Day 52: Mile 602.0 - 621.9

And this day can be thought of in Three Acts.

In Act One, I was awakened at Robin Bird Spring with first some early-morning hikers getting water, then a distant car alarm, some distant voices, and finally some gunshots. No problem, as long as they're not shooting at me, they're welcome to hunt in season! I packed up my stuff and headed out, and this first section reminded me a lot of Big Bear: this was the land of boulder and pine and needle again, only here the trees seemed younger and thinner, the forest floor not as completely covered. The trail still traveled along these little ravines jutting up around dry creekbeds, wandering in the woods, never revealing anything beyond the next turn or two. The only difference from Big Bear was the heat: even before 10am, my watch was registering mid-80s, though luckily this was regularly cut by a subalpine breeze. But besides the heat, this was a wonderful little section, continuing the surprisingly nice hiking of yesterday.

At the end of Act One I was supposed to divert at a road and head to Landers Meadow Spring to get water. That's 7 miles ahead, no problem, should get there around 11:30am, and 11:30am rolls around and I don't see a road or spring anywhere and I check Guthooks. And I was 1.1 miles *beyond* the turnoff. That's a lot! Enough that I checked if I could make it to the next water: 6 miles, with 0.5 L. Sigh, no, I can't, so feeling like an idiot I turned around and hiked the 1.1 miles back to the road, made the correct turn this time, and went to Landers Meadow Spring to get water and eat lunch.ˋAnd that's the actual end of Act One.

Act Two covers from Landers Meadow Spring to the next water source: a large water cache at Kelso Road. Over this stretch, the trail starts to become desert, but not yet! Instead, as it descends down the mountain, walking along the side of a broad canyon, it stays in the woods, just now of solitary pines and oaks sprouting up at acute angles from the slopes. From here I looked out across the canyon to barren mountains, just dirt and shrub, and I thought, oh I hope we don't go over there! Oh, so much better to stay here, where Brother Pine and Sister Oak, though sparse, still protect from Beating Sun, and are oh so welcome for having done so. And for much of Act Two, as the trail went down and down and down, the woods held up, until finally, sadly, in the end it dropped below the treeline and the desert, unmitigated, appeared in full. But this was only briefly--soon after, the trail met Kelso Road, and here a trail angel had established a large water cache, and I stopped, ate another meal, and filtered and purified yet more water.

And in the third and final Act, after Kelso Road, the trail heads into the desert proper. Here the land is just sand and little scrub-shrubs, occasionally punctuated by a juniper tree or even, on rare chance, a stand of juniper trees. Here the trail climbs yet again, and the mountain that I had looked at in Act Two and hoped not to cross? Well, the trail crosses it, although to be fair, it doesn't go over the top (as I had dreaded), but instead goes over a pass on its shoulder. Beyond that mountain, though, the trail walks the top of another desert canyon, only now with the sun setting over the immediate mountain to my left, and with a canyon yawning open before me, showing a desert floor far below and blue ridges of yet other ranges far beyond--sunset over the desert mountains, the rocks thrown into sharp, 3D relief, the soil now burning ochre in the last rays, it was quite a sight!

It was also quite windy, so luckily Dove Spring Canyon Road was at the top of a pass: the wind was coming up behind me, so after crossing over to the other side, it lessened. Only there were no real campsites on the other side, just the road winding down. I wandered for a bit looking for a site, eventually finding a small flat bluff above the road, slightly protected from the remaining breezes coming over the bluff by a spate of juniper trees. I camped, realizing that if anybody came up the road I would be right there, but there weren't any other good spots. The other problem was that there weren't any rocks around for hammering my stakes in; luckily, I found a sturdy stick that someone had used in a firepit here, and used that as hammer. And so I made camp, using the no-fly style again since it was warm enough, and the wind was still rushing through every now and again. And that was the hike!

I will mention one last thing. In the middle of the night I got up to go the bathroom--common enough. And on this night, in the desert, on a moonless and cloudless night, even a bit groggy and my eyes not yet adjusted, I looked up and saw the stars filling the dark, and the hint of the Milky Way curving a band right across it all. And for a moment I understood why people come out to the desert and stay up all night stargazing. For my part, I did pull out the tripod and try taking a few long exposures, but night photography is its own discipline, and I quickly ran out of energy and went back to sleep! Maybe that wasn't the greatest idea--after all, moonless nights only come around once a month, and to simultaneously have clear skies requires two fortuitous events--so likely I should have stayed up and enjoyed it more. But the covers of my sleeping bag were also calling.

