Day 54: Mile 643.8 - 651.3

So let me know if you've heard this story before (seriously: I fear I'm repeating myself with these descriptions).

A short hike today, just to Walker Pass 8 miles ahead. And the trail started in the scrub-land desert, with boulders and grit-sand and no cover, everything sun-drenched yellow and dust green, windy and short, but with one interlude: a brief wood, with young trees and deciduous leaves, the morning light slanting between the thin trunks. Then to a clear descent down (what I'm guessing is named) Jack's Creek Canyon, and here the trail becomes a shelf trail slowly walking down the side of the canyon, the dirt yellow and little-grained, crunchy but not yet slippery. The canyon side is wooded too, with old tall trees withstanding the wind, sometimes shaded, but often sparse, and when they suddenly disappear and you come to a bald section, you look down the slope and realize just how steep it is. But some trees there, a bush or two or three, anything to hide the drop, and you'd never notice. After that the trail takes a turn and walks down through foothills, yellow grassed but also wooded, now with younger trees and more shade, and now looking up at the slopes. And finally it finished in a peculiar space, in flat little rolling section of medley: conifer trees standing awkwardly in introverted groups, every other tree dead, dressed in dry gray and deep black, a few junipers standing out in the crowd, and finally a few big boulders thrown in for good measure. Almost as if all had come to this place, set up roots, and now were waiting to see if the boiling pot would work, or if one or the other type of green would eventually come to dominate. By now, I could clearly see the highway, and just across the valley, on the other side the mountains rose tall and yellow and bare and I thought, well, not going there today!

Because I was getting off trail at Walker Pass and heading into Ridgecrest. And I took a left to the Walker Pass Campground, and there found 1) a bunch of other hikers, and 2) trail magic! Which was food--including rapidly melting ice cream--and nuts and snacks and water and man, but it was pretty incredible. A bunch of hikers were also there, they seemed to know each other. But these folks were fast: for the past couple days, I'd been getting passed by people who started in early to mid May, people who do 15 miles, stop for lunch, then say, yeah, I can do another 10-15 before sunset. Fast people. And that's one of the problems with taking time off for the vaccine, then taking time off for getting sick: all the people I knew are now far ahead--maybe a week ahead?--and that's almost impossible to make up. (Think of the math: if they do 17 miles a day, and I do 20 miles a day, it'll still take me a week to make up the difference. If they're as strong as me--and they are--and they're also doing 20s, well, then Zeno's Achilles really does never reach the turtle!) And that's discouraging, honestly. I remember way back when we left Big Bear, Cookie had put in a big day--20 miles--and the reason was because she wanted to keep up with a cool group of folks. I didn't share the sentiment then, but now? And folks say, you'll meet new people, and that's true, but these people are fast: doing 25-30 miles a day, so I meet them for a stop, a day, maybe a day and a half, and then they're gone. But they say part of the PCT is about being isolated--we are in the middle of nowhere, after all--so that's par for the course. I still miss people, though, and feel so far behind.

Anyway, after partaking of the trail magic, me and another hiker--Sandals--headed to the highway to hitch a ride. And first car that comes up?--boom!, pulls over! Lucky! This would be Jim, who lives in Lake Isabella, but was heading over to Ridgecrest for a dentist's appointment. We got to talking: Jim works at McNally's, a restaurant/store/resort along the Kern River, but the more interesting thing was his leg. I couldn't tell--Jim was wearing jeans--but back in the day Jim rode motorcycles all over the place in the desert, and had gotten into an accident where he had effectively been T-boned by a car. And at the hospital, they had originally said he would lose his right leg beneath the knee because it had severed an artery or vein down there, but by chance a visiting doctor was heading out that day, but knew of a procedure that could save the leg. So they did that and he was able to keep the leg, but it had taken 7 surgeries over a couple years, and now he had metal rods in both the upper and lower parts of his leg. I asked him when he got back on the bike, and he said he didn't own bikes anymore, but he had a friend who refurbished them out in Vegas and when he would go out there (about once a month), he would ride them. He had a couple of kids--two sons--that he had after the accident. They were grown now--when he was a kid, his family would go out to Lake Isabella to visit his grandparents, and he wanted to raise his kids in a smaller school district so he moved out there--one son worked in military procurement out in Nevada, and the other worked at with him at McNally's. Jim was a nice guy, slow spoken--at one point I asked him for restaurant recommendations in Ridgecrest, but then we talked about something else, and then there was a pause, and then, a few minutes later, he answered. But he dropped off Sandals at the Pizza Hut down the way, and for me, I said just drop me off at the hospital, my hotel is just around there, and so he did. He stepped out to smoke a cigarette before going in and I asked my standard, can I give you a little something? And he frowned and said, no, I was going this way anyway. Just drop a little extra in the offering plate on Sunday. (Which was out of the blue, we hadn't discussed anything religious, but made sense to me.) He reminds me of lao mei in the best sense of the word--considerate, measured, means what he says.

And then I was in Ridgecrest! And then the chores: check in at the hotel, figure out the laundry situation, then hit the post office for my box, then the Stater Bros for resupply, then the local Chinese place for dinner (just for something different from burgers and pizza), then back to the hotel, eat dinner and put the laundry in, wash a bunch of stuff. Wanted to get more done, but by then I was tired and ended up falling asleep with the TV and all the lights still on. But that was the day!  

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Some notes:

-- Cabin & McIver's Spring > Walker Pass Campground > Ridgecrest

-- On the way to the post office, I passed by an ice cream shop and, on a whim, went right in. I was looking at what to get, then saw the lady before me getting this sort of mango ice cream drink so I said, one of those. And it was mango ice cream in a cup, but with a red sauce that was spicy, a good contrast. I did get a medium when I should've gotten a small (as the guy working there had recommended): one of the problems with hiking is that your eyes become bigger than your stomach. But it was pretty good!

-- Another little observation: on the way back, I saw an SUV stopped at a light, and then a little sedan pulled up beside. And the driver of the sedan looked over and recognized the SUV driver and waved. And she waved back. Then she looked in the back seat and waved at the little girl back there too. I know that Ridgecrest is a town of 28000 (according to Guthooks), but that little moment felt much smaller than that.

-- And I stopped at a Walgreens, and the lady at the counter recognized I was a PCT hiker--I think the backpack gave it away. How much does your pack weigh?, she asked. I try not to think about it, I joked. But what, like 40 pounds or so? I could never carry that, she said. (I think she could, would just take some training is all.) And at the Chinese restaurant, the girl who took my order recognized I was a PCT hiker--I think the backpack gave it away--and asked about it between orders. And she mentioned that she likes to pick up hikers on her commutes whenever she sees us out there, and I said well we definintely appreciate that. So you bump into folks who know about the trail out here, and all seem pretty happy and positive about it, and it's nice to (hopefully) be a nice and positive person back!