North Star: June 2013

San Francisco feels impossibly green and luxuriously cloudy compared to the desert I came from! I finished my hike at Walker Pass on Wednesday June 5 with a long 28 mile day into Walker Pass Campground.

The last few days of hiking were rough - I got a light version of a hiker 24-hour bug going around that left me nauseous and unable to eat anything but water with Propel in it, Pepto Bismol tablets, and dry bagels very, very slowly - but still had to hike 20+ miles a day because there was not enough water in the section to support a slower hike. The days were hot, around 100, shade was scarce, the desert was unrelenting. The last night before Walker Pass I lay in a small tent site surrounded by Joshua trees with two older hikers, Willie Make It and Spark, and I said, "in Judaism we have a prayer we say every morning thanking God for keeping us alive to experience a new day. Tonight, I would like to say, Thank you, God, for making this day over." We all cracked up, because it was so true.

In the middle of this last tough section was a tantalizing 15 miles of lush pine forest resting between 6 and 7,000 feet. In this part of the country the rules of water are reversed. While on the East Coast our mountaintops are dry and you have to hike down for water, here the mountaintops are the only place that get water in the form of snowfall and rainfall in the winter. I held the memory of these shady pine groves and moist ground as I slogged through the dry, dry sand leading to Walker Pass.

I thought I would feel some sadness leaving - I was by all accounts a thruhiker who began down at the Mexican border with the other hopefuls headed for Canada. But I just felt a sense of accomplishment and relief and craving for the very simple comforts of running water, a bed that I didn't have to unpack from my pack, reliable showers, fresh fruit. After a long and calorie-poor day of hiking, I stumbled into Walker Pass Campground to see a tent festooned with flags and lots of voices. Who would be RV camping on a Wednesday, I thought. It was Yogi, the former thruhiker and author of the most widely-read trail guide on the PCT, teaming up with another trail angel named Oakey Girl to provide hot spaghetti, pancakes in the morning, and most importantly water to the hikers coming through. I was able to eat a couple ounces of noodles and fell asleep to the hum of voices around me, grateful to have arrived at something that portended of home.

A fellow hiker and retired nurse, Puppy, and I cemented our arrival in Lake Isabella the following morning (through a generous ride from Aloha, the husband of one of our fellow hikers) with the thickest milkshakes imaginable at Nelda's Diner. My stomach rallied to the task of consuming one of the 100 varieties of milkshakes (frappes, for you New Englanders) that the place makes. And I began, and continue, to reacclimate and reconnect with all the people who supported me in direct and indirect ways during this five week journey. One close friend has decided to join the foreign service - another has a birthday and will unexpectedly be in our hometown when I will. I caught up on careers, romances, friendships, victories and losses and revisited some of my own, too, en route to San Francisco via San Diego.

Once I am in Boston, I plan to go back through these entries and add the pictures that fill out the journey. And then, this account will be done. I can't quite envision reviving my longtime blog, Stranger in a Strange Land, with all the scrutiny my new role in Tel Aviv will entail, but I will find a way to keep recording and there is always my trusty, CSL-provided red journal.