As we are falling asleep, we hear horses. They’re clomping around and they’re chomping on grass, growing closer. There’s a lot of them, they are unafraid of us entirely and they’re….right next to our tent. An entire family of horses!!!

I get out of the shelter, stand up in the quiet night and look at the horses, squinting without my glasses. Some of them are close enough to touch. They are entirely unmoved by my approach, give zero shits if I am near. They squint right back at me, peering through the night. We are all completely still.

I clap my hands. You can almost hear the horses scream OhShitOhShitOhShit before they take off, galloping. I climb back into our shelter, spooked.

“This is totally why I’m vegan” I say to Carrot. “I’m terrified of animals.”

The horses come back. They eat the grass around us and Carrot googles. Will horses stomp us? Do horses kick humans while they’re laying down? Will a horse step on my tent?

Google says we should be okay, and then the horses get the zoomies. They’re zipping back and forth, up and down in parallel lines on each side of our tent and I think I’ll never sleep, what with these wild galloping creatures boxing us in. I say so out loud to Carrot and she suggests I try and close my eyes. Within minutes, I am breathing rhythmically, lulled by the gallops and the trots, and then I am asleep.

—

In the morning, we set out to walk in the sunshine, cross country. The cross country, again, is chill. I see where I am going based on the topo lines and track of my map, and I see how it translates to the ground. Is this terrain and navigation easier or am I stronger? Probably a little bit of both.

I hike alone and listen to Team Dresch. I think about coming of age, what it has meant to have a longstanding history of admiration for strong women. I’m going to see Team Dresch play this summer and I fantasize about the pit, a circle of aging riot grrls with too short bangs and cardigans and tattoos that say Revolution, Girl style now! thronging in chaotic, haven’t-gone-out-in-at least-six-months harmony. Nothing is perfect, but I am so happy to be queer, to have this queer world with me. in my headphones, on this trail. One of my very favorite things about myself is being gay, at least mostly gay, and I’m keeping that fact in my pocket, super close. I like the world that exists for me when I live completely outside of the need for male validation.

ATVers pass me. They have rifles in their holsters and confederate flag bandanas tied around their necks. They ask me if I am okay and I look away. I want to scream at them. Do you know what that flag around your neck means?! What it represents?!

I listen to a This American Life episode, one about a time that a small southern town lost just over 100 people in a matter of hours. ICE showed up to the meat packing plant, you see, targeted immigrants in the middle of their hard work day full of blood and guts and manual labor and rounded them up like dogs for arrest and deportation. In the episode, children of the immigrants speak about how scared they are, they are crying. They want their dads back home, then their dads are released on bail and they are glued to them. The dads want to go to the store, but the kids won’t leave their sides. The dads need to go to work, the kids panic. These kids have PTSD I think. I’m crying thinking about how easy it is for folks to be ripped apart. The US government is happy to tear families away from one another. Can you believe it?! At first I can’t and then I very much can. The trail I am currently on is the General Crook Trail. General Crook is a man whomst took great pride in rounding up native folks to either A) move them away from their actual land, to reservations that no one could survive upon or that were used as concentration camps or B) slaughtering indigenous folks altogether.* This isn’t a fucking game! This country has always done whatever it wants in the name of white supremacy and the longer I go not being able to believe it, the more my own white supremacy shows.

It hurts but it’s true.

Carrot and I meet for lunch. We consider doing our largest mileage day yet, just under 24 miles. Up until this point, there was no way it felt possible to go more than 20 miles, but today with my rage and my sadness and my almost three weeks of hiking cultivated strength, I think I can. My shoulder is singing little pangs of pain up my arm, and I take an Ibuprofen. Again, I turn my music up loud and I let myself think about uncomfortable truths. This combo fuels me for many, many miles and by the time I realize that I haven’t eaten since lunch, the sun is starting to sink.

I find Carrot. We discuss meals we like to make at home. One of particular note goes like this:

Carrot is very good at vegetables. She cooks carrots and cabbage and onions in a cast iron, shines them up with olive oil and salt and low heat. We make some rice noodles, we roast asparagus. We fry tempeh in a great deal of oil. We make a tahini dressing with tahini, lemon, garlic, olive oil and tamari. We serve all of this on a bed of greens and with a side of sauerkraut. Carrot makes the sauerkraut too, she uses a lot of dill. The whole thing is just fucking incredible.

