Day 107: Mile 1599.7 - 1613.7

Last night, while sleeping in the park in Etna, for once I was woken by a thunderstorm. It happened early in the morning, around 4am, which is the one of the hours I normally wake up anyway (and then hit the snooze button for about an hour), which is why I probably caught it. Lots of bright flashes lighting up my tent, followed by thunder, very near, very much overhead. And rain, lots of rain. It lasted a while, and eventually I went back to sleep before it finished, but it did wake me and I do remember it. In the morning, walking from my tent to the restrooms, I passed Turtle who was already sitting by one of the storage lockers, ukelele out, strumming a bit. Congratulations, he said, you survived the Great Downpour. Well I wouldn't call it that: it *was* a storm, and a big one, but the Great Downpour? At best I think it's training for what to expect further north--a taste of what's to come--at worst I suspect we'll be getting the same storms every night for the next couple nights. Because the weather today was still hot and muggy, and the air still, so still!, just pregnant and waiting to rain rain rain!

In the morning, we packed stuff up and then walked to the bakery to get breakfast. Which was very good--I had an Italian sausage fritata, a chocolate croissant, and a yogurt parfait: all very rich and very flavorful. We then walked up the road that lead out of town to the cemetery, where we waited with some other hikers and eventually got a hitch up to the trailhead from Joy, a very nice lady who used to work at Denny's Bar in Etna but is now writing a book.

It was about 11am when we got to the trailhead and started moving. The day started out hot and exposed, with lots of planes and helicopters going overhead. I suspect they were out surveying: checking for hotspots and smokestacks from the lightning last night. At the bakery in the morning, I had overheard a hiker who had phoned Klamath National Forest for guidance on hiking. And evidently they had advised that there were lots of little fires from the storms--nothing big yet--but that since more lightning was projected for today, to stay out of the woods. Well, we didn't follow that advice, but we did see the surveyors making the rounds, and we did see what looked to be a possible smokestack, back towards the east.

At about 4 miles in, we stopped at a saddle of sorts to lay out our stuff to dry. For me that included the tent, the sleeping pad, and the sleeping bag, all either laid out on logs or hung up on trees. I will say that these modern materials are pretty amazing: I swear my groundsheet, for example, was dry even before I could put the rocks on it to baton it down. The site we picked was a campsite where, years ago, Double Snacks had camped: she remembered it as a bad campsite, sloped ground, in amongst dead trees (it's at the edge of a burn area). But it functions well if all you want to do is dry stuff out (well, except that there's no shade for you yourself).

We continued on, and by now the clouds were starting to gather overhead. I kept expecting it to start raining but it never did while we were hiking today, just got more and more heavy and the dark gray-bottomed clouds filled more and more of the sky. Of course, I didn't know that at the time, so I was just thinking about making it to camp before the rains hit, and the mind became very prone to seeing just the 10 feet in front of me again. But then, at one point, I looked up. And we were crossing a section of steep slopes, along a ledge trail that wound in and out, cutting into the mountain then curving back out along the outside. And I saw that the curve I was walking was all of red rock, sharp and jutting; and the next curve was all of exposed gray rock softened with ankle-deep brush; and the next curve was white trunks, the results of a long-ago burn; and the next curve had a patch of evergreen running down the bank, the colors deep and dark. And all with the blue mountains behind. Just ahead, on that wisp of trail, was Double Snacks, a small white dot traversing this huge space, and then Skippy sped past me and there were two dots moving through this magnificent place. And I realized that this was actually extraordinary, but had been rendered ordinary by the trail, and that that's one thing the PCT does do after 1000+ miles: it renders the extraordinary, ordinary. And I wondered: if I had started up here in northern California, if I had begun in these woods and not seen what I had already seen, not walked what I had already walked, not become accustomed to what I had already become accustomed to, what would this place look like? Would I be wowed and amazed?

But those waters are past, and all I had now was to enjoy the extraordinary of this little stretch. And that would have to be good enough!

There was one other extraordinary stretch towards the end of the day, when the PCT walked through the edge of a burn area. By which I mean right on the edge: to the left, white dessicating trunks haunting the exposed hillocks; to the right, tall full trees, and behind their dark green needles, little meadows tucked away, surrounded by the lighter greens of leafy plants and flowers, and the dark streams of water and pool. Almost as if the PCT itself had been the firebreak, as if the firefighters had drawn the line there and said, this is as far as we'll let it go. I tend to like interstitial spaces, and we were definitely walking one here, literally walking the line between burned and untouched.

