Tehachapi is for lovers

June 6
Being underslept and beat up by a 36-mile day cleared out any celestial rapture lingering from the night before. Now it was day, in the desert, sun already beating down the door. I had a big fat ridge to get up and over before meeting with Lily and resupplying in Tehachapi. Time to, as my friend Amber would say, put on my big boy pants.
I can remember a time when I loved the sound of wind. The CDT pretty well cured me of that, with its endless exposed ridge walks. I was always being deafened and shoved around by the wind; it never augered well, only potentially bringing cold or harder hiking.
So imagine how I felt hiking through an immense wind farm. Miles and miles of windmills,  dunn-colored grasses thinly covering reddish dirt and rocks, and always the wind. It drowned out the podcasts I was trying to use to drown it out. It shoved me around and blew my pee back at me when I relieved myself. I was momentarily charmed by a sheepherder watering his flock, but then the wind shoved me like a high school bully in the hallway between classes. The trail went up, it went over. It took its sweet time descending to the road crossing. There was an idyll of river and trees and road just off to my left, but that was not that trail's plan; it wanted to keep me right up there where I could get some more fresh fucking air. I tied my hat to.my head with my bandana, looking like a Beverley Hillbillies Babushka.
And then finally, there was the road. Lily picked me up, and we drove into Tehachapi. We had BBQ and marveled at how the town's main street is quaint and one block off it got very seedy. It was so delightful to be in her company again, catching up on her career felt like catching up on calories. I am pretty sure that solo, Tehachapi's lasting impression would have been of the homeless addicts trading barbs a block off Main Street; with her it was all smoked ribs and joy.

A shepherd, a water truck, a wind tunnel

Trail Angel Trail Part III

June 5
The third installment of the Trail Angel Trail took me theough more desert hills, sagebrush and chapparal, and down into the Antelope Valley, a broad flat expanse of true desert one must cross via the LA aqueduct.
But before the aqueduct was the angel. This one is Hikertown, a surreal property on the wasteland's edge. It looks like the set of a Western, fake store fronts saying "saloon" or "town hall." It looks like Pioneertown. The owner has a slightly murky reputation -- mega generous and definitely fanciful, but also prone to attempting to impress young women by telling them he is a Holywood producer, or showing them his Ferrari. Whatever, he has good wellwater in a terrible dry stretch. I filled up, rinsed my socks, showered, and hitched to the nearby store.
Said store, also owned by the Hikertown guy, coughed up a couple days worth of food, a bowl of delicious pozole, and a six-pack of beer.
I was ready for the aqueduct.
I left as the sun was diving toward the hills ringing the western edge of the valley. This was a planned, premeditated night hike, not like my occasional fumbling crashing exhausted extension of  an already long hiking day. The low elevation and lack of shade make this a famously good place to night hike.
And it is. The aqueduct, after briefly being open and looking like an inviting concrete river, becomes closed and functions as a 20-foot-wide sidewalk. This removes my main issue with night hiking, that being that I am clumsy in the dark. It left my attention free to wander upward toward the sky. The sunset bled from gold to purple, then finally dusked out, leaving first Mars and then Jupiter and then Vega to appear. Scorpio came out from hiding and caught Mars in its pincers; Big Dipper showed me the through-hikers favorite celestial body, the north star, which then gracefully led into the little dipper. 

How Tinseltown flushes its toilets: The LA Aqueduct 

Hours passed and so did the stars, wheeling down to the west. I have in all my hikes never experienced the stars with as much intimacy as on this one. I am not sure why, other than that my age seems to be bringing with it an increased appetite, voracious sometimes, for knowledge about nature. I have so far learned nature on these hikes experientially -- this mud is solid, that plant stings, that rock will be slippery, that snow is rotten and will not support me -- but now I care deeply about things that do not matter to my survival. I care about the things that will never care about me, and it feels like being set free.
I hiked the last few miles in to camp with a young man carrying the same Grafix three-foot acrylic bong that had been considered absolute state of the stoner art when I went to college. We talked Boy Scouting (he was very, very deeply involved), got lost, found ourselves with the aid of another hiker. She and my companion argued about whether waterless urinals were inherently misogynist; I wondered about how odd it is that human consciousness exists in the universe. Both lines of thought were ended the same way when we reached a water source: By sleep, finally, around one a.m. I had hiked 36 miles and slept in a manner appropriate to that.