We get to camp. We do not eat our special meal, but I do eat an entire box of vegan mac and cheese with dried kale and peas and when I’m done I dip my hippie Oreos in peanut butter. We pitch our tent in the peaceful ponderosa, and fall asleep with rifle shots flaring in the distance.

—

*I learned about General Crook from Carrot who read about him in Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee. It sounds like this is an important read for all white folks, myself included.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest

I wake up debating with myself. Carrot is determined to hike the miles we missed in the last section, the ones we had to skip in order to get to the ATM at the store before it closed, so that I’d have cash to purchase our motel room and deal with my foot. Her goal is to slack pack, IE get out early enough to hike the seven or eight miles without most of her gear and hitch back to our cabin by 11 to pack up and check out. I could go with her, or I could stay right here, in bed.

I consider this: bed is incredible. But also, a nice walk in the forest, early in the morning without a heavy pack is a marvelous thing. If I stay in the cabin I will almost certainly waste my time scrolling and staring slack jawed at my phone. I should probably just go, right? To really be able to say I’ve hiked the whole thing? Besides, it’s a beautiful day!

And so I do. We walk our miles in reverse and it’s all scenic forest roads, perfectly flat terrain, a glittering lake. We talk about my upcoming trip to southbound the PCT, we both have a lot of feelings about it, we brainstorm ways to make it more palatable to be apart for so long. How does one have a relationship from so far away? And when you’re a moving target? And what about how something in me knows I have to go do the thing, that it’s unhealthy to not follow a dream to keep stability. Or is it?! What is stability anyway?! We don’t know. Searching for answers, if you have any.

As a palate cleanser, we talk about the dogs, what they might be doing. We finish our miles, hit the highway, and hitch back— arriving at our cabin exactly 30 minutes before check out. Perfect.

We eat our lunch at the general store and make a plan for the day. 12 more miles today? 13? Maybe 14? We see a huge descent is on the horizon and we settle on going 13.7 miles further. This drops us right at a water tank, we can fill up enough now to avoid the cattle troughs. We can hike 13.7 miles by dusk.

Except…we can’t.

We get a text a mile into our first section, from our housesitter. They found two large greedy bed bugs on our porch couch. They have bites all over their hands. They’re taking the couch to the curb. Understandably, they’re freaked.

Carrot and I are freaked too.

We call the city. They’ll take the couch away within a week. Our housesitter calls an exterminator to come assess, they’ll be there within a half an hour. If we walk for half an hour, we don’t know if we’ll have service. If the house sitter has to bail, we’ll have to bail too. It’s all very fraught, and all we can do is wait. We’re just on the edge of Forest Lakes, not even out of town yet and so we do the only reasonable thing: we go have fries and cokes.

My brain is moving too fast. We’re almost halfway through the route! I want to see it through! I think maybe I’m getting stronger? I’m definitely getting smarter, learning the rhythms of the Mogollon Rim. If we leave will we just burn all of our items, find a new dog sitter and come back? Is that unreasonable?!

It’s confusing how life keeps churning when you’re walking in the woods.

It turns out, inside our house has zero bed bugs. Zero?! I’m confused. I didn’t think that was how bed bugs worked. It turns out everything is fine after all, and so somehow, we still get to walk? My heart is pounding from the caramel coloring and caffeine. We get to walk!!!!!

We hike cross country for a handful of miles, maybe the most cross country we’ve had on trail yet. It’s chill! Low scrubby plants, a medium amount of rocks. Tall dead grass. We meander, moving up and down strips of land, aiming for Black Canyon Lake.

Eventually, we arrive to a giant party, we speculate a family reunion. There’s cornhole and zooming children and ribs on the bbq and ATV’s and men that yell “HIIIIII!!!!” when we pass. Everyone waves and I feel shy and weird with our backpacks against the RVs in the backdrop. We pitch our tent just out of their view, imagining ourselves invisible in the gloaming. After lentils and lake water filtration and tooth brushing, we settle in. We’re slightly under walked but we’re tired and full and happy and we don’t have fucking bed bugs!!!!

That will have to do.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest.

There is nothing much in Forest Lakes.

Carrot and I wake in our motel room. It’s dim in there, kind of dingy and I alternate between hot and cold all night. There’s no place for laundry there, the front desk says we’ll have to hitch to Heber, 15 miles away. The lobby smells deeply of cat piss, but no one seems to notice.

