put my head into the kayak and it told me to write this down so i did
So i paddled down the Missouri River in 2020 and finally, after nearly two years, i wrote nothing about it. My kayak did, and this letter will be heading to the home of the man i purchased the kayak from off of craigslist. It did a pretty good job of summing up our journey together, so here i present it in its handwritten final state:
photos of low quality, like my confidence upon the water. rushed transcription, like my slapdash preparations for the trek. difficult to see through, like that cursed river. grand, still holding my pride, like the journey we shared.
an old goddess, both eternal and resurrected. her bones are grand, varied, tangible, ethereal, and not even fully her own. her soul reflects her natural beauty, her visage wields power over hearts and souls. her being stretched across this great distance, her arms warm and opened far along these lands. she offers plenty to her devoted followers, but she does not do this freely.
she lays upon her apostles a passenger. she conjures the cloud of igottadomiles over their heads every morning, rooting their eyes upon the horizon. this is no curse, her disciples enjoy this exchange. ever reveling, but seldom lingering in her bounty. for when they do, the igottadomiles fog creeps and their eyes become hazy unless focused on that line between land and sky in the distance. and so she grows in influence and her legends multiply, for it is easy to love the gottadomiles as it is easy to love the great goddess.
i love this goddess. for the past almost five months she had me in her tender embrace, breathing igottadomiles fog around my senses. as those months progressed i kept getting glimpses past the fog at the world beyond. ever the fog would thicken and refocus my efforts.
the fog got in the way of me spending time on a lavender farm. the fog pulled me from mount shasta, i didn’t even try to go play on her slopes. the fog recently stopped me from going rafting down to a rodeo. the wind blows, and the strength of the fog changes.
this is me getting off trail but it’s not sad promise
I’ve now done about 4000 miles of long distance trail. Bouncing from town to town following that thin earthen line is still great, i love doing it. Much much slower than most of the other hikers out here, but i do love long trail life. I’m comfortable saying that i’m pretty good at it too, this delicate orbit kept around modern society. I am also eager to break free of the trail’s certainty to pastures of different colors, to adventure through rural and urban environs.
oh jeez i spent too much time on this i didn’t sum up the past few days on trail
the only surviving picture of mount jefferson, for some reason my phone took blank white pictures for all the other ones
Northern Oregon continued to impress. The rain threat only escalated, to a point where it was spooky for about one day straight. Boy all the PCTers were terrified, one guy chastised me for shrugging at his horrifying prophecy that the rain would linger for days. It didn’t, but i did sleep like a rock that night, lulled into comfort by the gentle crinkle tinkles of a non-angry rain on my tent. It was exciting to walk across a ridge immersed in a cloud with the wind whipping around me though, reminded me of Maine.
woof i gotta get a new graphics card for this thing
i bet this is common in the cascades
Hella burn areas, a lot of this state has burned up recently. I like burned forests, they’re still and creaky. All the little baby plants reaching up to the stars and the still standing corpses of their progenitors.
i spy with my little eye a dead horse, can you see it? don’t look any harder it was awful
i waited a good hour for the clouds to reveal this beauty
I spent a few hours at a resort with little electricity. It was a cozy place that unfortunately ran out of ice cream. I lingered too long and got swept up into having a wine party on trail that night and it was great. Shoutouts to Machine and Yukon, those boys hike hard and city harder.
smiles > miles
yukon and the machine, shortly before doing two solid days and one solid portland
I did six miles of roadwalk to get a resupply from a gas station in the shadow of Mt Hood. I lingered there too long and did my Hood ascent in the dark. As i continued to climb the treeline broke and i could see lights in the distance calling to me. The wind was howling and the moon was just breaking on the horizon. It was super cool and i camped right next door to the big ol breakfast buffet at Timberline Lodge.
whew
hey there mount hood
Buffets on trail are a big deal. The prospect of eating as much as possible while you’re out there at peak hunger puts dreams into your head and passion into your stomach. It’s an even bigger deal that this buffet isn’t even .1 mile off trail.