So those were the two notable landscapes of the day. We did get to camp ahead of the rain, set up at Fischer Lake where we bumped into Skippy again, taking dinner and (eventually) opting just to camp there. There were a few campsites close to the trail, then if you went up past a tree, a little grassy area next to the lake where you could set up, but in very soft soil. So we took the spots near the trail and, as soon as the tents were up, the skies finally broke and the thunder rumbled and it started to rain. And my campsite was in a bit of a depression, which was bad, and I watched as the water dripped from my rain fly and started these little rivulets down the dirt towards my inner tent, and I got paranoid and tried carving little canals in the dirt with my extra stake, but eventually gave up: when you're tented in a depression, all channels ultimately lead to where you're at! So I decided to stop worrying, ate inside my tent, and settled in for the night. The storm appears to have passed now: it was a torrent, but only lasted for about an hour or so. Stuff will be wet tomorrow, but that just means I'll have to stop again and set stuff out to dry again. Because even if it rains out here, it *will* eventually be dry again, and sunny, and hot, and everything will be fine again.

At least that's what I tell myself!

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Some notes:

-- Etna > Etna Summit Trailhead > Tentsite (2) > Cub Bear Spring > Fischer Lake

-- Today I saw Balloons again, in front of the bakery in the morning. I hadn't seen him since Bishop, and then since that bit i the Sierras where I was talking about the reasons why to get a PhD with Dylan, and Balloons got bored of the conversation and passed us. He had just got back into Etna: evidently his foot (the one with the ingrown toenail that he had gotten straight removed in Bishop) had finally healed about a week ago, but now his other foot was starting to hurt, mostly the tendons along the top. And so he went in Yreka to talk to a doctor and to buy new shoes, because he believes the new foot problems were caused by his Topos--and here he looked down at my feet and hesitated--which he was now replacing with the Altra Lone Peaks. Hey, didn't you used to wear Lone Peaks?, he asked, and I said yeah, but I'm switching over to the Topos: my foot pads were getting sore, so I wanted the extra padding and none of the extra-padding Altras fit right. Hmm, ok, he said, sounding a little unconvinced. But it was good to see Balloons again: he was going to spend some time in Etna, but he's a fast hiker so I know he'll be passing us whenever he gets back on his feet. Sucks that he's got yet another foot problem, but I think after excising the ingrown toenail in its entirety, he should be able to handle any foot problem in stride!

-- Speaking of injuries, I talked to Beans in the morning, who was going to take at least another zero day in Etna. Beans actually hadn't been feeling well in days--a stomach issue of some sort--and finally came into Etna and went to the clinic. And they prescribed him a bunch of antibiotics. So he's taking those and resting up in town rather than on trail (as he said, laying around in town feels ok, but laying around on trail feels bad--you want to get up and hike!), and taking a day (or two) in Etna. I mentioned that there's a rodeo in town this weekend, so he thought he might attend that. But I've had stomach trouble on trail before--back in Tehachapi--and my solution was to get off trail (thanks to a long long drive from Ian) and lay up in a hotel for a few days with the threat of throwing up constantly hovering over me. So I hope Beans' experience ends up being better than mine!

-- Speaking of staying in Etna, in the park there's a covered area with some picnic tables set up on a concrete slab, and in the morning the place was thick with cowboy camping hikers. Which was a bit awkward: that's where the hikers hang out throughout the day, so that's where I went when I had finished packing up all my stuff to get off the wet, only now I'm trying to be quiet, stepping around still sleeping hikers. Ah well, what can you do? But cowboy camping on the covered concrete, around and sometimes on, the picnic tables?: that's a quintessential thru-hiker move! The night before a bunch of hikers had evidently gone even further and cowboy camped on the tennis courts next to the park instead, and I did see a tent out there this morning, although I'm not sure how good that spot would have fared in this morning's thunderstorm!

