Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail (11 page)

We hikers have it easy in one respect. There are people that truckle and cater to us like we are the masters of the universe. It is such an overwhelmingly positive experience, that it comes as a real jolt those rare times when we meet someone that is the opposite. And when that person is a doctor it can have serious repercussions for your entire journey.

I say doctor. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. The entire town of Idyllwild (population 4,500) didn’t have a single doctor for reasons that are mystifying. Dave and I had hitchhiked into town the previous night and gotten a cabin at the rustic Idyllwild Inn. In one of those quirks of fate, he had idly said, “There’s supposed to be a medical clinic near here. I think I’ll go have ‘em check out my feet.”

“Oh, I might pop up there with you,” I said.

The person who saw me was a
nurse-practicioner.
In fact, according to rumors I later heard, she was quite the journey-woman nurse-practicioner, having nurse-practicioned all over southern California. I sat there on a patient’s table with my shoes and socks off and bandages removed, when an un-pleasantly plump woman named

Renee barged in.

“Hiker,’ she barked out, barely suppressing her distaste.

“Yes,” I answered, and proceeded to explain. She started going over my feet like a mechanic rifling through a car engine. The look on her face was like somebody had placed a rotten sulfuric egg just under her two nostrils.

“How important is this trip to you?” she suddenly said.
Shouldn’t that question be coming later in the appointment?

“Well, very important,” I answered. “I’ve been planning to hike this trail for years.”

“Have you had any blisters or swelling on your face, or anywhere else, recently?”
What the hell is she talking about? This is about my feet.

“Yeah, I walked all over the beach in Florida in the middle of the day getting ready for this hike,” I answered. “My lips swelled up with uh,—I guess—sun blisters really bad for a few days.”

“Yeah, well,” Renee said with an increasingly sour look on her face, “the way your foot is all swollen up, you may have
herpes of the feet.”

“Herpes of the feet,” I repeated in disbelief. “I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

“Yeah, you need to take a good five or ten days off the trail,” she said bluntly.

“I’m on a tight schedule,” I moaned. “Everybody is hiking together. It’s best to stay together in the desert.” Boy, I really know who to tell a sob story to, don’t I!

“These are awful-looking feet,” she said, reaching down and giving them a quick toss up to make her point. “And look at this left foot. It looks practically
gangrenous.
See the way this fluid is coming out from these calluses,” she pointed out. Sure enough there was fluid leaking out from these calluses. “Those are blisters under the calluses. They could get infected any time. Do you wanna’ lose your foot?”

If the ability to confuse and scare the hell out of a patient is the hallmark of a great physician—excuse me, nurse-practicioner—then this lady belonged in the Hall of Fame.

“Well, well, what should I do?” I stammered.

“These blisters need to be
debreeded,”
she said.

“How is that done?” I wondered.

“I have to cut the calluses off to get at the blisters underneath.”

“That’s gonna’ take a long time to get back to where I can hike,” I muttered. “Is there any alternative?”

“Well maybe you could try soaking them for a few days and taking antibiotics for the infection. I don’t know.” She walked straight out before I had a chance to discuss Plan B.

A few minutes later a thirty-ish male walked in with a clipboard.

“We just need you to sign this showing you agree to the procedure and the price,” he said.

“But what about the other option—the soaking and the antibiotics?” I asked.

“What other option?” he asked. The communication problems in this clinic seemed to run in all directions. Renee came back in with a determined look about her.

“Lie down on the table.” I had no idea what was getting ready to happen. But my feet were badly ravaged, I reasoned. So I laid down on the table.

“Do you fit?” she asked.

“Yes, can’t you tell,” I fired back with my head and arms draped over the end of the table.

“Oh, these are much worse than I had thought,” she immediately said. “I’m going to have to go deep. This might be painful.” For the next fifteen minutes I felt like you do at the barbershop, worried the barber is cutting too much, but not sure whether to interrupt.

“Okay, I’m through,” she announced.

I pulled up my feet to take a look, and immediately felt sick at my stomach. Seventy percent of my calluses on the balls of my feet were gone. Instead, there was a visible terrace from where calluses ended and the drop down to a deeper red color where she had cut. Yeah, the blisters were gone and in blister heaven. But how the hell was I going to hike to Canada?

Renee commenced wrapping my feet in one layer of surgical tape after another in a way I couldn’t possibly hope to replicate. I tensely asked one question after another about the taping, walking, etc. which she robotically answered. Then she was finished.

“You’re done for awhile,” she said in full-stride as she bolted out of the door.

To be perfectly fair, I was in a helluva’ fix when I had hobbled in there this morning. But that was nothing compared to the way I
walked
out. I could barely make it to the waiting room. After paying I just hung out in the waiting room. Renee came flying through.

