Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail (34 page)

Then the weather took an unexpected turn—for the worse, yet again. Torrential storms ripped at the flaps of my tent, and I began to wonder if it might blow down altogether. The leaking in the tent became rivulets coursing in various directions through the tent. I changed positions from the left side, to the right side, to my back about every half-hour. Each time I would see just how much water had accumulated on each side. It was spilling over my
Z-Rest
sleeping pad. Soon, I would be lying in a puddle.
I need to get out of here.

Where can I go? I damn sure couldn’t disturb Not a Chance and Leprechaun, unless I was really at death’s door. Giggles and Rocket Man were nearby. Both had done a sporty job of setting up their tarps to avoid water runoff. But both were tight fits, with no room for an extra body of even average size.

That left only one option—Five Dollar. On a personal basis, it was by far the most embarrassing. He was very unusual to begin with. He had grown up a Mormon, but had harshly rejected the religion. I had periodically scrimmaged with him over this (Five Dollar—“They’re all a bunch of crooks and pedophiles.” Me—“You can’t condemn ten million people in such a general way.”) But for the most part, we had gotten along well. In fact, along the way we had gotten in the habit of swapping jokes about the
inflatables
that we both claimed to be carrying in our backpacks, as well as other perverted humor. It was all par for the course. But the prospect of now having to approach his tent in the middle of the night and beg him to let me in was mortifying. However, this situation of getting wetter and colder by the minute was ominous. I was desperate.

I don’t want to do it. But you’ve got to do it. I don’t want to do it. You have to. This is a once in a lifetime emergency. He will understand.

But I desperately didn’t want to do it.
Try something else.
I began doing deep-breathing exercises, and alternated stretching exercises for various parts of the body. I normally kept my backpack and food bag in the vestibule of the tent, if only to keep a little distance between me and a bear that might steal my food bag. I grabbed the backpack and moved it into the tent as a headrest, and resolved to periodically eat some snacks.

Finally, the storm climaxed and its intensity began to abate.
What time is it?
I didn’t have a watch, but spent the next few hours trying to guess the time and hoping to divine the first ray of light. At least it kept me thinking, which is critical in avoiding hypothermia. Slowly, the sun came up and the rain completely died off.

I didn’t even get out of my tent until about 10 or 11 o’clock. Continuing north on the PCT was out of the question. I needed new gear—a tent that didn’t leak, a synthetic sleeping bag instead of a down bag, and some new gloves. Not a Chance was in even more dire straits than me, and we separately re-traced the fourteen miles back to Sisters.

There, I called Uber Bitch’s husband to explain why I hadn’t kept up with his wife. To my surprise, he put me on the phone with
her.
She had found a steep side trail during the ferocious second day of storm and called her husband to pick her off.

“I’m off the trail,” she said heavily. “Sorry.”

“No worries,” I said. “But I’ll sure as heck miss you as a hiking partner.”

I then hitched to Bend, Oregon, where the only REI was located.
What a stroke of luck to have this problem in the only place where there is a nearby REI.
Lucky, that is, unless you just happen to be in the near 7-foot range. Then they will tell you that you are
SOL
(....out of luck). They didn’t have a single tent I could fit in, nor did they have a 7-foot down or synthetic sleeping bag. I did pick up some new gloves and an emergency space blanket.

But for the most part, I was gonna’ have to make it to Canada with what I had. This whole Labor Day weekend debacle effectively cost me four precious days and God-knows-how-much weight. The possibility of very cold, wet weather would occupy me to the point of obsession from here on out. Even on nice, sunny days, it would be in the back of my mind—
the clock is ticking up there in northern Washington.

Chapter 37

Pretty Boy Joe

T
he PCT is not a pioneer experience. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a very demanding challenge for the average person such as myself. But the U.S. Forest Service and dedicated trail volunteers have done an admirable job of maintaining the trail, and good maps are generally available. We know exactly when we’re gonna’ hit trail towns along the way to stock up on food.

However, as I covered large parts of the West, I couldn’t help but wonder if amongst the trail population were a few folks who would have made kindred souls with the likes of Davy Crocket, Kit Carson, or Daniel Boone back in the 19th century. Almost surely, the answer is yes.

My favorite candidate would probably be
Pretty Boy Joe.
He was 22 years old, just graduated from the University of California, and chock full of idealism. However, he seemed to have a maturity well beyond his years, and got along well with the trail’s more senior citizens (such as myself). With his long, lean physique, straight gaze, and manner of speaking in the soft, unhurried cadences of the West, he even reminded me of a younger Clint Eastwood.

