Day 5 mile 77.3   

My feet moved swiftly and I preferred to keep it that way when I noticed an older gentleman leaning against a pole at the upcoming intersection.   Instinctively, I recoiled at the idea of a forced, lame ass, “hi how ya doing, good how about you bullshit.”  But there was no avoiding him.  

“hey how's it going” 

“good how bout you”

“Ah you know, just enjoying another beautiful day, you staying cool out there?”

“haha, trying to, real scorcher out there today”

“well, your in luck, Julian is a small town just down the road, you’ll be able to get out of the sun and fill you belly. You going”

“oh yea?”

“Yea, there’s a place called Carmen’s.  Has a banner hanging on her porch, says: “Carmen loves PCT hikers! Free hugs, beer, laundry, and sleep.  Also there's Mom’s Pie, they give y’all hikers a free slice if you show them your permit” he paused, then answered my unasked question. 

 “yea i do this every year, stand out here, listen to the many reasons one is hiking, help where i can.  No, but really, you guys should take the little detour to Julia.   It’s easy to hitch in. Just head to that road, stick out your thumb, folks around here know what time of year it is. They’ll get you there.”

I listened to the Julian spiel again once Melo arrived, wondering how many times this guy has delivered it and how many hikers had visited Juilian because of him.  It took no more than three minutes of thumbing before a truck pulled over.

“Julian”?

In the bed of the truck, I felt the vibrations of the old Ford diesel intensify as it gained speed.  I poked my head out from behind the back window, quickly snagged my hat before the wind claimed it, relishing in the few moments of cool relief before the wind dried all the sweat from my forehead.  I looked at Melo and pretended not to be excited, but inside I was exhilarated.  I was finally that gu riding in the back of a random truck bed, as the rigid metal imposed itself into my back, intensifying with each bump, my left arm hanging over the edge and right palm pressed hard against the granules of sand of the floor as it tried to stabilize my torso against the curves and bumps of the road.  Legs covered in a thin layer of dust.  Uncomfortably comfortable.  My long blonde hair trembled as if orgasming in the wind.  I looked again at Melo but this time cracked a smile.  The truck stopped in front of Carmen’s.  Sure enough, a large banner with the words "Carmen loves PCT hikers! Free hugs, beer, laundry, and sleep” draped across the front of the building.    

We opened the door and climbed a staircase to a dining room swarming with hikers, the air buzzing with the sound of many people talking at once.  We navigated through the maze of people, catching a few glances that said, “you've made it, welcome”, invoking a feeling similar to being a freshman on the first day of highschool.  

Outside, backpacks leaned against the railing of the deck like soldiers at ease.  A small crowd surrounded a man sitting on a chair with his pants rolled up to his knees, a pair of swollen and bloody feet submerged in a tub of steaming water.  Seeing his feet made my feet tingle.  I locked eyes with him for a long moment, he had the eyes of a lost toddler.  I gave him a sympathetic, pitiful look that did nothing to ease his pain.

  A doctor, also hiking the trail, was tending to him and told me his infected feet were soaking in water and epsom salt, “he’s going to have to take some time for his feet to heal before he continues,'' doc bluntly stated, almost with a hint of warning. “But if you haven't got a burrito yet, find the kitchen. Carmen will wrap one up for you.  This is her place, every year she lets us hikers come and take over.  She doesn't even charge for the burritos!”  He finished.

After again making our way through the swarm of bodies, we found the kitchen and received a warm smile from Carmen herself.  She was standing alone behind the flat iron grill, wrapping burritos and ladling various salsas into to-go cups.  

“Would you handsome boys like beef or chicken or are you vegetarian?”  Carmen asked, her eyes twinkling with love and a side of mischief.  

Blushing, i asked for beef.

“Go and find yourself a table and i'll bring ‘em on out” she finished with a wink. 

We bumped our way to two empty chairs. The room swelled with bodies reminded me of an ant colony—fifty people crammed into a space meant for twenty-five. I sat back and soaked in the chaos.  Beside us, a Brit was boring a Central American woman to death with endless details about his gear—ounces, brands, field experience.  She did nothing to hide her “i couldn’t fucking care less” look on her face, i wondered why she just didnt get up and leave the poor bastard.  He could have been the boy scouts of america president for the way he was talking.  

New hikers trickled in from the stairwell, eyes wide with wonder and disbelief at the madness before them.  Attempting to make their way through the crowd to the porch, massive backpacks bumping into nearly everyone on the way.  Nobody who got bumped seemed to even care, in fact they almost seemed happy to have gotten bumped, reacting with a cheerful hello or nod.  Carmen materialized before us and set down our massive burritos with a side of homemade salsa.  She smiled and vanished again in the swarm of people.

Through the grapevine, we heard that after burritos, people usually made their way over to Mom’s Pie, a cozy cabin just a few minutes down the street where a permit earned you a free slice.  We happily took our free slice and brought it to a heavy wooden table fit for Paul Bunyan as well as his babe, Ox.  The pie lay in the middle of a white plate, a sleeping princess in a king sized bed. 

Fit for a photographer.  

Give me color! 

Give me tang!  

Give me tease!  

The pie gave itself.

No choice other than to pie fully.  

The pie pied.

I forked the pie into my mouth and that was the life of Pie.

Day 6 mile 109. 

