Starting Out - April 7th - 8th 2013

My bus rolled out of the parking lot, populated by an array of haggard-looking souls, each waiting for something – maybe to score, maybe to turn a trick, maybe just some change towards the next bottle, but not for a bus.  We turned onto the street and passed two women smoking cigarettes on the uneven plywood porch of a house literally falling apart, which I took to be a crackhouse.  Next to that two rows of tiny, grungy apartments faced each other across a strip of dry grass, a few residents drinking on their front steps.  We crossed a street toward the freeway onramp, by a small open field littered with garbage.  A woman sat barefoot amidst the food containers and plastic bags, her legs spread, her hands on her knees.  Her back was to the road, her expression hidden, and I imagined that she was meditating. 

The scene was in stark contrast to the previous day.  It had been my 36^th birthday, and my sister and her husband had taken us to eat an upscale buffet in the courtyard of a beautiful hotel constructed in the style of a Spanish Villa.  In one corner, at the top of the courtyard wall, a huge clock sat above a rotating, life-sized diorama involving a princess, a bear, and an Indian with a bow and arrow.  A wedding was in progress somewhere inside the hotel, and at one point the bride and groom snuck out to kiss on a balcony in another corner.  We’d reveled in the ambience, joked with the friendly waiter, and taken turns holding the baby and fetching plates of food.  Shi-shi cocktails with salad, wine with prime rib, salmon, and tuna, more wine with fruits and cheeses and samplings of the other entrees, and finally coffee with an array of desserts.  We’d spent the morning eating a frittata of my devising and the carrot cake my sister had made me from scratch, and sitting on the bus I wondered how I could possibly be hungry again, and how I could possibly have forgotten to pack some of the cake to take with me. 

By the time the bus stopped in Temeculah, the driver and the woman in the front passenger seat had been discussing their cosmetic regimens for a solid hour.  It sounded as though even just the conscientious observance of cleansing and moisturizing rituals and the dutiful application of the various layers and types of makeup could be a full-time job, and that consistently acquiring the requisite products of sufficient quality and at competitive prices likely necessitated a small private army. 

I wondered if the discussion of “primer” (applied to the face before foundation), the human wreckage washing up around the Greyhound station, and the luxury of the courtyard buffet wouldn’t all soon seem equally surreal.  I was headed south to the Mexican border to hike the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) from there to Canada.  I couldn’t remember how the idea had first come to me, but I thought it had been around Christmastime.  I remember that on New Year’s Day I had mentioned it to a friend in Eugene who had responded by ordering me the book Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, but the idea was in my head before he told me about the book.  I also remember being on a hash run[i] and hearing a guy talking about his PCT hike, and later tracking him down through mutual friends to ask him for details.  Gio would become my friend and eventually take me shopping for most of my hiking gear, but I had the idea before meeting him.  When the organization that I had moved back to the U.S. to work for fired me at my six-month performance review, giving me a severance check and a promise not to contest unemployment it seemed like the logical next step, but honestly can not remember where I first heard of the PCT. 

Bob, my first trail angel[ii], met me at the Greyhound station in San Diego.  As we drove to his house we passed naval shipyards, and he explained how he was retired from running logistics for the naval ships in port there, managing supplies and repairs and the like.  He said he would manage 58-79 ships simultaneously, and I thought that managing hikers must be the perfect retirement activity. 

Bob lived in a comfortable house with a pool, a hot tub, his adult son, the adult son’s fiancé, and an assortment of dogs.  After I took a walk he listed a slew of restaurants, and I chose the buffet.  The buffet was brightly lit, full of popcorn shrimp and families with small children, and served no alcohol.  As I ate a plate of salad and then one of soul food, Bob told me about the four heart attacks he’d had over super bowl weekend.  As I ate a plate of steak and friend prawns, he explained his gastric bypass surgery.  By the time I went back for a plate of sweet carrot slaw, candied banana, and fried chicken, we were on to the subject of the PCT’s annual kickoff party.  The party is the last weekend in April, and is held 20 miles in from the start of the trail.  There are a limited number of vendors, but the main purpose seems to be seminars on topics related to thru-hiking[iii], making a lot of hamburgers and potato salad to feed hungry hikers, and generally having a good party.  The event is free for each year’s class of thru-hikers, and is supported by donations from people who have hiked in previous years.  Bob makes potato salad and fries burgers, and says that although his time is donated and all of the food is provided to the hikers for free, each year there are more complaints about the degree to which alternative diets are catered to.  He’s taken to running separate grills for Boca burgers, flipped by spatulas that never touch meat, but says that the biggest problem is the number of people who register as vegetarians and then show up hungry for meat.  I asked him if they’d gotten on the gluten-free train yet, and we both laughed.  “Really, though,” he said, his brow knitting a little, “I’m going to have to write the board and see if they’re prepared to do some gluten-free buns…”

