Perhaps by now I’d come far enough that I had the guts to be afraid.
When I stopped for lunch, I lingered until the others caught up to me. They told me they’d met a backcountry ranger who warned them of a forest fire to the west and north, near Happy Valley. It hadn’t affected the PCT so far, but he’d told them to be on alert. I let them all hike ahead, saying I’d catch up to them by nightfall, and walked alone into the heat of the afternoon. A couple of hours later, I came to a spring in an idyllic meadow and stopped to get water. It was too beautiful a spot to leave, so afterwards I lingered, soaking my feet in the spring until I heard an ever-loudening jangle of bells. I had only just scrambled to my feet when a white llama rounded the bend and came bounding straight up to me with a toothy grin on his face.
“Ah!” I yelled, the same as I had when I saw the bear, but I reached for the lead rope that dangled from his halter anyway, an old habit from my childhood with horses. The llama wore a pack that was strung with silver bells, not so unlike the belt on the woman I’d met at Toad Lake. “Easy,” I said to him as I stood, barefoot and stunned, wondering what to do next.
He looked stunned too, his expression both comical and stern. It occurred to me that he might bite me, but I had no way to know. I’d never been so close to a llama. I’d never even been far from a llama. I’d had so little experience with llamas that I wasn’t even 100 percent sure that a llama was what he was. He smelled like burlap and morning breath. I pulled him discreetly in the direction of my boots and stuffed my feet into them and then petted his long bristly neck in a vigorous manner that I hoped struck him as commanding. After a few minutes, an old woman with two gray braids down the sides of her head came along.
“You got him! Thank you,” she called, smiling broadly, her eyes twinkling. With the exception of the small pack on her back, she looked like a woman out of a fairy tale, elfin, plump, and rosy-cheeked. A small boy walked behind her and a big brown dog followed him. “I let go for a moment and off he went,” the woman said, laughing and taking the llama’s rope from me. “I figured you’d catch him—we met your friends up the way and they said you’d be coming along. I’m Vera and this is my friend Kyle,” she said, pointing to the boy. “He’s five.”
“Hello,” I said, gazing down at him. “I’m Cheryl.” He had an empty glass maple syrup bottle full of water slung over his shoulder on a thick string, which was odd to see—glass on the trail—and it was also odd to see him. It had been ages since I’d been in the company of a child.
“Hello,” he replied, his seawater-gray eyes darting up to meet mine.
“And you’ve already met Shooting Star,” said Vera, patting the llama’s neck.
“You forgot Miriam,” Kyle said to Vera. He placed his small hand on the dog’s head. “This is Miriam.”
“Hello, Miriam,” I said. “Are you having a good time hiking?” I asked Kyle.
“We’re having a wonderful time,” he answered in a strangely formal tone, then went to splash his hands in the spring.
I chatted with Vera while Kyle tossed blades of grass into the water and watched them float away. She told me she lived in a little town in central Oregon and backpacked as often as she could. Kyle and his mother had been in a horrible situation, she said in a low voice, living on the streets of Portland. Vera had met them only a few months before, through something they were all involved in called Basic Life Principles. Kyle’s mother had asked Vera to take Kyle on this hike while she got her life straightened out.
“You promised not to tell people about my problems!” Kyle yelled vehemently, charging over to us.
“I’m not telling about your problems,” Vera said amiably, though it wasn’t true.
“Because I’ve got big problems and I don’t want to tell people I don’t know about them,” Kyle said, his eyes going to mine again.
“A lot of people have big problems,” I said. “I’ve had big problems.”
“What kinds of problems?” he asked.
“Like problems with my dad,” I said uncertainly, wishing I hadn’t said it. I hadn’t spent enough time with children to be exactly sure how honest one should be with a five-year-old. “I didn’t really have a dad,” I explained in a mildly cheerful tone.
“I don’t have a dad either,” Kyle said. “Well, everybody has a dad, but I don’t know mine anymore. I used to know him when I was a baby, but I don’t remember it.” He opened his palms and looked down at them. They were full of tiny blades of grass. We watched as they fluttered away in the wind. “What about your mommy?” he asked.
“She’s dead.”
His face shot up to mine, his expression moving from startled to serene. “My mommy likes to sing,” he said. “You wanna hear a song she taught me?”
“Yes,” I said, and without a moment’s hesitation he sang every last lyric and verse of “Red River Valley” in a voice so pure that I felt gutted. “Thank you,” I said, half demolished by the time he finished. “That might be the best thing I’ve ever heard in my whole life.”
“My mother has taught me many songs,” he said solemnly. “She’s a singer.”
Vera snapped a photograph of me and I cinched Monster back on. “Goodbye, Kyle. Goodbye, Vera. Goodbye, Shooting Star,” I called as I walked up the trail.
“Cheryl!” Kyle hollered when I was nearly out of sight.
I stopped and turned.
“The dog’s name is Miriam.”
“Adios, Miriam,” I said.
Late in the afternoon, I came to a shady spot where there was a picnic table—a rare luxury on the trail. As I approached, I saw that there was a peach on top of the table and beneath it a note.
Cheryl!
