Blistered Kind Of Love (37 page)

“Breakfast time, boys!” I shouted

“Go away and come back in a few hours,” groaned Crazy Legs from his bag.

No such luck. We roused the boys and goaded them to share their (guaranteed to be wacky) story. Unlike us, they'd celebrated the passage into Oregon in style, camping out right next to the border with a group of other hikers, sharing a potluck dinner and a round of beers—all packed in from Seiad Valley. Toby chuckled as he recounted what they had done with the empty Bud Light cans—“We threw them back onto the California side and Casey yelled, ‘Keep Oregon clean!' ” After the border bash (and yes, they did carry out the trash), they stopped in Ashland for a day and a half, taking in some of the local entertainment. They'd planned on some outdoor Shakespeare but found the tickets were too expensive, so instead opted for a few beers and an artsy movie.

We spent several hours with Casey and Toby at Rim Village, grabbing soggy burgers from the cafeteria and sharing stories and gossip. We learned that Amigo had left the trail shortly after entering Oregon; he was back in Chico
pursuing his Master's in Education. He'd vowed to return to hike Oregon and Washington the next summer. We'd miss Amigo; he'd been a consistent source of entertainment and inspiration—providing a constant supply of silly jokes, trailside cries of “
Arrribbaa
,” trekking-pole drawings in the dust, and clever notes and cartoons in the trail registers. Drip was also home starting his junior year of high school, but Fallingwater, after a bout with an unspecified gastrointestinal ailment, was back on the trail and apparently not too far behind. Fish had returned to Tampa to attend to a promising business offer. Ryan and Daris remained on the trail although no one was sure where they were or if they were hiking together. We estimated that Chris and Stacey were a week or so back; they'd emailed us recently from Mount Shasta City. Chris was proud of their new trail names, Rise and Shine, a reference to their early morning hiking habit.

After some time, an encroaching sea of motor homes, khakis, flip-flops, and unflattering hats overwhelmed our conversation; the summer tourist season was at its height. And the tourists flocked with good reason; Crater Lake is an incredible sight.

After Mount Mazama blew her top, she collapsed on herself, leaving a twenty–square-mile hole over 2,100 feet deep. Slowly, rain and snow filled the crater, eventually to a depth of 1,932 feet. Over hundreds of years, Crater Lake's depth has remained essentially unchanged, with the rate of precipitation matching that of evaporation.

At the western end of the lake is a remnant cinder cone—Wizard Island—that towers 763 feet above the lake's blue waters. And blue the waters are, deep and pure—so pure that when you see the lake you can't believe the color is possible without digital enhancement. The color of the lake is a result of both its depth and clarity. Indeed, the clarity of Crater Lake is unmatched; in 1997 it set the world record for underwater visibility, at 142 feet.

As we followed a trail and road around the lake I was mesmerized. It was
nothing more than a large puddle of water, but it emanated mysticism. I could see why indigenous Native American cultures worshiped the lake as a holy site—even today some still believe that to lay eyes upon the lake means instant death. If that was true, I had died and gone to heaven, because all I wanted was to gaze out across the blue water. I yearned to find a sheltered cove of grass where I could enjoy the sunset and subsequent sunrise over the lake, stare into the blueness and enjoy a warm mug of hot chocolate. But, as had happened so many times before, we were tugged by the call of miles with not many days left to cover them. It felt incredible to have walked over eighteen hundred miles and still face over eight hundred more. Crater Lake would just have to be added to the list of places to visit again.

VEERING AWAY FROM THE SHARP CLIFFS
above the mercurial blue waters of Crater Lake made my heart ache. It was like saying good-bye to a friend, one you weren't sure you'd see again for a long time. For eight miles we'd watched the changing position of the sun alter the mood of the subtly rippling waters. It was entrancing. By evening, the once brilliant view into the crater had darkened to shadows, the water a deep and mysterious indigo. Strolling down the Rim Road, we walked in perfect sync with the world around us and with each other.

The harmony lasted until the lake was out of sight. Then I grew tired and wanted to camp. Duffy wanted to cram in a few more miles before darkness. The resulting terse disagreement was a prime example of the mutual bull-headedness that often led us to a cacophony of misunderstandings and injured feelings. At such times I wondered whether we were even speaking the same language.

In her book
You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation
, Deborah Tannen, Ph.D., writes, “Talk between men and women is cross-cultural communication.” Men, she explains, speak a language of status and independence, while women speak a language of connection and intimacy. For example, when I was run down (like I'd been prior to our blowout at Vasquez Rocks, and was the night we left Crater Lake), I wanted to talk about the things that were making my day difficult, things like heat, hunger, and malaise. Such talk was my way of sharing my intimate thoughts and fears with Duffy. It didn't mean
I was blaming him or wanting to give up, but rather it was how I asked for empathy, tenderness, and support. Duffy, however, may have seen my complaints as criticism, as a threat to his status, and as evidence that he was failing me. “A man,” according to
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Men and Women
, “loves to be around a woman whom he feels he can make happy.” Any evidence that he was ineffective in this regard seemed to make Duffy defensive, regardless of the fact that I loved him and the PCT madly.