By late afternoon, we reached the Warner Springs Community Resource Center, an otherwise quiet like building that now pulsed with the peculiar energy of a PCT outpost.  A utilitarian interior, cold linoleum flooring, long rectangular tables and folding metal chairs yet humming like a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max watering hole.  Indistinct chatter floated like static electricity in the air and people once again scurrying around like ants in a colony.  The folks in here were dirty, bedraggled and had in their eyes a raw and frenzied look.  People who just one hundred miles ago were civilians experiencing the luxuries of the 21st century.  Now were now living out of a backpack, walking 6-12 hours a day.  Sleeping on the ground, sitting on the ground, eating on the ground and shitting on the ground.          

Each electrical receptacle was plugged with power strips and from those power strips wires flourished like pubic hair.  People huddled around the outlets like homeless folk surrounding an oil drum fire in the dead of winter.  Lining one wall were long rectangular tables topped with what looked like an REI yard sale, box after box of donated gear. One contained food, another various articles of dirty clothing, a box of shoes and sandals, another box filled with miscellaneous things like hiking poles, sun hats, bandaids and antiseptic.  Boxes with Batteries, headphones, bars of soap, water bottles and all sorts of dehydrated food.  These boxes were the legendary “Hiker Boxes” a chaos of castoffs, free for the taking.  Dumpster diving PCT edition.  

Outside, a porch featured a large commercial sink, orange five-gallon buckets, and sagging clotheslines. A few showers—barely bigger than outhouses—lined the building.  Curtains opened like stage props; revealing and concealing semi-nude hikers with soggy hair and dusty calves.  Tents were scattered across the patchy grass in the fenced yard, pitched sporadically beneath the wide limbs of a massive old tree.  Small groups lounged about eating, swapping stories, and showing off the innards of their USPS flat-rate resupply boxes, packed by the hiker themself and sent by a trusted friend to strategic points on the trail where food options were scarce.   Warner Springs, for instance, offered little beyond a gas station and a golf course restaurant. If you arrived late, your only meal for the next weeks being bags of parboiled rice and Slim Jims.   

 One group sat cross-legged on the grass, unveiling their boxes like kids at show-and-tell.  We joined a cluster of trail veterans that had already completed the 2,200 mile of the Appalachian Trail and the 3,100 miles of the Continental Divide Trail.  One guy tracked himself via GPS and kept a live feed of his whereabouts for people to follow him on the internet.  Gear talk flowed freely of specs, sleeping pad R-values down insulation and how many ounces it weighed. I asked a wiry hiker where his backpack was. He glanced at me, bemused, at the tiny sack on his back. “This is it,” he said. Six pounds base weight. No tent, just a square of Tyvek. No stove—he cold-soaked rice or oats as he walked. His down quilt doubled as his jacket.  These people were pros, averaging around 30 miles a day yet still having the energy to chase one another with their sleeping bags fluttering behind them like a cape.  I am back in high school at recess. 

I pitched my tent in what little space there was and surrendered to the fact there was to be no escape were a chainsaw of a snorer to begin sawing air come 2am.  I crawled inside and read through an earlier journal entry 

“13:05 lunchtime, limped and sweat my nuts off for 6 hours already.  I cant believe how bad my feet hurt, the pain sends shivers up my spine, there is no relief, as soon as one foot leaves the ground the other steps down, the pain in inescapable.  The inside of my shoes are a swampy mess, so slimy with dust and sweat that my feet slide around and it feels like i grew an extra layer of skin.   At night my feet throb with the beat of my heart, sending shock waves through the entirety of my foot. Not sure if i can even continue, achilles tendon feels clamped in a rusty vise grip, feels like the tendon could be cinched in half at any moment.  Shoulders feel like they are being ripped from their sockets with each step.  The heat is relentless, my shirt is soaking wet but face is dry because as soon as the sweat leaks from my face it evaporates.  I can literally smell my skin burning and it smells like burnt hair, but i have no sunburn.”

The journal entry was stopped there as i remembered overhearing some old lady say how she wouldn't even hike if it weren't for the hip strap on her backpack.  I mulled that over and as we departed for the afternoon session, I threw on my fat green turd of a backpack, looked at my unbuckled hip belt, buckled it, cinching it tight above my hip bones and praise Jesus.  I nearly started crying it had made such a difference.  Left me wondering why no one had asked me “hey! are you dumb or tough?” or  “Why are you not using your hip belt”?  

A silvery glint caught my eye, my metal,15.2 ounce leatherman named “The Surge”.  I flipped out the serrated bladed and in a moment of clarity of madness, carved U-shaped chunks out of heels of my shoes. Whether they would stay on my feet or not was food for tomorrow.  I seeked vengeance on those bastards and demanded retribution.   Then, like a feigning drug addict looking about the coffee table for any scraps, I looked at the feet i had been limping around like a famished dog in the slums of india for the last couple days.  Both pinky toes had swelled and blistered so much that they had pushed their nails right off, exposing the skin that otherwise lives under ones toe.  

I pushed my finger into one of the big blisters, watching the sides balloon out and then I pinched the thin membrane in between my thumb and finger and yanked.  Clear slime oozed from where I had pulled and my body tingled slightly, tears formed in my eyes from somewhere deep inside of me and I even giggled a bit.  The relief was on the verge of orgasmic.  I ripped open the remaining blisters and released my weight into the ground, relishing the small victories of life.