I finally filled a plate with cobbler, bread pudding, gooey chocolate cake, and ice cream, and Bob told me stories about Various PCT personalities, a few of whom I’d heard mention of in the guidebook[iv].  Back at Bob’s house we sat in his living room playing with the two golden retrievers.  He brought up the subject of my being a woman and hiking alone.  He was in full support of solo female hikers, but raised the issue to tell me not to be afraid of the illegal immigrants I would encounter in the desert.  It honestly hadn’t occurred to me to be afraid of illegal immigrants.  I have been scared once as a girl traveling alone, in the occupied territory of Kelbajar between Armenia and the internationally unrecognized republic of Nagorno-Karabagh, but that’s a story for another time.  I have not yet been scared to be a woman within the borders in any functioning nation-state, recognized or not, but my curiosity was piqued.  Bob said that it was a common concern for solo female hikers, but that all the people crossing the illegally want is to reach Interstate 8, because if they can get north of the highway, they cannot legally be hunted by the border patrol.  The “BP,” as he called them, work only the corridor between the border and that highway.  I thanked him and excused myself to go to bed, but resolved to learn more about the situation. 

In the morning Bob knocked on my door to make sure I was up, gave me coffee and an English muffin with jam, and we set off.  Outside of San Diego the road to Campo was dark and winding.  Bob liked to say that his degree was in physics, his master’s was business, his teaching qualification was in math, and his passion was English.  I gasped as we hurtled around a steep bend and he chuckled, telling me how many times he had made the trip.  His inspiration in the subject of English had been a woman who moved to his Midwestern town from London, having married a visiting American scholar.  She was Bob’s high school English teacher, and had once played Lady Macbeth for the Queen.  I gasped again on another corner.  I though back to my first trip into the Mountains in Georgia.  My friends Eli and Alexei and I had hired a driver to take us over a little-traveled mountain pass between Lower and Upper Svaneti, and as we hurtled along the twisting, crumbling mountain roads, a thousand-foot drop off to one side, Eli told me that we would not die on that road because he refused to consider the possibility.  Alright, I thought, I had seen worse, but Bob could hold his own driving in Georgia.  Then, as if he could read my thoughts, he told me told me how one hiker had come to Jesus in his van on the road to Campo, kissing the ground and praising the Lord upon arrival at the trailhead. 

The trailhead sits right on the border.  Behind it there is a chain link fence topped with barbed wire, and then 50 feet to what I believe is the actual international border, where large sections of aluminum fence, numbers painted on each, separate the land of opportunity from the south.  The space in between the two fences is patrolled constantly, the border patrol vehicles large and white with green emblems.  Bob fetched the trail register for me to sign, and then we snapped a few photos of each other and hugged.  He told me that many people say that the most alone they feel on the entire trail is standing alone on that border, watching him drive away.  I felt fine watching him leave; I enjoyed his company but was excited to start my hike.  I felt slightly more alone when I realized, staring out across the scrub, that I didn’t understand where the trail went from there.    

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[i] Hashes are non-competitive runs, punctuated by beer stops along the trails.  The club was started by British expats in Malaysia in the 1930s, and there are independent chapters in most major cities in the world.  The Wikipedia page on Hash House Harriers is succinct and provides a general overview. 

[ii] Trail angels are people who assist PCT hikers.  Bob is one of the trail angels who work the trailhead, picking hikers up in San Diego, helping them with last-minute purchases and trail advice, and transporting them out to Campo to start the trail.  Trail angels help hikers on a volunteer basis, some accept donations to cover costs (Bob does not) but none are making a profit. 

[iii] Hiking the entire PCT from the Mexican border into Canada

[iv] Yogi’s Guide to the PCT is the general PCT bible; it includes general information to be read at home and area-specific pages that tear out to be carried on the trail.