Lake Morena to Mt. Laguna, April 9th-10th

In the morning my knee still hurt badly enough that I worried I’d overdone it and blown the whole trip, but by midday I found that it was suddenly fine and I set off for Boulder Oaks Campground 6 miles away.  I walked with a man who called himself Doaf Master as a trail name, the nickname having been given to him by friends in high school[i].  Doaf was 49 and had had a career in something that sounded like managing investment bankers, but my mind glazed over whenever I tried to focus on the topic.  He had been saving to hike the PCT at age 50, but the combination of a fight with his boss and a $35,000 inheritance from his grandmother had shifted his plans forward a year.  We were a comfortable hiking duo, and his style of stopping every few miles to take the weight off of his feet taught me an invaluable lesson on taking care of my body on long hikes. 

 My first day, hiking alone from the border, I had sung myself the Bruce Springsteen song The Line over and over:

I got my discharge from Fort Irwin
took a place on the San Diego county line
felt funny being a civilian again
it'd been some time
my wife had died a year ago
I was still trying to find my way back whole
went to work for the INS on the line
With the California Border Patrol

Bobby Ramirez was a ten-year veteran
We became friends
his family was from Guanajuato
so the job it was different for him
He said “They risk death in the deserts and mountains
pay all they got to the smugglers rings,
we send 'em home and they come right back again
Carl, hunger is a powerful thing.”

Well I was good at doing what I was told
kept my uniform pressed and clean
at night I chased their shadows
through the arroyos and ravines

drug runners, farmers with their families,
young women with little children by their sides
come night we'd wait out in the canyons
and try to keep ‘em from crossin’ the line

Well the first time that I saw her
she was in the holding pen
Our eyes met and she looked away
then she looked back again
her hair was black as coal
her eyes reminded me of what I'd lost
she had a young child crying in her arms
and I asked, “Senora, is there anything I can do?”

There was a bar in Tijuana
where me and Bobby would drink with
the same people we'd sent back the day before
we met there she said her name was Louisa
she was from Sonora and had just come north
as we danced and I held her in my arms
and I knew what I would do
she said she had some family in Madera county
if she, her child, and her younger brother could just get through

At night they come across the levy
in the searchlights dusty glow
we’d rush ‘em in our Broncos
and force ‘em back down into the river below
she climbed into my truck
she leaned towards me and we kissed
as we drove her brothers shirt slipped open
and I saw the tape across his chest

We were just about on the highway
when Bobby's jeep come up in the dust on my right
I pulled over and let my engine run
and stepped out into his lights
I felt myself movin’
felt my gun resting ‘neath my hand
we stood there staring at each other
as off through the arroyo she ran

Bobby Ramirez he never said nothin’
6 months later I left the line
I drifted to the central valley
and took what work I could find
at night I searched the local bars
and the migrant towns
Lookin' for my Louisa
with the black hair fallin' down

Today I just sang the most relevant lines from an Ani DiFranco song I vaguely remembered:

When I look down,
I just miss all the good stuff.
When I look up,
I just trip over things.

Horse pens at Boulder Oaks Campground

 It was still warm and bright when we reached the Boulder Oaks Campground.  It had pens for horses, which I would see again and would make me ridiculously happy each time, although I have yet to see one occupied by a horse.  The PCT is open to horses, lamas, and other animals and only closed to wheeled transport, but I have yet to see any of either on the trail.  There are parts of it that I’ve already walked that would be impossible for a horse carrying a rider dicey even for a horse just carrying a pack, but there are also sections that would probably be great fun. 

Doaf had planned to hike further but stayed at Boulder Oaks to camp with me.  While fetching water from the park’s spigot I met a young man in road bicycle gear.  He introduced himself as Derek and seemed hungry for conversation, so I invited him over to our table.  Derek had just begun a two-month bicycle journey from San Diego to Tennessee, where he had relatives, and was documenting his journey in a blog at http://www.oursharedadventure.com/.  He said that he’d provided live-in hospice care for his dying grandfather a few years back, and they’d had a lot of conversations about what really mattered in life.  He been saving since them for this kind of trip, and wanted some different lifestyle, one that involved travel, but most importantly involved meeting people and hearing their stories.  The three of us felt like kindred souls, with our mutual desire not spend any more of our lives in front of a computer the common thread.    

Making my tent poles double as a clothesline.  The T-shirt is from the California Honeydrops, who sponsored me on trail by giving me a free shirt to wear. 

Derek

Derek seemed to have planned for this journey to have a few almost Peace Pilgrim-like elements (he was familiar with her, when I asked) – as an example, he wanted to knock on doors and ask for water from garden hoses and permission to camp on lawns, and expected that many people would invite him into their homes.  So far, he had a dehydration headache.  He was kind and sincere and interacted with people easily, but Doaf and I would talk about him the next day and worry – I, because while I have been shown extraordinary kindnesses by strangers, know that no plan can depend on them, and Doaf because Derek’s route traversed the hottest part of the country during one of the hotter times of year.   