Instead of hitching to Heber, we try the RV Park next door. At the RV park they do have laundry! They’re happy to let us use it! The kindly proprietor feeds long eared squirrels peanuts and gives us quarters in exchange for dollars and throws in some detergent for free. We ask to see the cabin they rent out for non RV visitors and it is…..incredible. High pitch wood beam ceilings, a cozy bedroom, a full kitchen. It costs ten dollars more then the dingy hotel next door and we can check in immediately. We take it and I am filled with excitement.

First thing, we make the most incredible convenience store lunch of all time. Giant salads with microwaved instant quinoa and chickpeas and hummus and chips. We split a mini watermelon. I drink a container of juice. I am happy and sleepy and then it’s time to write.

Our zero day passes like this:

In the same bed, Carrot and I create our own little worlds. We work on our separate blogs, parallel between the sheets. It’s so silent you could hear a pin drop.

Intermittently, I call my bank to deal with more bank foibles, I talk around and around in circles and, with enough patience and enough fortitude to repeat myself over and over again, the trouble is fixed, at least for now.

I sew the small hole in my sleeping bag, patching it with duck tape to secure.

Carrot and I discuss the secrets of the universe: relationships, bodies, interpersonal dynamics, love, mental health, trauma and triggers, so many things. We touch each other a great deal in between our talks and you can probably guess where that went.

Eventually, we make dinner. More vegetables and rice and beans, things we won’t see for a few days. We organize our new food hall, cram things down as far as they’ll go, marvel at the height and weight of our packs, full and ready for a new section.

At 8:30 PM we turn the lights out in our perfect little cabin, the place where we were so relaxed.

Tomorrow, we hike.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest.

When we wake, the rain is gone. We are in the cloudy damp ponderosa forest, sticky everywhere from condensation, but no rain comes. It’s supposed to be sunny for ten days.

I’m concerned about my foot. I sit up, slowly remove my sock and medical tape and I examine it. I touch it lightly, and once again a stream of puss comes out. I douse it in hand sanitizer to clean, a move I’ve pulled so many times that I’ve instead taken to calling it foot sanitizer. I tape it. I put my dirty sock back on. I get dressed and we set out to hike. What else can we do?

Today will be chill. Yes, there’s a big climb out of the forest and back onto the rim, a 1000 foot clunker up, up and up. But! Evidence suggests it will be easy enough navigation. Our data book reveals no difficult to find trail or bushwhacking. I have a feeling section three, the one we’re on now, is perhaps far easier than any of the others. I’ve almost never gotten lost! The rocks are hardly notable! We are to hike 21 miles today but they are *~chill miles~* and so! Who can complain.

The morning is perfect. The ass dragging that plagued me yesterday has disappeared and I chug along, smiling. It turns out Eat, Pray, Love gets all white savior-y at the end, which is a true bummer because I loved the book, up until I didn’t. My foot is bothering me, I keep stopping to dump the rock out of my shoe, and then discovering there is no rock. Or rather, the rock lives inside of me, in the callused palm of my footbed. It feels bruised, and if I step wrong, the pain is sharp. The day warms up and I feel the heat concentrate. I’m pretty sure the prickly pear I stepped on last week has left a piece of itself inside of me. Something wants to come out.

I visit water sources at the 54.5, 54.9 and 56.6 mile marks of this section of trail. They are all dry. Water has been abundant on the MRT, flowing freely from sources marked as possibly wet and also sources not in our data book at all. Our hike has been highlighted by surprise springs and tinajas. I am out of water now, but just a little bit thirsty. Soon I start my steep climb onto the rim, and once I’m at the top, there will be water a few miles after that. It’s definitely not the best circumstance, but also not the worst.

I climb. The climb is an ass kicker, a big exposed thing with my foot thrumming along for the ride. In the distance, I hear some hikers. Coming down the mountain, I in fact see a line of them, maybe 20 hikers in all? They’re all young men in forest service hard hats and steel toed boots and they pull aside one by one in an effort to let me pass.

“Do you…have any extra water?” I ask. I don’t even think about it before it flies out of my mouth, and I’m glad for that, because I’m shy and maybe would have chickened out.

They ALL have extra water. I pass two empty Gatorade bottles to the group and they take turns filling them up, chatting gregariously. These are nice boys, trail maintaining boys, eager to help boys. I tell them Carrot is behind me, that she’ll need water too and their enthusiasm swells. Ah, the beautiful desire to help!

I reach the top of my climb hydrated and Carrot arrives shortly thereafter. We sit and eat slowly, marveling at how light our packs are the day we are set to arrive in town. We share peanut butter on pretzels and chocolate and ramen. I tell Carrot I’m worried about my foot, that I want to hitch a little sooner so that I can get to the general store to get to the ATM to have money to get a motel.

