I know I shouldn’t, but I fall asleep at six PM. I’ve hiked 80 miles so far and slept poorly the night before on top of that and try as I might, I cannot keep my eyes open. I sleep for 12 hours, with a brief intermission at 3am where I am awake to pee and fantasize about petting dogs and seeing Carrot and eating various foods and I rise for real at 5:45. TODAY IS TOWN DAY AND I CANT WAIT. Dogs and Carrot and fresh food are right around the corner.

Homework is gone before the rest of us are even out of our tents and Dad and Jukebox wait for me as I go over all my gear twice to make sure everything is just so. We load out and start what turns out to be a miserable five miles into town, a slog where I take all the downhills backwards because my knees are fucked the fuck up. We arrive to the road that leads to Trout Lake at exactly 9:00am and just as I am trying to figure out which way we go on the road that takes us the 13.5 miles into town, Homework rolls up in the passenger seat of a truck with Washington plates.

“Load up!” He says “Gary’s taking us straight to the diner!”

The ride into town is gentle. We are all laughing a lot and saying basically nothing, just speaking in the inside jokes that we’ve cultivated over four days of walking. I am both incredibly happy and incredibly sad, because I know I’m going to need to take an extra day, maybe many extra days of rest on account of the fact that my knees have turned to bare gear grinding on bare gear, complete with shooting sparks of pain and tremendous creak. My friends aren’t injured, not really anyway, and so they’ll rest one day and pack up and out tomorrow in the morning. I just wish they’d wait for me, even if I do understand why they won’t. I get it and it also breaks my heart.

The sun splashes longways at us and I elevate my knee on Dad’s pack as we wiz down Road 23. I want to take a picture of the moment, capture this togetherness and keep the feeling in my pocket if I need it, but that’s not how these things work so I try to soak it in completely, experience it up my arms and into my neck, down through all my fingers, all around my torso and into my legs and in each of my toes. This is a time I do not want to forget.

We’re dropped off at Trout Lake Grocery and immediately there are many chores to do. We want a hotel room to share, and we know there are a huge amount of hikers that want just the same thing right behind us. We need to pick up our boxes. We NEED (and I mean need) coffee that is not instant and food and to wash every square inch of our bodies with real live soap and actual clean running water.

It is a flurry of activity, and we are stupefied by the pace an actual town provides. Within an hour or so we’ve secured a hotel room with a jacuzzi that we can check into at 2PM. We’ve had insanely delicious smoothies made only of huckleberries and rice milk and ice. I’ve caffeinated twice, and laid languidly on the lawn and set up station at the diner. In a fit of genius I cobble together a vegan meal (a sandwich of sourdough bread, hash browns, ketchup, side salad and balsamic vinaigrette) and then I stare and stare and stare at absolutely nothing at all. Our room won’t be ready for a few hours and so we wait.

Carrot has promised to bring us giant steaming plates of stir fried vegetables and tofu in curry sauce and brown rice with kombucha and bubble water to boot. Additionally she is bringing me a short sleeved shirt to replace my tank top on account of my shoulder chafe and some kinesiology tape for my knees. She is due to arrive at 5:45PM and everyone grows more and more impatient as the hours march on. “Where’s Carrot?!” they ask. “Is it time to see Carrot yet?”

We check into our hotel and thus the battle over whomst showers when begins.

“Dibs on first shower!” Calls Homework.

“I got second!” Jukebox and I say in unison.

“I booked the hotel room so actually it is I who shall go first!” declares Dad.

Dad wins, but eventually all of our showers come and when they do, they are transcendent. The water is hot and perfect. I’d sent myself fancy shampoo samples and tea tree oil soap in my resupply and I used extra of absolutely everything, sudsing and rinsing until the water ran black, then brown, then gray, then clear. What an incredible feeling.

The jacuzzi is cold-ish. I find this out when I show up in my underwear and bra with a towel around me and my entire crew greets me with diabolical grins, claiming it is perfect and I should hop right in. We sit in the tepid tub and laugh and laugh and laugh. If you choose a hotel based on a jacuzzi of course it will be cold. It’s like, the law.

There is nothing left to do but wait for Carrot and I do, sitting in my fake bathing suit on the tiny square of front lawn near the parking lot of our hotel, pretending to read my library book while I glance at the time every few minutes.

