Town Fever

June 22

"Town fever," also known as "horse and barn disease," is a syndrome in which subjects, sensing that they are close to an outpost of modern Western Civilization, focus on the upcoming interaction with said outpost to the point of obsession. Symptoms include vivid, involuntary mental images of ice cream or kielbasa (in extreme cases, kielbasa sundae visions have been known to occur), 4 am wake up times, and jogging down the trail.

And with 9 days having elapsed since Kennedy Meadows, I had the fever. I had it bad. This was the day I was going to hit Vermillion Valley Resort on Lake Edison. It was time for beer, cheese, meat, and fresh veggies. In addition, I missed my fiancé, Lily had promised to come all the way up from Berkeley to meet me, a drive of several hours.
But I still had to get there. The trail headed up and over Selden Pass. There was some snow, but it was really a total cakewalk;
not so much a pass as the head of a canyon. Up top I was hailed by a beaming grey-haired man -- Hub, I believe his name was -- and it turned out we had an acquaintance in common. We both knew Kevin Hoover, former editor of the Arcata Eye newspaper. The Eye was sort of our competition when I wrote for the North Coast Journal in Arcata, CA, from 2000 to 2002. Such a small world, etc. Hub said Hoover was hiking the PCT, in fact.

Huh. But six degrees of yadda yadda whatever, because: Town.

While hustling down the pass, I saw a couple hikers heading south, so geared up for icey mountaineering that looked like unhorsed knights.

"How's the snow up there?" one asked. 

Surveying the crampons, distress beacons, ice axes, gaiters, the technical t-shirts and shade hats, I promised them they'd have no problem. 

"Did you posthole?" he asked. Postholing occurs when your leg sinks in snow up to the thigh. It happens in soft, afternoon snow, and is pretty annoying, because you have to pull the leg back up using your poles. 

"A bit," I shrugged. 

They gave each other looks that conveyed terror balanced -- barely-- with manly courage. Postholing must have a really bad reputation these days. Maybe they should strap snowshoes onto their pack next time.
As the elevation dropped and the snow abated, the mosquitos came out in force. Now we were getting a taste of real bug country -- swarms that interfered with eating or tying your shoes. I suited up in my dorkiest gear: headnet, button-down shirt with permethrin, rain pants, the works. Then I shed it all again in stages, because who can hike like that all day? 

At the turnoff for the Bear Ridge Trail, which would take me to VVR, I met He-man and Zuke, two brothers from Danville, CA, just out of college. They were really fun to talk to, full of young man energy. We discussed Boy Scouts (a surprisingly frequent topic) and food and that sort of thing. It's like they were the coolest jocks on the football team, I thought. 

We got into a conversation about hiking while listening to audiobooks.

"Whaddya listen to?" He-man asked me.

"A lot of crime fiction, like George Pellacanos," I said. "Or old adventure novels, like the Three Musketeers." I hoped reading Alexandre Dumas didn't make me look too stuffy.

"Cool!" he said enthusiastically.

Zuke chimed in. "I've been listening to 1776, McCullough's contemporary study of that seminal year's import to the Revolution and early American Republic? Well, it's quite... entertaining. But I think it's rather short on substance."

"BRO," He-man responded, "I totally hear you! I myself have been listening to a string of presidential biographies. Yet I find the modern author to be so focused on an appearance of erudition that the work lacks rigor. I mean, great man vs societal trends -- the historiographic debate is cast aside in favor of 'readability.' Feel me, bro?"

As my mom would have said: Never judge a book by the cover.

VVR, to quickly frame this, is a collections of cabins, tent cabins, and tent sites with a store and restaurant attached. It has long had a rep for cheating hikers by padding their bills or selling $20 steak dinners, only to run out of steak halfway through dinner. I had promised myself not to buy a meal there because I resent the place, having personally experienced some pretty suspect behavior in 2008. But it is also a party and nutrition outpost after a long section without, and can be super fun.

When we walked in around 4 pm, there was a huge, drunken singalong in progress around the unlit campfire circle. Someone knew most of the chords and some of the words to all of Abbey Road, and they were determined to use them. It was festive, tipping toward crazed. A young man, very drunk, explained he was a cancer survivor who had just taken up smoking, which no one thought funny. Then someone fell down, which we all found irresistibly hilarious. 

I got a can of Olympia and ordered dinner. So much for my resolve. 

But both dinner and the staff were delightful. 

I had showered and laundered by the time I spied a green Kia Soul coming into the lot.

It was Lily and, to my delight, her mother Marcia. Hugs all around as we gushed to each other -- it had been a beautiful but very crazy drive, they said. My hike was much the same, I said. We checked Marcia into a tent cabin and grilled dinner over an open fire, she recalling her Sierra memories and I wondering if mine would end up seeming as sweet.