Muffy J. Davis

Body Image Advocate

Day 6: An extremely humbling affair

We set our bedrolls out to cowboy camp a few hundred feet above our tenaja, but mosquitos plague Carrot, zinging at her ears and biting at her face while I gently snooze beside her. Carrot wakes me to set up our shelter in the dark, and I am useless and dopey in my half asleep slumber. Eventually, we settle back in.

I toss and turn through my final hour of sleep, and I wake up grumpy. Everything is fine, there’s nothing wrong at all really, and still I am a dark hole of grumpiness.

I caffeinate. I eat my oatmeal, adding in freeze dried blueberries to cheer myself and it works, a little. I tell jokes with Carrot, who is not grumpy per se, but definitely more tired than usual too. We look at our water notes and see today will be long carries or stock ponds exclusively and I try not to let it get to me. Water is water is water right?! We’re in the dang desert.

Finally, we are packed and ready to go. Our bags remain heavy, but less heavy then yesterday and we decide to meet at another tenaja just seven miles away for lunch.

Today, our terrain is rocky and our trail indistinct. There are so many ways to be a rock, it turns out! Some rocks are more pleasant then others (I’m a fan of big uniform smoothy bois. They’re easy for stepping!) but today’s rocks are solidly middle of the road. They’re jabby, but they don’t wrench my ankles. They’re everywhere, but don’t quite make the terrain overly punishing by forcing you into cat’s claw or prickly pear. Today’s rocks are medium fine and that’s good enough for me.

Still, I am slow. I go 1.5 miles in 1.5 hours, in fact and when I find Carrot under a tree we agree that we’re going to need to pick up the pace to like, get anywhere. But how does one hike faster then they can hike? Therein lies the question, dear reader.

Luckily, we’re all descents today and the trail becomes more obvious, perfectly clear and 12 inches wide. Cairns dot the way. It gets warmer as we go lower and I am sweating. I feel hot spots on my feet, but we’re so close to lunch I decide to wait. Just around the bend I find Carrot tucked away above two beautiful tinajas (minimal mosquito larvae!) filling up her bottles.

We set a timer for 45 minutes and take off our shoes to air our feet and tape hot spots. We purify our water, a slightly yellow earth broth with just a few bugs. We drink electrolyte powder and eat caffeinated jelly beans and eventually the alarm goes off and we pack up.

We are about to start a climb, one with an awkward connector to our next stretch of trail, according to the creators of the MRT. we speculate what awkward could mean. You climb while farting in front of your crush? You climb while getting caught pants down and wiping your ass by a day hiker? You climb with, like, really bad breath just before a first kiss?

It’s hard to say.

The tread is mercifully flat, elevation wise, but lumpy under the feet– like the cows made a conceptual art project with their hooves and red mud, just after an intense flash of rain. We walk toward the gate that is the threshold to our climb, we’re chatting merrily about foods we have eaten and foods we will eat in the future, and my left ankle rolls out beneath me, sliding sideways into a loud pop.

I yelp and fall to the trail. Carrot is with me on the ground, asks me what I need and I’m crying but I say I need nothing, that we should keep walking. I move forward, unsure of the l extent of the damage, and when the tread turns to rocks again, I tear up. My ankle hurts. I could keep going, but it’s not a good idea.

“It’s nice out, we should go swimming anyway” Carrot says.

We backtrack to a drainage that has become a blessed roaring river and strip off our clothes. I ice my ankle in the river. We wash our chafe and we google our options on sun dappled shore.

Turns out, we’re 2.5 miles from the Village of Oak Creek, and they have a Chinese restaurant. We are suddenly so hungry that we’re faint, just the mere mention of Chinese food makes me forget I ever ate lunch at all. Gently, we walk to a road with a visitor’s center and hitch a ride into town in a truck bed full of cases of apples and coolers of fish.

The food is transcendent. It is the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. I eat my whole plate of tofu in black bean sauce with extra broccoli in record time and then I order another, like the greedy greedy hiker that I am. We tape my ankle with KT tape back at the visitor’s center, pitch our tent just down the bend, and settle in.

I’ll try again tomorrow I think as I drift off.

I’m hoping for the best.

—

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

Day 5: Have you ever been stabbed by plants, like over and over again?

I wake up at 5:30AM, then 6:00AM, then 6:30. We are at our friend Caity’s house, up in her loft, sunrise filtering through the skylight. I should get up, but I don’t want to get up. Instead, we just rest.

Eventually it’s undeniable that we should probably hike. This next section, Sedona to Pine, is almost twice as long as the last, with an elevation profile that goes up and up and up before plunging deeply down, over and over again, for 87 miles. We’ve packed six days of food, more than I’ve ever packed before, and the sooner we get going, the sooner I can start cramming my bars down my throat, attempting to make the pack lighter.

