Blistered Kind Of Love (16 page)

Carrying a book, a pipe, his guidebook section, his letters to Summer, a sleeping bag, and a homemade alcohol stove, Zach's sneaker-clad feet carried him northward quickly and easily. When he hiked, he went light and fast. But when he was off-trail, he could linger under a tree whittling a pipe all afternoon. He made it all look effortless—but still, I could tell that he wished he had someone to hike with. As evening approached, Zach strode off across the burning white sand, alone. I watched ripples of heat envelop him until he disappeared into the shimmering air.

“We should get going,” Duffy said, rousing me from my musings.

“What's your watch say?” I asked. We'd set it down in the shade to record the temperature.

“Hundred and eight . . . at six o'clock. Unbelievable.” Duffy stood up to put on his pack.

As the sun set, cooler temperatures would hopefully arrive. We hiked to the top of a ridge and along its narrow spine until dark. Then we laid our space blanket and sleeping bag out under the night sky. Often, the desert night was cold enough that we preferred to be in our tent, but this night was balmy (probably because it had been 108 degrees at six in the evening). The stars shone like candles, and we could see the twinkling lights of Palm Springs, only 400 feet above sea level, to the east and the silhouette of 10,805-foot Mount San Jacinto to the south.

There are lots of reasons why sex on the trail can be unappealing—dirt, sweat, exhaustion, aching muscles, and cramped tents, to name a few. But none of them seemed to be able to take the romance out of that night. Under the stars, with an aria of coyotes in the background, all the day's troubles
were forgotten and we made love. For the time being at least, we were enraptured by everything—each other, the night sky, the smell of sun-baked sagebrush, and coyote songs.

The next morning I was simultaneously euphoric and lethargic. Mentally, I was revitalized, but physically I continued to feel weak. There was good news, though; we were moving into the San Bernardino Mountains and from stubby brush to massive pines. As we hiked toward Big Bear City (where we would pick up our re-supply box and wait for the arrival of Duffy's brother, Chris, and our two friends, Lisa and Pete), I breathed deeply. The mountain air felt fresh and I could see laughter in Duffy's eyes. Mountains, I'd already discovered, brought out the little boy in him. At Onyx Summit (mile 254), he startled me with boyish excitement.

“It's the grizz!” He jogged to a chain-link fence separating the trail from an animal farm. In nearby cages, big cats—a cougar and a tiger—paced, eyeing us hungrily. The bear lolled in a corner, unimpressed by our presence.

“Just like Meadow Ed said,” we remarked, almost in unison, before taking a photo and moving on.

“Milky Way.”

“Mr. Goodbar.”

“Butterfinger.”

My mind's eye sifted through a pile of trick-or-treat candy while Duffy, his brother Chris, my old college roommate Lisa, and another friend, Pete, awaited my answer.

“Strawberry Charleston Chew.”

“Ohhhh, good one, good one.”

Another narrow escape from Candy Bar Game humiliation. Pete's family must have taken lots of road trips, or he must have spent many rainy summer days as a camp counselor trying to keep cranky Blue Birds and Little Warriors from feuding. Either way, he grew up to be an excellent guide to the land of good, clean, mile-eating fun.

“Excuse me while I engage in some self-aggrandization. . . .”

“Such a fixation fills me with trepidation. . . .”

“I'm not sure I like your insinuation. . . .”

These snippets of nonsense were all successful plays in another of Pete's time-killers—the Radiation Game. Animation, flirtation, excommunication, even breast augmentation. We must have covered six miles with such “ations.” It was great to have guests.

We met Chris, Lisa, and Pete in Big Bear, and they hiked with us for three days—covering twenty-four miles. That's right, a mere eight miles a day. The leisurely pace and fresh blood was a life- and hike–saver. After surviving heat and dehydration, we needed to have some fun. The best thing about having friends from home hike with you is how they change your routine and perspective. We'd been working so hard to make the miles that we hadn't had time to sunbathe (a whole different way of perceiving the sun), nap, play Kick the Cone (the au naturel version of Kick the Can) or pinecone softball. With our friends around, we did all those things and more. We paused to listen to birds, watched pine boughs dance in the wind, made our first campfire, roasted turkey-dogs, concocted monster s'mores, and shared a few beers. Trail purists may cringe at the thought of lugging such luxuries into the wilderness, but the company was cause for celebration. And beyond the bad jokes told by moonlight, trail games, siestas, tuneless renditions of “Puff the Magic Dragon” (later to become “Duff the Magic Dragon”), and the mesmerizing sparks of the fire, time with Chris, Lisa, and Pete helped us remember why we loved spending time in the outdoors. We were reminded that not everything about hiking the PCT needed to be a test of our relationship, stamina, or determination. Hiking and camping were fun! If only we could have hung on to that feeling for a little longer.

We dawdled while our friends were with us and enjoyed every minute of it, but as soon as they left we felt the pressure again. Compelled to make up for lost time with fast miles, we set our sites on Agua Dulce, our next major re-supply point and home of the archangel among trail angels, Donna. To catch up to our itinerary, we'd have to make good time through Section D and the San Gabriel Mountains.

There are four things I remember distinctly about this 110-mile stretch of trail. The first is the hummingbirds in the morning, zooming by our tent with intricate aerial maneuvers. The second remembrance is much less pleasant—the yellow smog that hung in the valley below the mountains like a drop ceiling. Third, I recall the charred landscape left by a forest fire started by a hiker burning toilet paper three years prior. And finally, I remember an unpleasant altercation between Duffy and our confounded stove.

