Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

  “Did Greg go to the AT too?” I squeaked.

  “Nah. He didn’t want to keep missing so much of the trail, doing all these bypasses and taking alternate routes, so he’s coming back to hike it next year instead. That’s what the Australians told me, anyway.”

  “Wow,” I said, feeling sick at the news. Greg had been a talisman for me since the day I met him in the very hour I’d decided to quit. He’d believed that if he could do this, I could too, and now he was gone. So were the Australians, a pair I’d never met, but a picture of them formed instantly in my mind anyway. I knew without knowing that they were buff and Amazonian, dazzlingly fit for the rugged outdoors by virtue of their Australian blood in ways I would never be. “Why aren’t you going to hike the AT instead?” I asked, worried he’d reveal that in fact he was.

  He thought about it for a while. “Too much traffic,” he said. He continued looking at me, at Bob Marley’s face so big on my chest, as if he had more to say. “That’s a seriously awesome shirt, by the way.”

  I’d never set foot on the AT, but I’d heard much about it from the guys at Kennedy Meadows. It was the PCT’s closest kin and yet also its opposite in many ways. About two thousand people set out to thru-hike the AT each summer, and though only a couple hundred of them made it all the way, that was far more than the hundred or so who set out on the PCT each year. Hikers on the AT spent most nights camping in or near group shelters that existed along the trail. On the AT, resupply stops were closer together, and more of them were in real towns, unlike those along the PCT, which often consisted of nothing but a post office and a bar or tiny store. I imagined the Australian honeymooners on the AT now, eating cheeseburgers and guzzling beer in a pub a couple of miles from the trail, sleeping by night under a wooden roof. They’d probably been given trail names by their fellow hikers, another practice that was far more common on the AT than on the PCT, though we had a way of naming people too. Half the time that Greg, Matt, and Albert had talked about Brent they’d referred to him as the Kid, though he was only a few years younger than me. Greg had been occasionally called the Statistician because he knew so many facts and figures about the trail and he worked as an accountant. Matt and Albert were the Eagle Scouts, and Doug and Tom the Preppies. I didn’t think I’d been dubbed anything, but I got the sinking feeling that if I had, I didn’t want to know what it was.

  Trina, Stacy, Brent, and I ate dinner in the bar that adjoined the Belden store that evening. After paying for a shower, laundry, the Snapple, and a few snacks and incidentals, I had about fourteen bucks left. I ordered a green salad and a plate of fries, the two items on the menu that both were cheap and satisfied my deepest cravings, which veered in opposite directions: fresh and deep-fried. Together they cost me five dollars, so now I had nine left to get me all the way to my next box. It was 134 miles away at McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park, which had a concessionaire’s store that allowed PCT hikers to use it as a resupply stop. I drank my ice water miserably while the others sipped their beers. As we ate, we discussed the section ahead. By all reports, long stretches of it were socked in. The handsome bartender overheard our conversation and approached to tell us that rumor had it that Lassen Volcanic National Park was still buried under seventeen feet of snow. They were dynamiting the roads so they could open it for even a short tourist season this year.

  “You want a drink?” he said to me, catching my eye. “On the house,” he added when he saw my hesitation.

  He brought me a glass of cold pinot gris, filled to the rim. When I sipped it I felt instantly dizzy with pleasure, just as I had when I drank the Hawaiian screwdriver the night before. By the time we paid our bill, we’d decided that when we hiked away from Belden in the morning, we’d follow a combination of lower-elevation jeep roads and the PCT for about fifty miles before hitchhiking a bypass of a socked-in section of the trail in Lassen Volcanic National Park, catching the PCT again at a place called Old Station.