Ah, the issue with my bank account. I have money in my savings you see, not a lot but enough. As I’ve used my card, I’ve assumed that money’s been pulled from my savings but it turns out there’s a special federal limit on how many times that’s allowed in a month. I’ve passed the limit. My checking account is about 800$ overdrawn. I’ve accrued 100$ in fees. I can’t transfer any money from my savings because of the limit. My only option is to get to an ATM, withdraw from my savings, then deposit the money back in, into my checking. There is one ATM in Forest Lakes, it is in the general store, which closes at 4. It’s 1:00PM now, the store is 9 miles away. I am angry at this, there’s no way we’ll make it in time if we hike the miles. Instead I’ll have to hitch.

At the trailhead no one picks us up. It’s 2:30 now and I am nervous. My sister books our room on her card in case we don’t make it to the ATM in time. I have never borrowed money from my sister before and I feel extremely grateful and ashamed in tandem. They feel like twin emotions.

Eventually, I ask someone smoking in the parking lot of the trailhead for a ride. I explain the situation: the store, my blister, the bank and she says of course she will give us a ride. She’s going the opposite way but she’s happy to drive us to Forest Lakes. I like her so much, this woman. She’s 22, she has two kids and braces. She grew up in Snowflake, AZ— a mostly Mormon town. Someday she hopes to move to Portland, OR. Her car has red leather interior and she has nails like Cardi B.

She drops us in front of the store and wishes us well. At the ATM, my transaction is denied. I call the bank, they approve my ability to make transactions. Turns out there’s no depositing ability on this ATM, though. I can take money from my savings but I can’t get it back into my checking before my autopayments go through, to stop the 25$ fees from happening every single time a new purchase, one that I made before I knew about my misfortune, goes through.

I’m crying. I have enough to live, but do I really have enough to live? Am I making foolish financial choices in the name of writing and adventure and my own stupid white lady Eat, Pray, Love situation? The woman on the phone, the one from the bank starts to cry too. I know it’s not your fault I say over and over again. I know it’s not your fault.

The woman talks to her manager and like magic, all of the charges are reversed. Because I have tried all of the ways I can to get that money over, the big boss made an executive decision that they can cut a check from my savings and put it in my checking. I cry. She cries. We all cry.

In our motel room, Carrot and I make an incredible meal, made entirely of items found in the dusty convenience store. We have instant refried beans, pre cooked garlic brown rice, pull top canned salsa, and guacamole on top of beds of greens. Everything tastes very very good and we moan into our titanium pots. So many people helped me today, I moan. And this food tastes so good.

At last, we shower. I hold the flashlight app up to the sore spot on my foot, we sterilize the needle with a mini lighter. We get to it. Carrot gently prods at the spot, tearing the callus a little bit, teasing back the skin. She releases the puss and— POW— I give a little squeeze and a prickly pear thorn pops right out, shooting like an arrow. It is truly the most satisfying moment I’ve had in a long, long time.

And at last, my foot is free.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest.

We wake up to howling wind, whipping around our little shelter. Will it rain today? Forecast didn’t say so, the last time we had service, but if I had to guess now, I’d say yes. It is definitely going to rain.

I pack up as quickly as I can, we’re trying to up our daily mileage now and we know for sure we’re most likely to succeed if we hike out early. I leave before Carrot, going slow— so much slower than I want to, like I am walking through a river of peanut butter and mud. Why is my body moving so slowly after a perfectly quiet and restful night’s sleep? With weather that is absolutely medium in temperature and terrain that is entirely unbothersome, completely milquetoast in its presentation. The mysteries of hiking, man. The world may never know.

A few miles in, my foot is throbbing. There’s something in there, underneath the skin, and I carefully remove my socks to examine. I poke a sore spot and a thin stream of yellow puss shoots out. I try to squeeze it more, but nothing happens. I hand sanitize it, quick (is this like…going to a doctor?) and I hike on. What can you do? All there is is walking now.

I trudge slowly toward our lunch spot, at a creek 11 miles in. I listen to Eat, Pray, Love because that’s just the type of bitch I am. The author is in Italy during this part of the book and she’s eating so much. Soft buttery pizzetas. Thick creamy gelatos. Bitter greens dressed in lemon and garlic and cracked pepper. I love when she talks about the food, it takes my brain right where it wants to be. Food!!!!! God, I love food.

