Day 9: April 21st

A cloud hung over me as we started our first day back on the trail after our break. We had to say goodbye to Alex’s parents, warm food and beds, and the comfort of knowing, almost certainly, that we would not be eaten alive in our sleep.
We had decided that we would “only” do a ten mile day because we had just had our first zero day and wanted to ease back into the trail as best we could. As soon as we began walking and Ric was out of sight I began crying (again). I felt that I had completely lost sight as to why we were doing this whole hike in the first place. I began feeling like this was all selfish to just disappear from our families’ lives for five or more months. We were needed back home and we were CHOOSING to be in misery and pain and fear (for me) in the desert instead. WHY!? Neither of us had an answer to that and we just had to try to pray that the purpose would become clear again soon.
Aside from my lackluster feeling of the trail we’ve also had to deal with a lot of pain. Pain has really been one of the biggest problems for us so far, as one might imagine walking fifteen or more miles a day is made a lot harder when you can barely walk. Alex had a right pinkie toe that had essentially exploded, fallen arches that were causing him immense pain, a very painful ankle, and a knot in his shoulder that was so hard he thought it was a clip from his backpack poking him. He also had contracted a mystery rash on his legs and arm and severe neck pain. Now I had seemed to have developed Elephantitis of the legs (I didn’t even recognize my own legs, they were so swollen they literally looked like a man’s, and “cankle” doesn’t even come close to describing this!), my right pinkie toe had started to fall off, literally the whole top half of it, a hideous blister (pictured last entry) horrible arch pain and now bad knee pains, especially when descending.
I continued to feel down all day and Alex and I tried to make it better by just pacing ourselves and taking breaks in the blistering sun, or the shade out of the blistering sun rather, whenever we wanted to and making camp fairly early, by ourselves, at five or so.
Our tent was set up on a ridge overlooking Warner Springs, it was a beautiful view but it also just reminded me again of the family that we had left and how isolated I again felt.