Day 73: Mile 838.9 - 856.7

And at the risk of making this a Trope, here is the Day as an enumerated List. Alas, but no throughline Emerged for today, and with that no Idea, so that I am left without Structure. And so a List it is!

1 Uno and I have been heading out early, with Dylan catching up later, so I go to wake Uno each morning while Dylan sleeps in. And today I woke her about 15 minutes before sunrise. And so we gathered ourselves, then went to the top of the little bluff east of our campsite, and watched the sun break through a notch in the peaks to the east. And it was magnificent. As Uno said, this place almost looks like Mars (well, except for the flowing snow-stream down below babbling away) (and the snow-bank it's springing from) and to see the sun rise someplace so foreign is almost surreal. To our left, the lake spread wide and clear in the windless morning, and behind us, the moon was just now setting, dropping behind a peak near-orange in the sunrise, it's top grayed by cloud shadow, it's bottom strongly blacked by shadow of the eastward cliffs. It was an utterly earthly, and strangely unearthly, experience, both at once.

2 At the top of Muir Pass is the Muir Hut, an emergency shelter for hikers. Some folks stayed in the hut last night, and when Uno and I arrived and peaked in, even though it was dark I could see an occupied sleeping bag still laid out on the floor to the left, could make out a fireplace too, and a bench that went around the whole room and then, oh my goodness!, someone was at the back, directly in front of me, waving at me! This would turn out to be Twilight, who we would meet later on, at the lakes below, and whom Uno knew and would end up talking to.

3 On the other side of Muir Pass, there's a series of terraced lakes, with each upper lake feeding the lower lakes through an outlet that often flows fast over large smoothed boulders, with little drops and falls interspersed if you can find them. It makes for a really beautiful scene: the rocks, the water, the blue sky behind, and the green grasses and bushes beside, all wide and open and so ordinary up here, and yet all so extraordiarily beautiful. And I remember stopping for a moment and wondering: where does all this water come from? Because we've just gone over the pass--we're pretty high up and it's flowing down--where does it come from? And rationally I know it comes from snow melt--but there isn't that much snow up here--and maybe it even comes from a spring, but it's flowing and flowing for hours and days and weeks and where does all this water come from? I just can't get it to add up in my mind.

4 We stopped for lunch at the northern end of Evolution Lake, a place that Martin had recommended when I had bumped into him at the stream. And I agree: Evolution Lake is very pretty. What makes it is, if you sit on the northern-most tip of the lake, look to the west and see the pinnacles, tall and imposing and falling right into the lake, and watch the clouds dance as they come over them, and watch the cloud-shadows play across them and highlight every crag and crack, and just sit and be amazed (and, if you stare too long, feel a bit of vertigo, a bit of that lighthouse-is-falling-on-me illusion). 

5 After the pass, and after the lakes, the trail drops down into a river valley (of course), in this case following Evolution Creek. And here we finally had a PCT river crossing: one where you get your feet wet. Because the stream is wide here and there are no rocks to hop. So Dylan went first, peeling off his shoes and socks and going over barefoot, and the water was calf-deep and he looked a bit unsteady in places but made it fine. And I went second and did the same but chose a route slightly upstream where the water stayed but ankle-deep, but the footing was tricky because the bottom of Evolution Creek is rocky and pebbly, so I took it slowly and carefully to make sure not to fall. And Uno went last and put on sandals and crossed it like it wasn't a thing. Ah, the benefits of having the right equipment!

6 Just before the Evolution Creek crossing, at the Ranger Station, we took a brief break and as we were gazing out at the meadow that surrounds Evolution Creek, we noticed two deer just out there, grazing away in a marshy bit. And I know there are deer out here--this is their home, after all!--but they're still a treat to see, and in such an idyllic setting, with the green grass of the meadow, the tall dark conifers behind, the gray granite of the mountains so close just behind them, and the sound of the creek bubbling away. And in the afternoon light, not yet golden hour but getting there! These are the times when you want to stop hiking and just sit and try to synchronize with Deer Time. But, alas, we had places to go!

7 Oh, and speaking of animals, I should probably tell my (paltry) version of Uno's bear story! This encounter was from a few days ago. So south of the Kearsarge-PCT junction, on every signpost, there's a handwritten note from the rangers warning that there's a Mama bear with her two cubs in the area and YOU MUST USE YOUR BEAR CANISTER because HANGING DOESN'T WORK. Now Dylan and Uno had gotten out of Bishop late, so they crossed Kearsarge late, and so had opted to make camp right at the junction, and had decided to cowboy-camp it too. Well, just a Uno is on the edge of falling into her subconscious, Dylan says, in a quiet voice, we need to move. What?, she says. There's a bear, right there, Dylan says, and Uno looks and, yep, right there, not 10 feet from her, is a bear cub, its distinct head shape highlighted in the moonlight, looking at her and making the strangest almost-whimpering sound. And a further look shows Mama and the other cub not far behind, just checking them out. Now Uno had asked Dylan--jokingly--what he would do if they met a bear, and he had said the standard: get big and make a lot of noise. So--that's not what they did. They hesitatingly knocked their poles against some rocks and the bears, uninterested, went away. Dylan followed them some, keeping his distance, just to make sure they went, and saw they were going towards another camp. He tried calling out to them in warning, but they ignored him, until a few minutes later there was screaming and yelling and calls of, oh no, not my tent! But by then Dylan had gone back to the cowboy camping site and he and Uno got up, broke camp, and hiked some more miles--in the dark--to get the hell out of dodge! But to come that close, to a Mama bear and her two cubs, man, but that'll throw you for a loop make no mistake!