On our twenty-fifth day on the PCT, at Messenger Flats Campground (mile 431), our MSR Internationale sputtered out. It was unfortunate timing; we were still twenty-five miles from Agua Dulce and out of food, aside from some uncooked macaroni. Duffy took out the stove maintenance kit and we patiently read all the instructions and followed them step by step. In the process, we managed to take the stove completely apart. It now looked like one of those wire puzzles where you twist and turn each individual piece in an attempt to get them all free. Trouble was, we couldn't get our pieces apart
or
back together.

It appeared that there wouldn't be any macaroni that afternoon—especially not after Duffy threw the stove against a stately ponderosa pine. Hitting the orange-brown bark, it collapsed in a heap on a bed of long yellow-green needles. On a warm day, the ponderosa oozes sap that smells like vanilla, a natural aphrodisiac and calming agent. This pine, however, was having no such effect on Duffy. He jumped up, ran toward the tree, picked up our mangled appliance, and threw it again—harder this time so that it made a satisfying clatter. “We'll return it to the store when we get home,” I said, trying to at least soothe his wallet, since satisfying his stomach wouldn't be possible.

Eleven discouraged miles later, we came to the North Fork Ranger Station. A large, wolflike white dog barked as we approached the garage. While we filled our water bottles from a hose, a man emerged from the station and introduced himself as Todd. His dog's name was Dakota. He invited us in to use the station's showers and gave us clean towels. Throughout our hike, we eagerly anticipated getting to town so we could bathe. In keeping with this, we couldn't wait to get to Agua Dulce the next day—but now here we were, in the wilderness taking a surprise shower. It was a luxurious treat, but looking
down at my sudsed-up belly, I couldn't help but notice it was caving in. We needed to eat.

After our showers, we headed to the ranger station's barbecue pit to build a fire and make dinner. Boiling water over a barbecue isn't very efficient, and we wasted a lot of time. The flames roared around our pot so high that we couldn't open it to stir the macaroni, and as the pot blackened, I knew our dinner inside was doing the same. Balancing the scalding-hot titanium pot on sticks, we managed to get it off the fire and onto a picnic table. Duffy burned his finger trying to remove the lid. Inside, our dinner was charbroiled around the edges and a soupy, porridgelike consistency in the middle. It reminded me of the first time I'd made pasta on our MSR, months ago in Philadelphia, in Duffy's driveway. We gulped the burnt, lumpy mess down hungrily at first, but soon began to feel nauseated. It was going to be a long sixteen miles to Agua Dulce.

Eager to get a head start, we declined Todd's invitation to stay the night and put in another three miles. Hiking down into a canyon, we camped at Mattox Creek. The next day, we awoke to the rumble of each other's hunger pangs and prickly, goosebump-covered skin. We packed up quickly and then Duffy was off like a rocket—he wanted to get to Agua Dulce as fast as possible. I followed close behind, eagerly anticipating an early morning snack at the trailer park on Soledad Canyon Road.

By eight in the morning we were hiking through the rows of mobile homes. We searched in vain for a vending or soda machine. Finally, we spotted an elderly gentleman cleaning the park's pool. He told us that the snack bar had closed years ago and the nearest store was in Acton, eleven miles away.

“What kind of thing ya looking for?” he asked.

“Anything to fill our bellies,” Duffy responded, “bread, cereal, whatever.”

“Why don't you go over to trailer sixty-seven and get my wife Jenny to fix up something? Just tell her Pete sent ya.”

“Oh no, we don't want to put you out,” I said. “Maybe we could just buy some bread.”

Pete was insistent. I approached the trailer alone, hoping to diminish the
initial shock of the early morning request. I knocked shyly several times. Nearly a minute later, an elderly woman in a flowered housedress and shower cap opened the door. She apologized; she'd been “on the can.” I was so embarrassed I almost turned and walked away, but instead explained that Pete had said she might be able to give us some food.

“But we don't want to be any trouble,” I stammered, “and we have money. Could we maybe just buy some bread and peanut butter or cheese?” Jenny would hear nothing of that and invited me in. She'd make us bacon and eggs, she said, as soon as she finished up with her previous business. While she attended to this, Duffy arrived and we made ourselves comfortable.

A few minutes later we were watching perky morning shows on the television and listening to Jenny chat merrily while she cooked. Soon a fine feast of bacon, scrambled eggs, toast with blackberry jam, milk, and orange juice was laid before us.

Leaving the RV park, we crossed the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks and passed a three-foot rock and concrete obelisk commemorating the PCT's completion ceremony, in June of 1993. It seemed a strange and unattractive place to celebrate a beautiful trail. Garbage, graffiti, old tires, and shopping carts littered the landscape. Quickly, though, the trail led us out of the canyon and onto a brushy hillside. In the distance, we could see the pinkish rocks known as the Vasquez Formation. These weird conglomerates of igneous and metamorphic cobbles and coral pink siltstone looked flabby, like rolls of fat on a chubby belly. My energy had spiked shortly after our hearty breakfast, but now, as the sun's rays beat down on my bandanna-covered head, I started to crash. Duffy was speeding off ahead and I was struggling to keep up. It was becoming the same old story and I sank into a sulky sadness.

After we passed through a tunnel under Antelope Valley Freeway 14, we lost the trail. This was the straw that broke the Chigger's back, and I started to cry. Duffy glanced at my tearful face briefly, but having located the trail (after about ten minutes of searching), walked on. We were entering the Vasquez Rocks County Park, named for the famed outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez, who used the caves, nooks, and crannies of the large outcroppings as hideouts during
the 1850s. The landscape is so bizarre and surreal that a number of sci-fi movies have been filmed there, including episodes of
Star Trek
and scenes from
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
.