Caity is asleep when we leave and so I thank her silently before we quietly close the door. We hitch to our trailhead, and by 9:15 AM, an ungodly late hour, we are hiking.

The trail is full of people at first, but as we climb, the crowds taper off significantly. 2 miles up the trail, we depart from our GPS track and instead take a power line cut, which is a little shorter and steeper. Our friend Drew runs this way with his dog Roscoe, he said it’d be more scenic then a section of trail that parallels the road and we figure YOLO. We like it just fine, that swift and steep cut through. While we’re on it, I think of Roscoe’s special heft, his shiny dog body zooming up the trail, his loyal cadence next to Drew’s.

Today we’ll climb. We’ll climb thousands of feet and we’ll climb for ten miles. There’s water often enough, but a lot of it is cow pond water, water filled with silt and shit, and so if we want to avoid that, we’ll have these climbs with our six days of food and long water carries from our sparse clean sources.

Hmmmm we say. Hmmmm.

I try to distract myself on the ascent. I feel stronger today, my appetite has returned and my nausea has gone away. I feel well rested, our two nights in Sedona filled me with sleep and fresh vegetables. My cuts and bruises have scabbed over. Two days off of my feet allowed my blisters to heal.

All this, and the climb is still hard.

Carrot and I split apart. Every half mile I stop and bend at the waist, sticking my ass out and leaning into my hiking poles. This serves the duel purpose of stretching my hamstrings (they’re screaming) and allowing me to get my head below my heart to catch my breath. I yell fuuuuuuuck a couple of times, to nowhere and nothing, and it is satisfying to hear my voice echo from Mesa to red rock.

I really don’t have the option to be the only person around all that often.

We finish our climb and lunch at a surprise water, it turns out a gloriously wet winter and spring has gifted us with so many surprise waters! All of my food tastes incredible and we make dumb jokes, mostly about how hard our dogs are partying while we suffer. The climb is over and I’m in a good mood.

We have some flat rocky miles. The flat part is incredible and the rocks dismay me, twisting my ankles this way and that. I listen to a podcast about Heavens Gate cult and I like, totally understand how people get sucked into that sort of thing. We ALL want something better don’t we? Something nicer than the status quo?

Carrot and I find one another at a silty stock pond and agree to hike six more miles. If we don’t do that, we have to dry camp, our packs sag heavily on our shoulders and we don’t want to carry more weight. I don’t even know if I COULD carry more weight ? The sun is low in the sky and we get walking.

Our descent is the BDSM of long distance hiking. The terrain is a surprise bushwhack, chaparral and cats claw jabbing at us, grabbing hold and clinging on to our bodies, our poles, our packs. We dub the MRT the Mega Real Trail, because these stabby jabbies aren’t fucking around even a little bit. They want to tear our fragile hiker asses up and we are defenseless against them, but also we sort of like it? In a weird way.

Hours pass. We are poked and prodded and bleeding. It is 6:00PM And we’ve gone 1.5 of six miles. We accept the fact that we may have to dry camp, skip cooking dinner and eat chips instead to save water, camp on a hill or some rocks instead of some perfect flat space. I ponder this, morose, but then suddenly! There are tinajas in the drainage below us! Shallow pools of rock filled with water!!! And a ridge just wide enough to cowboy camp on!

We’ll take it.

—

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

Day 4: What is a rest day for?

A rest day is for walking onto the main drag and going into Chipotle. You order a bowl, the biggest bowl of beans and rice and vegetables you have ever seen and when the server asks which salsa you’d like you say “ALL OF THEM”. You order chips, too, a giant paper sack of chips and you eat all of it until you’ll burst and then you stare down at what’s left, numb. They’re playing The Slits over the loud speaker and the lights are fluorescent. Out the window is majestic red rock and inside it’s just….Chipotle.

You find your motel. The clerk thinks you’re cool and it’s weird because you’re not cool, never really have been? You dropped out of high school because you were so uncool you didn’t even have one single friend? You get your key and you turn your rain jacket into a skirt, your puffy into a shirt so that you may do your laundry without flashing ass in the launder mat. You teach your love this trick, and she looks incredible in her rain jacket skirt. She’s humble, though, so she will never know the depths of her special rain jacket skirt beauty.

Eventually, you have a very tiny pile of clean laundry and thousands of words to write. You edit from bed until you fall asleep and the next day you wake up and edit more.

In the morning your wounds are still raw, but less so. You spend hours between the sheets, typing into your phone and eating vegan queso on newly procured corn chips, ones that are completely whole, not even a little crushed. You finish typing and your girlfriend kisses gently between your thighs, mindful of your chafe and your wounds. Eventually, the housekeeper comes in, surprised to note that you have not left, and instead of leaving, you are in fact having gay sex.

