August 1
Miles: 14.3
Mile Markers: 1971.3 – 1985.6
Miles to Canada: 670.8
I packed up in the morning and started hiking. The butterflies are absolutely incredible. I don’t think they’re monarchs, but they do look similar. They’re migrating, but when I have observed them flying, it seems like they’re flying West most of the time. I’m not sure where they’re going exactly, but we’re both on a journey, migrating from one place to another, heading for the border of some other land.
Not even a quarter of a mile after I left my campsite, I saw a beautiful deer in the meadow, eating. I just stood there for a second watching. I got a little closer and she just stayed there. Just chewing, having her breakfast. I felt bad disturbing her because I’d be pissed if someone disturbed me while I was eating my breakfast. So I apologized and said sorry and then kept walking towards the deer and she moved off the trail about 20 ft and kept eating.
It feels like I’m in a fake place. It’s so beautiful – between all the butterflies, the wildflowers, and the snow-covered mountains in the distance. It feels like I’m in a Viagra commercial, or inside of a mural that should be on the wall of a now defunct Ponderosa restaurant. It doesn’t feel like a real place, but it is, and I get to be here.
I keep meandering through pine forest and then meadows full of wildflowers and thousands of butterflies migrating, and then I came to some giant mountains of lava. There’s tons of volcanoes around here and I reached a place where it looks like lava had flown down from the volcano and created these fields of pumice rock. It got really hot out with no tree cover, so I put my sun umbrella up.
I kept leapfrogging a family who’s doing a weekend hike – three of them with very large backpacks. It makes me remember how much stuff I had with me when I started the trail.
I went through one absolutely gorgeous meadow full of wildflowers. It was one of the largest meadows with a long path with nothing but wildflowers and butterflies, and I reached a stream bed that was dry and they were just thousands of butterflies on the ground and when you walk by, they flap their wings and flutter away. I ruined their zero day.
At the end of the meadow, I stopped to take some pictures of the butterflies and I heard two people yell. Are you a thru hiker? They were perched up on a giant lava rock up the hill and I yelled yes I am! They asked if I wanted any snacks. I said sure! and they said they would come down from the rock. I met them on the trail. Scott and John who are doing a 14 mile day hike. Scott was extremely excited to potentially meet some PCT hikers, and he had a plastic bag full of different snacks – beef jerky, trail mix, even Luna bars. I offered to take some beef jerky and trail mix off his hands but told him that I probably couldn’t eat any more bars for at least 5 years. I stayed to chat with them both for a little while. I told them that the reason I was able to hike the trail was because I had been laid off. John was writing a book about layoffs. Scott worked at a hospital in Bend and said when I finished PT school I should come work there. It was one of those really lovely interactions with people on the trail that I’ve luckily had so many of recently.
It’s so funny how on the trail you can downplay your achievements and think that what you’ve done isn’t really that special, but speaking to people who are not thru hikers and how in awe they are of how far we’ve hiked makes you realize how incredible this experience truly is.
Each day I’m closer to Washington, and I’m closer to the trail being over, which feels pretty sad in a way. I don’t really want it to be over, but I am very excited about my new life. Something that’s not often talked about on the trail is post trail mental health issues. There have been some suicides – people who finish the trail and can’t imagine their lives without the trail afterwards. A lot of people find it difficult to reintegrate into their old jobs or the places that they used to live. And on the trail, there’s a very strong community that you belong to, you have purpose. Life is very simple, and you meet people along the way who constantly tell you how incredible you are. And then there’s the part where you’re in nature for 6 months. I could see how people would have a hard time leaving all of that, when you go back to the daily grind at a job you hate, sitting inside most of the day, feeling alone, being away from the incredible vistas and nature, having your life complicated by things you don’t care about, going back to just being an average person again.
People are extremely lonely. We don’t live in small communities or little tribes the way that we used to. A lot of our lives are digital, online, anonymous.
I kept walking over some lava fields and rounded a corner, and I heard someone kind of yelling. I had my sun umbrella up so I couldn’t really see who it was but it turned out that it was my friend Lava! She was hiking southbound with her friend Mamba, another southbound hiker. It was around 1pm by then, so we sat and had lunch together in a lava field. I guess the perfect place to meet someone named Lava.
She gave me some new leukotape and Mamba gave me some KT tape and I re-wrapped my ankle which felt a lot better. Right now I have my foot taped and then I have a bandage over it to apply more stability to the ankle joint and stop it from moving so much. I think this will be enough to get me to Big Lake Youth Camp where I have an ankle brace and more leukotape waiting for me in a package.
After we said goodbye, I kept walking through volcanic sand, which is pretty hot. There’s so many butterflies flying and I’m walking through sand with these big piles of lava rocks and trees surrounding. Definitely a strange landscape. I’m happy to have my sun umbrella because this feels about as hot as the desert, and there are some very long water carries. Lava and Mamba told me that there’s a water cache at the road which is where I was planning on getting to today. So hopefully I’ll be able to take enough water to get me there and be able to get some water at the road to get me to the next spot .
I read some comments about the road crossing where the water cache was but people were saying there were 5 gallons left and I didn’t know if that was actually five 5 gallon jugs of water or actually 5 gallons, but a bunch of people had said the word gallons so it made me not feel too confident that there would be water left by the time I got there. I decided to take the alternate trail to Mattieu Lake and collect a bunch of water there. So I had 4.25 l of water on me when I started crossing the lava field. The trail goes through a giant lava field, and the trail is covered in lava rocks which are sort of round pumice rocks. But they’re really hard to walk on and tear up your shoes. And for me, my ankle really hurt walking over them because they were so unstable and every step felt painful. It took me quite a while to walk even one mile on these rocks, but I finally made it to the road. I could road walk to the trailhead, not even a quarter of a mile or I could take the trail and so I took the road because my feet were done.
I was so mad that I missed a comment on FarOut informing me that I could have skipped the whole lava field by taking another alternate route. Oh well.
It was hard to set up my tent because a lot of the land and the soil was just lava sand and my tent stakes weren’t staying, even with rocks on top of them, so I moved over into the forest. I set up my tent and a woman came by with her two dogs and we talked for a long time. She was a trail angel and had hosted some hikers at her house the night before. She was taking her dogs up on the trail just for a short walk. We talked about hiking gear, the PCT, Oregon and when I told her I was going to school in Canada and I hoped to stay there, she told me about her trans grandchild and how her daughter was trying to figure out escape plans from the US.
Being on the trail is very much an escape from reality sometimes, but then these little conversations and things are reminders of the so-called “real” world.
She offered to give me a ride to Sisters if I needed to go into town but I thanked her and said I had a package waiting at BLYC. She said if I changed my mind, he car was the Subaru in the parking lot. Of course it was.
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