8 Towards the end of the day, the trail walked along a small gorge, the water coursing beneath, carving away at the stone. At one point, it had carved a hollow in the stone below, so that what had been a cliff was rapidly (well, rapidly in geological time) becoming a shelf. And atop that shelf budded a small tree, still young, only just taller than me. And I imagined the trees here, on the more secure shore, tall and big and much much older, calling out to it, little one, little one, do you know where you sprout? The ground beneath you: it won't be ground for long, I can see the river churning below, eating away at the stone. It's not safe over there! But then again, trees can't move, so there's nothing to be done except hope in geological time, and that by the time the water erodes the shelf enough that it finally collapses, the tree will have already grown and coned and lived the tree-equivalent of a Good Life, and maybe even already passed. For even when you build on the rock instead of the sand, know that the rock isn't forever; but sometimes it can be forever enough.

9 During one descent, Dylan and Uno got into a discussion about some worry that Uno back in Real Life, and Dylan remarked that thru-hiking is supposed to be simple. You just walk, eat, and sleep, that's the beauty of it, as he said. And you just leave all the other concerns, all the other worries of life, behind. Now I don't know if you can leave all the other worries of life behind--that world continues to spin with its own inexorable logic and rules even as you go for a walk, and you're still held to those logics and rules--but the idea that thru-hiking reduces to just walk, eat, and sleep: there's something there I think. I think it can reduce to those things, and I think to reduce it to those things is an admirable goal, but I also think reducing to just that--for me, at least--is harder than it sounds.

10 And I'll end on an observation: I've found it's hard to get miles in the Sierra, not just because it's at elevation (although that's a big contributing factor, one I especially notice on climbs), but because the trails are often much more technical. I talked this over with Dylan, and he roughly agreed. A lot more rocks--sometimes the trail just traverses loose rock tumbles like around passes, sometimes it walks across bouldery terrain, and sometimes the soil is just stony--and a lot more roots. I noted a long time ago that the PCT is a remarkably well-groomed and well-maintained trail and that's still true--I think it's just that the ground itself here is more technical. Makes for great scenery--all that granite!--but makes for much longer days with much shorter mileage: I don't think I could get up to 3 mph on these *downhills* if I even tried!

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Some notes:

-- Campsite > Muir Pass > Wanda Lake > Evolution Lake > Evolution Creek > Goddard Canyon > Piute Canyon > Campsite

-- And today was the day I talked baseball with Dylan--who's a fan of the sports ball--and we came to the classical "divide": I like baseball more for the stories, whereas he likes it more for the analysis. He will talk about who the greatest player of all time is and back it with statistics, whereas I just revel in the hagiography. But that's fine: the game has plenty of room, and if you happen to like that corner and I this one, well, we're both still in the room. He did ask if I follow football, and I replied with my standard, no, football is too intelligent a game for me, to which he countered that's a bad take, and proceeded to list off 4 reasons why. And I don't remember them all, and I admit it's a self-deprecating joke to cover the fact that I only have enough bandwidth to follow one sport--there's too much other stuff to do!--and baseball was the one it ended up being (although these days I follow the KSL/GSL more than baseball). But I will say this about baseball versus football: I think that football is indeed a more complex game, whereas baseball is a simpler game but one that begets detail. The complexity of baseball is almost mathematical: something so simple that it gives rise to all manner of structures and directions and pursuits. Traditionally, I always thought of football and baseball in terms of Ben Mossawir and myself: whereas Ben's mind is incredible and can tackle complex things straight on and push through to the other side, mine can't. So I have to pick at the edges, trying to find a way in, poking for an approximation that I can pseudo-justify that captures at least most of what I want. I have to simplify the problem down to an issue or two, a single tradeoff, at most a trio of variables, and then starts the analysis from there. I can't handle complicated things, so I cheat and reduce down to simple things. Is it any wonder, then, that Ben can hold and appreciate the complex strategems of football, while I can but focus on the the next pitch?

-- At the gorge, Dylan--intriguied--found a spot to clamber down the steep cliffs to the water below. I think he wanted to jump in but, given the strong current and the way the water was churning, took the wiser course and stayed dry. But it was the type of face that I would have trouble descending, even if I shed my pack, and it was a bit nerve-wracking watching him head down. He does do a lot of rock climbing, so the rational mind says he'll be fine, but the guts just invoke that empathetic response--see that steepness, hear that huge sound of falling water--and get queasy nonetheless! When he came back up, he did remark that there was a waterfall down there, hidden by the rocky outcroppings above, and that it was amazing. Ah, but there are things you get to see if you have certain skills, and if you don't--like I don't--you can but content yourself with the expressions of wonder on the face of those who do!

-- Finally, on the home stretch we came across a deer that crossed the trail, and then lingered. Usually the deer basically ignore us--they look at us, then go back to their business (of grazing, always grazing)--but this deer seemed a bit more nervous, almost pacing back and forth and eyeing us suspiciously. Dylan conjectured that it was looking for a fawn and that might be: I could anthromorphize worry over a child in its actions. Anyway, we moved on: if it was worried about these strange humans and what they might do to its little one, better to move on and alleviate the anxiety as quickly as possible!