The guide app i use has a comments section for each waypoint on trail. For this lodge people took John Muir quotes and changed words so they were about buffets, the lowest hanging fruit being “the buffet is calling and i must go.” I’d reference more but i already deleted the app and i can’t be bothered.
getting that good insta pic with the fancy drink
The breakfast buffet was great, i ate until it hurt and then i pushed some more. Our waitress said that if i played guitar she’d buy me a drink, but after breakfast i could barely breathe and she left before i got the chance. I sat catatonic, mooching off the wifi for a couple hours.
When i could locomote again i spent a while just looking at the lodge. It’s a real cool building in a real cool place, no wonder Kubrick used it for the Shining. Eventually i found my way to the pub and found some hikers still getting their drink on and i was happy to join them. At around 5 we stumbled our way out of the lodge and barely made any progress before it got too dang cold.
you’re sloppy we ain’t sloppy what are you talking about
At the pub the word got spread that there was trail magic the very next day at about 6pm 17 miles up trail. I dug deep, hiked hard, and made it just in time. I accidentally took a side trail that added a bit of a climb but might’ve been shorter overall, and i intentionally took a side trail that was longer so i could see a cool waterfall.
i did the thing
also i made this. i passed by a number of 3000km markers over the course of a couple few miles so i assume 3000km is more of a state of mind than a distance measurement. the thousand yard stare was for a bit, that the will of the trail overtook my consciousness and i crafted this shrine in a fugue state.
The trail angel picked up six of us in her pickup truck and drove us the 20 minutes to her place. They had hot tubs and two cats and a nice creek and a cool house. Spaghetti for dinner and you know i ate up until it hurt. They told us of this 3000 mile rickshaw journey they’re planning for next year that sounded cool and scary.
cat
cat
cat
cat
We got moving slowly the next morning, and i loosely made plans with all the other hikers to do 15 miles to a lake knowing that i probably wouldn’t make it and like of course i didn’t
these two canadians jammed with a cool vibe
i’ll miss you blaze art
In the final stretch of trail Squirrel caught up to me. I had met him on the AT up in Maine so it was cool he caught me right before i hopped off. And wouldn’t you know it, Jason who is now Eastwood, going sobo, crossed my path. He had gotten off trail for a bit because of foot fracture and was doing sobo to see his family one more time. With that i was pretty satisfied, i threw on Hyper Potions and coasted down to Cascade Locks.
and thus my final reunion with a fellow inmate of trail jail
i totally paid to camp here
That night i watched a 30 minute movie about the big fire that almost wrecked Cascade Locks last year and ate a tube of Pringles faster than i thought was possible. This morning i said goodbye to a few other hikers and hopped the bus to Portland.
eh that’s good for now. it’s weird getting off trail. the thru hiker life doesn’t have a slot for my current plans or mental state so it’s interesting seeing how everyone reacts. i guess bittersweet is the closest word i can use but it’s not even that bitter. the sad part of not spending time with all the humans i grew fond of out here is basically over and mostly has been for hundreds of miles. there’s a few phrases i’ve been using but the one i keep coming back to is that i don’t think that the pct has anything left to teach me. i’m comfortable with the societal orbit of long distance trails. since around tahoe when i got that forsaken backpack i got really good at sitting and existing in places and my skill has only improved since then. A task called anyways, a wedding in Iowa to take place in a fortnight that i received an invitation to on top of Mount Whitney months ago.
so, next season, on whatever this is: it’s two thousand miles to iowa city, i’ve got a full backpack, half a pack of plain bagels, it’s hot, and i’m wearing cotton clothes
hit it.
🍕
off trail? on trail? it’s still the trail? what is the trail? why is the trail? how are you doing today, trail? i’m fine, thanks, i’m here about four and a half years after the previous section of words with all these addendums fresh from a more weathered body and soul.
i’ve been calling it the gottadomiles lately, i think i prefer it that way. i pruned some language from those paragraphs as well, too cruel to this trail goddess and trail goddesses everywhere. was it really the unprecedented times that emptied out the arizona trail when i set out on it? or my digital cruelty to the trail goddess powers? no it was probably the unprecedented.
the gottadomiles and i came in contact again out on the AT in Vermont in 2022. late in the NoBo season; the nights bit with wind instead of mosquito. a defined mileage to the finish line, a due date, a simple math to give a ‘miles per day.’ a perfect storm descending of gottadomiles fog. i loitered at a ski patrol hut on a bald mountaintop as nobos paused for meals while counting how much further they had to commute for the day.
