Blistered Kind Of Love (2 page)

We are also extremely grateful for the love and support of Angela's family. Special thanks to her parents and to her brothers and sisters-in-law (for constant encouragement, advice, and affection). Mile by mile, we were followed and supported by many friends and loved ones. We owe a large debt to all of those who aided our March of Dimes charity effort and who sent thoughts and words to spur us northward.

Next, we'd like to acknowledge Duct tape and Spenco 2nd Skin. Without these wondrous inventions, our feet and certainly our thru-hike wouldn't have survived—and no trail love, not even a blistered kind, would have been possible.

During our months in the wild, we met many generous souls who offered help while asking nothing in return. So here's a toast to Bob, Donna, Meadow Ed, and all the other trail angels who brightened our path. You are
the spirit of the PCT. And while we're at it . . . here's to trekking poles. Without you, we would've spent much of the summer on our asses.

During the sometimes agonizing birth of this book, many took time out from their own busy literary careers to help us focus and improve our manuscript. Chris Ballard, Karen Berger and the folks at
GORP.com
, Alexandra Cann, and Erik Larson; and Mary Metz, Christine Clifton-Thornton, and Alison Koop at The Mountaineers Books—we owe you much. We must also extend our gratitude to the Savage family and the Barbara Savage Memorial Award for helping us turn our literary dream into a reality. Thanks, as well, to whoever invented the baby wipe. We're certain you've helped keep us together.

We'd also like to send our appreciation to those who allowed their names, experiences, and writings to be included in this book—in particular, Toby McEvoy for his witty insights into long-distance hiking as recorded in his journal and Luke Snyder for his jokes.

Finally, we must thank and acknowledge our summer's constant guide, the direction north. Keep up the good work.

DR. JOHN WILLIAM LOWDER'S
unwitting premonition shook me. “When I die,” he said to a friend, “my wish is to be in the mountains, alone, and to have a few hours with God.” Lowder, a sixty-nine-year-old outdoorsman, was walking from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail (PCT) when he and fellow hikers faced a snowstorm in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains. Ignoring his old rule to never hike alone, Lowder separated from his younger companions; no one's sure why. Perhaps he hoped to out-hike the brewing storm. Possibly his judgment was compromised by exhaustion. Most likely a combination of factors caused the veteran backpacker to take a chance—to set out on his own toward the small town of Lone Pine.

Along the way, he lost the trail in the snow and fell two hundred feet down a steep, icy slope, breaking both legs and one arm and taking severe blows to the head. Amazingly, he survived the fall, climbed into his sleeping bag, and began treating his wounds. Still, he didn't survive the night. He spent his final hours in the mountains alone.

I looked away from the computer screen and around my cluttered studio:
Backpacker
magazine's latest
Gear Guide
lay amongst peanut butter Power Bar wrappers and a dog-eared copy of
How to Shit in the Woods
. I knew that hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was going to be the experience of a lifetime, but I didn't want it to be my last.

Initially, my primary worries had been about leaving my job and upsetting my mother and father. Then I heard about Lowder, bear attacks, and snakebites, and suddenly, unemployment and familial discord didn't seem so bad.

Although our dream of going on a really long walk had taken shape slowly, by the time I read about Lowder we'd reached a point of no return. Duffy and I were inextricably tied to the trail, as was our future. Looking back, I'm not sure which came first, Duffy and I falling in love with each other or falling in love with the idea of hiking the PCT. I guess the two life-changing attachments developed in tandem, and from the very beginning, bipedal travel was a fundamental part of our lives together. We'd started off as winter running partners who met despite rain, sleet, and face-cracking cold to jog the streets of Philadelphia, and during each jaunt we shared enough secrets that by spring we were inseparable.

One of our first romantic getaways was to Duffy's parents' cabin on California's rough and craggy coast. Perched on a hill overlooking the ocean, the cabin was a little lonely and bedraggled, the rotting and weather-warped door reluctant to open. Once inside, Duffy sifted through his childhood memories while I poked around, checking the dates on old magazines and flipping through books until a particular tome caught my eye—
The Pacific Crest Trail
, by William R. Gray.