Today I play a long and elaborate game of take off and put on my layers. Is it hot, is it cold?! It’s freezing hot, you see, both hot and cold at once. A fun game of stopping and starting.

During one de-layer, my phone pings me. There’s something wrong with my bank account, I am getting weird emails that don’t tell me all that much from both my bank and the companies I pay my bills through, the autopayments. I try to call my bank from the ridge I am changing my clothes on, but the reception is weird and bad and I only understand a little of what is going on. Long story short, my checking account is empty and I’ll need to do some magic to get money from my savings into there as soon as I am in town. They can’t transfer the money for me, for some reason having to do with federal regulations and transfer. I am 800$ overdrawn, which is very distressing.

The sky has been on and off thick and threatening grey and black. I get to our lunch spot late, and just as I do, fat raindrops start to fall. I have my own shelter, we’ve packed two just in case we need space sometime on trail, and I’m setting it up as Carrot arrives. We eat our lunches under the tarp, decadently heating water for mid day tea and ramen. The sky pours, and just as we’re finishing up, it clears. I pack my tent away as the sun comes out, once again.

I eat too much at lunch and I am nauseous on the immediate climb. I’m hot and I’m cold, we go up and we go down. The sky is clear for a long stretch, and then it goes back to grey. I have raging hiker hunger today. I don’t get hungry like this unless I am hiking and I haven’t felt such a tight ball of need since I was anorexic, seven or eight years ago. I panic inside being so hungry, go to the space where I weigh 95 pounds, where I am shaking trying not to eat even though food is what I desperately need. I know I am safe now. I am going to eat as much as possible, as soon as I can. My body is a constellation of my experiences, though and even very very far away from the past, here I am- exactly me, with exactly my traumas and triggers, always just the same.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest.

At 5:30 my eyes shoot open and I am ready to hiiiiiike!

The sun is rising as I read through the data book, imagining what we will walk on today. The trail will be easy! I speculate. We’re on the highline trail now, which is also the AZT for a moment. This means simple identifiable tread, tread where we can just go without having to think too much. The tread will get a little less easy when the Highline leaves the AZT, where less hikers go. How much less easy!? we wonder. The data book tells us a lot but unfortunately ease is subjective, so we won’t know the answer to that until we get there.

Our morning miles are transcendent for me. Crisp golden trees hover, shining while I walk. The trail unfolds simply, the sky is clear and totally blue. I am euphoric as I go, jamming snacks into my mouth gleefully as I check the GPS. I happily walk for hours, though I really only go a few miles. Well!

After lunch my beautiful forest gives way to a burn. We are hot and exposed, we’re climbing on hard lumpy soil made by cows and water and maybe earthquakes?! It’s so eroded, I’m not even sure. The rocks come back. The trail disappears and reappears and disappears again.

I cross a river carefully, the brambles on the bank tear at my flesh and make me bleed. I hike cross country up hills when the trail is so overgrown that there’s no point in trying to find it. I navigate myself East, surprised at how I can just do that now, how getting myself from here to there is so much simpler 13 days in.

Carrot is a mile short of our goal and asks me if I want to camp. It’s flat here, by a river. A mile further is a part of a climb, who knows how camping would go a mile further.

And besides, our feet hurt. The palms of mine feel bruised and Carrot is growing her pinky horn, you see— the part of one’s tiniest toe that blisters greatly before become gnarled, callused and bionic. It’s part of the process, but it’s also very painful.

We set up camp and I surprise myself by seeing that I’ve sent myself the white flavor of macaroni and cheese instead of the orange. I really didn’t see that one coming, I murmur while spooning peas and noodles and vegan Alfredo into my mouth. It’s good though! Nothing in the world can satisfy me like this giant oily pot of food can, and it turns out the color of the calories matters not at all.

And with that: I am warm, I am satisfied, and at last— I am asleep.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest

The Payson, Arizona Super 8 is weird. The window doesn’t open, not because something is busted but, like, on purpose. We try to break the mechanism that keeps everything locked up but we can’t, eventually giving up and blasting the air conditioner instead.

We are feral forest canyon desert mountain creatures, we need fresh air.

The AC clicks on and off all night. It is very cold and very loud and then it goes silent and the room becomes very stuffy. All of my blankets fall to the ground or are wrapping Carrot like a burrito and I’m shivering.

We wake at six, I pick all of the blankets off of the floor and I swaddle myself. I drink cold brew from a disposable plastic cup, refilling it three times from the giant bottle I have purchased. I eat an almond milk based yogurt, slowly appreciating the inherent wetness of in-town food. I want to eat this breakfast ten more times but I also want to go back to the woods.