lol these dry pct hikers all anxious about rain. thanks, appalachia, for saturating me with rains and hardening me to their trials. give it one more state, they’ll all be in cascades of the stuff i bet.
buffets are still big deal, special occasion to really see what i can do.
at the front desk of the hotel you could ask to hold the axe, you know, that axe, the one from the shining? mr jackson dullboy nicholson himself held it as he calmly entered that bathroom where his wife and child were waiting. do you remember that do you remember the shining? well don’t worry, because ‘HERE’S JOHNNY’ is burned into the wooden handle, deeply burned into it, in a gaudy way that feels like a disservice to both a cinematic relic and the memory of the perfectionist director who labored on it. but it sure is the thing that he said in the movie do you remember?
some fun reunions right at the end there, just what the doctor ordered. the trail provides.
this bench sat outside of the public restrooms and i sat on it
this was a milling stone but i don’t remember who the dude was
this building once held wells fargo and was the lodge for a fraternity kind of like the masons but their imagery is more getting drunk and pranks and less end of days
the newspaper was sassy about new media and i met the guy who wrote that article
the owner of this restaurant didn’t let all the brits inside to watch some footy because he wasn’t open. he did tune in on the tvs inside, prompting this assembly. look carefully at the english fish and chips sign and the poor business decision the owner made right here, at least five pints of beer went unsold this morning.
there was one gas pump, one side of it didn’t work. no attendants, credit card only. this sticker was there
fires didn’t usually take buildings in sierra city because water flowed freely but a house did recently burn down, the wreckage still sits undisturbed right on main street
i was told that if i talked to the real estate agent here i could get a look at the upstairs of this lodge but they were closed when i made it back in town. i familiarized myself with a different society instead, the Clampers
hey i did take a picture of the burned building. i didn’t take any pictures of the kentucky gold mine tho oops
#dragoneggpct
#stateofjefferson
this spoopy thing was hanging on the wall of the cabin at the kentucky mine, the history guy i chatted with wasn’t sure why it was there. glad it has such powerful imagery that i have now channeled through the internet to you you’re welcome
i went to the cemetery at dusk and picked out names that i learned about from my day in town, then i sat here and mooched wifi and did more learning to the delightful sounds of polka music blaring next door
you’re a cool place sierra city, you spoke to my creativity – e clampus vitus
still think about this city. nestled into a mountain valley, mine adjacent. i learned how to french braid here.
the clampers. secret society jokeur: the ancient and honorable order of e clampus vitus, parody latin translated from “i believe it because it is absurd.” preservers of history, lunacy, and dank dank pranks. in a secret society love triangle with me and the independent order of odd fellows.
That night at Benson Lake i thought i had bad mosquitoes. The trails before and after it i had the same thought. The trail after Wilma Lake taught me otherwise.
this is the only picture i got. two of them landed on my hand as i was doing this
The air was thick with insect. Any exposed flesh that remained stationary for even one moment had multiple bugs probing for blood. Any meat in motion would come under assault in mere seconds. With a cloth in one hand and a handkerchief in the other i whirled, putting up a swirling fabric shield that was mostly functional at keeping them at bay.
It was not enough. The cunning bugs found cracks in my defenses and i am covered in their bites. They dove in through the fabric on my shoulders. A bold one tried to bite my eyelid. Some of the more frisky ones found their way up my skirt.
Every couple of steps i had to land a targeted strike on one that found purchase. I stopped wiping away the bodies. Were they trophies? Signs of warning in an attempt to scare them away? Maybe i was hoping to cover my skin with their essence and pass through unnoticed.
I started to question my place on the food chain. Can one die from too many mosquito bites? I felt powerless, like i was trying to fight the wind. The relentless insect gale buzzed on endlessly.
I have three scabs on the front of my right leg. One on the side. One on my left knee. Any other blemish was immediately vilified and struck down. Was it bug or was it just mud? They both squish on contact. The strikes flew freely.
When it came time to stop i threw up my tent and dove inside. Nine of them made it inside with me. The first eight went down easy. The ninth i struggled to defeat. After about a minute of the hunt i cornered it and smeared it along the mesh exterior of my tent. I left the body hanging where i struck it down.
My tent was overrun on the outside. I stopped counting at 75.