  After we returned to our camp, I sat in my chair writing a letter to Joe on a piece of paper I’d torn from my journal. His birthday was approaching and the wine had made me nostalgic for him. I remembered walking with him one night a year before with a miniskirt on and nothing underneath and having sex with him against a stone wall in a private cove of a public park. I remembered the giddy surge of emotion I’d felt every time we scored another bit of heroin and how the dye from his hair had stained my pillowcase blue. I didn’t let myself write those things in the letter. I sat holding my pen, only thinking of them and also of the things I could tell him about my time on the PCT. It seemed impossible to make him understand all that had happened in the month since I’d seen him in Portland. My memories of last summer felt as foreign to me as my description of this summer would likely seem to him, so instead I mostly asked him a long list of questions, wondering how he was, what he was doing, who he was spending time with, and if he’d yet made the escape he’d alluded to in the postcard he’d sent me at Kennedy Meadows and gotten clean. I hoped he had. Not for me, but for him. I folded the letter and put it into an envelope that Trina had given me. I picked a few wildflowers from the meadow and pressed them inside before sealing the envelope shut.

  “I’m going to mail this,” I said to the others, and followed the light of my headlamp over the grass and along the dirt path to the mailbox outside the shuttered store.

  “Hey, good-looking,” a man’s voice called to me after I put the letter in the box. I saw only the burning end of a cigarette on the dark porch.

  “Hi,” I answered uncertainly.

  “It’s me. The bartender,” the man said, stepping forward into the faint light so I could see his face. “How’d you like your wine?” he asked.

  “Oh. Hi. Yeah. That was really nice of you. Thanks.”

  “I’m still working,” he said, flicking the ash of his cigarette into a planter. “But I’ll be off in a bit. My trailer’s just across the way, if you wanna come over and party. I can get a whole bottle of that pinot gris you liked.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I’ve got to get up early and hike in the morning.”

  He took another drag of his cigarette, the end burning brightly. I’d watched him a bit after he’d brought me the wine. I guessed he was thirty. He looked good in his jeans. Why shouldn’t I go with him?

  “Well, you’ve got time to think about it, if you change your mind,” he said.

  “I’ve got to hike nineteen miles tomorrow,” I replied, as if that meant anything to him.

  “You could sleep at my place,” he said. “I’d give you my bed. I could sleep on the couch, if you wanted. I bet a bed would feel good after you’ve been sleeping on the ground.”

  “I’m all set up over there.” I gestured toward the meadow.

  I walked back to my camp feeling queasy, equal parts flustered and flattered by his interest, a shot of bald desire quaking through me. The women had zipped themselves into their tents for the night by the time I returned, but Brent was still awake, standing in the dark, gazing up at the stars.

  “Beautiful, huh?” I whispered, gazing up with him. As I did so, it occurred to me that I’d not cried once since I’d set foot on the trail. How could that be? After all the crying I’d done, it seemed impossible that it was true, but it was. I almost burst into tears with the realization, but I laughed instead.

  “What’s so funny?” Brent asked.

  “Nothing.” I looked at my watch. It was 10:15. “I’m usually sound asleep by now.”

  “Me too,” said Brent.

  “But I’m wide awake tonight.”

  “It’s ’cause we’re so excited to be in town,” he said.

  We both laughed. I’d been savoring the company of the women all day, grateful for the kinds of conversation that I’d seldom had since starting the PCT, but it was Brent I felt oddly the closest to, if only because he felt familiar. As I stood next to him, I realized he reminded me of my brother, who, in spite of our distance, I loved more than anyone.
br />   “We should make a wish,” I said to Brent.

  “Don’t you have to wait till you see a shooting star?” he asked.

  “Traditionally, yes. But we can make up new rules,” I said. “Like, I want boots that don’t hurt my feet.”

  “You’re not supposed to say it out loud!” he said, exasperated. “It’s like blowing out your birthday candles. You can’t tell anyone what your wish is. Now it’s not going to come true. Your feet are totally fucked.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said indignantly, though I felt sick with the knowledge that he was right.

  “Okay, I made mine. Now it’s your turn,” he said.

  I stared at a star, but my mind only went from one thing to the next. “How early are you taking off tomorrow?” I asked.

  “At first light.”

  “Me too,” I said. I didn’t want to say goodbye to him the next morning. Trina, Stacy, and I had decided to hike and camp together the next couple of days, but Brent hiked faster than us, which meant he’d go on alone.