You check out of the motel. You hitch to the post office and you note that you must carry six days of food, twice as much as your last section, and you are dismayed. You go to a Safeway and feel generally freaked out. All of these people, man, and their hopes and their dreams all splayed out all over the grocery store. It’s like, a lot.

You lose your spork. You walk from tourist shop to tourist shop, at least half of the shops have “hiking” in their name. No one has a spork, they just sell t-shirts silly, but don’t worry- your girlfriend steals one from an ice cream parlor and hands it to you, all warmth and glow in her eyes.

You love her, and tomorrow you hike.

—

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

Day 3: And sometimes, it feels good.

Day 3

I wake in the dark and it’s 5:20am. I have transcended time and space with my sleep, and with this morning I am reborn raw and brand new. I have wounds from head to toe, but I am smiling and ready to hike.

This is to say, I wake up feeling good.

There’s no rhyme or reason to the days I wake feeling good or bad when long distance hiking. The first thirty miles of the MRT have leveled me, really shown me challenges of terrain and navigation, exposed my weakest hiking habits. Instead of frustrated, today I am grateful in between the vast red rock and sand. I get to be here, on this land, I am a guest and the least I can do is humbly bow.

Carrot wakes up happy too. She curls into me, unzips my sleeping bag just a little and reaches her arm in. We lay here like this, silent for a long time and as the sun starts to rise, we sit up for our morning chores.

Put the sports bra on, eat, wash pot, brush teeth, fold up the neoair, stuff everything into sacks, wrap everything in trash compactor bags (it’s supposed to rain all day, though the sky looks mostly clear from where we sit.) I do not shit, because I haven’t really shit for the bulk of this section and I am briefly dismayed before I forget about it in order to hike.

We climb up and into Red Rock country and it’s hard not to lose hours of time to my camera. I have never seen anything like this landscape, not in real life anyway, and I want to memorize the contours of its lines so that I may never forget. We gently traverse cross country and the thorny spikeys are minimal today, instead replaced with purple and white wild flowers and soft red mud that squishes gently as we walk.

We climb gently rolling hills through popular trailheads around Sedona, all the brutality of the last few days now replaced with a surreal world of easy walking on tired blister pocked feet. Eventually, we start to ache on the easy tread, both of us with inner thigh chafe and our last miles in sweet juniper forest are a slog, a reminder that when you’re tired enough any kind of tread will happily kick your ass.

From our trailhead at the 49.5 mile mark we hitch a ride into town with a mother of twins. Her kids start school next year and she quit her job to take a year off and travel with them before they do. This story excites me and as she drops us in the Chipotle parking lot, we all wish one another good luck.

Adventure, man. If you’re privileged enough to get it, you really have struck gold.

—

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

Day 2: Nature is the boss

Day 2

We wake early. Before I open my eyes I feel the soreness of my body ringing up and out of me like a chorus. Shins, knees, elbows, shoulders, hands. All my wounds call out together in a harmony and I am awed and humbled by the sound.

Once packed up, we pass through corridors of grabbing, stabbing and stinging plants that gouge into the pulp of my knees and elbows. I wince as my raw parts are continuously jabbed, steel myself as we cross into a rocky river bed. The bed is dry and contains small, medium, and large boulders– each a different experience to step upon. Our data says we’ll be walking on this for three miles and a quick assessment suggests that three miles will be one mile an hour terrain at the fastest.

One mile an hour is fine with me. The riverbed is flat, and the sun baths us in its gentle way. We have a breeze and just below red rock there are surprise pools of clear, cold water. The pools—some large enough to swim in— aren’t on our data as water sources at all, and so we know that they are but an ephemeral surprise, a gift from our extra rainy year. We sit by a river bed and eat snacks, smiling easily, and then we begin our ascent.

We climb quick and hard, straight up. We lose the trail for a moment, but Carrot finds it again by scrambling a hundred feet above us, hand and footing her way up broken slabs of red rock. I follow. My phone screen goes dim and will not return, briefly depriving me of my GPS track. Just as I yell “CARROT!” into the great trail beyond, it comes back to life, its light embarrassing me as Carrot runs back, concerned. I fall far behind, thinking about this trail and my skills in tandem. I do not have the skills to do this trail, but I’m doing it anyway. I’m hoping that I can learn quickly because in the heat I am feeling so slow and humbled that it borders on ashamed. The terrain is steep and prickly and I walk carefully, trying to avoid the jabbiest of the plants, the ones eager to stab tack like points into my various open wounds. I am morose and I let it wash over me.

