Woke up in the unpleasant company of party guests waiting for breakfast. Each of us isolated in our individual castles, we communicated by shouting. Veggie, the mean guitar player of Tuoleme Meadows and Hitch, a novelist, were there too. Hitch arrived late in the evening wearing a large mosquito head net. She told a good story of blowing a large snot rocket, forgetting about the head net. The resulting mess both grim and hilarious.

My morning constitution was shaping up to be a potential tragedy. That kind of exposure to winged vampires was chilling. Except it didn’t happen. First time on the trail without my morning regularity. I blame dinner, which was highly irregular. All of it came from the free hiker box and none of it was couscous which I had run out of. The first course was mashed potatoes, bland and blocking. The second course was hot cocoa, or what I took to be hot cocoa in a clear plastic Ziploc bag. I poured it in the cup and added boiling water. It swelled and expanded, eventually taking on the appearance of a Brown sponge. Everyone had an opinion as to its identity perhaps carnation instant breakfast or protein powder or hot chocolate gone rogue. So I ate it because hunger is the mother of consumption. It did not taste of a food group. At the halfway point I stopped eating as I realized what it was. It was some form of an emergency female contraceptive device. Thus this morning I have a contraception sponge damming my colon waiting to stop procreation. I’m sure.

The rush through clouds of hate to departure. Life is movement. Death is packing. I retreated through the swamp and pushed to higher ground with dreams of escape. It was not to be. All day they probed. I smeared on DEET, which will give me the cancer later in life. It worked with movement. Stopped, they found a way to pump always. Now I have empathy for hamsters. Sooner or later I had to stop for the night, I knew it and they knew it.

Thus the day had a rushed feeling to it. Every time I paused to look around or snap a photo, it was snack time. Dreams of a mosquito free pass or lake or anywhere a delusional fantasy. Even the midday swim involved swallowing mosquitoes because you have to surface and breath. So we walked on. I even considered pushing on to the next town Bridgeport through the night though it was another 20 miles on. The scenery was still achingly beautiful. It was just viewed through the prism of hundreds of black dots. The major milestone of 1000 miles should have been a fine celebration. Instead it was a quick snapshot during a panic dance.

Traditionally, the night brings relief. So we walked in that direction and the miles piled up. Left Yosemite and entered the toiyabe wilderness. The mosquitoes did not respect the boundary. I saw deer everywhere flicking and twisting spasmodically brothers in our abuse. Hope left, and we stopped. The anticipated buffet again. I bent down to fill up water and received a neat line of hypodermic’s across my plumbers crack. I had to eat and that is how I found myself sitting on a log, bathed in the smoke of the fire, shoveling more lifeless mashed potatoes in my mouth under a lifted net and contemplating the nature of insanity. The low point of the trip. Oh for a return to the kindness of the desert where mosquitoes are grilled to death for their cruelty. But when it’s all said and done it still beats 9 to 5.

Panic dove into my tent and killed all the infiltrators with non-Buddhist glee. Free from my tormentors I finished someone else’s sojourn in my cocoon with a smugness bordering on ecstasy. 1000 miles indeed.

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

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