The next morning i dove into battle once more, mere miles away from the Yosemite border. As i left that godforsaken land i contemplated how every bite they successfully landed meant the birth of a multitude of bugs in the future.
this is my favorite mileage shrine i’ve seen so far
these smaller rocks were way cooler than the big ones in yosemite
those switchbacks were the past 10 minutes of my life
the ridge walk up here was blustery and i bet it woulda been pretty if i did it at sunset yesterday instead of sleeping
Thankfully the trail got real cool real quick, way cooler than Yosemite was. I made it to Bridgeport this morning, officially out of scary bear country. I would send home my bear can here but my backpack is falling apart so i’m gonna play the field a bit in Tahoe. My current pack weighs almost 5 pounds so it’s easy weight to drop, but I wouldn’t be surprised if i got the same backpack but one size bigger on the torso. yay gear talk!
this past gadget, he doesn’t know how poor a backpack can treat him. the red menace was also not sized right, but at least it regularly treated the body okay.
love the name of this one. content too, good show past me.
i hiked with the starship troopers book near the end of my AT but i didn’t read it.
i didn’t mention how i had to pee in the middle of the night. the assault was still active. it was not a peaceful experience.
The Hostel California is a rad place. My first night there was spent watching a 2.5 hour long Catan game that gradually got more vitriolic. Sleep eluded me because of course someone snored like they were dying the whole night. I ‘woke up’ at around 530 and listened to a rip of the live stream of Kanye and Cudi’s album which was also rad.
The next night i was told that there would be an open mic night at a coffee shop and everyone got all on me case saying i had to play it. When i went to scope out the place i found out that it was bi-weekly and it was an off week. So instead i went to a brewery and watched a bluegrass band play a show. There was an older man who owned the dance floor. I forget his name, i referred to him as Overalls, i’ll let you guess why. He was a thiccer guy, very gray, and his dance moves were on point. During one song he started dancing with a younger girl and it was entrancing. I talked to her afterwards and got the story. He’s a regular at this brewery, at most of the shows he’s busting a serious move. Normally he has a dance partner, and older woman from South Africa, and together they run the joint. That night she wasn’t there, so the girl i was talking to had to step up to the plate and dance with this legend. She was still visibly nervous about this dance she just did. As i was leaving i shook Overalls’ hand and told him i loved him.
The next day immediately started with cheap beer so i nearly double zeroed. At around 4 i started trying to hitch out of town. Two hours later i was picked up by a thru hiker who had a bunch of plants all over her car because the earth told her she needed em. When i got to the trailhead the pass was blustery and my pack was heavy and the sun was setting so i basically just crashed.
water for days up here. water in lakes, in snow, in streams, and in my shoes
I did Kearsarge and Glen passes very very slowly the next day. On my way down Glen i slipped and fell and bashed the top of the Doctor and now i’m extra nervous about his well being. I keep noticing more cracks and woes with him. Perhaps thousands of miles of hardships aren’t the best for the longevity of a toys ‘r us guitar.
The Sierras are mosquito territory. At any point if you stop hiking the gang attacks. My cowboy camping days are mostly over at this point and that’s kind of sad. But sitting in my tent and seeing 30 mosquitoes all frustrated mere inches from my tasty blood feels great.
suck this mosquitoes, ya’ll suck
I had camped kind of far from the next pass, Pinchot, but i dug in and made it over that day. I still felt like trash, i was struggling to do one mile an hour on my way up it. I hit the top at around 5 so postholing was a certainty.
this happened at least once a day
Bear threats and snow covered passes aren’t very scary to me out here. River fords are. That night i camped right next to our first juicy one, Kings River South Fork. I got water from it that night and boyo that water was deep and fast, it coulda killed someone without a second thought. The next morning it calmed to about knee height and I froze my toes off fording it.