We do five miles in five hours, a steady 1mph pace. It is noon and we haven’t travelled far, but we’re hungry and there are cabin ruins and a water source just up ahead and so we agree to stop and reassess.

I tell Carrot how bad I feel. Getting off trail, having so many cuts and bruises from the first five miles of our traverse, having to boulder up to safety when I have no idea how to boulder. Walking through spike corridors, losing my track, going so slowly up steep passes that I may as well be crawling. I eat chips and chocolate and I tell her I am trying to let nature be the boss. I know there’s not much I can do to fix how difficult this is beyond continuing to move forward and improve my skills. I can’t fight my body, and I’m not here to fight the land.

It’s just humbling is all, being so clumsy with nothing to hide behind.

—

We continue to climb, and hours pass. “This terrain is really beating me up today” Carrot says, sitting on a rock next to our water source, eating jerky and shivering into her puffy. She says this so easily, like it’s regular to struggle. All day I’ve questioned myself and my abilities and with one comment I realize the truth: I am inexperienced, for sure, but this is also just a hard trail. All kinds of people would find this to be a hard trail! It’s a relief to know.

We walk up a dirt road, and I zone out to On The Come Up by Angie Thomas. The second half of the day provides terrain that is significantly more gentle and easy to navigate and I let myself relax into it.

Up high, we come to another cabin ruin. Here we find our last water source of the day, a rusty metal tank with dead mosquitos skimming the surface. Winds pick up all around us and we shiver as we filter, knowing we have a 2000 foot descent, that we’re going to get down and camp where it’s warm.

We hike quick. I ache my way toward the campsight, knowing that if we get to the 29.9 mile mark today, we’ll be camping just outside of the camping restriction zone. If we hustle tomorrow, we can make it all the way to town, and I can clean the scrapes that decorate my body, soothe the red ringed wounds with something beyond hand sanitizer and antibiotic ointment.

1.5 miles away from our proposed campsite, I find Carrot. She asks if we can hike the last little bit together, and as we do we say a little prayer to the Nature Gods.

“Please Gods” we say. “Show us a campsite, as flat as a frisbee, just before the restriction starts, and tucked away in some trees”.

We push forward, searching, and just around the bend, directly below some red rock ruins, it appears.

We eat our food staring silently into the abyss, set up our shelter, blow up our neoairs, crawl into our sleeping bags, and close our eyes. Three minutes pass, and I am totally, utterly, and completely asleep.

—

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

MRT day 1: Wherein I learn to pay more attention

Day 1

I wake on and off and wonder if it’s time to hike. At 6:40 we open our eyes for real and are surprised to see the late hour. The sun has been up for an hour at least and what are we doing? Snoozing like there’s nowhere to go.

We make a plan to be up and hiking by 7:30AM. I try to eat my cereal and protein powder milk as fast as possible, to chug the cold brew I packed out, to put clothes on and stuff all of my small things into small sacks for my pack. By the time all is said and done, we walk away from our camp at 8:15, wondering where the time went.

We think we’re going to Ford a river, but when we approach it’s really more of a lake than a stream. We walk around it, then cross some ankle deep water and ….that’s it! Nothing so dramatic as a ford.

We climb. We climb up rocky red slopes, up great boulders and tiny pebbles and sand. I feel nauseous again, wonder if I have an ulcer and slowly mince upward, watching Carrot’s graceful stride up the mountain. She is but a speck, and I am concentrating on not gagging while I climb. A cool breeze chases me and I am grateful that I’m nauseous as fuck but at least I’m not nauseous in the heat.

The animal trail I’ve been following peters out, I consult my GPS and can see that I’m off the line. I grumpily try to cut back to it, refusing to backtrack and retrace my steps, and climb over prickly pear and under cats claw branches. I slide my way down some giant slick boulders. I walk and I walk and I really don’t seem to be getting much closer to the track I’m supposed to be on, when it occurs to me that I can use the topo lines to make my way— I don’t have to be aiming myself toward an idea of a line and hoping for the best.

I can see that I need to be aiming for the saddle above me. I retrace my steps back to the slick bolder I carefully stepped down and when I go to climb back up I can see that there are no real handles to grab onto, no real steps for my feet.

I tell myself that I hand and footed my way down this boulder, I can get back up. I toss my poles up just above me, feel my way up the sides of the red rock, and look for a crevasse to wedge my hand, promising to accept even the tiniest outcrop for my foot. I find both, eventually, and I know I just need two more of each to get back up toward stable ground. I slide my hand up again, and eventually, there’s a hook for my fingers. I commit to wedging my foot hard into the nothingness that will be my step, and somehow it sticks. I feel my my way up the boulder again, almost to the top now, and look down for just a second. What the fuck am I doing here? Climbing a boulder in the middle of red rock desert with no one around for probably miles? My left leg starts shaking violently and I lose my grip, sliding back down from where I started from. My poles come crashing down on my face as soon as I hit the ground.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!!! I scream to no one. Ringing silence meets me.

