Day 53: Mile 621.9 - 643.8

In the morning, I woke to a cloudy, almost overcast, desert, with a cold wind blowing through. My campsite had been mostly sheltered from the wind during the night--it did whip through every now and then, but nothing severe enough to warrant waking up--then the wind suddenly died at dawn, before picking up again after sunrise. Clearly the wind is correlated to temperature. It's very local-specific, but I remember back at Scissors Crossing that it was windy during the day and night, but at dawn and sunset there was probably less than an hour of calm when the temperature differentials just balanced out. This spot seemed to be in that same vein.

In the morning, the trail continued walking through the desert. And looking around, it *looked* like desert: gone were the hills with forests decorating a slope over there, now it all just sand and bluff and the occasional juniper stand as far as I could see, and I found that, actually, I rather liked it. Granted, the cloudy morning may have been shading my judgment more favorably--I likely would have wilted in the heat and had a much different opinion!--but on this morning, as I topped a bluff and looked out to the Mojave stretching out to the east, flat and featureless with the lone bright line of a road running straight into all the emptiness, I found something strangely compelling about the desert. The desert is open, and it's honest. Sure, there's an ecosystem here, and life and its rhythms, same as any other environ, but it all seems just straightforward. Without deceit: it doesn't hide anything, everything is obvious and that's just how it is. And it would be a great place to camp and just be for a while--is this what the Desert Fathers were looking for?--at least it would be if it weren't for the lack of water. And that made me remember Dan (Chikami--who checks in on the apartment to make sure it hasn't burned down), who had this idea for a water-transporter-robot-reverse-wheelbarrow thing he wanted to exactly solve that issue.

Ok, so what I'm saying is: Dan, if you're reading this, the robot idea is a good idea. And if you want me to help work on it, I'm game. And if I waver, take me up to a mountain somewhere overlooking the flat desert expanse below, and hope it'll reawaken this feeling.

In the morning, benefitting from overcast skies, I hiked to Bird Spring Pass, the last water source--a provided cache--before Walker Pass, 20 miles away. I bumped into Sam here. He had hiked a couple miles past Kelso Road yesterday, then wandered about a quarter mile off trail to find a prime camping spot next to a juniper tree--he found something almost romantic about staring up at the stars through the spines of juniper tree--and he had seen the Milky Way too. We talked some, then he headed off: the next part of the trail was a climb over a mountain, and he wanted to get that done then take lunch. Whereas I stayed, and took breakfast, and then lunch, here next to the water. (Hey, both of those used water, so I wanted to stay as close as possible.)

It was a long break, and may have been ill-advised: when I started up again, the clouds were starting to finally burn off, and I ended up hiking up the mountain in the heat. I slowed a lot as the switchbacks climbed up what seemed like the tallest peak in this section of the desert. The sort of place where you look up and see the trail ahead of you, going up and up, a shelf trail going up a slope that ends in nothing but blue sky. (It'll switchback there, don't worry, but it *looks* like it just goes into the wide blue yonder.) I got passed by a group or two of hikers and found myself stopping a lot at the switchback turns to catch my breath. After about an hour and a half of climbing, I finally reached the upper bluff and crossed over to the other side.

Which in contrast was wooded and shaded and looked out north. And in the far distance I saw what I thought was Whitney, but would later be corrected by another hiker that that's not Whitney, *that*, over *there*, is Whitney, but regardless, I saw the Sierras and Whitney and I thought, man, but that looks far. And I remembered that I had thought the same of Mount Tehachapi so many weeks ago, and passed it, so coming up, I'll be passing that too. But the preview of the Sierras, and a clear landmark, that was an unexpected pickup.

This section descended down the mountain, heading for Walker Pass, and was a dry wooded region, but wooded nonetheless. And over the course of this section I met two folks: Gutfish (who was hiking with Pinata and Long Haul, the group who had gotten water at Robin Bird Spring yesterday), and Thankful. I met Gutfish first in the early afternoon. Gutfish is an older guy, 53, and recently retired from 20+ years at the FBI. He's hiking the trail to help figure out what to do with the next phase of his life, which was originally one of things I was supposed to think about as well, but I haven't gotten to it yet. And he hadn't either. He had this theory that it would kick in after the Sierras--after the toughest part of the trail--so, sure, why not, I'll go with that. But he had figured out a couple of things: he'd figured out that love is one of the most important things in life, and that everything is relative. I didn't ask about the former, but did about the latter. He said, sit on a hot stove for a minute, or on a park bench with a beautiful woman for three minutes, and time will run very different for those two events! But it's more than that, I think. Because if things are relative, then they're open for interpretation, and that interpretation--which is your choice, is controllable by you--isn't somehow invalid or unreal. It's can't be measured against some objective thing and be found wanting. (Or if it can, I can't know that objective view, so effectively it can't, if that makes sense.) So then become and engineer and pick the interpretation that works best. (There's the inverse side of this--the cage of freedom idea from the existentialists--but let's leave it in a still-happy place for now.) Anyway, that aside aside, I talked with Gutfish about the trail (and the schedule, which was depressing for me--I feel so behind), about his work at the FBI in intellectual property (he worked in Silicon Valley, and had a sad story about a guy who had built the guts of banking system, only to have someone steal the source code and take it to a big bank--the FBI eventually proved the theft, but still, when it's little guy against big guy, you feel for the little guy), about the fact that everybody else on this thing is so young (relative to us old guys)! We walked together for a while, talking and chatting, and then eventually Long Haul caught up and I headed out, pushing ahead to a road walk portion.