-- For our hitch out of town, we walked up to the Etna Cemetery and waited on a grate out there with some other hikers--Tapo and Two Tone and Barnes and Noble, to be precise. And Tapo and Two Tone got a ride, and then it was just Barnes and Noble, Double Snacks, and myself. And we got passed by a guy in a truck going our way, who stuck his head out and said, I'm the mailman, I've got to deliver up and down this road, but if you're still here when I'm done I'll give you a ride. And after he'd gone, a lady passed by going the other way with a car full of folks, and stuck her head out the window and said, I'm going into town to drop off these guys, then getting some gas, and if you're still out here when I get back, I'll give you a ride. And that's how we eventually got a ride with Joy. And Joy has lived everywhere, it seems, traveled all over the place, and these days was studying the Mayan calendar, specifically the sacred calendar (and not, say, the agricultural one). That's the book she's writing: it tries to explain the sacred calendar and how to properly interpret it to improve your life and well-being. And I remember an old argument that my dad used to make: the Chinese have a tradition of fortune telling based on your birthdate, and every year my grandfather would get a reading for the next year. And my father argued this wasn't necessarily anything mythological, this was basically actuarial table calculations before there were formal actuaries. So, sure, these sorts of things may be explained in terms of energy and alignments and forces, and you may thus dismiss it as mysticism and superstition, but if we just called it statistics would it make you feel better? Either way, I think the book would be an interesting read!

-- We passed by a trail register today--just a composition notebook in a plastic bag, with a rock on top so it doesn't blow away--and as usual I looked through a bunch of the names. And I saw Mr Brightside's name--he had passed through about 3 days before--and he had written his motto next to his name: let's keep the glass half full. And I don't remember if I mentioned it before, but when we were hiking up Kearsarge, he had mentioned a tattoo that he wanted to get, of a glass right at the tan line of his shorts, so the tan line went right through the middle of the glass, and he would inscribe the phrase "let's keep the glass half full" around it. A pretty cool and novel tattoo, although I was worried about the tan line moving: maybe he changed to different-length shorts, or maybe he couldn't get outside for a while so the line faded. For the latter, at least, he could say that the glass was now completely full (and in fact the litmus test would still apply: without the tan line, is the glass empty or full?), and I remember he was pretty happy with that interpretation.  

-- There's an off-trail spring--Cub Bear Spring--where we needed to get water. And I walked right past the turnoff, realized it, then went back to hunt for the side trail. And even with Double Snacks there--who remembered this spring, and remembered finding the side trail was tricky--I still couldn't find it. Finally Double Snacks managed to find it and we dropped our packs and went to get water. Having gotten the water and now following the side trail back to the PCT, we came to the junction and who was there but Wetfoot. And she was standing right next to an ankle-level wood sign, propped up on some rocks, that said "Water". How did I miss that? I mean, it was obvious: Wetfoot saw it clearly, after all. So evidently you don't need to be exceptionally observant to hike the PCT, but it certainly does help! 

-- Maybe it was the cowbells we would hear off and on throughout the day, always out over there somewhere, but at one point Double Snacks asked me who would win in a fight: cow or bear? ("Black" bear, she would clarify, but cow vs black bear doesn't sound as good as just: cow vs bear!) Because she had been thinking about how safe the cows were out here, and first whether mountain lions would get them (probably not: would need either a very sick cow, or a very sick--and thus desperate--mountain lion), then upgraded to bears. And me, well, I just thought about the fight promotion. Sunday Sunday Sunday!, it's Cow vs Bear (black bear, somebody'd yell in the background), at the Coliseum! And in the pre-fight interview, an irate Bear comes out and explains his beef (har har): I mean, Cow, you come here to *my* mountains, and you poop in all *my* water sources, and even with my Katadyn and my Sawyer and all my filters I *still* can't get the smell out! It's gotten out-of-hand and there's only one way to settle this--in the Octagon! And cow's pre-fight interview would just be: moooo! I actually don't know who would win, but when Double Snacks put it to Skippy at camp, Skippy answered--immediately and without hesitation--oh, easy, Cow would win. Blacks bears just run away, but she'd been bluff-charged by a cow once and cows are scary. And so Double Snacks upped the stakes: how about cow vs a grizzly bear. And that made Skippy pause a bit, but I think she was still leaning towards cow. I mean, if you've ever stood next to a cow you know: a cow's a very big animal, and its sheer bulk is rather intimidating!