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Some notes:

-- Robin Bird Spring > Landers Meadow Spring > Kelso Road > Dove Spring Canyon Road

-- Today I met Stardust, who came in just behind me at Landers Meadow Spring. Did you go the wrong way?, she asked, I saw you coming back. And yes, and I explained. We talked a little bit, she's a recent graduate (2019) and worked in parks services back in Connecticut for a bit before coming out here. She's already done the AT, she's doing the PCT: I asked if she thought about the third. No, she said, I think I want to travel to other countries instead. Fair enough! There's a large campground just across the road from the spring, and while we were eating and filtering at the spring, one of the campers came to grab water, motoring up on his dirt bike with a 5-gallon jug. He got to asking us about the trail. For example, when did you start? April 16th, I said. May 12th, said Stardust. When do you plan to finish? By October, I said. In August, said Stardust. I mean, when I'd asked her where she started this morning, she had said in the big field with everyone else, about 15 miles back. 15 miles? I'd done like 7 so far and she's done 15? When I asked her how far she's going today, she said she said, well, she wanted to get her 30 miles in. (I shouldn't have been surprised by that, but still, I was a little surprised!) She was very chill--she talks in a very calm, very even voice, with a laid back tone that's so unassuming that once when she asked the camper getting water a question, he straight up thought she was just continuing a conversation with me and didn't reply. So very chill, and just casually doing more than a marathon a day!

-- At Landers Spring I also met Sam and Primetime, who were taking a break too. They knew Stardust and talked with her a bit. Sam looks a bit like Niko of the Corridor Crew, for reference. Towards the end of my break at Landers, I headed off to use the outhouse (that's the benefit of campgrounds: actual bathrooms!), and when I came back Sam and Primetime had a standing bet going. At Landers, the spring is a pipe, about 2 inches in diameter with a strong flow, which empties into a large metal tub. The standing bet was whether to take a dip in the tub. Primetime seemed uninterested, just laying in the shade, half snoozing, while Sam stood by the tub and thought about it. Finally, he stripped down to his skivvies and jumped in. And it was cold, freezing! Acclimating myself to the Sierras, he said. I would meet up with Sam again at the Kelso Road water cache, and here we spoke some more. He has a degree in biochemistry, but is currently in carpentry. He wants to build his own house, is working on it (although evidently building materials are ridiculously expensive right now). Not a full size house, but a smaller one. He's also a musician, plays the fiddle, is in a band. He knows places I think because he's traveled there for music: he knew of the Bay Area, for example. He is thinking of making a change, though, possibly going back to school to get a graduate degree in chemistry--he enjoyed the chemistry side of things. When he heard I was an engineer, he asked if I had any profound thing I've learned as an engineer, and of course my mind went blank. Not that I *have* learned anything as an engineer, just that if I *had*, I wouldn't recall it on the spot like that. So I said, engineering is very pragmatic, it's very see-problem-fix-problem (anyone who knows baseball will immediately see where I stole that construction from), and he seemed satisfied enough with that! Sam's a more gregarious fellow, likes to talk, ask questions. 

-- And then there was Primetime, who I talked to a bit at Landers. He's from Idaho, and recommends hiking the Sawtooths, which are evidently pretty famous (Sam knew of them too). At Landers, he was mostly interested in resting. I saw him again at Kelso--he was coming in as I was leaving--and told him that Stardust and Sam had just left (they had taken a brief break there to wait out the heat), and that Stardust at least was planning on another 8 miles. Yeah, he said, I'll try to catch her. And about, oh, 30 minutes later, as I'm going up that first desert hill, who comes powering up the trail but Primetime. It's priiime tiiime!, he drawled, as I stood aside and he flew past me. And I think that's the last I'll see of that guy!

-- One final story. At Kelso Road, there was a squirrel who hung around and clearly had gotten used to people. If you left your bag unattended, he would go up to it, start hunting around for food. Sam was greatly amused, watched the squirrel try to get water from the big water bottles, talked about how it spread out in the shade, tracked it nosing around his bag. Well, I was sitting next to my bag, eating there out of my Backpacker's Pantry bag, when I felt something on my pack. What the, I said, and stood up. And Sam, amazed, laughed. The squirrel had literally jumped from the bush behind me onto my back! I mean, I'm not that fast admittedly, but I'm also not a stationary object! Anyway, normally I would think it cute, but then I thought that maybe squirrels carry rabies and I've already been sick once thank you very much, so then I guarded against Mr. Squirrel much more vigilantly! (He didn't cause me any more trouble, certainly didn't jump on me again!)

-- Some more water calculations! There were two water sources today: the natural spring at Landers Meadow, and the provided water cache at Kelso Road. I believed in the latter thanks to a handwritten message in a trail register yesterday--the note had said guaranteed 250 gallons (!) as of yesterday. Granted we hikers drink a lot, but to drink through all 250 gallons is a bit much! So I trusted it would be there. Landers Meadow to Kelso Road is 7 miles, so I took 3 L: usually, it would be 1 L per 5 miles so only 2 L, but this was the desert and getting hot. From Kelso Road, the next water was a provided water cache at Bird Spring Pass, 20 miles away. That would require camping in between too, so coming out of there I carried 6 L: 4 L at the 1 L per 5 miles rule, plus 1 L for camping, plus 1 L extra for the desert. This section--between Tehachapi and Walker Pass--is dominated by water concerns. In fact, without the provided water caches, there's a stretch of over 40 miles without natural water sources! So many thanks to the folks who provide the caches!