It was on fire when we got here

July 1

I awoke crisp and bright, the plan for an epic day ready-formed in my mind. Breakfast, breaking camp, and striding out into this new sunshine I'd been given was all that I could ask for. 

And so I rolled out the morning like a piece of pie dough, slowing to stare at the towering spires of rock and then speeding back up again. There are those days, my favorite days, when the miles are like a ball of yarn you've tossed down a slope. Your body ceases to be a cage and and becomes a sleek vehicle; your mind stops chewing the cud and reliving the past and just coolly observes the glory of the world.
Yes, these are glorious days. Days of enlightenment. Days during which you are so overly self-satisfied with how blissed-out you have become that you leave your water filter someplace and suddenly come to the grim realization that you're about to be out of water and there's nary another hiker in sight from whom you could borrow a filter or purification solution.
Huh.
Shit.
Well, I reasoned, better to drink some "live" water than no water at all. That's what I like to call untreated water when I drink it: "Live water." It's not a term I invented, but I do think it's a pretty clever rebranding of "non-potable water." Makes it seem like perhaps the bacteria and protozoa in there are new, beneficial probiotics.
Who knows, I thought to myself as I filled my Platypus with water from a little mountain stream. It's probably fine. It's not like there are that many things living up here on these alpine meadows that could shit in this water.
And on cue, a marmot stuck his insolent little head up and chirped at me. Screw you, buddy.

Thusly dispirited and brought back to the reality of my existence -- nasty, brutish, and potentially about to center around diarrhea -- I hiked down to Carson Pass.
I had great hopes for a yogi here. No, not a guided stretching instructor with vague spiritual aspirations, but an opportunity to "yogi," that is, charmingly panhandle for food and/or beer in the fashion of Yogi Bear scheming on a picnic basket. But there were few vehicles stopping as the dusk grew dim, and they were primarily big pickups and shiny BMWs -- not very good prospects. I shuffled on.

So I punched up over a notch in the ridge separating the highway from the wilderness beyond. There was a pleasant drop down into the canyon on other side. I couldn't see any sign of other campers, but I smelled smoke. There were people somewhere down there, and I intended to ask for the use of their filter.

I found camp at a stream crossing underneath a broad, sheltering pine. Just on the other side of the creek was the source of the smoke: Two boys, or perhaps they'd just crossed over into the territory of young men, were huddled next to the sad black remains of their fire. I recognized immediately that they had committed the cardinal sin of no-trace camping: They a had made a new fire ring.
Or rather, they had failed to make a new fire ring; they had just made a fire scar on the flat, grassy ground. But you know, it's bad form to scold people when you plan on begging them for the use of their water filter, so I simply said hello and prevailed upon their kindness. They regarded me with a little fear and shame, clearly cognizant of their crime.
But we both let it pass. I didn't want to chew them out, and they wouldn't have had mich to say in their own defense -- after all, it hadn't been on fire when they got there.

Goodbye, sublime bullshit

June 30

It was cold and damp in the trees I'd chosen for my tentsite, but I heard my new friend Owl clanking around in his impromptu cafe at the picnic area just yards away. I had no way of knowing that this meant coffee, but my keen addict's intuition told me to go invetsigate. It was enough to impel my sore body up and out of the tent a la Nospheratu rising out of his coffin; my legs jolted me over to the table, wide-eyed and vacant of mind.

My guess was correct.
And not just coffee, but dripper cones and a stove to boil water; I could make a pour-over here. This is a pretty big deal to a professional coffee nerd like myself. I have come to expect much less and be happy with it. Percolators, Mr. Coffees, ancient Bunn-o-Matics from the civil rights era, I will drink it all when I want a cup of coffee. In college, there was a commonly told joke that pizza was like sex, because in both cases, even when it was bad, it was still pretty good. This joke is, I have to say, the worst compound lie I was told in all my years of schooling. However, when you really want a cup of coffee, there is almost no such thing as a bad cup.

Anyway, I know, too much coffee nerdery. He left me to make myself a cup of coffee, which I eagerly did, using a heroic dose of ground coffee to do so. The result was ink-black, bitter, dark-roasted Peet's coffee. A related result was me going through the same process of rejuventation that happens to Popeye when he eats a can of spinach. I stuck a piece of chocolate cake in my mouth, leapt to my pack, wished everyone a great day, excellent day, toodles, and scurried off to the trail with the grace of a frightened cat.

Cake and strong coffee had an effect on my metabolism similar to pouring gasoline on a fire and then deciding to go ahead and also put in that stick of dynamite you'd found at the swap meet. I was sugar high. I mean like really high, like illicit-drug high. The trail seemed to be obliging me by flattening, widening, and generally becoming easier to hike. My one remaining trekking pole was tucked into my pack, leaving me to concentrate on my legs and feet. Flying over dirt, careening off boulders, executing antics while hopping across streams. I was making killer time and I knew it. 