Trail Angel Trail part II

June 4
8 am in the morning found me at Casa de Luna, looking at a "hiker" dude pound Miller High Life and huff a Parliament to kill his hangover. Ah, youth.
This is the second iconic trail angel house in 90 miles (the Saufleys being the first, Hikertown being the third).
The Andersons are the ying to the Saufley's yang. Or vice versa, I forget which is which. Anyway, where Donna has responded to the rapid growth in hiker numbers by being organized, Terrie and Joe Anderson have responded by allowing things to take their course. Thus was it that some 40 or 50 dirty hippies were lounging in their yard, with pancakes being handed out to people just waking up from the day before. Want to play guitar, man? Now is a GREAT time to start teaching yourself. Want to do laundry? Use the bucket and the hose, man. Want to hike, man? Trail is that way. Or not. The Andersens will abide.
Terrie herself DID recognize me from 2008, shockingly. I asked for a picture with her, which I got -- she kinda grabbed my ass, giving the photo a shock/joy vibe. I asked about the detour around an upcoming fire closure and was directed to a crudely-drawn map on construction paper, taped to the wall. It looked a bit like a treasure map drawn by a blitzed pirate. And given the company, it was entirely plausible that it was just that.

Yikes! Gotta love Terrie

Pretty serious outdoor enthusiasts congregate to discuss possible drink-til-we-barf session tonight

After pancakes, coffee, and more hugs to Terrie, I walked out with a woman named Mighty Mouse to start the detour. About my age, she was an air force vet who was imi g to celebrate the end of her service. She had been bitten by a rattlesnake (maybe not such good luck), which story I listened to in rapt attention. We talked motorcycles, having supportive partners, cancer and whatever else, and walked the road all the way to a biker bar.
Stepped in, got a couple beers and a BBQ sandwich. The place was a buzzing nest of hikers, getting drunk in the mid-morning. Many were people I had just seen at the Andersons who had hitched to the bar. Kind of lame but oh well.
I hiked out alone. I passed another tavern and stopped long enough to listen to five Merle Haggard tunes and talk to a local who had spent his career as a land surveyor. Hiked on into the afternoon heat, regretting the beer I had but cherishing the conversation and the cool hour I had spent.
Right before turning off the road onto trail again, I was accosted by a minivan. It pulled over, and who to my wondering eyes did appear but Terrie Anderson, handing me a slice of pizza.
"There's pepperoni if you prefer," she said. "Oh yeah," she added, rooting around in the van like I had forgotten something at her house. I waited a few minutes for the search to conclude.
"Aha! Wanna sno-kone?" she asked, holding an ice shaver aloft. Yes, I did. Bubblegum flavor, please. More hugs and then she drove away.
So I was standing on the side of the road, somewhere between half drunk and half hung over, one mitt filled with pizza and the other with an electric-blue sno kone. Man, I really fucking love the Andersens.
Soon as I hit trail, I was overtaken by a dozen plastered hikers. They had just hitched up from the bar. This was dispiriting. I mean, what are people out here to do? Experience leisure and drink beer? They should get season tickets to their baseball franchise, much more efficient means to an end.
Having not yet hiked that day versus my like 20 miles, they bounded ahead of me. I dogged on, sweating and grumbling. When I finally topped out around sunset at a dirt road, I was met by MORE people who had gotten someone to drive them to just that point on the trail.
My anger flipped right over into defeated sadness. Yeah, the trail is crowded, but that's democracy in action. The culture of through-hiking, however, is being diluted to the point of losing something really special. It mattered that we once all did the same thing, all passed the same trees and rocks, felt the same heat. It engendered a sense of camaraderie and mutual respect. Now, it's just like any other safety-through-consensus experience of modern consumer culture. If you don't like any facet of it, that facet doesn't apply to you.
So yes, I get bitter.
Of course, here is another side -- the trail itself remains the same. The stark beauty and gentle open slopes are the same. It's still the only place I want to be right now. People come and go, or they just ride around in strangers' cars, but the trail, like the Andersons, will abide.