The sun sinks a bit in the sky and paints the parking lot golden. Carrot’s van rounds the corner of the lot, kicking up dust in its wake and I pop up and my knees scream in pain. I am undeterred in my enthusiasm, ecstatic that she has come from the Noatak River, to Kotzebue, to Fairbanks, to Portland, to Trout Lake, Washington. The tiny chihuahuas spring from the van, jumping and hopping and yelping and licking like they do and Carrot runs straight out of the drivers seat and into my arms. I hug as tight as I can, and then I scoot closer, so my feet are in between her feet. Sometimes when I see her I can’t kiss her immediately, because there’s been so much longing, so much desire, so much unbridled emotion swimming around inside of me for weeks and it all feels like too much at once to just go in and put my face on her face. Instead I smell her hair and say “oh my god, hi.” into her neck. I can’t believe this person loves me, drove all this way to be with me.

Carrot produces five bottles of Polar sparkling water, a huge vat of spinach and kale with vegan ranch, four New Seasons hot woks, cold brew coffee, unsweetened almond milk, baked tofu, gluten free bread and a gigantic watermelon. You know, real life foods, complete with all of their originally possessed waters. In the absence of a knife, I filet the whole melon open using my spork and proceed to fall into sweet hydrating fruit heaven, a place where I eat and eat and eat my watermelon and still it is cold and bright and pink and above all, abundant. I fucking love watermelon. I never want this one to end.

I sleep like shit.

At 1:50AM I wake up and I’m filled with longing. Carrot has finished her trip to Alaska, her glorious, beautiful, serene sounding trip and she is in my BED with the dogs that I’ve more or less decided to take as my own.

I love all three of them so much, in my house, in my room, between my covers. Carrot has been gone for weeks and she gets closer all the time but here at 1:50 AM we cannot get to each other fast enough and I feel a little stupid in my tent. I could have waited a few days and we wouldn’t be so far! But what is life if you can’t just go and have your adventure regardless? I went when I felt like I had to, there was no ETA for her return, and here we are. This is just how it is sometimes, I suppose.

I close my eyes and I imagine what it’s like when I’m with Carrot. I think of how sometimes she’s doing the dishes and I come up behind her and put my arms around her waist and press my face into her hair. I think about how we wake up and the morning light spills through my window and she smiles before she opens her eyes. I think about her relationship with her dogs, how they all three love one another the best and the most and how she gives them so much careful attention and calls me her dog’s other mom. I feel like that’s kind of a big deal statement and it feels really good to me to recall.

Eventually I drift back to sleep thinking of Carrot’s hands and her eyelashes and her walk and her rosy cheeks and a few hours later I can hear my trail family rustling about. While I lay with drool crusted down my cheek everyone else is ready to go.

Here’s the thing. I *am* a morning person. I love to make early plans and exercise early and write in the morning when my brain is most fresh. But I cannot just wake up and pack out. It goes against everything in my nature to forgo a breakfast eaten from my sleeping bag, a hot instant coffee slowly savored. Dad leaves, then Homework, then Jukebox and I am left alone in our campsite to chew and drink and stare into space before I go. It like to go slow.

I’m gonna give it to you straight: I haven’t shit on the actual trail yet and it is in this moment that I know that I’m going to have to. I meander away from the other campers with my toilet paper and my trowel and I poke at the ground looking for a soft spot. Everything is trees and roots and sturdy stocked plants and I. Really. Fucking. Have. To. Go. This shit waits for no soft ground.

Just as I’m deciding to post dig (that is shit first, dig later) I go and it’s fucking gross. I need vegetables! Looking my poop in the face tells me so.

I proceed to dig a cat hole that not only am I not proud of, but I’m honestly deeply ashamed of. I tip my trowel toward the poop and dump it in the shallow hole. “I’m sorry” I whisper to the forest. I tried my best.

—-

Objectively speaking, trail conditions are fucking perfect today. Gentle slopes and gentle declines. Sun dappled trees and perfect trail tread. It is beautiful and I’m so fucking grateful, but as the miles go on my knees hurt more and more. Every step is like a bunch of tiny little knives in my knee pit and I KNOW this is overuse, I KNOW i need to rest, but I also know I am very close to our first town and my friends seem to mostly feel good and I want to stay with them. It’s a conundrum! One of drive and of ego and maybe a dash of codependence.

—-

At 8:42AM I am about eight miles in and Carrot texts to tell me she’s hatched a plan. She wants to join me (how am I so lucky) but she’s sprained her ankle just before the kayak portion of her trip and she’s unsure it would be wise to hike relentless big days on a healing ankle.

She says she’s going to go on a test hike. If her ankle still feels too tender she’s going to drive out to us with a van load of dogs and kombucha and kale salad and KT tape. If not, she’ll just come and hike. She’s going to see me tomorrow either way and that makes me want to jump up and down and scream and scream and scream. Carrot!!!!!!!! My beautiful brilliant lover is coming to me!!!!!!!!