The men made a fire while I wrote in my journal, and the three of us sat around it talking.  Derek had some great stories, the most colorful of which were from a college trip to China.  Determined to meet local people, he had regularly gone to bars at night after his class’s activities were finished.  He said that Chinese people exchange business cards when a contact is made, and that they carry the business cards of their contacts and show them as a way of demonstrating their connections when necessary.  One night in a bar he had accepted a cigarette offered by the local chief of police, and the chief had given him a business card.  Later his class had taken a field trip and stumbled on an incredibly strange festival of some sort, where people screamed and swore through a fence and were whipped with a horse tail from inside it.  Fascinated, the students had tried to get closer for a better look, but were intercepted and told to leave by the police.  Derek had fished in his wallet and found the chief’s business card.  He’d flashed it, and suddenly everything had been OK.  His professor had been astounded, asking how on earth Derek could possibly have the business card of the chief of police.  His answer:  Go out and meet people. 

The next Day Doaf shook Derek’s hand, I hugged him, and we set off down the trail.  Later, looking at Derek’s blog, I found that Doaf and I were two of the people he had met on his current adventure and written about:  http://www.oursharedadventure.com/an-unexpected-encounter/ - there’s even a picture of me. 

My confidence in my body renewed, I resolved to hike the 16 miles to Mount Laguna unless something started hurting seriously.  Doaf let me take the lead, and I found that I was able to set a fairly decent pace, particularly on the uphill stretches.  It seemed as though hiking uphill worked muscles, which I already had from running, and hiking downhill was hard on tendons and ligaments, where I didn’t have any strength built up.  I also realized what a huge debt I owed Gio, my 2012 thru-hiker buddy who had helped me choose my gear.  Doaf was tall and lean and was an experienced hiker, but I still think he carried twice the weight I did, and the day was much harder for him than for me.  As we climbed the 3,000 feet between Boulder Oaks and Mt. Laguna he worked hard to stay with me, although I’m sure that had we carried equal weights the situation would have been reversed.  

Interstate 8, the finish line for illegal immigrants

Looking back on Interstate 8

Taking frequent rests makes all the difference.

Are you kidding me?

I'm still madly curious about this scat.  I've yet to figure out which animal makes it or to see the berries anywhere outside of the scat - where on earth does it come from?

 I also began to realize that there was a fine line between too much water and not enough.  My first day I had carried five liters, dumping two of them out only late in the day and cursing myself for my stupidity.  Today I carried only my three-liter platypus, but the day was hot and we found a flowing stream only right before my water had finished and well after I’d begun to worry.  I charged up to the stream with my two auxiliary one-liter bottles, filling them clumsily and including much more sediment than was necessary.  I took out my Vizene bottle full of bleach, squeezed one drop into each water bottle, thanked Gio again mentally for the lightweight and easy water purification solution, and stashed them in my pack.  

Got water!

 I checked my phone for the time, and suddenly realized that we could make it to Mt. Laguna by 5:00 PM, when Yogi’s guide said the store closed.  Visions of cold beer clouded my sight, and I hurriedly threw my socks and shoes back on, crammed my scattered belongings back into my pack, looked at Doaf urgently.

“It’s OK,” he said, “go ahead, I’ll catch up.”  

The terrain changes rapidly on trail.  I took this picture and the one below it in the four miles between the stream and Mt. Laguna. 

As we approached Mt. Laguna, the terrain became forested. 

 I raced along for two miles before he caught up, and then for another mile and a half before reaching the edge of a campground that the Guthook’s PCT app[ii] showed connecting to the town’s main road.  We charged through the closed campground and met the highway.  We hoofed it past a closed restaurant/bar, a sporting goods store, another closed restaurant/bar (they’re only open on weekends in Mt. Laguna), and finally saw the store.  As we approached a large man emerged and began to move a few plastic chairs inside. 

“Too late.”

“No!”  I screamed.  “You’re open till 5:00!  It’s only 4:30!”  The man began to laugh.

“I know,” he chuckled, “just messin’ with you.” 

“It’s really, really easy to do that right now,” I said.  “I am really easy to mess with in this state.”  Really, I was pretty low hanging fruit. 

I bought a half-rack of Miller High Life, and Doaf rented a cabin room with two beds and invited me to sleep in the second.  He charged off to the room shower, and I stayed on the porch drinking beer and eating cheddar and saltine crackers in the sun.  

 It took me 45 minutes to muster the energy to carry my backpack and the beer to the room, and another solid hour to rally to take a shower myself.  I laid near catatonic in the second bed, drinking Miller High Life and watching Bill Murray lead a band of rag-tag army recruits into trouble.  I felt somewhat disappointed that civilization wasn’t giving me culture shock, although I’d only been hiking for three days and even had an iPhone app to help me get into town before the store closed.  Bill Murray invaded Czechoslovakia in an RV, which was surreal enough to make me feel a little better.   

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[i] It’s tradition on the PCT for hikers to be given trail names.  Some people name themselves, but I think the tradition is to let others name you something relevant to your personality or actions on the trail. 

[ii] There are a few apps that have been developed for the PCT.  I think the most common is called Halfmile, but I bought Guthook’s on Gio’s recommendation and think it’s probably better because I’ve showed it to a few people who already had the Halfmile app and were impressed and bought Guthook’s, which has some cool features like mapping your upcoming elevation changes and showing campsites and water sources.  The most important feature of the apps is that all of the maps are downloaded with them.  Any mapping app can pinpoint your position using GPS, but when you use a standard mapping app you need cellular service to load the map.  With these apps the maps are on your phone, so you don’t need to be in range of a cell tower to use them.  I’ve been keeping my phone in airplane mode to save batteries and quickly switching out of it to locate my position on the maps, but I’ve read that with an iPhone from AT&T you can actually just pop out the simcard and then keep the phone out of airplane mode without wasting battery constantly searching for a signal.