I am scratched with raspberries of blood dotting my knees, elbows, shins and stomach. I almost had it, I’m convinced I almost had it. I know where I have to be to get on track, it’s just a few hundred feet up. If I can get above this bolder it’ll be low and gentle cross country to the trail and it’ll be easy enough from there. Easier than this, I think. Easier than fake bouldering with absolutely no skills or experience. I toss my poles up, repeat the same exact choreography of arms and legs, and again, I slide right back down.

I am going to throw up. My breath starts to quicken and I weigh my options. In my slow stupor I’d shooed Carrot away hours ago and she is surely very far along the trail, and I am even further from that. I could call for help, but I’ve seen no footprints and when I listen hard I hear only profound quiet. There are helicopters, is this a helicopter situation? I start to cry and I can feel myself on an edge, this close to panic. I rip myself back.

No. A voice says from deep inside. You are not going to panic yet.

Here are some facts the voice inside gives to me: it is early, only 11AM. It’s not hot. I have three liters of water, and a lot of food. I have service and I can text Carrot and wait. I have service and if things become dire I can actually call a helicopter.

And besides the voice says. You’re pack is making you too heavy to pull yourself up.

I drink some water, steady my breathing, and take my pack off, tossing it above with my poles. I tell myself I will not look down, that I’m bored of standing here just a few hundred feet from where I’m supposed to be and I hurdle myself up, as fast as possible; no stopping allowed. When I land on bloody hands and knees next to my pack and my poles, finally away from my place just below where I wanted to be, I sob.

What the fuck, Muffy. What in the actual fuck.

—-

I walk in a daze, cramming vegan cheez-itz into my mouth and crying. The terrain is gentle, I find the trail easily using the topo lines, and my body is moving in the right direction, which is kind of all that matters. I feel fried though, deeply exhausted by the stress of my morning and by the time I reach a cow pound, just 6 trail miles in, I could collapse.

I think about stopping but I want to see Carrot, want to hug her and make jokes with her and let her soothe me in her way. She’s left me a note at the cow pound, it says she waited for half an hour but is heading on, she’ll meet me at the next water source in another five miles.

I commit to the next five miles and fly down cattle trails, drinking and eating while I walk instead of taking a lunch break. My whole body aches, my shirt is torn and I am bleeding. Just two miles later I see Carrot’s pack poking out from a sycamore tree and I whoop. CARROT!!!!!! I am SO FUCKING HAPPY to see CARRRROTTTT!

I show Carrot my wounds. She rubs my back and listens sympathetically, we game plan for how to check in from here on out to keep us close together. It starts hailing gently while we sit, almost snowflake like pebbles, except it is 70 degrees, dry everywhere and sunny so nothing is sticking. A storm is threatening, though, a dark grey cloud headed our way, surrounded by only blue sky.

Time to walk we say, zipping up rain jackets and putting on shoes as quick as we can.

It’s the desert man. Never really can tell what’s about to happen.

—

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

The sun melts yellow over red rock

Day 0

I’ve felt sick for a week now. This morning, I make peanut butter and jelly toast and I gag while I spread the peanut butter across the bread, walk toward the toilet to heave but before I get there, I stop so I turn around. I’ve been vibrating on this nauseous anxious frequency, and the closer we get to our trip the tighter the knots in my stomach cinch. I am excited and I am scared and as far as my stomach is concerned, those are pretty much the same thing.

I kiss the dogs and all three of them look freaked out because I am definitely acting clingy. Their little dog bodies are the single hardest thing about walking in places I do not know, indefinitely, and I try to memorize their smells as shapes for my mind to latch onto. Quito is a fresh plumpkin from the plumpkin patch, moist eyes lazily blinking. Kinnickinnick is a long and grumpy rocket, stretching out her stiff bones to zoom just once or twice before once again finding her bed. Mabel is my tightly wound dusty rose, her tortilla chip ears tucking back when she walks, zigging and zagging her leash violently this way and that. I love you, I love you, I love you I say. They all move away, slowly.

Emma picks Carrot and I up in her 1990 Suburu, with Fem4Femm on the license plates. She drives us to a Mediterranean place in Phoenix, a combo restaurant and grocery store where we get big piles of fava beans, rice, baba gahnough, garlicy iceberg lettuce salads and sides of pickles. We eat until we’re a little bit too full and I try to soak Emma up, too. We’re walking along the Mogollon Rim, 500 miles around the crust of the Colorado plateau in the largest stretch of Ponderosa Forest in the world. Only two other people have thru hiked this route in it’s entirety, and we are the first women, besides one of the creators. We’ll hit six tiny Arizona towns, and I am pretty sure this is our last little bit of queer culture for five weeks or so.