In reality, Duffy had many of the same fears and inner conflicts that I did. The difference was that he rarely showed or shared them. He wanted to be on the trail, so he attempted to maintain a consistent cheeriness. Meanwhile, I showed him each and every one of my emotional peaks and valleys. Yes, I wanted to hike the PCT, but I also had to admit that some aspects of the hiking life were hard. As a matter of fact, some things about long-distance hiking sucked—like the weird, egg-sized sacks that were forming under the skin on my hips. I'd lost all the fat around my waist. This meant that nearly the full weight of my pack rested, via the hip belt, directly on my now-prominent hipbones. Perhaps to compensate for lack of cushioning fatty tissue, my body developed what seemed to be fluid-filled bags right where my pack hit my bones. These pads made me look like Twiggy with swollen love handles. Would they ever go away? Or was I doomed to go through life with mysterious, subterranean formations right where the strings of my bikini bottom should be? Then there was the sunburn. Despite vigilant application of SPF 30, my nose had been blistering since Campo. Was malignant melanoma to be my PCT legacy? Was the fact that I wasn't menstruating dooming my future reproductive health? These were valid worries and complaints. They didn't detract from the value of our journey, but they were worth venting about if only because venting provided some relief.

It's no secret that when women get together they often “bitch” about what's bothering them. They don't do this to hurt the people they're bitching about or even to find solutions to their problems, they do it as a form of catharsis. The act of purging negative feelings and receiving reassurance from friends makes us feel better. Without many women thru-hikers around for me to talk to, I turned to Duffy for everything—which wasn't really fair. I'm not
sure any man can succeed in assuming the role of a woman's female friends.

Science has revealed that supportive social networks have a positive effect on health, lowering the chances of high blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar, and also slowing cognitive decline related to aging. Recent research in rats goes one step further. In a study conducted among rats at the University of Chicago, female companionship was shown to benefit longevity. Put male rats together, the researchers found, and they'll battle for dominance—often to the death. But put female rats together and they'll actually live longer—in fact, forty percent longer than their isolated sisters.

Unfortunately for my feminine side, there wasn't much of a sisterhood on the trail, probably because there were so few of us sisters—so few that I could count the ones I'd met on my fingers and toes. Foremost among them were those who made it most or all of the way. Daris, our Canadian friend; Madame Butterfly, hiking with her deaf husband Improv; Stacey, of Chris and Stacey fame; Sunrise, the Israeli tank operator; Desert Rose, retired and traveling with her husband; Debbie, another retiree; Lady Godiva, who was riding the PCT on her horse Livingston; and Ginny, traveling with her Jim. And then there is the longer list of those who went home early: Lora, who bailed out with the flu in the Sierra, never to be seen by us again; Chris, a teacher from Bolivia who suffered injuries in the desert and was left, literally, to tend to them in the dust (we believe her partner, Natasha, went on to complete the trail); Nokona, who abandoned her hike due to altitude sickness; Marcy, who gave up hiking and hung out in towns along the way instead; Laraine, who got off the trail in Northern California because of severe lactose intolerance; and Rosey, whose companion (her sister, The Artist) had departed during the first few days and who herself quit before Oregon.

Intellectually, I'd known that the PCT's long-distance hiking community was male dominated. But it wasn't until late in our hike that I realized what this really meant. Talking with men, and only men, the vast majority of the time sometimes made me feel like I was the last woman on Earth. The attention could be an ego boost, but at the same time I missed my friends and looked forward to having more gender diversity in my life when I got home. Being out-numbered, it seemed, added one more level of stress.

For me, this was a negative situation. But not all women thru-hikers felt this way. Daris, for instance, found the ratio of men to women to be extremely encouraging. “I try to convince my friends to go do [the trail],” Daris wrote to me, “and tell them that it's like twenty to one . . . good chance of meeting a fine one.” Besides, says Daris, thru-hiking seemed to bring out an abundance of old-fashioned gentlemanly spirit. This was true. Duffy carried more weight than me (it was the only way I could go at his pace), held my hand during dangerous stream and snowfield crossings, and much more.

As my manly protector, Duffy felt a big responsibility to keep me safe, healthy, and happy. To ease his burden I needed to be optimistic and strong. I mean, really, Duffy didn't
always
need to know that the blister on my toe felt like a hot coal stuffed in my sock. Now, if only he'd learn to listen and say “I understand” empathetically just a little bit more often. . . .