Day 23: Mile 266.1 - 282.0

Well, after a zero day that had too much walking to be a zero day, it was time to get back on trail. In the morning, I got a ride from the Treadwells--both this time!--and got to finally meet Carol in person. It was nice to finally put a face to all the emailed advice and texts, and it was a warm smiling face too! We chatted about various things as Bill drove up to the trailhead. She mentioned one time that she and Bill had gone hunting for pine nuts in the woods, and how they tasted so fresh when plucked straight from the pinecones. (Big pinecones have smaller nuts, while small pinecones have big nuts, mused Bill.) And they had even come across some that had been sitting in the sun for a while, for that sun-roasted flavor. It sounded like a great time, a day hike with a culinary bonus. 

Plus, do you know how much they charge for pine nuts at my local grocery store? And you mean to tell me you can just pick them up off the ground?

The conversation was nice enough that when I got back on trail, it took a bit to get back into the swing of walking. When I had gotten back on trail at Paradise Valley Cafe, so long ago, as I stepped out of the car I could feel the wilderness *right* *there*, and sense my feet wanting to go *out* *there*. But not as much this time. Maybe it was wanting to talk to the new batch of hikers at the hostel more (our bubble was leaving, but the next bubble was just coming in, folks like Bloom and Ru and Taheil who I haven't seen in a while), likely it was wanting to talk with the Treadwells more--they strike me as folks it'd be great to get to know, certainly better than two car rides' worth! But the trail was there, just as I'd left it, and it was time to go for a walk.

The trail in this section headed west, going up and over the hills and slopes north of Big Bear Lake. Sometimes, looking south I could see the dry bed of Baldwin Lake (right next to Big Bear Lake) or catch a glimpse of the deep blue of Big Bear Lake, but a lot of time this mountain or that ridge would interpose. Rather quickly this section got back into the woods, so at times this redwood or that pine would interject as well, but that was fine: after a day off, I was mostly thinking about getting my legs back into the rhythm of hiking. And make no mistake, they were cranky at first, complaining more persistently than I would have liked. What's this?, they said, we're doing this again? We didn't sign up for this! But I was ultimately able to convince them that, yes, we're doing this again, and no, there's nothing for it, oddly enough by taking a divert to go up Bertha Peak.

Bertha Peak is a local peak, north of Big Bear, that overlooks the whole lake. It's also off-trail, an ascent advertised at 0.7 miles that does have some steep climbs. I don't think many thru-hikers bother--1.4 extra off-trail miles no thank you!--but on a whim I decided to go for it. The trail had been pretty mild up to now--mostly inclines rather than climbs--and I had been making good enough time that I figured I could indulge some wandering. I took the turn and headed up an immediately steep gravelly dirt road, pointedly ignoring the advice on Guthook to drop my pack and head up much less encumbered. (In my defense, it was the weekend so there were day-hikers going up too, and while thru-hikers know to just leave a discarded backpack be--the hiker'll be back soon enough!--day-hikers aren't necessarily as familiar with the convention and might walk off with it in the best intentions, eventually leaving it at some faraway trailhead for its owner.) This ended up being a tougher climb than I expected, and I stopped a lot on the way under the shade to catch my breath. At one such stop, I met a lady with a day-pack doing the same. That green building, that must be the top?, I asked. Yeah, she replied, and I can see people zig-zagging up the mountain towards there. Hmm, I thought, this divert is longer than I expected, but by now I'm *committed*. I'll see you up there, I said, and continued on.

The rest of the way didn't end up being as long as I thought: a couple more climbs on the road and I found myself at a green building. A short scramble up a use-path and I found myself at *the* green building, at the top. I took in the view, then noticed the lady from before coming up. Come on up, I said, and she did, looking out over the canyons out north (hmm, I had hoped to see the desert from here, she said--you kinda can, right through that little pass over there, I said, but yeah, it's not much) and over Big Bear Lake to the south. We headed back down to the "a" green building, where there was a landing of sorts, and ended up talking for a spell. Her name was Michelle, and she worked at a community college in Barstow. When she heard I was a PCT hiker, she told me this story of how a few years ago, she had helped out a couple of PCT hikers from France with a ride--a brother and sister pair, he had spoken very little English, but her English had been pretty good--and had given them her number. A couple months later, she gets a call on her phone from an unknown Oregon number. Well, she knew some folks in Oregon, so she took the call. Who is this?, she asked. It turns out it was a random guy in Oregon who had given the pair a ride, but then the sister had accidentally left her phone in his car. And Michelle's was the only contact in English on the phone! So Michelle looked up where he was, deduced which hotel around there hikers would have stayed in (i.e., the cheapest one), called there to find that, yes, they had stayed there and the sister had been frustrated with losing the phone and left the address of their next stop, then called the driver back to ask him to drop off the phone at said next stop. That's a lot of work--plus some straight-up Sherlockian sleuthing!--for a stranger. A while later, she texted the sister and  confirmed that she had indeed gotten her phone back: she was so happy, all her photos from the trip had been on there!

(How many stories like this am I going to have by the time this hike is over?)

There were more stories too: I ended up hiking down Bertha Peak with Michelle, eventually splitting about a mile farther down the PCT where she headed to the parking lot and I continued on (at a confusing junction where I probably would have gone the wrong way if she hadn't pointed out the PCT goes over there, to the right). She was training for an upcoming hike up Yosemite's Nevada Falls later in May (hopefully, there wouldn't be snow), and had hit Baden-Powell (where there *was* snow), now Bertha Peak, basically a bunch of the "local" big peaks, in preparation. Through our conversations, though, I did sense a slight undercurrent of melancholy. Now Michelle was fine, pleasant to talk to, inquisitive, joked here and there, but--while she never told me the full story outright--I pieced together that she had very recently lost her husband to a cancer that had been in remission for many years, but had come back with a vengenance. I got the impression that they had enjoyed the outdoors and had originally planned to go to all these places together--she still used "we" and "us" when talking about this hike or that peak--but now she was doing them just on her own. She didn't show her sorrow though--as a more Asian background might say, she didn't place it on anybody else. I don't know much about such sorrow, and know even less about living with it, but I do hope that the trees and hills, and blue waters below and blue skies above, might provide, in their way, a little help along the way.

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Some notes:

-- Early on in the day, I diverted to get a better look at the desert out north and found myself at a little lookout bench (evidently other folks had also thought this a good spot), with a brown medicinal bottle and a green tag asking: "PCT Hikers: What do you hope for in life?" The bottle was stuffed with responses: little wisps of yellow lined paper torn from a legal pad curled up inside a nearby tube. I thought for a moment, then wrote my response: "fulfillment". Which I think is honest: more than happiness, more than fun, more than "passion", the chance to put time and energy into something I enjoy and get something meaningful out of it, that's what I hope for. Plus, writing "a good cheeseburger" was, I thought, a bit too cheeky.

-- A memory: right after Highway 18, the PCT switchbacks up the slopes of Gold Mountain (I think it is), and here there are rivers not of water, but of cut stone, bright and white, cascading down the mountain. They make for tricky crossings--beware turning an ankle in the scree!--but I remember first encountering such on a trip up to Modjeska Peak, just past the Four Corners of Main Divide-Maple Springs-Harding. And I remember that I had been very scared of my footing, moving very cautiously, when I had been passed by a mountain biker. Do you have anything for these bugs?, he had asked, blatantly unconcerned with the loose rocks he was peddling over, and swatting at the cloud of gnats gathered around his head. Unfortunately, I didn't, and he had sighed, still swatting away, but seeing him cross--and on a bike!--well, that went a long way to assuaging my fears. The trail provides!