  “So did you make your wish?” he asked.

  “I’m still thinking.”

  “It’s a good time to make one,” he said. “It’s our last night in the Sierra Nevada.”

  “Goodbye, Range of Light,” I said to the sky.

  “You could wish for a horse,” Brent said. “Then you wouldn’t have to worry about your feet.”

  I looked at him in the dark. It was true—the PCT was open to both hikers and pack animals, though I hadn’t yet encountered any horseback riders on the trail. “I used to have a horse,” I said, turning my gaze back to the sky. “I had two, actually.”

  “Well then, you’re lucky,” he said. “Not everyone gets a horse.”

  We were silent together for several moments.

  I made my wish.

  PART FOUR

  WILD

  When I had no roof I made

  Audacity my roof.

  ROBERT PINSKY,

  “Samurai Song”

  Never never never give up.

  WINSTON CHURCHILL

  11

  THE LOU OUT OF LOU

  I was standing by the side of the highway just outside the town of Chester, trying to hitch a ride, when a man driving a silver Chrysler LeBaron pulled over and got out. Over the past fifty-some hours, I’d hiked fifty miles with Stacy and Trina and the dog, from Belden Town to a place called Stover Camp, but we’d split up ten minutes before when a couple in a Honda Civic had stopped, announcing that they only had room for two of us. “You go,” we’d each said to the other; “no, you go”—until I insisted and Stacy and Trina got in, Odin lumbering behind them to sit wherever he could, while I assured them I’d be fine.

  And I would be fine, I thought, as the man who drove the Chrysler LeBaron made his way toward me on the gravel shoulder of the road, though I felt a sick flutter in my gut as I attempted to discern, in the flash of a second, what his intentions were. He looked like a nice enough guy, a few years older than me. He was a nice guy, I decided, when I glanced at the bumper of his car. On it, there was a green sticker that said IMAGINE WHIRLED PEAS.

  Has there ever been a serial killer who imagined whirled peas?

  “Hey there,” I called amiably. I was holding the world’s loudest whistle, my hand having traveled to it unconsciously over the top of Monster and around to the nylon cord that dangled from my backpack’s frame. I hadn’t used the whistle since I’d seen that first bear on the trail, but ever since then, I had a constant and visceral awareness of where it was in relation to me, as if it weren’t only attached to my backpack by a cord, but another, invisible cord attached it to me.

  “Good morning,” the man said, and held his hand out to shake mine, his brown hair flopping over his eyes. He told me his name was Jimmy Carter, no relation, and that he couldn’t give me a ride because there was no room in his car. I looked and saw it was true. Every inch except the driver’s seat was crammed with newspapers, books, clothes, soda cans, and a jumble of other things that came up all the way to the windows. He wondered, instead, if he could talk to me. He said he was a reporter for a publication called the Hobo Times. He drove around the country interviewing “folks” who lived the hobo life.

  “I’m not a hobo,” I said, amused. “I’m a long-distance hiker.” I let go of the whistle and extended my arm toward the road, jabbing my upright thumb at a passing van. “I’m hiking the Pacific Crest Trail,” I explained, glancing at him, wishing he’d get in his car and drive away. I needed to catch two rides on two different highways to get to Old Station and he wasn’t helping the cause. I was filthy and my clothes were even filthier, but I was still a woman alone. Jimmy Carter’s presence complicated things, altered the picture from the vantage point of the drivers passing by. I remembered how long I’d had to stand by the side of the road when I’d been trying to get to Sierra City with Greg. With Jimmy Carter beside me, no one was going to stop.

  “So how long have you been out on the road?” he asked, pulling a pen and a long, narrow reporter’s notebook from the back pocket of his thin corduroy pants. His hair was shaggy and unwashed. His bangs concealed then revealed his dark eyes, depending on how the wind blew. He struck me as someone who had a PhD in something airy and indescribable. The history of consciousness, perhaps, or comparative studies in discourse and society.