The book's cover was bent and water-stained, but the photographs inside remained vivid. Soon we were sitting on the porch, alternating between gazing at the beach below and the spectacular images of the Pacific Crest Trail in the aged book. Reading captions like “Snowmelt thundering down Woods Creek” and “Mist swirls around a treeless ridge of the Goat Rocks,” I was enchanted and enthralled. I longed to witness elks sparing in the Cascades, to gather wild berries as I walked, to see butterflies resting on snow, and to “adopt the pace of nature.” Duffy's eyes sparkled.

“What are you thinking?”

“Nothing,” Duffy replied mischievously. “It's just that I've heard of this trail and have been thinking of doing it.”

“Doing it? Doing what?”

“Well, it's two-thousand-something miles long, and it would take months, but I was thinking it would be cool to hike the whole thing—from Mexico to Canada.”

“You're crazy.” I turned my attention to the book's prologue. In it Gray
describes hiking the Pacific Crest Trail as a “calling,” to be embraced for reasons ranging from love of wilderness and kinship with nature to lust for a physical test. The rewards of answering the call, he writes, are intensely personal: “the pride of surmounting a difficult pass, the simple luxury of falling asleep in a silent area of rocks, trees and stars.” The experience, he concludes, can change a person in ways that can't be foretold or imagined.

When we returned to Philadelphia, I showed the book to Duffy's parents. They'd never seen it before. Someone must have borrowed the cabin for a night and left it there. I can't help but think it was left for us.

Duffy and I had been planning our hike for almost a year before I finally told my parents. I knew that quitting my job and disappearing into the deserts and mountains of the West with my boyfriend wouldn't make them happy and was deeply afraid of even broaching the subject.

When I did finally bring it up, I explained that Duffy and I were going to embark on a pilgrimage of sorts and hopefully, someday, write a book about it. Their reaction was what you might expect from many parents: They were horrified and said so. I tried to explain that this was going to be good for me, that I needed to take a risk, and that it was a smart career move to quit my advertising job and attempt something extraordinary. They'd traveled a lot as youths; maybe they could empathize with my wanderlust? But my parents are protective, and for them there was no getting around the fact that I was taking off with a man they'd never met to backpack along a trail they had never heard of. Nothing I said eased their minds, and I felt like I was speaking through a wall. Everything was muffled and confused.

As I drove back to Philadelphia from visiting my family and breaking the news, I replayed the confrontation in my head and cried. I wasn't a perfect daughter. There were things about the woman I'd turned out to be that I knew my parents were unhappy with, but I tried not to purposefully disappoint them. By hiking the PCT, I was going against their wishes, and that was a hard thing to do. That didn't mean, however, that I wasn't going to do it, and
when my tears dried I was more committed to our hike than ever.

After that, my parents and I didn't speak for a few months. It wasn't an entirely intentional separation; it just kind of happened. I guess I needed time to cool off and adjust. When you're little, you think your parents are infallible, and even into early adulthood you tend to trust that they're right—and mine often were. But in this case, I was fairly confident that they weren't. I say fairly because I still had fears—of bears, bugs, bandits, and the like. Potential danger, however, lurks everywhere you go, and I truly believed that trekking the Pacific Crest Trail was the appropriate next step for Duffy and me. The months of relying on one another for food, warmth, and shelter, as well as for safety and companionship, would bring us even closer and help us to determine whether we were cut out to spend the rest of our lives together. But by prioritizing the man I loved, I was damaging my relationship with my parents. It was a heart-wrenching trade-off. Only time could prove whether it was a worthwhile one—or not.

ONE EVENING IN THE FALL OF 1998
, while flipping through a popular men's “lifestyle” magazine, I came across a headline that captivated and taunted me—
Be a Man of the World: The 10 Adventures of a Lifetime
. The list included a voracious bite of everything macho—mountains and motorcycles, Cadillacs and kayaks, animals and air travel. The writer dared me to carry out one of these adventures and overcome years of pathetic suburban impotence. The challenge struck a cord. It was bad enough to be a prematurely balding and single twenty-something, but to be further mocked by a magazine that I depended on to unlock the secrets of female pheromones was too much.