Day 11: April 23rd

I had had to take two Nyquil’s the night before so that I could sleep through another solitary night with no other fellow campers and with strange scratching noises I heard coming from the dark outside our tent. After a somewhat restful sleep I woke up to someone coughing and unzipping their sleeping bag, I rolled over to discover that Alex was still soundly snoring (it’s become a bizarre hissing sound each night now as his allergies get worse) I checked the clock and realized that we had overslept. It was already 5:15 and the tiniest hints of light were starting to show in the sky. I woke Alex up and heard the cough again, we guessed that someone must have walked past us in the night after we had fallen asleep (totally possible when we passed out around 7:30).
Our solar charger finally had started working the night before and I had been able to charge our ipod. Alex and I passed a man packing up not far from where we had slept, his name was Marco. Alex went to filter some water for us out of an algae thickened “creek” and I went ahead to try to use my first wind as best as I could. I put on my headphones and sang along to Ray Lamontagne and Fiest as I watched the sun rise over the hills. Hiking by myself in the cool air in a peaceful solitude was actually nice. Listening to the soothing music cleared my head and helped me not to feel so harshly about the trail. Was I reconsidering quitting? I wasn’t quite there yet.
Ric and Ginny (Alex’s parents) were meeting up with us again at the Paradise Café ( a hiker haven that we had heard about endlessly) on the Palms to Pines highway later in the day and we had to make it there before the restaurant closed.
The day got increasingly hotter and the trail never seemed to get any shorter. Slowly the bile I had for the trail began to rise again. It was so hot, the ridges we had to cross were so steep (yet again because of private land use issues we had to go far out of our way and actually on the edge of a canyon that had been blasted into the side of a mountain, very steeply) and my feet and knees were killing me. Along with Beyonce blasting in my ears I had “WHY!!!???” screaming in my head.
I told Alex that I had to get out, as yet another panic attack began to rise in me I said through clenched teeth that if he would let me quit I would do anything, even skydive (possible more scared of flying and subsequently jumping out of a plane than I am of cougars) or walk on the glass walkway that now hangs over the Grand Canyon. We kept walking in silence until I burst out in tears uncontrollably sobbing about my life. When you are hiking for so many hours and so many days your mind will make you think of things you might normally repress. Well, I had hit my limit and now everything was spilling out. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, I cried for the pain of my body, the fact that I was giving up on something that we both had wanted so badly and for the fact that I didn’t want to quit at all, I just felt that I had to.
Alex and I talked for a long time about our options and how we were both feeling about the trail. The thing we kept coming back to was that we didn’t feel like we were done yet. Although I couldn’t imagine myself on the trail for five more months of this, I couldn’t imagine myself having quit the trail either. We picked ourselves up and hiked to another water cache, we signed our trail names (Alex is 2-Pack , because when I was about to die in the afternoons he would offer to carry my pack for me and the name caught on. My name is Budget cause I save that money) and read the note from our friend Gumpy Bear telling us that he would meet us for the Jose burger later that afternoon at the Paradise Café.
To avoid a total nervous breakdown on my part Alex called his parents to have them pick us up a few miles early before the café. While we waited for his parents Alex and I had the revelation we had been waiting for and it came in the form of a quote that Gumpy Bear had told us “Hike your own hike”.
It seems so obvious but it becomes far too easy to get pulled into a mile race where we’re trying to keep up with much more experienced hikers. Although I hated sleeping by ourselves it is much better than being absolutely miserable every day because we’re pushing ourselves further than our bodies are ready to go. As Alex and I decided that we would no longer try to go so far just to keep up with other people and that we would go just until we were tired or found a good camping spot (within reason) we felt a peace wash over us and finally a renewed sense of purpose as to why we were doing this whole trip in the first place.
Were we on our ways to finding ourselves already? I don’t know but it felt good, and a lot less scary when I thought about returning to the trail after our two zero days in Idyllwild.