Where I met Thankful, who's on the other end of the age spectrum. He's 5 years out from a chemical engineering degree from UT Austin, finishing up a stint at Schlumberger (sp?), but also considering a pivot. Evidently 5 years into your first job is pivot time?--Thankful seemed to feel so. For us, we talked engineering: he was interested in moving into energy, which he felt was the key to improving quality of life for everyone. Clean, affordable energy. In particular he wanted to work on battery and energy storage. (Ah, someone else who can appreciate my argument that if you want to work on energy, work on *storage*, not on generation, since if we had efficient storage that means we could budget and plan and save and do all those basic things they advised you to do in your high school home finance class, rather than living hand-to-mouth as we do now!) Thankful walked a quick pace--almost 3 mph--but over this road walk I was able to keep up with him, side-by-side as one or the other of us would be noticably higher or lower (the road was pretty rutted, so the two sides were almost never level). But he also reminded me of something, the engineering principle of being quick to fail. If something isn't working, then change it, change it quickly, and see if that helps. If it doesn't, change it again, the point is to "prototype" as quickly as possible, to test through new solutions as rapidly as possible, and iteratively to get to an answer. So like my feet hurt. And he said, have you tried changing your shoes? I'm wearing Lone Peaks--you know that Altra has two other lines, Timps and Olympics (I think those are the names) which are the same shoe but with more padding. Maybe that will help. Or there's another one Altra makes for thru-hiking: that classic wide toe box, but with more arch support, maybe try that one. Thankful was clearly an engineer, and a young one: head still full of ideas, heart still enamored with building and trying and achieving. He comes from a long line of chemical engineers--his dad was a chemical engineer working on environmental solutions, his grandfather was a chemical engineer working for Dupont on nylon back in the day--so clearly the engineering knack is around the house! But, like Gutfish many years his senior, he's also thinking about a "pivot" (as he calls it), and what to do next. And also like Gutfish--and me, for that matter--I don't think he's thought about it a heck of a lot yet!

The PCT joins the road for about 2 miles before jutting back onto its own trail. I walked and talked with Thankful under pretty much the end of that, where he joined back with his group. You're welcome to camp with us, they said, but it was a windy spot and they were cowboy camping. I wanted to set up my tent so after eating dinner with Thankful, I continued on to a cabin that looked to be over the bluff, and thus hopefully sheltered more from the wind. And this was the discouraging part of my day. Because when I found the cabin, and found my campsite, and set up my tent, and opened my bag to get out my sleeping bag, I found that one of my water reservoirs had leaked. And evidently I hadn't cinched my compactor bag properly, because the water had gotten into there as well. So now everything was wet. And it was dark by now, and windy still--I picked a spot between some trees that was a little better but still--and now I was trying to dry out my sleeping pad, and my sleeping clothes, and other things were wet too--it was a mess. I eventually got out of my tent, spread out my sleeping pad on a big rock, went over it with my Shamwow, then hoisted it up like a sail and let the wind blow on it for a little bit, all in the dark lit only by my headlamp. Oh, and just before sunset, after I'd just finished setting up my tent, I'd looked out and seen a fox not 50 yards away, staring out at me, so while I wasn't alone out here, it wasn't the type of company I wanted. sigh. It was tough night, trying to dry everything out, trying to hang stuff from the ceiling of my tent, and just being miserable for a little bit. On the one hand, I should be thankful this happened here, in a fairly germane environment where everything being wet wasn't life threatening. On the other hand, everything was wet! Well, except my sleeping bag--that escaped, thankfully. But yeah, I felt stupid (I think this water-into-compactor has happened before, I can't remember when, but clearly I didn't learn my lesson), I felt discouraged. I remember knowing I needed to filter water, and just staring at the CNOC reservoir and my Sawyer for 10 minutes knowing I needed to do this thing, and just not wanting to--I just wanted to go to bed--but eventually I did. So what had started as a good day: almost revelations in the desert morning, two good conversations in the wooded afternoon--ended on a sour note. Ah but the trail goes up, and it goes down!

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Some notes:

-- Dove Spring Canyon Road > Bird Spring Pass > Cabin & McIver's Spring

-- Merton once wrote that the desert was useful to God exactly insofar as it was useless to Man. Only the desert isn't useless: I remember back when I was hiking with Candy Corn and Runts, we overlooked the desert and Candy Corn asked, what were the deserts useful for before windmills and solar panels? Just casinos. And brothels. But that's not what Merton meant--I'm not sure I completely understand what he *did* mean (and I think a lot of the rest of the book tries to unravel that insight)--but I do think the honesty of the desert contributed to it. Because out here, all the extra stuff gets stripped away, and all there is is the world you see and must interact with, and water. That's it: everything reduces to what's in front of you, the situation you're in *right* *now*, and water. Nothing distracts, nothing prompts anything, it's just there. And from that place, starting from emptiness, I think one can begin to think, to really think, with a clarity and almost purity. And if your thoughts run too far afield, become too unreal, then the heat and the sand and the stark immediacy will hit you and force you back into reality. Or all the way the other way, into delusion: as Merton notes, the devil is also here, the ultimate unreality also lives here! (Reality vs unreality: it's a theological thing.)

-- Oh, and in the evening, right before I found out my reservoir had leaked into my compactor bag, I went out of my tent to take a powder and, not 50 yards away, saw a fox in the dimming light. And he looked at me, and thought that maybe I hadn't seen him, walked a bit away, turned and looked at me again. Foxes are fine, but when you're alone at night, next to an empty cabin, and off trail so odds are nobody else is going to show up, they are a reminder that, yeah, you're in the wilderness and there are rules out here that aren't yours but that you're subject to. I'm saying, given the situation, it was a bit spooky, and it did make me bring my shoes into the tent for the night, lest they myteriously disappear in the dark.