June 22
Listening to: Lord Huron – Digging Up the Past
I woke up this morning and it was absolutely freezing. I tried to make coffee, but after boiling water for an extremely long time, I decided not to waste my fuel, and just drank lukewarm coffee. I hung the pot upside down to dry, and frozen water droplets formed on the rim of the pot. It took me a long time to get out of my sleeping bag and I was just tired, so I wasn’t on the trail until 7:15.
I had made the mistake of washing some shorts and socks in the river when I got to camp and hanging them inside my tent to dry while they were still damp, and in the morning, they were completely frozen.
Part of me wants to see Paul but part of me doesn’t. He’s sent another message informing me that he had a hotel room until Wednesday in Mammoth, and which hotel room number it was, and to just come on by, casually, as if nothing were wrong. Casually, as if he has no idea how truly upset I am.
This morning I blew my nose and it was just a huge chunk of snot mixed with blood. I’ve had more and more snot and I have a fullness in my ear. I’m pretty sure I have some kind of sinus or ear infection, which is probably why I thought I was hearing things. Maybe I didn’t have a magical experience with the wind gods and mountain elves in the Sierra. Maybe I was just sick. But maybe I did have some supernatural experience.
I think about that night that I camped alone in the huge field next to the river where I just got naked in the middle of nowhere. There was no one anywhere close by, and I felt so free and I thought about my inner child and what I would do to protect her. And I think about what am I doing now? What if I don’t stand up for her again? What if I just keep letting her get hurt? I would be no better than the predators and the people I should be protecting her from, so I have a choice to make.
I kept thinking about my story. This is all my story and I get to choose how it goes, and maybe it’s not the love story I was hoping for with someone else. Maybe it’s my own love story. What a completely cheesy and lame thing to say, but I think that’s what it is. I choose myself.
Last night I had angrily typed out a whole paragraph. I think 11 whole Garmin satellite messages worth explaining all the ways that I was angry and all the ways that he had betrayed me. But I turned off my phone Bluetooth before it actually sent to Garmin even though I had pressed send. And honestly don’t think it’s even worth sending at this point because I shouldn’t really have to explain all of these things. It’s a waste of energy. I think most of the time, from my experience, men know what they did. They just don’t want to be held accountable. They don’t want to apologize. They don’t want to be wrong. They don’t want to be vulnerable. They’re just say “sorry”. Sorry as if those words mean all of those things, but those words mean nothing. Those words mean absolutely nothing when someone keeps doing the same thing over and over and over and over.
I descended along the trail down into a valley, with lots of shimmering birch tree leaves and ferns. It just smells like greenery. It’s so different from the barren rock and pine trees and rivers from snow melt from on the other side of the mountain.
There’s a long ascent of the final pass which is called Silver Pass and I just feel completely wiped and exhausted. Every step feels so difficult and I’ve made many rest stops along the trail. There’s been many times where river crossings have an alternate route and you can jump over some rocks to get to the other side without getting your feet wet. But I came to one where I didn’t even trust my legs to hop between the rocks without falling because I was so tired.
I sat at the side of the trail at one point trying to eat some food to lighten my pack weight and someone came by and asked how I was. I don’t think he expected me to give a real answer but I said I was exhausted. He asked if I wanted some caffeine chews and I eagerly took him up on it, but they didn’t really help very much. I decided to take a nap around 2pm for about an hour which is not something I normally do on the trail, but I just felt so exhausted. After all these other passes, I think anyone would be though. I decided to sleep on my mat under a tree. I figured an hour “wasted” now, might save me a half day of hiking later.
I keep wondering if I’m trying to press on to finish this section in 3 days because of Paul or for my own reasons. It would be nice to take a shower and do laundry because I feel absolutely disgusting, but at the same time I don’t necessarily feel like any particular rush to get to town. Paul said that he had his hotel until Wednesday, but do I care why? Should I rush off to try to get there before Wednesday which I’m assuming is when he would want to get back on trail.
I’m guessing he’ll want to get back on trail on Wednesday no matter what, regardless of whether I’m there or not. I’ll have phone service at around Mile 900 tomorrow based on some FarOut comments and I think I’m going to try to find accommodations for myself even if it’s more expensive. I don’t really want to stay with Paul.
This is probably the easiest pass of all of the passes I hiked last week but it definitely feels like the most difficult just because I’m this tired. But after my nap I finally got the energy up and started hiking very very slowly. But I made it up the more steep ascent to a flatter section where I could see the previous pass that I climbed. I saw someone eating something at the top of the pass and they yelled over asking where the boot pack was to the trail. It was right in front of where I was also eating. It turned out to be Rey! She had gone to Vermillion Valley Resort and said it was extremely expensive but so nice.
I’ve started having really bad chafing on my inner thighs, not because of chub rub, but actually the opposite – my shorts are too big again and are now rubbing on my skin. I started the trail wearing a size medium short from Old Navy, and I’m now wearing a small, but I think I need an extra small this point. The size small started off as basically booty shorts and are now as baggy and frumpy as the size medium were when I had to size down to the small.
While hiking down Silver pass, I walked through another Alpine Meadow with water streams, rocks, little flowers and plants. It looked manicured like somebody’s garden. It looks like the Shire – like a hobbit might pop out at any moment.
Per my Garmin watch, I’ve burned over 4,000 calories the last few days so I’m likely not getting enough calories as I rationed for about 3500 per day. So I’m going to eat a double dinner tonight, since when I stopped to eat food, I did get a lot more energy so I’m assuming my glycogen stores are just completely depleted.
I feel really proud of myself that I found it within me to get over the pass today because I was seriously thinking of camping somewhere before it. But I really did want to try to see if I could get to town in 3 days and I think I’m going to succeed. It’s funny because resting for an hour and a half was really the thing that allowed me to keep going. I once asked Paul if he had ever heard the phrase go slow to go fast and he said no. And what it means is sometimes you have to slow down in order to actually go fast. And for me, when I rush through and I try to push myself beyond my limits when I’m exhausted, I crash and burn. But if I stop to rest and I take my time and a hike slower, I end up actually hiking faster in the long run. And that’s a concept that I’m realizing where we’re extremely different in that regard because the way he hikes is to just push through to keep pushing and that doesn’t work for me at all.
Maybe this is how I learn to be gentle with my body and how I learn to succeed despite my limitations and to work around them and to find these Solutions and ways of living so that I can still do the things that I want to do.
I hiked to a little bit before where I was trying to get to, but I felt really good about getting over Silver pass. I felt bad – I set up camp near some either JMT hikers or weekend backpackers who kept waving to me and saying oooo that’s a zpack tent – ULTRALIGHT. As if I was some professional backpacker. There were so many mosquitoes out so I waved to them but didn’t hang around to chat because I just wanted to set up my tent and stop getting eaten alive. I was so tired and fell asleep pretty quickly after making dinner.
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