We yogied this from day hikers for you. Enjoy!
Sam and Helen
I was thrilled about the peach, of course—fresh fruit and vegetables competed with Snapple lemonade in my food fantasy mind—but more so, I was touched that Sam and Helen had left it for me. They no doubt had food fantasies every bit as all-consuming as my own. I sat on top of the picnic table and bit blissfully into the peach, its exquisite juice seeming to reach my every cell. The peach made it not so bad that my feet were a throbbing mass of pulp. The kindness with which it was given blunted the heat and tedium of the day. As I sat eating it, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to thank Sam and Helen for leaving it for me. I was ready to be alone again; I was going to camp by myself that night.
When I tossed the peach pit, I saw that I was surrounded by hundreds of azaleas in a dozen shades of pink and pale orange, a few of their petals blowing off in the breeze. They seemed to be a gift to me, like the peach, and Kyle singing “Red River Valley.” As difficult and maddening as the trail could be, there was hardly a day that passed that didn’t offer up some form of what was called trail magic in the PCT vernacular—the unexpected and sweet happenings that stand out in stark relief to the challenges of the trail. Before I stood to put Monster on, I heard footsteps and turned. There was a deer walking toward me on the trail, seemingly unaware of my presence. I made a small sound, so as not to startle her, but instead of bolting away she only stopped and looked at me, sniffing in my direction before slowly continuing toward me. With each step, she paused to assess whether she should continue forward, and each time she did, coming closer and closer until she was only ten feet away. Her face was calm and curious, her nose extending as far as it dared in my direction. I sat still, watching her, not feeling even a little bit afraid, as I’d been weeks before when the fox had stood to study me in the snow.
“It’s okay,” I whispered to the deer, not knowing what I was going to say until I said it: “You’re safe in this world.”
When I spoke, it was as if a spell had been broken. The deer lost all interest in me, though she still didn’t run. She only lifted her head and stepped away, picking through the azaleas with her delicate hooves, nibbling on plants as she went.
I hiked alone the next few days, up and down and up again, over Etna Sum
mit and into the Marble Mountains on the long hot slog to Seiad Valley, past lakes where I was compelled by mosquitoes to slather myself in DEET for the first time on my trip and into the paths of day hikers who gave me reports about the wildfires that were raging to the west, though still not encroaching on the PCT.
One night I made camp in a grassy spot from which I could see the evidence of those fires: a hazy scrim of smoke blanketing the westward view. I sat in my chair for an hour, looking out across the land as the sun faded into the smoke. I’d seen a lot of breathtaking sunsets in my evenings on the PCT, but this one was more spectacular than any in a while, the light made indistinct, melting into a thousand shades of yellow, pink, orange, and purple over the waves of green land. I could’ve been reading Dubliners or falling off to sleep in the cocoon of my sleeping bag, but on this night the sky was too mesmerizing to leave. As I watched it, I realized I’d passed the midpoint of my hike. I’d been out on the trail for fifty-some days. If all went as planned, in another fifty days I’d be done with the PCT. Whatever was going to happen to me out here would have happened.
“Oh remember the Red River Valley and the cowboy who loved you so true …,’ ” I sang, my voice trailing off, not knowing the rest of the words. Images of Kyle’s little face and hands came to me, reverberations of his flawless voice. I wondered if I would ever be a mother and what kind of “horrible situation” Kyle’s mother was in, where his father might be and where mine was. What is he doing right this minute? I’d thought occasionally throughout my life, but I was never able to imagine it. I didn’t know my own father’s life. He was there, but invisible, a shadow beast in the woods; a fire so far away it’s nothing but smoke.
That was my father: the man who hadn’t fathered me. It amazed me every time. Again and again and again. Of all the wild things, his failure to love me the way he should have had always been the wildest thing of all. But on that night as I gazed out over the darkening land fifty-some nights out on the PCT, it occurred to me that I didn’t have to be amazed by him anymore.
There were so many other amazing things in this world.
They opened up inside of me like a river. Like I didn’t know I could take a breath and then I breathed. I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment I was crying my first tears on the PCT. I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn’t crying because I was happy. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I wasn’t crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full. Of those fifty-some hard days on the trail and of the 9,760 days that had come before them too.
I was entering. I was leaving. California streamed behind me like a long silk veil. I didn’t feel like a big fat idiot anymore. And I didn’t feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too.
PART FIVE
BOX OF RAIN
I’m a slow walker, but I never walk back.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
MARY OLIVER,
“The Summer Day”
15
BOX OF RAIN
I woke in the darkness on my second-to-last night in California to the sound of wind whipping the branches of the trees and the tap-tapping of rain against my tent. It had been so dry all summer long that I’d stopped putting the rain cover on, sleeping with only a wide pane of mesh between the sky and me. I scrambled barefoot into the dark to pull my rain cover over my tent, shivering, though it was early August. It had been in the nineties for weeks, sometimes even reaching a hundred, but with the wind and the rain, the weather had suddenly shifted. Back in my tent, I put on my fleece leggings and anorak, crawled into my sleeping bag, and zipped it all the way up to my chin, cinching its hood tight around my head. When I woke at six, the little thermometer on my backpack said that it was 37 degrees.