Gotta be smart about it

June 3
I woke up at the Saufley's, packed up, and anxiously waited. I had sent a pair of shoes, a new sleeping pad, and a couple other assorted pieces of replacement gear to the Saufley's from REI via next-day air. Now, three days later, it still hadn't arrived. The day got hotter, the hours of useful daylight burning away, the ukelele grinding out its maddening dirge.
When a hiker boasted to me that she had been there for four days, I snapped. Trails are for hiking, not hiding from, and these were not my people. I left a note dictating that my ever-wonderful, miraculous fiance would pick up the package and bring it to me in Tehachapi three days hence, and got the hell out of Dodge. I love the Saufleys but that love does not extend to all their acquaintances.
So off onto the trail, we don't need no stinking shade! Except all that bravado wilted pretty quickly in the midday sun. The desert kiln was firing -- hot, dry and white. The trail takes a road out of town, then climbs up into shadeless hills of chaparral. It finally got hot enough that the flies which had been plaguing me left me in peace, but on the other hand my parboiled brain pan was beginning to make me feel the particular overheated madness of Klaus Kinski in a Herzog flick. Sweat was pumping out of me like a spigot and being evaporated just as past. My lips were salty. My neck burned. Get that boat over the mountain! 

God, I thought, I gotta get smarter about how I do this hiking thing.
By and by, I noticed this bizarre track in the trail. The PCT is a dusty thing, and perfect for tracking . One usually can spot shoe brands,and sometimes track their owners, by their tread patterns. Horizontal slanted bars are Montrail, waffles are Saucony, furry-like pawprints are Altras. This track was none of the above, a long wipe right down the trail, no footsteps. I could not fathom what animal or shoe could make such a thing. I saw another hiker a quarter-mile up, the only other soul in the kiln, and decided to ask him when I caught up.
When I saw him, the mystery was revealed, at least partially. The guy, staggering under a big pack, was towing a sled.
A sled. "That's a travois!" he responded to my "what the everloving fuck?" question. "I'm a vet with a broken back, so I gotta be smart." How was carrying a giant pack and then augmenting it with a sled smart, I asked, gently. I try to be open-minded.
"They do it a lot in Alaska," he replied. I looked at the sere, dessicated landscape surrounding us. No tundra. No snow. No caribou. No one sees Russia from here.
"Ah," I said. The heat and the general Beckettian absurdity had pretty well overwhelmed my naturally effusive smartass nature.
I passed him and chewed the phenomenon over in my mind. In a way, I am sure he was being "smart." His idea, his lifehack, had made a ton of sense to him when he planned it. Maybe it made less sense now that he was putting it into action, or maybe, like conservative economic theory, it was a bad theory which is only reinforced by failure in praxis.
I hiked on with my wee little pack, enjoyed the cool onset of dusk, and rolled out the bedroll.

Get smart, man. Get travois. 

The Trail Angel Trail, part I

June 2
I made brekkies, coffee (Thanks Derrick of Ohm Coffee, the Full Stack hit the spot), and set my sights on that day's goal: The Saufleys, aka Hiker Heaven
Donna and Jeff Saufley -- mostly Donna, although Jeff is a prince anong men -- are the original miraculous trail angels of the PCT. They have opened their home in Agua Dulce to hikers for years, doing laundry, offering shade and giving rides to REI. I don't know how many years, but I do know they were here in 2002 when I hiked the PCT through California, and they were here in 2008 when I finally did the whole thing. They have, as I have, watched this pastime morph from a fringe pursuit for total wackos (2002) to an enthusiast's game (2008) to the domestic equivalent of taking Eurrail through the Continent the year after graduating from college (yeah, that's what it feels like in 2016).
Donna has responded by getting very, very efficient at providing hikers with the necessities. You walk in to be processed like a recruit in an old Army film: you sign in, are handed spare clothes to wear while she washes yours, given a tour of sleeping quarters. All is done with such gracious kindness that the rigor does not chafe. If I had an army, I would choose Donna as my general.