(And additionally she was awake from 2-5 AM too, missing me and probably thinking of her own tiny vignettes. This happens to us all the time, whether with sleep patterns or moods while apart and we decide that Quito the tiny chubby puppy transmits us to one another through his special antenna. It is important to Quito that we stay connected.)

This buoys my spirits despite the fact that when I find my trail family at our designated meet up point they’ve all been there for an hour and a half. I’d considered stopping at this point for the day, I really am in a lot of pain after all, but when I arrive it’s a giant dirt road expanse, full of bugs and the water source is scummy and stagnant. Our next water is a beautiful free flowing stream just 2.5 miles away and it feels worth it to get there, even if just to keep moving away from the bugs.

99.99% of the time on this trail I’ve hiked alone. I’ve had more pain than the others so I’ve gone significantly slower, but I’ve also loved listening to books (Hunger, Tiny Beautiful Things and Stray City so far) plus podcasts and having abundant time to think. I’ve cried every day on this trail because I’ve been so struck by what a breathtakingly gorgeous and heartbreakingly painful thing just existing is. I have felt incredible feelings allowed only by solo time on this trail and I’m so glad for it. BUT! For this 2.5 miles we all hike to the water source together and it’s fucking incredible. Time melts away, I laugh uproariously again and again and before I know it we arrive. It’s shocking honestly! I never get anywhere on a hike before I know it.

We all fill up and express gratitude for today’s conditions. Like I said, fucking perfect from beginning to end. Dad gives me some of their ibuprofen and it’s decided: although I could camp alone, it is better to hike the last 3 miles together and stick close. My knees are a good reason to stop, but togetherness is also a very good reason to keep going.

Today is like this:

Pain. I wake and before I open my eyes my knees hurt. I make my granola and protein powder and my knees hurt. My hiking partners pack up and out and my knees hurt. I make my plan for the day and my knees seriously fuckin’ hurt.

Well! What does a person do with so much knee hurt when there’s nothing to do but….hike? I know I’m probably pushing it too hard with my immediate 20 mile days so I take some ibuprofen and I decide I’ll walk less today. Less will be good for my knees.

I start with a slow peaceful climb in a temperate sun dappled forest and I’m ecstatic. The thing is every day starts out the best day? I don’t know how else to explain it, but even with the pain I feel so much better on this trail then I have in months, like my mind is clear and open and serene and I can trust the universe has my back and I’m gonna be ok after all. I stop to touch the mossy trunk of a hemlock tree and I close my eyes and feel grateful. Hello hemlock I think. Thank you.

Eight miles in Homework and I stop and get water from a robust pipe stream and it is legit the best water I’ve ever tasted. Dad and Jukebox roll up and I push them toward the pipe. “Drink!” I exclaim. “Drink!”

For lunch we stop at a dirt road with everything a person could possibly need: pit toilets, a picnic table and ummm…I guess just one another beyond that. I eat Bobos bars and sweet potato chips and vegan jerky and then I force myself to sit on the pit toilet for a solid twenty minutes and poop for the first time in days. Pooooooping. Feels good, man.

After lunch we break off again and begin a steep climb up a relentless exposed sandy ridge. It gets hotter and hotter and I’m rationing water and am too lazy to stop for food and suddenly i just … crash. 3 miles from camp I plop into a shady nook, blur my eyes until I only see smears of brown and yellow and green and shovel golden raisins into my mouth, dirty palmful after dirty palmful. One by one my friends show up and plop beside me shoveling their own provisions into their individual mouths. “Holy shit” we say to no one in particular. “Holy shit”.

I know the longer I sit the harder it will be to go, so I leave my bleary eyed friends and start the last of the climb. The last three miles involve a tremendous amount of knee pain and I play with my gait to try to fix it. Does my knee hurt when I take short steps? Long steps? Side steps? The answers are: yes, yes, yes. My knee hurts when I take all the kinds of steps.

Fuck. I think. Fuck.

I sleep at nine PM, and I wake at one AM and then again at 4:30AM before I cave to the urge to rise and organize my food bag at 5. Being meticulous is not actually in my nature and seeing as how I have approximately twenty million tiny items for roughly five weeks and seeing as how I was so exhausted I could hardly feel my face by the time I got to camp last night, I know I’ll probably have to put in a little morning effort to keep all my stuff orderly and actually with me.

My food bag is perfectly organized by 5:15 and it pleases me immensely.