We make up possible personalized plates (femmegem, gay4gay, fist in) and Emma tells us how she’s considering buying a Uhaul, so all the dykes we know can borrow it when they move in together and then again when they break up.

We arrive at Parson’s trailhead just before dark. There are TREES, actual green things with leaves that definitely don’t exist just three hours away in Tucson. The sun is setting, melting yellow over red rock and we pitch our tent at the trailhead, finding pebbles amongst the sand to secure our stakes.

Tomorrow we ford a river, first thing. Tonight, I fall asleep next to Carrot, the sound of rushing water lulling me away.

Should be fun I mumble to myself as I drift off. Should be fun.

The great Pacific!

I wake up at Pineapple’s and before I open my eyes I can feel that my whole body is tired. The blisters on my toes are throbbing, my hamstrings are wound into little fists of hard knot, and I am ravenously hungry. This is the first time I’ve ever hiked nine days in a row without any significant rest, and though I am excited to finish and see the ocean, I also just want to be done.

I really don’t feel like hiking today.

It’s funny, the allure of the indoors. OF COURSE I want to rest at Girl Scout’s housesit, OBVIOUSLY I want to eat Pho and sleep in Pineapple’s guest bedroom. But the indoors makes me soft, I think. The more I am comfortable, the less I want to walk all day for absolutely no reason. It makes sense to feel soft from this vantage point in my deeply comfortable bed! I don’t feel like hiking today, but I will hike anyway because that’s what hikers do.

Hikers gotta hike I mumble to myself under my breath. I am groggy and my pep talk works only vaguely.

BUT! Today shouldn’t be too hard. We have fifteen miles to go, and I make a personal goal to get to the ocean by 2:00PM. I’ve hiked faster than I’ve ever hiked before on this trail, and I feel confident that we can weave in and out of the neighborhoods at a quick pace.

We make an executive decision to leave most of our gear behind and hike without the weight of our shelters, quilts, and extra food. Pineapple takes us for vegan croissants and oat milk lattes and I decide this is officially a tropical vacation, which really lightens my mood. Just a long walk to the ocean, with feather light backpacks and third wave coffee in hand! What’s not to like?

Pineapple drops us where she picked us up the day before, and we head into Penasquitos canyon. We pass a playground, all plastic climbing structures and swing sets. We work to weave around the mud while chatting about our plans for the day. I roll my ankle a little, and wobble to my left, slapping my foot right into a thick mud puddle. I stumble right trying to yank it back out without spilling my latte and it becomes clear that I am either A) going down hard into this mud or B) losing my shoe.

I choose the latter. The mud sucks my shoe down into the muck, ripping it right off my foot, tied and still attached to my gaitor. I spill not one drop of my coffee and Jelly Bean and I laugh until we cry. Of all the terrain to almost deeply lose my shit, I’ve chosen the one directly in front of the play structure.

I dig my shoe out and it weighs approximately ten more pounds than the other, due to the mud. We continue on and start seeing signage for the San Diego Trans County Trail for the first time. This route was once a planned thing, something that didn’t include trespassing or bushwhacking, but it was abandoned by the city early on and these little signs are all that’s left. We weave up flat canyon for ten miles and it is sun dappled and sleepy. There are many dogs, small dogs and big dogs with their people in tow and I pet them all.

We come to a waterfall, and cross through thigh high water with just a little bit of negotiation. This route truly has everything! Just when you think it’s smooth sailing, the SDTCT will throw you a curveball.

Jelly Bean and I split off. I cross under a highway, and walk along roads of San Diego, watching people coming and going to work in their suits. I am on track to hit the ocean at 2, and I see a taco shop right on trail, with a huge hand painted sign in the window.

NO LARD IN BEANS.

It feels like a direct invitation. I cannot turn down a taco, wouldn’t want to really, and so I stop. I eat a giant fajita plate with rice and beans and fried peppers and onions and guacamole, then stop in the coffeeshop next door to drink a very large and very strong cold brew. I feel like I am living in a thru-hiker fantasy, one where the perfect food and drink is just on trail and I am deeply amused. I won’t hit the ocean by two, but I’d rather finish with a full belly and with Jelly Bean anyway so fuck it.

Just as I leave the coffee shop, Jelly Bean limps up. We both have tremendous and painful blisters and have slowed considerably as a result. We hit Los Penasquitos Marsh Preserve and try desperately to keep our feet out of the mud to avoid irritating our blisters and we fail miserably, sloshing through puddles until the narrow path breaks open and the ocean is just ahead of us.