I hiked along a high ridgeline in the rain, dressed in most of what I had. Each time I stopped for more than a few minutes, I grew so chilled that my teeth chattered comically until I walked on and began to sweat again. On clear days, my guidebook claimed, Oregon was in view to the north, but I couldn’t see anything for the thick fog that obscured anything beyond ten feet. I didn’t need to see Oregon. I could feel it, huge before me. I would walk its entire length if I made it all the way to the Bridge of the Gods. Who would I be if I did? Who would I be if I didn’t?
Midmorning, Stacy appeared out of the mist, walking southbound on the trail. We’d hiked away from Seiad Valley together the day before, after spending a night with Rex and the couples. In the morning, Rex had caught a bus back to his real life, while the rest of us walked on, splitting up a few hours out. I was fairly certain I wouldn’t see the couples on the trail again, but Stacy and I had made plans to meet up in Ashland, where she was going to lay over for a few days waiting for her friend Dee to arrive before they began their hike through Oregon. Seeing her now startled me, as if she were part woman, part ghost.
“I’m heading back to Seiad Valley,” she said, and explained that she was cold, her feet were blistered, and her down sleeping bag had gotten drenched the night before and she had no hope of drying it out before nightfall. “I’m taking a bus to Ashland,” she said. “Come find me at the hostel when you get there.”
I hugged her before she walked away, the fog enveloping her again in seconds.
The next morning I woke earlier than normal, the sky the palest gray. It had stopped raining and the air had warmed up. I felt excited as I strapped on Monster and walked away from my camp: these were my last miles in California.
I was less than a mile away from the border when a branch that hung along the edge of the trail caught on my William J. Crockett bracelet and sent it flying off into the dense brush. I scanned the rocks and bushes and trees, panicky, knowing as I pushed into the weeds that it was a lost cause. I wouldn’t find the bracelet. I hadn’t seen where it had gone. It had only made the faintest ping as it flew away from me. It seemed absurd that I’d lose the bracelet at this very moment, a clear omen of trouble ahead. I tried to twist it around in my mind and make the loss represent something good—a symbol of things I didn’t need anymore, perhaps, of lightening the figurative load—but then that idea flattened out and I thought only of William J. Crockett himself, the man from Minnesota who’d been about my age when he died in Vietnam, whose remains had never been found, whose family no doubt still grieved him. My bracelet wasn’t anything but a symbol of the life he lost too young. The universe had simply taken it into its hungry, ruthless maw.
There was nothing to do but go on.
I reached the border only minutes later, stopping to take it in: California and Oregon, an end and a beginning pressed up against each other. For such a momentous spot, it didn’t look all that momentous. There was only a brown metal box that held a trail register and a sign that said WASHINGTON: 498 MILES—no mention of Oregon itself.
But I knew what those 498 miles were. I’d been in California two months, but it seemed like I’d aged years since I’d stood on Tehachapi Pass alone with my pack and imagined reaching this spot. I went to the metal box, pulled out the trail register, and paged through it, reading the entries from the previous weeks. There were notes from a few people whose names I’d never seen and others from people I hadn’t met, but whom I felt I knew because I’d been trailing them all summer. The most recent entries were from the couples—John and Sarah, Helen and Sam. Beneath their jubilant entries, I wrote my own, so overwhelmed with emotion that I opted to be concise: “I made it!”
Oregon. Oregon. Oregon.
I was here. I walked into it, catching views of the peaks of majestic Mount Shasta to the south and the lower but sterner Mount McLoughlin to the north. I hiked high on a ridgeline, coming to short icy patches of snow that I crossed with the help of my ski pole. I could see cows grazing in the high green meadows not far below me, their big square bells clanking as they moved. ?
??Hello, Oregon cows,” I called to them.
That night I camped under a nearly full moon, the sky bright and cool. I opened J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, but read only a few pages because I couldn’t concentrate; my mind wandered to thoughts of Ashland instead. It was finally so close that I could bear to let myself think about it. In Ashland there would be food, music, and wine, and people who knew nothing of the PCT. And most important, there’d be money, and not just my usual twenty bucks. I’d put $250 in traveler’s checks into my Ashland box, originally believing that it would be the box that greeted me at the very end of my trip. It didn’t contain food or resupplies. It had only traveler’s checks and a “real world” outfit to wear—my favorite faded blue Levi’s and a slim-fitting black T-shirt; a brand-new black lace bra and matching underwear. It was in these things that months before I thought I’d celebrate the end of my trip and catch a ride back to Portland. When I’d changed my itinerary, I’d asked Lisa to put that small box into another of the boxes I’d loaded down with food and supplies and readdress it to Ashland, instead of one of the stops I wasn’t going to make in the Sierra Nevada. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it—that box within the box—and spend the weekend wearing nontrail clothes.
I arrived in Ashland the next day around lunchtime, after hitching a ride from the trail with a group of AmeriCorps volunteers.
“Did you hear the big news?” one of them had asked after I’d climbed into their van.
I shook my head without explaining that I’d heard little news, big or small, for two months.