  “I told you. I’m not on the road,” I said, and laughed. Eager as I was to get a ride, I couldn’t help but feel a little delighted by Jimmy Carter’s company. “I’m hiking the Pacific Crest Trail,” I repeated, gesturing by way of elaboration to the woods that edged up near the road, though in fact the PCT was about nine miles west of where we stood.

  He stared at me blankly, uncomprehending. It was midmorning and hot already, the kind of day that would be scorching by noon. I wondered if he could smell me. I was past the point where I could smell myself. I took a step back and dropped my hitchhiking arm in surrender. When it came to getting a ride, until he left I was screwed.

  “It’s a National Scenic Trail,” I offered, but he only continued looking at me with a patient expression on his face, his unmarked notebook in his hand. As I explained to him what the PCT was and what I was doing on it, I saw that Jimmy Carter wasn’t bad-looking. I wondered if he had any food in his car.

  “So if you’re hiking a wilderness trail, what are you doing here?” he asked.

  I told him about bypassing the deep snow in Lassen Volcanic National Park.

  “How long have you been out on the road?”

  “I’ve been on the trail about a month,” I said, and watched as he wrote this down. It occurred to me that maybe I was perhaps a tiny bit of a hobo, given all the time I’d spent hitchhiking and bypassing, but I didn’t think it wise to mention that.

  “How many nights have you slept with a roof over your head in that month?” he asked.

  “Three times,” I answered, after thinking about it—one night at Frank and Annette’s and one night each at the motels in Ridgecrest and Sierra City.

  “Is this all you have?” he asked, nodding to my backpack and ski pole.

  “Yeah. I mean, I have some things in storage too, but for now this is it.” I put my hand on Monster. It felt like a friend always, but even more so in the company of Jimmy Carter.

  “Well then, I’d say you’re a hobo!” he said happily, and asked me to spell my first and last names.

  I did and then wished I hadn’t.

  “No fucking way!” he exclaimed when he had it all down on the page. “Is that really your name?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and turned away, as if searching for a car, so he wouldn’t read the hesitation on my face. It was eerily silent until a logging truck came around the bend and roared by, oblivious to my imploring thumb.

  “So,” Jimmy Carter said after the truck passed, “we could say you’re an actual stray.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” I stammered. “Being a hobo and being a hiker are two entirely different things.” I
looped my wrist into the pink strap of my ski pole and scraped the dirt with the tip, making a line that went nowhere. “I’m not a hiker in the way you might think of a hiker,” I explained. “I’m more like an expert hiker. I hike fifteen to twenty miles a day, day after day, up and down mountains, far away from roads or people or anything, often going days without seeing another person. Maybe you should do a story on that instead.”

  He glanced up at me from his notebook, his hair blowing extravagantly across his pale face. He seemed like so many people I knew. I wondered if I seemed that way to him.

  “I hardly ever meet hobo women,” he half whispered, as if confiding a secret, “so this is fucking cool.”

  “I’m not a hobo!” I insisted more vehemently this time.

  “Hobo women are hard to find,” he persisted.

  I told him that this was because women were too oppressed to be hobos. That most likely all the women who wanted to be hobos were holed up in some house with a gaggle of children to raise. Children who’d been fathered by hobo men who’d hit the road.

  “Oh, I see,” he said. “You’re a feminist, then.”

  “Yes,” I said. It felt good to agree on something.

  “My favorite,” he said, and wrote in his notebook without saying his favorite what.

  “But none of this matters!” I exclaimed. “Because I myself am not a hobo. This is totally legit, you know. What I’m doing. I’m not the only one hiking the PCT. People do this. Have you ever heard of the Appalachian Trail? It’s like that. Only out west.” I stood watching him write what seemed like more words than I’d spoken.

  “I’d like to get a picture of you,” Jimmy Carter said. He reached into his car and pulled out a camera. “That’s a cool shirt, by the way. I love Bob Marley. And I like your bracelet too. A lot of hobos are Nam vets, you know.”

  I looked down at William J. Crockett’s name on my wrist.