June 10, 2013
25 miles today
Mile 741

The change is startling in its immediacy. The air is clearer, vision crisper, and all about is vivid. Julie Andrews comes to mind. Within, things change too. Just like when you return to a family reunion and find yourself falling into old roles, a return to the desert brings out my inner-kid, jokes, stories and all around goofiness. But the mountains are different. They instill a calm contentment that permeates my interactions. Perhaps I am even more adult like, though I resist even writing that.

Awoke, not true. Got up from a sleepless night only when the sun blessed my head. I had cowboy camped in a valley meadow at 8,600 ft. The bitterly cold air had hung low all night. Now it was in my bones as I drank from my water bottle clinking with ice. I whined to my compatriots who had all slept warmly. They, who had all grown up cold, smiled at the turning of the tables on the desert kid. I needed a plan, which in the end consisted of three steps to sleeping contentment. One, wear all the clothes I own to bed. Two, set up my tent every night to trap warm air. Three, figure out my sleeping quilt. Red and I looked it over. Turns out I’ve been sleeping with it upside down. Cue chuckle. Also discovered lots of bells and whistles on it that should provide more warmth. Optimism returneth.

Picture a seismograph in a big earthquake. That’s what an elevation gain and loss chart looks like in the High Sierras. Now strap on a heavily laden pack and you understand the day. The newfound adult calm is fortuitous; else there would be temper tantrums. So why do it? If you could trade eyes with me you would trade places too. In a heartbeat.

Headed down the trail I was lost, lost, lost in my thoughts. I glanced to my left and six feet away was Orbit lost her own thoughts. Problem was she was headed in exactly the opposite direction. It startled me tremendously. Where the hell is she going? Wait a minute, where the hell am I going? What’s going on? Turned out to be just a particularly tight switchback. The whole day was like that. Thoughts to awe, as the miles rolled past. Future courses of action, that had been drowning in murkiness, finally emerged from the muck. I now know what had to be done. Back to the awe.

Climbed to 10,600 feet and looked down at the drained and much abused Owens Valley where L.A. is a vulgar world. Our vantage point was a sheer drop that Slack dreamed of BASE-jumping from. I just remembered youthful urges. Later we summited a minor little peak and were rewarded with a wobbly, rocking boulder the size of a VW bug. Slack got on and I tried to rock him off the mountain. He was disappointed with my failure.

All day I experienced the fear the Taliban must endure. Over 25 sorties of fighter jets zipped directly overhead. Some of the flybys were 200 feet off ground. They sizzled the mountain and our senses, as we ducked repeatedly. I counted the bombs on their wings to pass the time. The hot-dogging was wild as I watched them doing barrel rolls through tight mountain passes. The training purpose was obvious. Those mountains were cousins to the ranges of Afghanistan. Hope they all come back.

A six-mile descent, that did an excellent imitation of 12 miles, brought us to a meadow with stream.

Arrived at 7 PM and declared home. The test of sleep ever-looming.

Steve Halteman
On the Pacific Crest Trail
Hiking the PCT for the Kids of Escuela Verde

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