One Way Ticket to Somewhere

I’ve been hiking for two weeks and my feet and legs are getting stronger. I’ve slowly increased mileage, but as soon as I started feeling great about myself, the terrain got tougher and put me back in my place. Bigger Mountains - Bigger Cacti The beautiful rolling San Felipe Hills came and went, and from there I entered the unexpectedly beautiful Warner Springs Meadows where I camped on a little hill, put to sleep by the mooing of the cows that grazed in the meadow below. Warner Springs Meadows The next day I got my first resupply package in Warner Springs.  Happiness In A Box The town used to have a restaurant and a helpful community center with showers and a store, but the restaurant was permanently closed and the community center temporarily, so all that I encountered was the post office and a gas station. I was happy to get fresh supplies, but also a bit deflated as my pack got heavier again when I headed out of town. Leaving Warner Springs The trail followed a small cree...

After hiking through the desert with a heavy pack for many miles every day, I started to develop a few aches and pains, most of which have passed again. Also, resupply doesn’t always go as planned. To put these issues into perspective, I started reading “Arabian Sands” by Wilfred Thesiger, one of the greatest explorers of the 20th century. He was well known for his physical and mental toughness. Like love, the desert sometimes hurts… Me: “My feet hurt! I got another blister and some of the other ones are getting bigger and look infected!” The appropriate passage in the book: Wilfred Thesiger crossed and recrossed the 250,000 square miles of the Empty Quarter, the largest sand desert in the world, in the area of modern Yemen, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Oman. He was in his late thirties and had worn shoes all his life but he walked barefoot so that every step in the desert burned or cut his soles. Pansy… Me: “Oh no! They didn’t have any gas canisters in the last resupply town and now I have...

And just like that my first week on the trail is coming to an end. As planned, I had started with a relatively low mileage to give my body time to adjust. It’s now my sixth day on the trail and it has already been an amazing experience! The Southern Terminus monument where the trail officially starts is actually almost directly at the border wall. People crop out the wall in their pictures, but it is very close. There was one girl taking pictures with a PCTA volunteer. After she left, it was just me and the volunteer. I had expected the start to be crowded and this was just magical! I took my time, taking pictures at the monument and the border wall, getting my official PCT tag and signing in at the trail register. That wall is a strange sight… Shortly after the first mile marker another hiker, Russel from San Francisco, caught up with me and we hiked together for a while, talking about Yosemite (where he works in a camp), books and our hike. I’m sure I’ll meet many people on this tr...