His hiking style was utterly unpredictable. From the very beginning to the very end, I’d see him turn up at all odd times of the day and evening, and from all kinds of side trails. Back in the desert, he had found a dead rattlesnake on the trail, skinned it, and carried it draping off his backpack for weeks. Then, he had met a Dartmouth University student out for summer hikes; soon the two of them were performing
dumpster dives.
It wasn’t for financial necessity, as Joe’s father was reputedly a very wealthy California real estate maven.

One of the less pretty faces of Pretty Boy Joe. This talented 22-year-old often seemed afflicted with a low boredom threshold.

“I hate seeing things go to waste,” he simply said.

Luna had given him his trail name, and other women had commented excitedly on this tall, handsome prince. But he proved to be quite elusive. Surely, he wasn’t immune to temptation. However, the more I saw of him the more I saw a larger force at work.

“We Americans are titillated by sex, obsessed by it, horrified by it, wrote Jon Krakauer in
Into the Wild.
“When an apparently healthy young man, elects to forgo the enticements of the flesh, suspicions are aroused.”

Krakauer mentioned Thoreau (who reputedly died a virgin), John Muir, and Tolstoy—as well as the book’s protagonist, Chris McCandless—as adventurers and intellectuals who maintained ambivalent attitudes towards sex. “Like not a few of those seduced by the wild, McCandless seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire. His yearning, in a sense, was too powerful to be quenched by human contact.”

Pretty Boy Joe seemed to have similar impulses at work. He sought a more ecstatic way of living; comfort and security were secondary. In fact, we chatted six months after the PCT hike ended and he told me he had been eating out of dumpsters at least every other day (Having worked in a retirement home and seen how much food they throw away, I recommended he look for some
geriatric dumpsters).

“This Timberline Lodge tests the workability of recreational facilities built by the government itself and operated under its complete control,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt said on September 28, 1937 at its dedication.

Like a lot of people, I have been infected at times with the prejudice that our federal government seemingly can’t do anything right. However, one trip to a place like Timberline Lodge utterly refutes that notion. It’s a classic case of something that simply wouldn’t have gotten done if the government hadn’t done it.

It’s brilliantly done by the famed depression-era WPA. Hundreds of out-of-work artisans employed by the WPA did the Lodge up with Native American materials and in western motifs. The rustic design had a subliminal appeal to my simple tastes. After an extensive tour of the lodge, I went so far as to vow, “If I ever get married, this is where the honeymoon happens.”

The lodge is actually only halfway up Mount Hood, at about the point tree-line is breached. That had been plenty OK with me, given the mountain has seen over 130 deaths in the last centry – most having to do with sudden weather change (In one notorious case in May, 1986, fourteen high school students were killed when the teacher urged the group to keep climbing in a snowstorm. The class was a
requirement,
not an elective). However, Pretty Boy Joe had seemed disappointed. As we had started up Mount Hood that morning, Joe had spotted some ski slopes.

“I’m going up there,” he said non-chalantly, and off he had gone.

My immediate purpose at Timberline Lodge was very straightforward—to commit mayhem at the buffet. For the very reasonable (given the magnitude of what is getting ready to transpire) price of $16, one gets the choice of all manner of delicatessens and delights. In fact, my five helpings there may have been my five best meals on the entire PCT. Others said the same. And this comes from people who at times revere food to the point of sac-religion.

Pretty Boy Joe finally turned up after a steep climb up a glacier field. Along the way he had picked up a Danish hiker named
Valhalla.
“This place is really cool,” Joe said in his soft-spoken manner, and then went poking around looking for some nook or cranny where he could hide for the night.

“How about this?” he said to Valhalla and me, as he perched up in what looked like a small attic or linen closet.

That pretty much left Valhalla and me to hike out from Timberline Lodge at dusk. And we were to stay pretty much together the rest of the way.

“Scandinavians are navigators,” Valhalla plainly said. “Look at the Vikings. It runs in our blood.”

Over the years I have cottoned on to the contrarian notion that being from a small country has great advantages.

“The Dutch are everybody’s favorite travelers,” my roommate in a Latin American hostel once spontaneously said. He may have been on to something. To that you could probably add the Swiss and the New Zealanders. These people from modest-sized countries aren’t afflicted with all these silly, megalomaniacal arguments—“We’re the biggest, the best, the most sophisticated—that we Americans, French, and British like to scrimmage over.

Their secret is they adapt. Valhalla was 50 years old and in trim form. As I got to know him better, it became clear he had traveled absolutely everywhere, despite making a modest salary as a social worker. Obviously, he knew how to do more with less. That’s kinda’ what hiking is all about.