I am happy at the ocean, deliriously so. The shore to the sea is rocky, making every step painful on my raw toes but I step up to the Pacific anyway, put my hands in it, splash it a little on my face.

The ocean is vast and I let myself feel small in comparison. I am but an ant, a speck, a piece of stardust in a giant universe, and the Pacific let’s me know that’s totally okay— more than okay really, actually preferred. 

Thank you, I say to the ocean, whispering at first and then saying it a little louder.

Thank you for giving me a place to walk to.

Rolling hills in Poway

I wake up in a bed. The bed has many pillows and blankets stacked around me and I feel warm and safe and still stuffed full of the vegan burger I ate last night. I think of the burger and I could cry. That burger was perfect.

Things are about to be different. We’ve walked through the dry desert washes in Anza Borrego. We’ve walked up the mountains, through the snow, amongst the cholla and the ocotillo. We’ve gone up and down El Cajon. More or less, from here on out we are walking through neighborhoods: first Poway, then San Diego. There is one more tiny bushwhack, but mostly we’re just above the cul-de-sacs, through backyards and across playgrounds. I think of the ease of walking through neighborhoods and from my space amongst the pillows on the cloud bed it sounds good. Reliable water and easy tread! Sign me up.

I stumble into the living room and Girl Scout is waiting. Jelly Bean joins us and we make a quick game plan: coffee and donuts and then we get going. Girl Scout asks us if we want to skip some of the neighborhood walk and go straight to the next bushwhack and we say nah. I’ll skip if there’s a time crunch or some sort of dangerous tread but if I start skipping parts that are just boring or uncomfortable I’d probably stop long distance hiking in no time! It’s all uncomfortable, really.

Girl Scout plops us right at the trail head and we thank him once more. Jelly Bean and I climb up and out of Oak Oasis campground and toward a brief stint of road walking on more private property. This private property is different then the last, though just a handful of miles away. Instead of loose dogs and Don’t Tread On Me flags, there’s just wealth. Tall stately homes with beautiful porches, high on the hill. I catch my first glimpse of the ocean and I could cry. I love the ocean so much!!! And we’re walking to it! What a fun thing.

From the wealthy neighborhoods, we head down at first just a little and then very steeply.  We hit Poway and road walk through businesses, all named Patriot this and American Industries that. There are Trump bumper stickers, so many Trump bumper stickers. How can people feel comfortable with these hateful bumper stickers?   I am offended for myself, the latino folks doing construction and road clean up all around us, and the Earth. Fuck Donald J. Trump. Fuck him so hard.

I duck behind trees to piss and there are horses and broken bottles everywhere. We head up into our bushwhack and it is blessedly short and steep and passes without incident beyond a little humidity. What a difference slightly lower bushes with space between makes! I am so grateful.

I listen to Big Little Lies and zone out amongst the rolling hills that rim Poway. The walking is incredibly gentle and I am grateful because the blisters on both of my little toes have started to demand attention, growing larger and larger until my actual toes look small in comparison. Clouds pass over the sun and I feel gloomy, wondering why anything is, if my lover will stop loving me, if I am doing the right things during this year, the one where I leveled everything to be free. The sun peeks out again and I brighten, knowing that I can’t know anything, not really anyway. It’s all a mystery but I’m probably doing just fine. I remember how I lived in Portland’s grey clouds for the better part of eight years and I laugh. Seasonal depression, man. I really do have it.

The issue with urban hiking is that we cannot think of a single place to camp that doesn’t feel awkward and at the 20 mile mark, Pineapple picks us up to sleep at her place instead of trying. Tonight we eat vegan pho, smelling like shit in a beautiful and well lit restaurant, my dirt mustache and grime caked fingernails extremely apparent under the florescent lights.

Tomorrow we hike our last 15 miles, and with that, we’ll hit the ocean. 

On trespassing and bushwhacking.

My alarm goes off at 5:30, but I am awake when it does because I AM EXCITED. Possibility! Enthusiasm! Positivity! Forward momentum! HIKING!!!! Fuck Yeah!!!

I eat oatmeal and peanut butter and I drink instant coffee. Instant coffee is a dirt I have come to love? It’s incredible. There’s condensation everywhere, and as I sip huge drops of it splash into my titanium pot. Condensation is the way of my shelter, and I’ve accepted it now. Inside my cozy zone is a spectacularly wet microclimate. I create a rainforest, all with my mouth. How beautiful.

The man in the RV locked the privy before bed and so, alas, we shallst not shit today. Where we are is wide and exposed, practically a neighborhood, with fancy houses all around. As soon as we leave, we trespass. Right after that, we bushwhack up a mountain. It’s all downhill from there, but downhill is packed jeep road, hard impenetrable clay that my trowel just isn’t fit to handle.