The funny thing was that as the sugar and caffeine ebbed, the trail continued to improve. There were no mosquitoes to speak of, either. I looked back across the pass below to the mountains behind. Clothed in brilliant white ice and funereal grey, they seemed to hold some sublime truth. Only that truth seemed to be one which I couldn't quite absorb it. It kept getting stuck in my throat. I saw not just bold, raggedly cut beauty, but also felt the wet seep of mud into my shoes, the annoying throb of bodily danger when crossing ice, and the way the mosquitoes hit my face like confetti.
I love adventure, but in a very important sense, adventure is not what my PCT is about. It's about the miles and the open country. I come here to do big days, see lots of light, feel my mind bleach out in the constant sun and physical labor. That back there? Yeah, it was sublime, glad to have done it. 

Looking back at the Southern Sierra... screw that (glorious) noise

But goodbye, sublime BS. I'll take this PCT that winds it's way in and out. This trail of wildflowers and dust sloping ridges in the distance. No, the angles of the peaks are not so sharp, but the curves of the valleys invite the eye to rest in a way that the High Sierra cannot.

Mostly, I was happy for good trail.

Accordingly, I pounded out the miles. Ten miles, fifteen, twenty.
Sometimes the trail serves flashbacks. I suddenly remembered taking a break with the Croat, perched on our packs in these meadows of green grassy flowers and red dirt. Another turn and I was thinking about what a funny man he was, what a good trail companion. My mind was running reels of footage believed long-lost, all the way back to my childhood with Dan Mikesell, and my first encounters with a natural world kind enough to let my brain do its own thing. I didn't have to think about where my next step was going to land; it was all good trail. And that day good trail meant it was all good.

It was well after sunset when I finally slowed down and started scouting for a campsite. I found one hidden in a stand of junipers on a small lip of land above a lake. There was a majestic stone fireplace and enough wood for a week, so I made my first fire of the trip while dining on instant noodles. The fire burnt down to coals with minutes of the last bite being shoveled into my mouth. I doused the coals and let my mind extinguish itself, wrapped in my bag and covered by my tent. 

Snap June 29

June 29

I awoke to once again find my entourage awaiting me at the door. Before allowing my adoring public access, I packed up as much of my pack as I could, then slipped out. I was dressed in my "mosquito spacesuit" -- headnet, rainjacket, long pants -- and my shoes were soaked. Get me the hell out of here.
Munching pop tarts and hurriedly slurping tea, I regarded the surroundings as I was trotting by: Swampy buff-colored rock outcroppings. Swampy dark green forest. Verdant, very swampy meadows. The ridges on either side of the canyon I inhabited did not look swampy, but one could not be sure without crossing more swamplands to check.
There was only one solution: Forward progress. I needed out of this alpine bog in the worst way. Out of here and into... what? A place of better drainage?
It's a low standard, I thought, but there you go.
Basically, I needed out of Yosemite.

Goodbye Yosemite, you crumbum!

I got my wish, as the trail shot straight north up the canyon, then past the inviting shores of a swamp named Dorothee Lake. At the head of the valley, I crossed into another watershed and saw, buried in the snow, the sign of my release and relief: I was out of the national park and into Hoover Wilderness.
Before me rose a very different kind of range. Slopes of porous volcanic rock and scree surrounded pinnacles of uneroded stone. I knew from experience that this softer, more porous stone held less water and wasn't as likely to form glacial lakes. From a nature photographer's point of view, I suppose that's bad, but for me, it meant good drainage.
Just a mile or two past the border, I walked past the 1,000 mile mark. Good stuff, I thought. Then, quite quickly, I was walking up Kennedy Canyon and onto the volcanic ridge that leads to Sonora Pass (where Highway 108 crosses the trail). The sloped were open, the views astounding. I could see storms building up thirty miles to my east, and the green grasses and rust-red stone were accented by bright yellow flowers.
Still quite a bit of snow, though. Couple challenging fields on the way up to the ridge -- but I've done worse, I thought. The snow's consistency was really challenging -- melted soft as a Slurpee on the surface by the day's heat, but too dense and firm underneath to kick steps easily.  It was two steps forward, another sideways, some slapstick-banana-peel moments, another step. And then: >snap<
I looked down. My beloved Gossamer Gear trekking pole had sunk deep into the snow and snapped as I tried to pull it back out.
My heart sank and my anger rose. These poles are the epitome of grace and joy as tools; I would not choose to hike with any others. Knife enthusiasts talk about specific blades as being balanced, or seeming to belong in your hand. That describes my relationship to these poles. They were also, coincidentally, very out of stock. It took a huge effort on both Lily and my part to replace the tips at Vermillion Valley Resort. And I had broken it going through one of my last snowfields.
I raged. Raged against the PCT for the routing, which seems to take a tour of every patch of snow remaining on the slopes. I raged at myself for breaking the pole, although i am unsure what I could have done differently. For good measure, I went ahead and got pissed at the useless, enormous bear can I was still lugging around.
Cursing and flailing with one pole, I slipped and stumbled down the loose dirt and slushy snow to the road. But upon reaching the pass, my spirits got the much needed boost: Somebody had set up an impromptu cafe at the picnic area at the pass. Two somebodies, it turned out: Owl, who gave me cookies and a beer, and iPod, who gave me two hot dogs to add to my noodle dinner. I'm not trying to brag, but the Knorr Teriyaki Pasta Side pairs quite well with hot dogs and lukewarm beer. My fuel cartridge ran out, but Owl let me use his. They took my trash, including my tragically broken pole.
I felt almost whole again. It isn't all bad luck, I thought. I can hike without a pole. Well past dark, I and a few other stragglers left the cafe and set up camp in some trees near the highway.