I came in with laundry already done, having stopped at a KOA along the way and showered, done clothes, and dipped in the pool. (As an aside -- there were dozens of hikers lounging there, some of whom had been at the KOA for days. Many were discussing possible hitching alternates to the hike ahead. Hike Your Own Hike, but also: These kids got no rigor.)
With laundry done, I just hugged Donna when I got in. She didn't recognize me, but I cannot fault her for that, I look like the other 2000 visitors she has hosted this year. I laid out my bedroll, got water and hung out with some of the dozens of hikers lounging around. It was a very hiker scene: There were hikers passed out in front of a TV showing Archer on endless loop in the bunkhouse, which bunkhouse smelled of caged animal and drunken youth. Hikers making clumsy passes at each other on the porch, your tent or mine? A hiker playing his GODDAMN UKELELE in the garage. Hikers butting their cigarettes on her lawn and leaving the butts there. Donna's (and Jeff's) tolerance and generosity are as vast as the sea. 

And it's a good thing she's possessed of military efficiency, I thought.  Her home has been effectively been occupied by an army of highly undisciplined infantry.

Double Luck

May 31

It can be hard getting the engine going after a zero day, all the more so when you are carrying several days' worth of food. Throw an intense, hours-long ascent into the mix and motivation is oft hard to find.
It was this line of thinking that occupied me as I peered up at Mt. Baden Powell from the parking lot. Lily helped push me away from the Trusty Kia and toward the trail, instinct took over, and I slowly started churning out the steps. Lily followed me for the first hour or so, then we kissed and said goodbye. Pretty sad to leave her, which did not help my state of mind.
But there really isn;t anything to do but go forward. I remember once asking a fellow hiker if they had a strategy for finishing long trails, of which he had finished a couple.
"It's easy," he said, "just don't go home."
True. So rather than go home, I huff-n-puffed up another five or six switchbacks. I came up on four young people, like teenage young, taking a break. Two of them were women and wearing t-shirts from the Marine Corps. The other two were skinny young men wearing what looked like bullet-proof vests.
"Hey guys," I panted, "what's with the vests?"
"We just enlisted in the Marines, and we're doing some extra training," said the taller of the two, puffing out his chest. "These weigh twenty pounds."
My brain executed a somersault as I tried to comprehend people volunteering to carry weight not necessary to their well-being... and then trying to see if it was possible they would like some EXTRA EXTRA training by carrying my pack up to the top.
I asked and they did not.
So I thanked them for their service and moved on. A little later, a very fast young man with light hair loped past me, and we chatted for a minute before he moved on. His name was Brewhiker, because he was carrying a live yeast culture and dried malt extract, and using it to home-brew beer. In his bag. I asked how it tasted -- I used to brew and a backpack is kind of a word place to try and achieve sanitation or temperature stability, both of which are important. He replied it tasted great, and I felt like a heel. At a later point, I actually saw the beer being brewed in a smart water bottle. It looked mile with suspended yeast, and little... Rustic. Well, who am I to talk, I eat M&Ms when I find them on the trail. Brewhiker, I salute you.
We finally got up top around the same time. There was a nifty monument at the peak to Baden Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts. I was a Boy Scout and, paramilitary associations and homophobia notwithstanding, I found it to be a great activity. Heck, they taught me to camp, I am grateful. Even more impressive was the 1,500-year-old Bristlecone pine along the way (they had a plaque with the age).

Me and my homie

I was incredibly relieved to be heading back downhill. Just the clear, high-alpine air, crisp even in the afternoon. The pines, the sagebrush. The fat black rattlesnake right next to the trail, waving it's head back and forth like its targeting computers were locking in on my ankle.

>Insert predictable expletives<

Man, those rattlesnakes will WAKE YOU UP. I leaned on my poles, waiting for my breath to subside to normal. As the adrenaline ebbed, the pace picked up again, my eyes watching carefully at the edges of brush for another snake. I knew it was unlikely, given how recently I'd seen the other one, but on the other hand, probability doesn't really decree that an occasion makes a repeat less likely hey there's another giant rattlesna

FUCK

ke right in the path, angry, clearly looking for an opening. 