What a weird world, this one where you just can’t poop so you decide you wont. 

My lips are medium swollen, not OHMYFUCKINGGOD, THOSE ARE SO SWOLLEN swollen and I am grateful. I apply sunscreen liberally, regardless and we set off to trespass.

I hate trespassing. I am a natural rule follower, I have no real interest in being on someone’s private land, and this land in particular freaks my shit. Loose dogs weave in and out of lazy cow pastures and yellow flags wave furiously, DON’T TREAD ON ME flapping in the wind. There are cameras rimming ranches, Jelly Bean and I are dirty and I feel…sketchy. These people for SURE have guns and here we are prancing right out in the open with mud caked on our legs and hiking poles clacking up the pavement. 

Jelly Bean tells me we probably look like somebody’s wives. We decide each of us is married to a DON’T TREAD ON ME man and that we strap ankle weights to ourselves and fill up our packs each day to get the blood flowing. We imagine we meet regularly to talk shit about our husbands and someday we will leave them. I will be gay, and Jelly Bean will still be straight because that is her curse both in real life and in this fantasy.

“It’s fine to be on this land”, we say. “We’re just somebody’s wives.”

By eleven AM we are done trespassing and I am relieved. We sit down before the big bushwhack and lay out all of our gear to dry, trying to guess what this trail-less stretch up a mountain will hold. It’s steep, I can see that in the topo lines of our GPS for sure. All reports say that it’s miserable, there’s no way around that. It’s only 1.5 miles long, but it’s also 1.5 miles straight up. Maybe we’ll go at a 1 mile per hour pace? 90 minutes up a mountain doesn’t sound bad. We can do 90 minutes.

Jelly Bean and I change into pants to protect from scratches, reapply sunscreen and follow our GPS track to the backside of El Cajon Mountain. El Cajon is said to be the hardest day hike in San Diego, and that’s when you come up the other side, the one with the trail. Jelly Bean and I approach and stare face high manzanita down, looking for a game track to enter into our ascent. There’s none really, and with nothing much that can be done about that, we start.

Two and a half hours pass like this: At first we are having fun, and then we are very serious. There’s no way up, really, but there’s going to have to be so we’re making our way, gingerly. There are cairns sometimes, little piles of rocks I feel certain were left by a previous SDTCT hiker just to say “Yes! Yes! You’re going the right away!”. I am angry sometimes, fighting with spiky brambles looking for my eyes, my nose, my mouth, all of my most tender parts. The seaming on my pants frays completely, picked and pulled by sticks and branches. I slam my shins against rocks and they bleed. I tangle with trees, fighting with them like they are people holding me from going up. I trip, over and over again. I am knifed with agave swords.  I am hot and I am frustrated and suddenly….I am free. After four false summits we make it up El Cajon and I am speechless.

Jelly Bean and I stop to eat. It’s kind of funny when something is so hard. We are laughing, like, what the fuck? What the fuck are we doing? Jelly Bean shares her jelly beans and I share my caffeinated shot blocks. Rumor has it that this descent has a ton of climbing, but that climbing is free of thick face scratchers and so I am prepared. If we can get up the back side of El Cajon mountain, we can do anything.

I put on my headphones and head down. The descent is steep, so steep it looks like sheer drop off after sheer drop off. It plunges down and rips me back up again and again and again, the trail folding in on itself with erosion. I am out of water but the sun is setting and I am HAPPY. This land, My fucking body. My best friend. We’re doing it and it feels good.

I reach Oak Oasis campground and go to the bathroom in the privy (shitting, FUCK YEAH!). I throw away my trash and sit to wait for Jelly Bean, wondering how she’s doing with the descent that never stops climbing. I imagine what I might make for dinner and in the distance I see a friendly face wander up, a glint of mischief in his eye.

It’s GIRL SCOUT! Girl scout has been indispensable with planning this hike, and now he is offering us so many things at once that it’s hard to grasp. He says his partner has a housesit nearby, that Jelly Bean and I can have our own rooms and bathrooms for the night. He says he’ll drop us at the trailhead as soon as dawn hits tomorrow, right where we are now so no skipping will be necessary. He says his 87 year old mom is in the car, and that the two of them would like to take us to a barbecue joint nearby. He’s already checked the menu and he starts naming the vegan items.

Jelly Bean shows up and by the time she reaches me my eyes are so wide they could pop out of my head.

“PLEASE CAN WE GO” I ask Jelly Bean. I am not above begging, if necessary.

Jelly Bean nods, and with that it’s decided. Tonight, we’re soft and we don’t even care. Give me a bed, give me hot water, give me soap and warm food and and comfort!

Tomorrow, we’ll get back at it again.