True love in the corduroy canyons June 28

June 28

I had chosen a campsite in some rocks up to the left of the trail. This had some distinct advantages: Slightly fewer mosquitoes than in the crowded trailside campspot, below. I had privacy, not that I had anything to engage in that required it -- it's not like I was washing or anything. But the little nook I'd found between huge boulders was comforting and snug in the fashion of an outlaw's last redoubt.
But nothing's free in this life, and my hideout had the disadvantage that I had serious trouble finding my way back out. Hiking in exhausted after dark appeared to have had the same effect on me as a blindfold during pin the tail on the donkey. I walked down off the rock outcropping in one direction and found a stream and a eager fan club of thousands of mosquitoes: Nope. Returning to the campsite, I used the sun as a compass, which made me feel proud of being a Boy Scout but also told me nothing, because I had no idea what direction I needed to go in.
I eventually lucked onto the trail and started the engine. Legs up, legs down, breath in, breath out. The trail started climbing up and down in an erratic fashion, diving in and out of canyons. These were not like the epic, 3,500-foot ascents and descents of the Sierras. They were quick jabs of elevation, episodic, sporadic, but always there. Our quest for mountain enlightenment had been replaced with high intensity interval training. No longer did John Muir perch on my shoulder muttering about the range of light; this was Richard Simmons country.

People fetishize Yosemite. Lots and lots of tourists from other countries come to see America, and when they want to see the beauty of the west, they take a bus to Yosemite. But honestly, when it comes to this part of the park, it's not easy to see what the hubbub is about. True, it is green trees and grass, black soil and grey rock, white snow and blue sky. But all of those elements have been diced up into small portions and scrambled together into a swamp. The trail bolts up and down like an ant over wide-wale corduroy. It's a wilderness of half measures.
Yes, sad but true, I suspect the northwest backcountry of Yosemite has inspired very little poetry. My ant metaphor may be the grandest homage to date. 

More probably, it inspired the formulation of DEET. Because those mosquitoes? They are real, man. Very real. "Fierce," "implacable" and "siege mentality" are the words that most readily comes to mind in this context. It's hard to convey the phenomenon without having you, dear reader, out to experience it yourself; it's kind of one of those things you must experience to comprehend, and yet simultaneously have no desire to experience. 

I wore long sleeves and long pants all day, although it is really too hot for such attire. I'd place your headnet on, same reasoning. Before eating, which requires removing the headnet, I'd apply DEET to my face. Ah, but when I lifted the veil, a mosquito -- probably like the Olympic gymnastics gold medal winner of her swamp -- manages to dart in and land on your eyelid, a place you cannot use DEET. I now had to drop my food to swipe at her, compounding my anguish.

All day it's like this up here.

There's no real use in getting upset about it, though. I try not to expend mental energy becoming incensed at the LITTLE DAMN THINGS AHHHH. Instead, I try to reframe them. For years, I tried to think about them as weather. Sleet is awful to hike in, yet I do not rage at sleet. No point. Aren't mosquitoes just like sleet?
No, because sleet isn't possessed of an evil intelligence. 

So I have taken this exercise in reframing one step further. I have decided that what mosquitoes are is love. And not just any love; mosquito love is the truest love. Some people will love you for your looks, others for your wit. But the love of a mosquito for a hairless mammal is an eternal love, a love for the ages. 

Love.
Some will die for it. Other will kill for it. Still others will be forced to wait outside my tent all night just for a chance at it. These little ladies I call my "entourage." They follow me wherever I go, just steps behind me. Do I take a swim in a lake? They will wait at the shore. They're dying to talk to me, whisper in my ear, fly into my mouth and die in that rank, peanut-butter-scented cave. I did not ask for this fame, my friends.

My escape that night involved a hasty, eyelid-swatting dinner and a campsite once again up in some rocks next to a long, damp, green swale and a thin ribbon of creek. True happiness for me was shutting the screen door on my tent. The star shuts the limo door, peace reigns, and the blood meals are over for the night.