June 21
I was eager to get out of Muir Trail Ranch, but wasn’t looking forward to the really steep ascent that came afterward. It’s best done to hike these larger ascents in the cold mornings before the sun starts to warm up everything. I see the sun starting to shine on one of the final switchbacks through the pine trees – glittering through the needles, and I try to hike faster. I’m trying to race the sun. The sun will win of course, but I can try anyway.
Most of the other hikers at Muir Ranch where JMT hikers who appear clean and their gear doesn’t appear to have holes in it. Their sun hoodies are still the color that they started with. It makes me realize how far I’ve come on the PCT. My hoodie completely stained, dirty and has holes in it. My legs dark and muscular. I used to be like these hikers and now I’m something else. One of the hikers plugged in a Kindle another had a mug hanging off the back of his backpack and a solar panel. I laugh about these kind of luxuries now but at the same time I walked 200 miles with an electric muscle gun. How far I have come?
I have way too much food in my backpack and it feels incredibly heavy compared to the last few days. Going uphill is really hard. The original plan was to go to Red’s Meadow which is about 60 miles away but the shuttle actually comes from a different trailhead which is about 45 Mi away. So again, I have way too much food for that trip which should take me about 3 to 4 days. I don’t know if Paul’s going to wait that long, but I don’t really care. I’m not going to hike much faster than I can and I think 3 days is really pushing it. 4 days would be much more comfortable so we’ll see what happens.
I sent a message last night saying to tell me now if you don’t want to wait or if you don’t want to hike together again, and I haven’t heard a response from him. He should have service at this point. He’s been sending Garmin messages through his email when he has phone service. So if he’s in Mammoth, he should have phone service. So I don’t know if he’s just taking the time to think about what he wants to say or or what, but balls in his court.
I feel as though I made a silent promise to child Amelia when I was out there alone. I will protect her. I will care for her. I won’t let anyone hurt her ever again. I’m done waiting around for some man to hurt me and to keep hurting me and to keep hurting me – there’s only so much you can take. Like he literally left me alone in the wilderness in some of the most remote, dangerous terrain possible. Do I trust this man? Trust is easily lost and hard to regain. So in my story, I don’t know if he is someone who has a redemption arc or if he’s just the villain.
I didn’t see anyone most of the day until about 2pm. Up until then, I was completely alone. I’ve had the ringing in my ears, and have been hearing strange things around water, and I would have expected to see more people today. Has everyone on earth disappeared? Am I in the matrix and something is broken? I’ve had so many strange thoughts and unsolicited memories that have been resurfacing since Kearsarge Pass and I try to just let them be – let them float through my mind without judgement. But I feel disturbed.
Paul finally responded to my message from yesterday and he said that he didn’t know that I would be upset that he went ahead, which I think might be worse than if he were actually trying to hurt me. He said he’s waiting in Mammoth until Wednesday and I’ll probably get there on Monday. Will he really still be there? He has now sent information about which trail to take and the trolley schedule to get to town. He seriously doesn’t know how angry I am, but have I gotten this so wrong? He wouldn’t have borrowed someone’s InReach to message me and wouldn’t be sending me messages about public transit if he didn’t care. Girl, he still left you in the wilderness, this angry voice in my head keeps repeating to me.
Being on this section by myself made me realize that I really don’t need him. I don’t really need anyone to hike with. I can rely on myself.
I got my period today which was funny because I thought I had it last week but apparently not. Have I been extra crazy? Have I completely overreacted about everything? Or, would spending 8 days alone in scary wilderness make anyone get a little cray? I feel like Tom Hanks in Castaway, but I don’t have a volleyball to talk to – that would weigh too much to carry. I feel like I’m losing touch with what’s normal, in general though. I only spend time with hikers, and my sense of what’s normal has shifted so drastically. Is going ahead on the trail from other hikers actually normal? Is my anger really justified?
My backpack was so heavy today because I got my resupply yesterday and I sent myself way too much food. I left some of the food at Muir Ranch but I still have too much because I sent myself a bunch of beef packets and they’re a little bit heavy, but they’re also hard to get, so I didn’t want to just leave them behind. I left a bunch of Clif bars and Pop-Tarts behind at the ranch in the hiker Box because I’m just sick of Clif bars (aka Fart Bars) in general. But the Pop-Tarts are heavy and are mostly just sugar and not really very nutritionally dense food, so they need to go.
I camped about a mile short of where I had intended to camp which was still a few miles past my original plan so I felt fine stopping for the night at a campsite that had a stream right next to it which is always convenient. I was there alone and shortly after, Shoe Leather showed up and asked if he could camp there. I joked that he kept crashing my campsites, but it was actually nice to see a familiar face.
He asked if I had heard from B-Roll (AKA Paul) and I just said that Paul had told me that he had no idea that I was not ok with him going ahead. Shoe Leather asked if B-Roll had ever been married and I said no. He just shook his head as if that explained everything. Shoe Leather said that he used to be like that, where he didn’t always think about his wife and about things from her perspective. He had been hiking the PCT with his wife but she got off in Tehachapi because she didn’t want to hike the Sierra with all the snow. He said that he missed her and wish that she were there even though they got on each other’s nerves hiking sometimes. He told me that Paul didn’t seem like a bad guy, just maybe didn’t think about how that would make me feel.
I didn’t care. Why wouldn’t he want to hike together? I don’t understand.
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