Early wake ups be damned, I feel fuckin’ good. I slept right on the rocky shore of a creek and when I woke up with a still pitched tent and some actual rest under by belt I was downright STOKED. Sure, I got up to pee seventeen times in the night because oh my god why does the sound of running water make me have to pee so bad?! But reader HAVE YOU HEARD OF HIKING/HIKING IS SO FUN.

Miraculously, my rolled left ankle feels fine. The back of my right knee still feels inflamed, I wish I could let the poof out of it by turning a nozzle like the one on my neoair, but I think it’ll be ok. No one is up yet, so I make my breakfast, organize my pack as meticulously as I do my food bag, make a little pot of instant coffee and eat some granola with protein powder “milk”. I make a plan to hike ten miles to trout creek and rest ’til the others catch up.

“I’m takin off!” I holler at six AM and away I go. Time to hike.

Today starts and ends with two five mile climbs that each have 3000 feet of elevation gain. My stomach feels weird from my granola (it was grain free for some reason, why make a grain product that’s grain free?!) but I’m a definite morning person and I’m ready to give all I’ve got.

I finish listening to Hunger by Roxane Gay and I am struck with both gratitude for how my body is serving me in this exact moment and a deep knowing of the incredible privilege just having this body allows me. I have been thinking about the ways marginalized bodies are treated for a long time now, and that thinking informs a good chunk of my politics / my extreme desire for health at every size practitioners whomst have empathy and compassion for every fucking kind of body on Earth. I think about how I love my body and how easy it is for me- a thin, white, able-bodied, fit privilege embodying person- to ask others to do the same. I feel consistently grateful when people take the time to tell their stories for exactly this reason. It’s important for thin people to reflect on their privilege. It’s important for me to think about the ease in which working with my body comes. The whole world supports it.

By 11 the climb is long gone and I meander up to Trout Creek, where Molly and Priyesh wait because they are fast as fuck and passed me almost immediately though they left a half an hour after my start. I learn that their trail names are officially Dad (Molly) and Jukebox (Priyesh) now and then we all sing Blink 182 for no reason beyond the fact that it feels good to act like a fucking ding dong sometimes. Homework joins us and they start calling me Tuffy… you know, because my name is Muffy and I’m tuff.

I eat lunch, dry my tent a little, and put my hat over my face to close my eyes in the shade. Dad, Jukebox, and Homework take off to hike and I putz around the campsite, gathering water and singing more Blink 182 to myself. I’m enjoying my solitude today and it’s also nice to know the friends will be waiting five miles ahead at our last water source until about six miles after we start hiking tomorrow.

—

We fill up bottles at Panther Campground and a nice lady named Lisa gives us otter pops and red vines. I try to poop in the pit toilet and cannot. (Will I ever poop? Haven’t yet since I stepped foot on trail!) We mentally prepare for the fact that we have another big five mile climb and now we’re each carrying 3-4 liters of water.

At this point in the day, my collarbones are raw and my shoulders are aching with the weight of the excess water. I fantasize about pouring it out (is it worse to be a little thirsty than carry this weight now?!) I sweat ’til it drips into my eyes. I curse and glare at no one and nothing, and within a mile I’m tired of myself and I put on my headphones and ignore my bad attitude. I listen to Rhianna and fly for a bit until then I’m just going a medium pace and then I slow to a near crawl in the last mile. I am sullen and withdrawn and then I see my friends waiting for me and I am overjoyed. People! They exist and they love me and they suffered too but now we’re all here, *~together~*!

What luck, what a gift.

Molly and I get into Travis’ car and head up I-84 East to the Bridge of the Gods. I am shaking. I have not slept, not really anyway— in roughly two weeks. I can’t relax! Because the business and the divorce and also because I’m fucking anxious and depressed and busy. Emphatically busy. I went from undergrad to grad school to teaching seven different subjects to high schoolers, to starting my own business, to writing a book, to opening a brick and mortar space for my gym. I have been busy for ten years and the accomplishments make me feel…nothing.

We pull up to the trail head and in the distance I see a tiny woman and three muscly trail men. My friend Nicole has been hiking the PCT southbound and going fucking fast. She just finished Washington and is about to meander on down through Oregon and instantly I know this tiny distant lady is her, by some genius stroke of luck we are crossing paths at just the right time.

“NICOLLLLLLLE!!!!!” I shout, pumping my fists. She runs into my arms pumping her fists right back and we squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.

“Don’t die!” She says

“I’ll try! I respond.

