up pronouncedly. Meadow Mary and her entourage had a big pot of soup, refreshments, and cold beers. Normally, this would have been one of those magic moments that hikers periodically experience where everything is perfect.

Instead, dispensing with all pleasantries, I immediately asked, “Is Hector here?”

“He just left.”

“Damn,” I flung my hiking pole and backpack down, and lay down under the tent brooding.