Just going for a walk

And so we reach The Break. A cousin of mine is getting married on Sunday (Day 26) back in the Bay Area, so I booked a flight out of Phoenix on Friday (Day 24) to attend. I fly back in on Monday (Day 27) and we get back to hiking on Tuesday (Day 28). But this leads to a long string of zeros (Days 24 - 27), at about the temporal halfway of the hike, so dubbing it The Break seemed appropriate. IMPRESSIONS, FAVORITES While I don’t like to reflect in general, and not during a hike specifically, I will say that my favorite section so far has been the wide open desert portion leading into Kearny. Those, what, two-three days?, of just endless desert, crossing vast spaces of Nothing, that really was pure happiness. I admit I was a bit bummed when it ended in that canyon, and we got back to mountains again. I will say that having my umbrella and overall clement weather (well, for the desert) helped; with sweltering weather and a hot wind blowing across it, I can see that section being interminab

And today was the sundering of the fellowship, as we all went into town and went our separate ways. In the morning, Works Hard headed out early (as is his wont), and that would be the last that I (at least) would see of him (Dylan and Dayna would see him at the Picketpost trailhead one last time). Then Dylan and Dayna headed out together, then me, then Evan, but I would end up hiking pretty much by myself the whole day. And it was a strange hiking day: the trail was just descending down from the mountains via the foothills, but the foothills--while smooth and golden-grassed--still had thoughts of mountain, and sported steeper slopes and narrower valleys that bordered on gorges. The trail often walked along contours, but would also sometimes dip down to cross the dry creekbeds of said gorges, but overall remained very pastoral. It reminded me of part of the Tahoe Rim Trail, where the TRT joins the PCT and continues north together. That’s a section that’s very pretty in its own right, ve

During a break at the Gila River today, Works Hard mentioned how it’s hard to get motivated when the towns are so close together, in this case Kearny and Superior. It’s about 37 miles between them, and while in theory you could rush, do 18.5 miles per day, and finish this stretch in 2 days, that’s also hard to do with trying to get a ride out of Kearny on day 1, and trying to get a ride into Superior (and do chores) on day 2. So it becomes a 3-day affair, and now it becomes our originally designed 10-17-10 mile days or, as it’s shaping up to be, our actual 11-14-12 mile days. Today, then, would be the 14-mile day in the middle. Not because we wanted a short day, but because at 14 miles there’s a rainwater collector that has water in the middle of an otherwise 20+ mile stretch with no good water sources. So: a short day. And so you’d think I’d get into camp pretty early, with plenty of relaxed time to setup camp, and eat, and write. Yeah, that didn’t happen. But for a very good reason.

One feature of the General Kearny Inn is that it has a communal kitchen. Another feature of the General Kearny Inn is that the IGA Supermarket is basically next door. Put two and two together, sprinkle in a comment from Works Hard at dinner last night ruminating about how great a breakfast with eggs would be, and you get an idea. So I decided to make breakfast. It was pretty easy: inventory the kitchen, then walk over and buy some eggs, some cherry tomatoes, some green onions, the cheapest bottle of olive oil you can find, and some disposable tableware. Bring Works Hard along and have him add some bagels and cream cheese. Then go to the kitchen, figure out how the induction stove works (i.e., push a lot of buttons, then push them again in a different order, and repeat until consistent heat) and make some eggs! My recipe was pretty simple: halved cherry tomatoes in salt and pepper to start, then add three whisked eggs (whisking courtesy of Works Hard, done via butter knife in styrofoam

The world is changing. I can feel it in the land, once open and infinite, now closed in by hill and carved out by wash. I can feel it in the plants, once spread and sown, now crowded and competed. And I can feel it in the hike, once unending, now heading into town. Ok, that’s over-wrought and over-dramatic to be sure, but today marked the final end to the vast plains of desert we had been walking the past few days. And in truth, I was sad to see it go: I must say that the last few days have been some of the nicest on trail for me so far. Just the wide open desert, flat-featured and immense and going for miles upon miles upon miles. That’s the sort of landscape I could walk for days. When I would express this sentiment to Works Hard in town later today, how much I liked just wide open desert, he would just smile and say “desert rat”. I don’t think he’s wrong. But today the plains-desert I enjoy so much concluded as we finally reached its end in the hills-desert, in particular, in Big Hi

Today was the Big Miles Day. We had originally planned to get to Kearny in 6 days, so the day after tomorrow. But Dylan took another look at the numbers and felt that we could instead get into Kearny tomorrow. This would have further knock-on effects on the schedule, with the ultimate result being that we arrive in Superior one day early, so that instead of me hiking 7 miles Friday morning, get into town, and fly out Friday afternoon, I could instead hike 7 miles Thursday morning, get into town, then have some buffer before my flight on Friday afternoon. Which is good, just it required doing 17 miles yesterday, and 22 miles today. So, yeah, a Big Miles Day. It should be clear by now that we tend to hike water-source to water-source, what I’ve been calling Legs in this blog. What may not be as clear is that so far we always reconvene at the water source: some of us arrive earlier, some later, but the early birds will always wait until everyone arrives, then usually linger for a bit, and