It’s Easter and we stop in Taco Bell on the way to the highway for our hitch. I recommend going to the Taco Bell in Payson, Arizona on Easter Sunday. There is every kind of person there, from people like us that don’t give a shit about the holiday to those in their Sunday finest. I order bean tostadas with no cheese, a thing I ate regularly when I was first vegan at age 14. There is no tip jar at this Taco Bell, which makes me sad. There should always be tip jars for service industry gigs, especially on Easter Sunday.

We eat and we speculate. Will we be waiting at the onramp all day ? It’s mild out, with a cool breeze, so at least we won’t be stranded in the heat if things take awhile. We bus our tables and head out. We have our thumbs out for less than ten minutes and we have a ride.

The kid is 20 (TWENTY!) and he’s coming back from a hunting trip. He likes to backpack, could hike all day, wants to hike the PCT. CARROT’S HIKED THE PCT TWICE, I blurt out because he’s starting to explain the PCT and I just can’t listen to a man try to tell Carrot what the PCT is. He is floored, eyes wide with excitement and we tell him he should hike it too, if he wants to. We also tell him not to worry about his career. I wonder if this is bad advice and I just can’t grasp a solid memory of anyone I know gaining anything from worrying about their career at age 20. We’re like this guy’s cool gay aunts, we tell it like it is.

At the trailhead, there are AZT hikers. Our route crosses over the AZT and it’s almost disorienting how different it is. We’ve grow used to being the only ones around for miles with the terrain being vague at best. There are…. signs?! That lead us along the trail?! And…. wide well maintained tread?! No real guess work necessary?!

I have a Taco Bell stomach ache as I climb, and I feel wildly lucky that I can ache on up the trail without having to juggle too much brainwork. The sky is clear and blue. The trail is FULL of water, water we knew about and also surprise little creeks, Easter gifts from the Earth.

I’m happy. I feel confidant and free as I pad up the trail, listening to my book and letting the miles poke by.

This tread is so much easier than what we’ve seen before. Can we finally go twenty miles a day? Longer? Finish this section early?? There’s possibility here, a real shot at moving quickly.

At least we think so.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest.

The guy that picks us up is named Jeff, or was it James? I’m not totally sure. Jeff or James is 29 years old, has lived in Payson since he was 5 and has a couple of kids. He works for the water company and smokes a strawberry vape while we careen down the highway to the closest town with a big grocery store. That town is Payson.

Jeff or James doesn’t say or do anything creepy, and for this, Jeff or James gets a medal. I feel sad that the bar is so low, but I can’t change facts. Thank you so much Jeff or James for the entirely mundane ride.

Carrot and I check into a Super 8 and immediately everything feels very challenging. We have to do laundry but there’s no laundry services or laundry mats close by. There’s an RV park across the street, they have laundry there! Except we have no quarters. We can get quarters from the Super 8 front desk! Except we have no detergent. We can buy overpriced detergent from the gas station! Except I forgot my card.

Eventually, we figure it out. Another thing we figure out, through a stroke of luck, is that there is a Mexican place, Alfonso’s, that will deliver to our motel room. Alfonso’s has a vegetarian burrito for 5$. I figure it can’t be that big for so little money and so I order two, shaky from hunger. I add sides of salsa and guacamole and bags of spicy pickled carrots. Carrot gets super nachos. Our food arrives and the burritos ARE big, like little baby arms full of black beans and sautéed peppers. I am happy and then I am very very full and then I am asleep.

—

The next morning, we have errands. We have to get our resupplies from the post office a mile and a half away. We need food and I need coffee. It turns out Carrot needs donuts and I also need Diet Coke. We need fuel canisters and KT Tape. I need hand sanitizer. We need to backflush our Sawyer Squeezes. I need a new case for my phone. It feels near impossible to imagine doing so many things, but somehow we’re out the door and a mild day unfolds before us, sunshiney and serene.

Payson is a perfect town. Everyone is chatty, smiling. No one stares at our backpacks or our tattoos, it’s working class in a way that feels so much more comfortable than the crystal shops and the tourists in Sedona. There’s plenty here: plenty of vegan options, plenty of grocery stores, plenty of motel rooms. I am having a great time doing this and that in Payson. I am so happy to be here!

Just before the post office, we pass Alfonso’s. It is…a burned out shell? Maybe an old location, we figure. There must be a new one now. We google, and don’t find much. Was my burrito a…ghost?