I think I cleared about 4' vertical with that post-snake jump. I slowly did a 360 rotation just to make sure that, I don't know, the earth wasn't under attack by rattlesnake aliens. I slowly, slowly started creeping down the trail like the guys in action movies do during a gunfight. What could it mean to see two rattlesnakes within five minutes? What sort of an omen was a rattlesnake? I decided to decide it was a good omen, an omen of good luck. I had the Double Luck, that's all.

That night, lying in my bag and staring at the sky, I thought about those snakes. One doesn't see snakes every day, but when you do, it makes a big difference. They are like trout that way -- stunningly beautiful, smallish, cold-blooded predators that make my adrenaline run. Neither is happy to see me close up. Just the one type has venom, which neatly turns the relationship on its head.

Gobbler's Knob

May 30

I took a full day off in Wrightwood, a zero, as in zero miles. Lily and I checked out of the hotel, did some chores around town, and then packed up some donuts and beer to do some "trail magic."
Much, maybe even too much, enthusiasm has been generated around this idea of trail magic. It entails doing something nice for thru-hikers (or section hikers, or maybe for anyone happening down the trail, depending on the disposition of the "angel"). Some trail angels leave water at road crossings, providing badly needed hydration for people too stupid to bring their own water. Including, at times, me. Others open their homes, offer rides, do laundry. Generally, they bring a little of the fruits of our post-industrial society up to a bunch of people who have volunteered to do without. They get gratitude, and we get whatever sprang to mind when they envisioned us hiking. Usually works out great.
Water, transportation and laundry are all well and good, but Lily and I are more of the "beer and a donut" school of trail angeling. Packed to the gills with empty calories and fun times, we pointed the trusty Kia up a dirt road toward a trail crossing in the desert south of Wrightwood. Turns out we had been beaten to that spot, as a couple was there leaving water. Man and woman, 4wd Toyota, sensible sun-protection clothing. We stopped to say hello.
"Thanks," I said. "I'm hiking this year, and it's really nice of you to leave water."
"Yeah, they've been emptying this cache out," said the woman.
"I was just here the other day," I said. "We're thinking of doing some trail magic. We did some around here a couple years ago at Gobbler's Knob." (It's a little mountain off the main ridge but on a dirt road and the PCT.)
"Trail magic, huh? You need to go back to Inspiration Point -- that's the place!" That crossing is just 6 miles further than Wrightwood. Lily and I actually tried to give away beer there two years ago, but all the hikers were bloated with burgers and chalupas and the like.
"We were thinking Gobbler's Knob," I said.
"Or you could back to drive to Cabezon, to the McDonald's," she replied.
"We think we know a place," I said, ever-so-slightly more insistent.
"Well, or you could just drive around! But Inspiration Point -- that's where you two need to be." She seemed exasperated. I was getting there myself. Lily put a calming hand on my arm because she knows how little tolerance I have for being bossed around arbitrarily.
"Great!" I said through gritted teeth. "We'll be seeing you later."
We proceeded to drive up to Gobbler's Knob. It's a pretty rough road, enough so that we discussed whether or not this had been a great idea. Maybe we should have gone to Inspiration Point. But as we rounded a turn, who did we see but the couple in their Toyota.
"You gonna make it in that thing?" the man asked, looking dubiously at the Kia.
"We did it before," I replied defiantly, now fully in the throes of Male Pride. By this time I would have driven the Kia to Vladidovstok via goat trail had they doubted me.
On we drove, occasionally bottoming out but finally arriving intact at the Knob. A couple was napping in their tent, and we got them up for beer. A few more people filtered in. A father and son in matching gear. A tall young man with a Go-Pro strapped to his chest ("I love filming people giving me lectures about it," he said). A man who claimed to have raided a pot grow operation and scored some weed, which he had stashed in the bottom of his backpack so it could dry.
One guy in particular, Frogger, was fascinating -- he had a degree in High-Performance Automotive Engineering, which we all agreed was the most bad-ass major we had ever heard of. He also reported that getting married in Vegas is harder than you'd think, but the divorce is pretty quick; Land Rovers are impossible to keep up unless, like him, you make your own parts; and people who used stakes for their tents were dumb.
We -- with the exception of Frogger -- then all used stakes to set up our tents, settled in, and had a warm, beautiful night of it.