“Excuse me, Renee,” I said diplomatically. “Could you just give me a ballpark figure of when I should be aiming to get back on the trail again?” She looked at me a couple seconds, as if in thought. Then, she wheeled around and whisked away without saying a word.

“You’re done for awhile.” Her words rung in my head. She sure showed me.

Chapter 12

Bettina

“I
s this Renee?” I kept asking.

“Yes, I’m the lady that cut the blisters out of your feet,” she said. I was in disbelief.

“Yes, yesterday morning,” she assured me. “That was me.” I was totally confused.

Dave and I had tried to walk back to the Idyllwild Inn the previous day. But after about twenty yards, he had called the Idyllwild Inn and ask them to come pick me up. They had obliged and I had buried myself back in the cabin for the rest of the day. Deep depression set in. My calculations—entering the high Sierra on June, 15th, getting to Canada before October, etc—all lay in shambles.

Idyllwild was overrun with PCT hikers as the annual wave of thru-hikers was passing through, and word had filtered out about my misfortune. Hikers were dropping by the cabin to commiserate. In reality, though, most simply wanted a firsthand look at the atrocity they had all heard this woman had committed on me.

“I’d call her up and raise hell,” Wrongway suggested.

“I’d call her up,” Cruiser asserted, “and tell her you were going to sue the shit out of her.” Neither fit my laid-back character. However, I did grit my teeth and call the clinic to try to clarify taping instructions. I was braced for a verbal shellacking from Nurse Renee. Surprisingly, they put me right through to her. Much more surprisingly, though, was her attitude. Gone were the surliness and antipathy to hikers. The new Renee was respectful and glad to repeat bandaging and medical instructions over and over to a neurotic ex-patient. Actually, there was even a hint of defensiveness in her speech. Was she remorseful that she had laid me so low? More likely, she was worried because Idyllwild is a small town. And yesterday she had made sure I was going to be here for awhile.

Headline: Cougar attacks hiker in the Cleveland National Forest. Dave had turned on the television and this bit of journalistic gold was at the top of the news.

“Hey, isn’t the Cleveland National Forest where we are right now?” Dave asked.

“We were,” I answered. “I’m not sure if we’re still in it.” A cougar had attacked a hiker there. The hiker’s dog had loyally jumped in to defend the hiker, at which point the cougar had made short work of the dog. The big surprise, though, was that it had occurred in the middle of the day.

“I thought they only moved around at night,” Dave said, sounding a bit concerned. He was planning to hike out alone the next morning.

There are about 5,000 cougars in California. They are nocturnal and extremely stealthy. So stealthy that they sometimes follow their victims for days at a time. In fact, most PCT hikers are probably followed by a cougar for awhile, although only about fifteen percent actually see one. They like to hang out on rocks where they spring out to break the back of their prey’s necks instantaneously. Fortunately, cougars are such great hunters that they almost always choose tastier prey than us wretched humanoids.

Dave wasn’t an alarmist type, but I did notice him watching the local news again that night at 6:00 and 10:00. And when I awoke and went to the bathroom at 3:00 that morning his light was on, and I heard him re-arranging his backpack yet again. He was just retiring in Florida where he had quite a nice lifestyle; this was proving tougher than expected. Off he went alone at first light into one of the most brutal dry stretches in the desert. My heart went out to him.

“How tall are you?” came the question from behind me. Never has been my favorite question. But in the literally tens of thousands of times I have fielded it, this would prove to be my very favorite.

I was in the Idyllwild Library, and turned around to see who had asked the question. A sixty-ish lady, quite decked out for a public library, stood there smiling at me. Fortunately, I didn’t give her one of the sassy answers I occasionally employ. I gave her a straight answer. After all, I was going to be in town awhile.

Every so often in trail towns you meet that rare person who is ga-ga over us smelly tramps. That was the case here with this woman, named
Bettina.
I was with Just Jack, who had very thoughtfully come by that morning and offered to carry my backpack to the Idyllwild campground, where I was now planning to stay the rest of my convalescence. But all I could think about was how difficult it was going to be to keep my wounded feet clean and properly bandaged at the campground.

“How would you two guys like to come up to my place for dinner and a drink?” Bettina asked.

No brainer. “Yes.” Let me say right off the bat, I had more than a drink in mind. But, it might not be what you think.

We got in her Cadillac and she drove up a steep hill to a picturesque chalet (the smallest of her three houses), which was two streets down from Dolly Parton’s vacation home.

“Has everybody in Idyllwild learned to stare at the pavement when Dolly walks by?” I asked.

“No,” Bettina answered. “She gets mad when people don’t come up and greet her.”

Bettina opened her house up to us like long-lost relatives, and we sipped drinks on her veranda which had a majestic view overlooking the mountains.

I’m usually shy in these matters and operate through indirection. But this time was different; I was in a pickle. So I popped the question directly to Bettina.

“Bettina,” I asked. “Is there any way in the world I could sleep a few nights out here on this veranda?”