Nicole rejoins her muscly trail men, and in this exact moment, I know without a doubt that my diva cup is leaking. In the bathroom I discover a torrent of blood dribbling down my tiny shorts and onto the toilet seat. There’s no toilet paper of course, why would there be toilet paper?! I laugh as I clean up the crime scene using scraps of TP tube. This is very on brand I think looking at the mess I’ve made. Makes sense.

I wash my hands and exit the bathroom just as Priyesh and Homework roll up. Travis asks if we want to pull a tiny tarot card before we get walking and hands me a deck of cards roughly the size of my thumbnail. I shuffle carefully and draw the three of pentacles. “Everyone can see your accomplishments!” He says, reading his equally tiny book with sincere and glittery eyes. “This is your reward!”

Priyesh, Homework, Molly and I start walking uphill- a steady state that will last the rest of the day. We all know one another a little, but only Molly and I know one another well. I am excited to walk with these people that I know a little but not a lot because we have a million conversational jump off points but know almost zero complete stories.

“THIS IS BEAUTIFUL!!!!” I exclaim and the others look to their left, toward the still very visible highway.

“Just look the other way!” I scowl as they low key make fun of me. “I just am ready 4 beauty, what can I say?!.”

Homework breaks off to stretch. Molly and Priyesh surge ahead and I decide to be alone as I ascend up rocky ridges and clear cuts and breathtaking forest that I guess I can admit is indeed much more breathtaking when the freeway is a distant memory.

I eat a nature valley granola bar and I fucking love it. “Are nature valley granola bars maybe my favorite food?” I ask myself out loud. “I think they are my favorite food”.

I listen to the Dear Sugar podcast and I cry. I listen to Hunger by Roxane Gay and I cry. I listen to a playlist that I made for Carrot and I cry. I’m not sad, really- actually I feel ecstatically happy at the 507.2 mile expanse of fucking freedom stretched ahead of me. It’s just that there are so many feelings inside of me and there’s been so little space and now they are pouring out my eyes in steady streams. I have a lot of emotion to expel.

I think of my lover. I think about how the two of us are together / how positively engorged with enthusiasm we become / how her eyes light up and she says “it’s youuuuu!!!” When I enter a room even if I’ve only been gone a little while. I think about how we’ve known one another for, like, ever – how we went on dates ten years ago, even- but how we maybe never really found each other until now. I think about how when I look at her I see everything all at once sometimes; I see how much we both suffered growing up in these twisted and severe ways and how now we are building these strange lopsided dream lives as adults and how we’re only going to get older and weirder and have so many more stories and how maybe we’ll be together a long time or maybe only a short time but now we’ll always get to know the real one another either way. I think it’s so LUCKY, the ways people get to really know one another when the time is right. I am overcome with gratitude and again, I cry.

By mile thirteen the climb intensifies and my sleep dep is real. I have intense chafe on both of my collarbones and the back of my right knee hurts. Who even am I? what’s going on? why am I still moving? maybe I should just sit down! this tree is very soft like a pillow!! Perhaps I should close my eyes?! I think as I push uphill. The group has agreed to meet at mile 15 to assess if we should camp there or at mile 20 where there’s water and I’ve made up my mind – they can totally go but I cannot go any further. I briefly consider the question of Am I Afraid To Camp Alone and my whole body tells me I’ll be fine. I’ll wave them off and see them in the morning.

I get to mile 15 and there my friends are, laying on pads and snacking and smiling and planning to get up and go, go, go to the water.

“I can’t do it!” I exclaim with a very excited smile because I’m so fucking happy to see them, damnit and I know if they push even a little I’ll recant.

Homework tapes my collarbones with medical tape. Molly makes the voice of my dog friend Quito. Priyesh pokes me with a pole. “C’monnnnnnnn” they say. “We’ll surround you in a circle of love and trust.” I can’t say no! I love to feel wanted.

The last five miles are a hilarious parade of suffering. Molly falls twice. Priyesh and Homework get stung by wasps. I roll my bad ankle. But then! Rock creek appears and it is clear and cold and the water tastes fucking great (it would have sucked to camp without water.) we all make pots of noodles and beans and soy curls and Homework and Priyesh attempt to sauté a lobster mushroom we found on trail before we all agree that it’s 100% certainly old on account of it being all leathery.

I awkwardly pitch my tent on a sandy alcove, closer to the creek than I’d like but holy shit, I don’t care, I’m so fuckin tired I will legit sleep anywhere. I hunker into my tent and I think about how long I’ll be doing this and I smile into the swiftly approaching dark.

I’m free. I whisper. I’m free.