Thankfully my mojo came back and i bumped Skrill and demolished Mather Pass. On top i got terrible news that Moneymaker had to get airlifted out the day before. There wasn’t enough room for his pack in the chopper so his gear was split up between everyone present to get hiked up to a nearby resort, VVR. I hope he gets back on trail, he did the AT the same year as me so i already had kinship with him, and that was before we sang songs together at the Strider trail magic.
this is just a postcard i took a picture of i’ve never been here
i liked how green it was here
I coasted downhill the rest of the day and got as close as i could to Muir Pass. It wasn’t close enough. I reached the snowy section at around 11 and immediately lost the trail. I ended up finding my own trail for quite a while, switchbacking up snowy slopes and eyeballing logical routes before i saw the pass in the distance. I hit the top of the pass at around 1 and started the slow trudge down the far side. The postholes were pre-made but i was still dunking my feet into ice cold melted snow in the bottom of them. After an hour of that i took a break on a boulder in the middle of the ocean to let my feet regain feeling and also have a little ‘this is insane what am i even doing’ moment. I hadn’t seen another person all day, and there i was on a boulder in a sea of pure white eating a Kit Kat and a tortilla somewhere in the mountains.
on top of muir pass. i couldn’t feel my feet
adrift at sea
Thankfully i saw people after that, but unfortunately i rolled up after they had passed around and finished all their whiskey. I stumbled downhill to get close to the next intimidating river crossing, Evolution Creek. That night i stayed up until around 1am reading a Jack Reacher book. It was alright, but Jack is a bit of a Mary Sue. His supporting cast was way more interesting than him.
I got moving at around 8, very grateful for the packet of instant coffee i was given back in Bishop i think from Lullaby? Evolution was mid thigh deep and not too fast. The worst part were the mosquitoes who took advantage of my struggle to swarm and bite my face.
i was rocking chiddy bang as i battled the current
The trail hugged the San Joaquin River for a few miles before climbing up towards Selden Pass. It was mostly unremarkable, just more glorious panoramas flanked by hordes of mosquitoes. I fell asleep at about 5pm that day, crashing hard from my night of reading. But not before i shared a moment with a neighborhood marmot.
this was somewhere? nature’s glory blends in my mind now
this is the only snow on this pass. my mountaineering days are behind me i guess
I had a surprise river ford the next day, Bear Creek. That one came up to almost my waist and was angrier than Evolution. Not too sure why they’re both called creeks though, i thought creeks were small and babbling things.
I took a 7 mile trail down to Vermillion Valley Ranch that afternoon. At one point i sloshed through a few hundred yards of calf deep marshy water within mosquito stomping grounds that was miserable. VVR is nice though. I got to pay to use a very slow Windows XP brick to check the internet and see that the Ice Climbers are coming back to Smash and that Nas dropped an album produced by Kanye oh man we eatin so good.
I also ate good, i got a steak last night and i couldn’t stop smiling after i ate it. I stopped by now that i paid for all my food last night and this morning and also a tiny resupply that came out to about $70 oof that hurts to think about.
There was also a campfire last night that i got bullied into playing guitar for but i didn’t sit in the circle cuz man that’s not my scene. Also i tried to teach two people how to play Euchre last night with a girl from Wisconsin and that was kind of a mess. but also over there they use 6s and 4s to keep score which come on guys two fives work just fine why do you do scoring that way.
whoo we got a meaty one this post. a lot of sierra action all compacted, and told with minimal grandeur. a disservice, a shame, but understandable. an attempt must follow.
climbing up and over those snowy passes was otherworldly, treacherous, not complicated but rather demanding. generally light on trail blazing, hundreds had already walked these mountains before me. decisions came from which set of footprints to follow, which would give more security and less risk. such a wild highlight. i suppose that’s why this one is more photo heavy, thousands of words are required to capture the magesty of traveling through this crazy mountain range. mornings of ascents, daytimes of overpowering brightness, evenings of descent, nights in the valleys surrounded by life.
hostel california in bishop. patient zero watched shindler’s list on vhs on an old crt tv in the common room. the gathering couches outside full of lounging hikers. fantastic spot. i got taco bell with some folks from down under, they were suitably unimpressed.
shoutouts to moneymaker, you’re still on my mind whenever i hear can’t stop by the red hot chili peppers.
muir pass. they sure picked out a doozy to name after this mountainphile.
lol that jack reacher book. what delightful shlock.
i can still fully picture that vvr steak i got. oh baby what a feast. the designated last bite so fatty and delicious.
two line breaks are needed for that steak. i don’t often splurge for steak, and splurge is the right word for ordering an expensive steak in the middle of nowhere.
man i dunno 