The woman at the post office says that her and her co-workers have been excited for weeks to learn what a Muffy and a Carrot look like, they’ve been making guesses ever since our boxes arrived. In line we learned that that WAS the location of Alfonso’s. It burned down last night at four AM. Everyone at the post office is devastated, it was the best place in town. They move on to discussing how white people just don’t make good Mexican food, and who can argue with that? White people are kind of sub par at a lot of things. (Don’t @ me).

I am very happy. I have food for the next section! We get our supplies easily! We’re done much earlier than I expected, and so I do something extremely decadent for my weary feet: I get a gosh darn pedicure. I sit in the electronic massage chair, I wince in pain when the nail tech touches my feet, and I work on this here blog for hours and hours.

If that’s not luxury, I really don’t know what is.

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📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest.

Our camp spot is perfect. We’re set back from the dirt road we’ve been walking on and the ground is absolutely flat, on a bed of leaves. Our shelter is pitched between tall and thin pine trees and the moon is full and shining into the shelter, promising us all sorts of things that can’t really be put into words. We sleep soundly in there, on our comfortable blow up mattresses amongst all of the quiet. At night we are so tired we hardly talk, just eat our dinners and write our blogs and go to sleep. It is peaceful, in its way.

I’m thinking about the meaning of life before I’m even awake, and once my eyes are open I push it out of my head. It’s too much for so early! We eat, joke, shit, drink coffee and tea, tape our blisters, stuff the stuff into sacks, take the shelter down, pack our bags and we go. Here the things to do are simple, and you don’t have to have any answers about any single thing in life to get things moving. You just hike.

First thing, we hop off the Mogollon Rim and down into a canyon. Ten days in I’ve learned some things for sure. Those things are this: up on the rim, is magic land. You have pinyon and juniper and pine forest. It’s shady, sun dappled, and cool. There will be a truly astounding amount of rocks, but once you decide to stop dreading them, they’ll just be there. Little lava rock friends, with you every step. Nothing much to fear.

When we hike deep into canyons we are met with*~mystery~*. Some days canyons are chill trail down, a quick walk in a drainage, and a pop back out. Some days they are fantastical sandstone and red rock shores, deep clear blue pools, and terrain that demands your entire body and takes 2 hours to go 1.5 miles.

Today’s first canyon is chill. It’s not too deep, there’s secret pools of water everywhere. There’s a creek flowing. Everything is golden and sun dappled and I feel good. We quietly pad our way up the drainage, navigating back and forth over the small creek and it feels peaceful to not have much to say except “yes” “beautiful” and “I love it here.”

We agree to meet in our next canyon and I zone out while I walk, feeling the exhaustion deep in my bones. This six day section is the longest I’ve ever gone without access to town and I am so scratched, so bruised, so sunburned and blistered. My everything hurts, with ten more miles to go. ‘Tis the life of a thru hiker.

We start our second canyon ascent of the day, it is hot and steep and I have concerns. Every time we get into a canyon we have to get out, and I am pretty tapped and uncertain about my abilities as we get lower and warmer. Carrot and I stop for lunch, and both decide to make our dinner meals instead of our usual hodge podge of snacks, on account of the fact that we both have so much extra food. After we eat I lay down and look at the sky, shift my items around to avoid the sun, wonder if the patch we are laying in is poison ivy. Eventually, almost too much time has passed and the moment has come: it’s time to climb out of this canyon.

The more we climb, the more exposed things get and the hotter I become. My chafe screams angry red across my inner thighs and I can feel it spreading into my bikini line and my butt. Clothes are so comfortable until you walk all day in them and then they become your mortal enemy, plotting to kill you by rubbing you to death. It’s really wild.

I try to ignore my body with podcasts, an audiobook, even Taylor Swift. Nothing quite works and in the afternoon heat I am hiking slack jawed and dragging my poles behind. The mileages are off on my GPS. I’m walking through Jell-O, slow and melting.

At the hottest part of the day, we descend on the south side of a ridge in full exposed sun. When we hit the bottom we sit, staring up, saying nothing at all. I’m hot, I think. So fucking hot.

We drink water. We eat bars. Eventually, we are fortified and we stand up to hitch.

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📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest.

I wake on and off all night, shivering and sticky from condensation. Carrot is snoring and then I’m snoring and the two of us take turns snoring me awake. Our noses are stuffed with desert dust.

I’m up for good before the sun. I open up the vestibule and cook my oatmeal and coffee in the dark. My heart feels heavy today, but I’m trying to make the best of it. This is just a heart heavy day, that’s all. It’s not abnormal for me and it will pass.

Carrot wakes up and makes her breakfast too. We game plan for the day. I want to go 20 miles to make our next day into town lighter. Carrot agrees, with the caveat that our plan has to remain flexible. You know, in case something crazy happens.

We’ve learned that the MRT is different every single day. Yesterday was easy tread, dirt roads weaving in and out of cool shaded forest. Today has some of that, for sure, but then there is this canyon ten miles in, one with steep and vague trail both in and out. We decide to meet and hike together for that part, let ourselves go at our own pace until then.

I’m trying something different. It’s too much stress on our relationship to hike all day on one another’s heels. Carrot is a) a perfectionist and b) has way more experience than I. This puts us in an awkward student/teacher position that frustrates us both. I feel micromanaged. She feels like she has to be responsible for me. It’s not the type of thing either of us wants in our romantic lives.

So I hike forth before Carrot, decide to push myself and go ten miles before my break. The morning is glowing, with golden sun rolling out over pine forest floor. I see a pair of elk gently frolicking through the juniper and it feels like it means something indistinct and also nice, just to get to watch them gallop.

I pause to change out of my leggings, my puffy, my long sleeve and my knit hat. As soon as my bottom half is naked, I reach for my shorts and yelp in pain. I stepped on a prickly pear! There are needles thick and white and needles fine and hairlike are sticking out of the bottom of my foot! Is this nature’s acupuncture?! Will it relieve the tiny ache left in my ankle?!

I briefly debate the order of events. Should I put my shorts on first and then remove the needles? I decide no, no I should not. Decency be damned, I porky pig my foot free of debris and then I dress.

Once I’ve changed out of my warm layers and gotten nature’s needles out of my foot, I descend. I climb down very steep, indistinct, and rocky trail. It takes me 45 minutes to descend a half mile and as soon as I hit the bottom, it occurs to me that perhaps Carrot will go down the indistinct path a different way. Maybe it will be hard to find me at the bottom of this canyon?

I pace this way and that, trying to figure out where I will be the most visible. It turns out I’m most visible in the blazing sun and so I toggle back and forth between sitting there, out in the open and hiding in the shade to cool down.

I intermittently yell “CARRRRROTTTTTT!” up the canyon rocks, just in case she is looking. Eventually, I hear a “caw cawwww!” in the distance, and we go back and forth like this for awhile, me saying her name and her bird calling back. Eventually, she yells “ARE YOU OKAY?!” and I realize she thinks I could be hurt. I didn’t mean to scare her, I just meant to find her. “I’M OKAY!” I yell back. When we finally meet, we are both smiling.

We try to skinny dip but it’s so cold it instantly ices me to the bone, and so I give up. Instead I scoot to the rocky bank backwards and dunk my head in, emerging with icy wet hair. I comb the tangles into new braids on the shore, and when I put my hat back on, I feel as if I’ve been reborn.

We eat lunch and we strategize. The water is very high, and we’re going to have to cross it multiple times. If the water gets too deep, we decide we will carry our packs on our heads. We won’t try to go fast, we’ll try to go safe.

We make our way through crystal clear blue green pools of water in the canyon floor and watch crustaceans scatter as we go. We climb up over large boulders when the water gets too deep, pull ourselves around blowdowns and spiky thorny predator trees. It is slow and it is beautiful and I am focused on the euphoria of being here in this canyon, here with Carrot. There are just so many nice things in this world to see. My whole body is made of gratitude.

We look for our way up. All around we see smooth rock, and after hours of boulder skimming and water walking, we see chunky stairs of grey mossy rock slab. Climbing out of the canyon is like climbing a wild and free set of stairs, some of them tiny and some of them giant. Minuscule cairns dot the way up and when we hit the top I am both exhausted and excited. Fucking NATURE, man!!!!!!!!! Heck yeah!!!!!!!

I hiked ten miles between 7 and 11:30AM. Since then, we have gone 2.5 miles more and when I look at my phone it is almost 5:00. “All miles are not created equal!” Carrot proclaims and I nod. That is the truth if I’ve ever heard it.

We go just a few miles more. I listen to Enya, we hike to water. I sing along, we hike to camp. I am happy the whole way, pleased as can be with our foreshortened day, with the easy walking and the hard walking and the rocks and the canyon walls and the water and my whole life, really.

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📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest.