Day 4: Wednesday, May 8

Cowboy camping at super-secret aerie (73.7?), a 17.8 mile day

Woke up to the threat of sun on our campsite. Threat quickly subsided and I had to put my windbreaker on after a mile. Temps still in upper 40s with thick fog after 3 miles, which was a gross horse trough water source. Passed on that, even though I could've used the water. Ended up stretching my last half-liter over the next 9 miles, during which it got sunny, to the next real water source, a fire tank at Rodriguez Spur. Luckily it never got especially warm (maybe 65 degrees) and the trail, despite traversing big mountains, was gentle as a newborn bunny. If only all long-distance trails in this country were so well-built ...

Two-hour break at that fire tank, in the shade of the tank itself, after which I was much improved. Walked last 5ish miles with Alex, who pushed on to get to the road, Scissors Crossing in 3 miles, where he's meeting some friends tonight. I'ma go there in the morning and hitch into Julian for some sort of enormous breakfast, as well as grocery shopping. Climb up from the Scissors into the San Felipe hills is legendarily hot and dry, so I might spend the better part of the day in town before heading back out in the evening to do it. My body could use the rest ... still feeling that second day in my legs.

Day 3: Tuesday, May 7

Tenting at a boulder field (55.9), a 13.3 mile day

Woke up to the same shit outside our cabin, wind rain and 100yd visibility fog. Dithered for a few hours, left cabin at 11, moseyed to store, talked to Lenny and Becca who had survived their night out but were very wet and now taking the day off at the Lodge, finally started hiking at 11:45. Bow stayed back to zero with them. Forecast called for a clearer afternoon, which was sort of right. Rain essentially was gone for the rest of the day. Clouds varied in intensity, the wind never went anywhere and only got stronger. Had fashioned a pack cover out of my second trash compactor bag and it made an almighty racket blowing behind me all afternoon. Would guess some 40-50mph gusts at the worst parts, although the trail usually moved to the leeward side of a mountain soon enough. I was only once tempted to de-layer (I was wearing three ... it never got above 50 degrees today) and I was quickly disabused of that notion upon rounding a corner into said wind.

Attempted to visit a Shriner camp after 5ish miles because sources said they were hiker friendly and offered water, which I was wanting. Place was like a zombie trailer park ... Office shut, no water, no people in fezzes, just an icy wind whipping through and one woman in a golf cart staring at me like she'd never seen a hiker before. Very disappointing. Scored a liter from a small cache after 10ish miles, enough to allow me to dry camp here now. Legs were feeling it after yesterday and there's no need for big miles because I'm trying to set up for a one-day, in-and-out visit to town of Julian at mile 77. Camping with Alex, a guy from Iowa that I met on the trail today. Second straight night someone that I have known for only a few hours has asked me if I know any dead baby jokes. They do say thru-hikers bond especially easily. Good times.

Scenery this afternoon was of the jaw-dropping variety. We're now in the Anza-Borrego desert, according to my maps. Can only imagine yesterday might have been this beautiful if we hadn't been in a cloud all day.

Day 1: Sunday, May 5

Tenting at Lake Morena (20.0), a 20.0 mile day

Woke up at 5 in our motel in Upland, on the road by 5:45. Breakfast at IHOP in Miramar, where the only other patrons were military men. Then we got stuck in traffic, at 8:30 am on a Sunday ... California ftw. No trouble finding Campo or the trailhead. We were both impressed already by the mountain scenery from the interstate ... Both of us I guess knew it was there in this part of SoCal, but had never tried to picture it.

Surprisingly, there were only about 6 names in the log book at the monument from today, and I got the feeling I was the last one. Started walking at 10 sharp, didn't see a soul for about seven miles, all of which were stupidly easy, helped by the fact that it was only about 65 degrees out with an occasional cool breeze. None of this 90 degree baking sun business.

After 11 miles, caught up to Jeff, dude my age from the Loo. Tall lanky strong looking guy but he's still trying to limit his miles because he's recovering from tibia stress fracture. We bonded over this. Soon ran into John, older fellow also going for a thru-hike who did most of the AT last year. Chatted a bit, then I went on ahead still on to make 20.

Wanted to rest before the Hauser canyon climb, the 1000 foot centerpiece for the day, but couldn't because thunderclouds were gathering, wind picking up and the trail was kind of exposed in that area. It did spit rain for a few minutes, then got off-and-on sun again. Climb was pretty tame, I was surprised how easy everything felt today. At the top, rain started to threaten again and temp dropped about ten degrees. Had to stop a few times and batten down my pack to make sure all the important stuff that normally lives on the outside of my pack (groundsheet, pad, camera, phone) was now waterproofed inside somewhere. Rain did start and didn't let up for about an hour and a half. Set up camp in it, ate dinner in my tent. This has to be one of the saddest first-night thru-hiker gatherings in Lake Morena history ... There are maybe 8 hikers here but everyone is huddled in their own tent instead of the big meet and greet that I figured would be happening on my first night out. It was about 50 degrees the whole time it was raining and afterward ... It's one of the great ironies that I ran away from the Oregon climate, which I often hate with a passion, to the Southern California desert only for the climate to follow me here (and leave it 80 and sunny in Oregon, which it is today).

Feel astonishingly good physically after 20 miles on a first day without a ton of training, but mentally spent. Severely sleep deprived and kind of emotionally exhausted by the past few days. Also somewhat deadened by the weather, although I presume the regular desert stuff will pick back up in a few days.

Day 2: Monday, May 6

At Mt. Laguna Lodge (42.6), a 22.6 mile day

Only one word comes to mind for today's weather: shit-tastic. Woke up at 6 when the stake supporting my tent pole finally gave out. It had done better than I was expecting, shitty loose soil all around my tentsite. It had rained all night, was still raining then, but I was happy to see most of the important stuff was dry inside my dubious Hexamid setup. Got things organized over in the campground bathroom building, where it was warm and dry. Met Lenny and Bow (actual spelling) there. Lenny is my age, from New Zealand, trying to thru-hike with his lady friend Rebecca from England. Bow also my age from Olympia, WA. Headed out with them, immediately lost the trail, realized it after about two miles, farted around for a bit as all our gps and phone devices failed (we did have paper maps too). Eventually we ran into a known streambed and a road, the latter of which took us back to the trail. We missed 4 trail miles, including a climb. Oops.

Weather was okay at this point and for the next few hours--cloudy but dry, 50 degrees or so--but went downhill as we went up. Afternoon was mostly a climb, Lenny and Becca dropped back, and Bow and I basically walked into a 45-degree windy, very rainy cloud layer and it stayed that way for about twelve miles. No stopping, we were too wet and cold. Quickly became clear that it was "hypothermia conditions," as they would say in my WFA class, camping started to look out of the question and we should try to get to Mt. Laguna with its potentially pricy lodging for the night. Got there at 4:30ish, met another dude named Gavin to go in on a cabin with ... $86 split between three was better than I was expecting. At that point my hands were too numb to sign the receipt for the room ... My signature looked like Jack Lew's and was nowhere near the line. This place does have a microwave, fridge and stove, and bed space for three comfortably. And hot showers ... Mmm, hot showers. Dinner, for the record, was two microwaved Cup Noodles, two Budweisers, and 12 Oreos dunked in a pint of whole milk. All bought during cold-and-hunger-shopping at the adjacent store.

Could have dressed better today for the conditions, but they came on gradually enough that by the time I noticed them it was too late and I was soaked. Turns out I'm barely prepared, certainly not ideally, for sustained cold and wet weather. My clothing setup is much better suited for hot dry days and cold nights. Which is what 80% of the days will be out here, just not the first two. Probably not tomorrow either, from what we hear.

To Cheryl Strayed wannabes thinking of the PCT: hiking is not a cure-all

I got in touch with my inner 45-year-old woman and absolutely tore through Wild by Cheryl Strayed over the weekend. I found it a very enjoyable read, much better than I was anticipating. As a friend suggested to me before I read it, its main strength, aside from solid writing on a sentence-to-sentence level, is its editing. It's perfectly paced: it never beats the dead horse, so to speak, about any of the main plot arcs—the mom, the hike, the drugs, the dudes. The structure of the book as a whole is so tidy; fifteen years of retrospect and a good editor have really helped distill it (this may also explain why people who publish their own hiking memoirs on a shoestring in close proximity to their hike tend to create such uneven works).

But I have a big problem with the story. It's not that she went out grossly unprepared for hiking—that's pretty common both in hiking literature and in real life. It should be fairly obvious to anyone, experienced hiker or not, that this resulted in abject physical and mental misery on the trail, and it's a nice cautionary tale in that regard for everybody. Every Cheryl wannabe who reads the book and decides to go on a hike is going to think twice about their gear choices, because the descriptions of the blisters, random pains and her overall exhaustion are pretty lurid. At first I was put off by how these sections are written in a slightly lighthearted tone, because in my experience, hiking in pain is your WORLD when you are out there and it really doesn't seem funny at the time. Later I decided that this levity was a result of a) the author having fifteen years of retrospect from which to look back and laugh, b) relatively speaking, the blisters etc. are still not as serious of a problem as the ones from her outside life, and c) it keeps the entire book from being one huge downer. It's easy for any experienced hiker to tut-tut when they read about her preparation, call her an idiot or whatever, but who cares? We were all like that at some point.

My real problem with the book is the central conceit that one, few-month-long hike can be a panacea for anyone. It says it right in the title: From Lost to Found on the PCT. She went on this hike and, after a series of identifiable and discrete transition points, she was totally rehabilitated! How convenient! There is no afterword that says, "This hike was the first of many steps in the 180 that I was able to accomplish regarding the direction of my life." No, the hike was everything: she was fed into the PCT machine a depressive nymphomaniac heroin junkie, and got spat out at the Columbia River happy, sage and responsible. I am not at all denying that a long adventure can significantly change someone, even for the better; I just think it's unlikely that 3 months and 1100 miles on the PCT apparently fixed everything for her.

The last few paragraphs are careful to note that, as she finished, she didn't know any of this at the time, which is good—it would be even more delusional for someone to get to the end of a few months of journeying and say that they knew right then exactly how they'd changed. The most you can say while you are participating in any adventure is that it is novel and, well, adventurous. You can't determine its sub-surface effect on you without a hefty buffer period of retrospection. But the book does make it seem that, even after that period of retrospection, she has determined that the hike was the cure-all in her life. Now I don't know Cheryl Strayed; she might very well be telling the precise truth, instead of artfully presenting the truth to make it fit into the type of narrative that sells millions of books (which is what I've implied so far). But even if this hike really did rehabilitate her perfectly, that's not going to be the case for 90% of the people who go out to replicate her feat. If you're tired of your own flaws and think that a few months on the AT or PCT is going to fix them right away, you've probably got another thing coming. You'll get back and realize after awhile that those flaws might have been temporarily suppressed, but don't really disappear. People just don't change that much that quickly.

This has been Scrub's self-help session. Now go back and eat that brownie you passed up earlier—might as well do it now because you'll never change and you can't resist it, you FATASS! HAHAHA! No, just kidding. I do hold out hope for people who go on adventures for rehabilitative purposes. It's just that, in my worldview, things are never as tidy as this particular ~non-fiction~ book makes them out to be. I'm going out on the PCT in a week and a half not because it's going to make me a better person; heck, I might come back even worse, more maladaptive to the real world than I already am. I'm going because it's fun: I like walking, I like journeys, I like places I've never been, I like new people, I like the West, etc., etc. It's going to be novel and exciting if nothing else. IF it does more for me ... well, I'll figure that out much later. I don't care if a few hundred lost sheep read Wild and decide to stray out onto the PCT this year or in the future; I just hope they go out with grounded expectations about the inherent value of hiking trips.

Some food and money stats from the middle of my AT hike

I have no idea how I was able to keep this up so thoroughly, but for the first 600 miles of the Appalachian Trail in 2011 I took a page out of my girlfriend Kristin's book and noted and categorized every single expenditure of my hike. I aborted this practice abruptly after Bland, VA, which was about six weeks into proceedings--most of the novelty of trail life had worn off by then and I had gotten too lazy to keep writing entries like "pizza & Dew - $17" or "moonshine - $9.27 + one day of blindness" over and over again. The tallies after six-plus weeks were as follows:

Lodging: $226
Prepared food (i.e. town food): $436
Alcohol, separate from that ordered with meals: $163
Resupply: $324
Misc. (laundry, tips, ATM fees, etc.): $81.50

This goes to show just how ridiculous the cravings for food and drink in town can be. Keep in mind that I chose restaurants and food options modestly, and everything is super-cheap in the South--the ledger is full of $5-15 meals and purchases, nothing crazy (except one trip to the brewpub in Gatlinburg, but that's another story). It does include three and a half days of Trail Days in Damascus, Va., which set me back about $100 in meals and $50 in beer. Unlike most of the attendees, I wasn't even day-drinking or doing drugs ... lame, I know. I was, however, relying on restaurants for every single meal, as I did, and as most hikers do, in every town. It turns out this adds up quickly.

The message boards that I read often feature people saying, "I don't plan on eating or drinking much in town on my thru-hike; what should I budget for?" Sweet, sweet baby Jesus are these people wrong--and usually there are a lot of other people around to politely tell them as much. Unless they are on a tight budget and very experienced at handling one, or they are in that minority of people who really are genuinely uncomfortable in any town or city, they'll be stuffing their faces at restaurants whenever they get the chance. Burning 4,000 calories a day will do that to a man.

And speaking of calories, I was also keeping track of total ounces of peanut butter and Nutella consumed, as well as total number of chocolate bars. I briefly tracked my Little Debbie fudge round/oatmeal creme pie consumption as well, but after a few tries I found these packed too heavy and bulky for my liking. I kept these statistics almost a month past the previous ones, up until Luray (pron. LOO-ray), Va., 930 miles and two and a half months in, at which point I stopped for a weeklong break to see Kristin and my family in Virginia Beach. When I started back up again, the stats-keeping impulses had been left somewhere behind. The results:

Peanut butter: 217 oz, or 13 jars.
Nutella: 93.1 oz, or 7 jars.
Chocolate bars: 85.

The peanut butter was almost always Skippy or Skippy Natural because Cooks Illustrated says it's the best brand and they're never wrong. Also I was told at several points that Skippy is the de facto peanut butter of thru-hikers everywhere and no one knows why (it can't be that we're all reading the same issues of Cooks Illustrated ... can it?). Anyway, this was about halfway through the mileage that I ended up completing, although I didn't know that at the time. Properly mortified by these statistics and their implications for my arteries, I tailed off ever so slightly from the junk foods as I went further north, although I never came close to giving up PB and Nutella altogether. Put together in a spoon at a 2:1 ratio, they absolutely give the strongest, best-sustained boost of any trail food I've tried so far. On the PCT this year, I want to say I won't be relying on them as heavily as on the AT, because my breakfasts and dinners will be quite a bit better (see previous posts for details), but it's really hard to know in advance how one's body will start to react after a few weeks of 20-mile days.

A final note: I wrote this whole entry on my phone--no internet access because I'm in the process of moving--so if it goes through and actually ends up on my blog, I will be pretty happy about my chances for updating successfully along the PCT.

Scrub's glossary of important trail terms

Whenever I hear rock climbers say something like, "And then he did a totally heinous dyno onto this manky overhang," I usually want to puke. That's not necessarily because I suck at rock climbing, or that I have known some climbers who have been real asshats (both of which are true)—at its core, my annoyance is based on my failure to understand the jargon of a group of people who are doing something pretty cool. You see climbers doing neat things, and you want to know about them, but you can't, because they've developed their own little argot that's inaccessible to the rest of us. Thru-hikers do the same thing. If you want a comprehensive and mostly PG list of trail slang, check out this article on WhiteBlaze. But below I am supplementing that list with a glossary of the terms that you're especially likely to see me using on this blog in the future. Study up now, so that when you're reading my August 14 blog post and I throw out a banana-blazing reference, you'll know the score.

THE BASICS

zero day — a day in which zero miles are hiked. Often spent in towns, but the on-trail zero can occur from time to time (for instance, Manks and I waited out a storm for a full day in the Fire Wardens Cabin Shelter north of Hanover, NH on the AT in 2011).

nearo day — not quite zero miles, but not a full day's hiking either. Fiddling around in town accounts for most nearos.
   (note: nearo and zero can also be used as intransitive verbs: "Cynthia nearoed into Idyllwild and spent most of the afternoon gorging on ice cream.")

trail magic — any act of generosity, often the provision of food or drink, to hikers by members of the community. Can be planned or unplanned. Examples include someone leaving a cooler of Gatorades/sodas at a road crossing, or grilling hot dogs and handing out fresh fruit by the side of the trail for hikers to enjoy. Very common in the beginning stages of a NOBO PCT or AT hike.

cowboy camping — sleeping out under the stars, no shelter of any kind. Not very common on the AT because there's seemingly always the threat of rain; very common in spring and summer out West. I've read some people say they had to pitch their tarp/tent a total of 5 times over an entire PCT thru-hike.

NOBO/SOBO/flip-flop — northbound, southbound, or different-sections-in-different-directions thru-hikers. People flip for any number of reasons, but running out of time before winter is the biggest one.

hiker trash — a nebulous term. Refers to the fact that hikers generally start to look, and sometimes act, like shit after a few weeks on the trail. Used as a term of pride or scorn, depending on speaker and context.

hiker hunger, or simply the hunger — refers to the incredible rate of metabolism acquired after a few weeks of hiking. Feats like eating $26 of Taco Bell food, having to order multiple entrees at sit-down restaurants, or consuming upwards of 10,000 calories on a zero day become possible. Tends to outlast the trail and result in significant weight gain upon returning to civilization.

SUBCATEGORY 1: TYPES OF BLAZING

The Appalachian Trail is marked for its entire length by white blazes painted on trees. People have since combined other colors with "-blazing" to mean many different things. Such as:

pink-blazing — adjusting one's hiking schedule to be in the company of a lady

banana-blazing — the opposite of pink-blazing. Significantly rarer due to the imbalanced gender ratios among thru-hikers, but still possible.

blue-blazing — taking any side trail that reconnects to the white-blazed trail eventually. On the AT, these are sometimes marked with blue blazes.

retro-blazing — hiking a portion of old trail which has since been re-routed

yellow-blazing — skipping sections of trail via car. Yellow-blazers are severely annoying to me.

aqua-blazing — on an AT thru-hike, canoeing through Shenandoah National Park instead of hiking. People on the whole, myself included, don't get nearly as morally uptight about this as about yellow-blazing, mainly because it sounds awesome and everyone who actually forced themselves to hike through SNP is jealous.

brown-blazing — 1) leaving the trail to find a place to poop. 2) hiking with giardia or other pooping-related issues

MISCELLANEOUS

hitch bitch — the female, hopefully long-legged and long-haired, that you stay nearby whenever a potential hitchhike is coming up. Cars are much more likely to stop for her than for you (assuming you are the average grimy, bearded male). Also called a "ride bride" by people of taste.

Type 2 fun — not fun to do at the time, but fun to talk about later. Contrasted with Type 1 fun (fun at the time, fun to talk about later) and Type 3 fun (not fun at the time, not fun to talk about later).

Vitamin I — a lot easier to say or spell for some people than "ibuprofen"

cameling — drinking a bottle (or two) of water right at the water source, then filling up again before moving on

the Dirty G — Giardia. The enema enemy of hikers everywhere.

Body Glide — anti-chafing lubricant. In my top five of essential pieces of gear. Would not have been able to walk some days on the AT without this stuff.

trail tail — carnal relations between or among hikers

Connecticut cute — refers to the state by which a northbound AT hiker might eventually find a given member of the opposite sex attractive. Connecticut, for reference, is ten states and usually 3.5 - 4 months into the trail. "Georgia cute" would be more of a compliment.

PUDs — Pointless Up & Downs. The AT has hundreds of these, the well-built and more gently-graded Western trails not so much.

gram weenie — someone overly concerned with cutting ounces from their pack weight. They may want to talk about gear a lot more than you do.

base weight — the weight of one's pack excluding consumables (water, food, fuel) and clothes worn. Skin-out weight includes clothes and shoes worn. Ultralighters might go an entire thru-hike with a base weight at 5 or 6 lb. Mine is 11 lb for comparison. Average is probably 15-20.

goofer — a weekend warrior. Someone carrying more weight for a 6-mile day hike than you are for a 2,000-mile thru. Someone decked out in shiny new clothes that an REI salesperson convinced them were necessary. Someone hiking 1.5 mph convinced they're going 3. Someone doing their dishes in the water source. Etc., etc.

SUBCATEGORY 2: FOOD CHALLENGES

Half-gallon Challenge — at the store at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in Pennsylvania, which is on the AT at roughly the half-way point, eat a half-gallon of ice cream purchased from the freezer. I've heard something like 75% of attempts are successful. I was one of them, but it was a long, disgusting slog (1 hour, 11 minutes). Here's a picture of me doing it in 2011.

Pancake Challenge — consume five pancakes at one pound each in under two hours at the cafe in Seiad Valley, CA on the PCT. I think only 6 thru-hikers have ever completed this challenge. Whatever it is, it's a minuscule percentage of the number who have attempted.

Case Challenge — From the VA 606 road crossing, which is 24 miles before Pearisburg, VA on the AT, obtain a case of beer. Over the next 24 hours, hike the 24 miles into Pearisburg consuming all 24 of your beers in the process. This one is particularly sadistic and of the 10 people I knew who tried it in 2011, only one finished.

McDonald's Challenge — 50 McNuggets and a gallon of McD's Sweet Tea in under an hour. Only the McNuggets part is known to have been completed.

Mayo jar + spork = kitchen

That whole thing about the alcohol stove and the joy of trail cooking? Forget it. I changed my mind a few weeks ago and I'm back to being a stoveless hiker, as I was on the Appalachian Trail. Backpacking without a stove is somewhat of a fringe technique—I'd guess that less than 10% of long-distance hikers do it for an extended length of time. But it works for me, and here are the brief pros and cons, as I discovered on the AT. Pros:

1. NO FUSS. This doesn't refer just to the possibility of mechanical failure, which is essentially nil with some alcohol stoves. It refers to the entire act of cooking: finding a flat place to set the stove, making sure it doesn't start a wildfire, tending to the kitchen when the weather sucks, carefully packing the stove and fuel, rationing fuel, resupplying fuel in town. When I hike, I am LAZY and HUNGRY and I want that food in my stomach as SOON as I stop moving. No fiddling around and waiting for 15 minutes while it boils and soaks.
2. You can eat whenever and wherever you damn well feel like it. This is especially nice in the tent in bad weather.
3. Cold foods may, but don't necessarily have to, use less water than cooking. It's a nice option to have when water is scarce, as on, say, most of the PCT.
4. Meals are a vague concept when resupplying (not always a pro; see below). Basically, as you're standing in the grocery store, you don't feel so limited to "dinner food," "lunch food," and "snack food" when you're eating them all interchangeably at different times of the day.
5. Weight savings? Disputable. Some cold food staples have a lot of water or fatty weight built in (think peanut butter, for instance). That said, if someone really had their diet dialed in and was using a lot of dehydrated food that reconstitutes well with cold water, they would absolutely save weight over someone with a stove and fuel. This is what I'm trying to accomplish this year.

Cons:

1. Variety is limited, especially if your resupply takes place only in grocery stores along the way. Some of my favorite no-cook foods, instant hummus and instant refried beans, are not found in most grocery stores and need to be shipped from home, where there is this glorious thing called the Winco bulk aisle. You may get into a rut, as I sometimes did on the AT, where you walk into each grocery store and don't have the imagination to come up with new meal ideas that really satisfy you. But I'm not sure that this problem is limited to stoveless hikers—a lot of people who cook their meals basically eat the same hot salty mush (ramen, Lipton or Knorr instant rice/pasta, instant oatmeal) each day. Being able to receive maildrops from home, modified to your real-time specifications (i.e. not all prepared before the beginning of the hike), increases the potential food variety for just about every hiker.
2. Meals are a vague concept (see above for why this is a good thing too). The whole no-set-meals concept on the AT frequently resulted in me taking more food, and hence more weight, than was necessary, as it was harder to plan for what I needed. People who have really figured out their trail diet have learned how to determine their food needs by weight and calories per mile, not by planning for specific meals. For instance, Scott Williamson lost zero pounds on his record-setting 64-day PCT thru-hike. But I'm not at that stage of understanding my metabolism yet. This summer I'm sure I will learn more.
3. Breakfast. I almost never found no-cook breakfast food that satisfied me on the AT. Pop Tarts and granola bars are shit when you have to eat them day after day, cereal doesn't go well with just water, and powdered milk gives me awful acid reflux. Nowadays I'm working on a homemade muesli concoction that can be soaked overnight, Swiss-style, and eaten on the go in the morning. Again, it will have to be shipped from home to ensure that it's (a) what I like, and (b) is the right amount for each section.
4. Not good in very cold weather. Fortunately, there's not a lot of that on an AT or PCT thru-hike. It may freeze overnight, but during a normally-timed thru-hike there will hardly be any days where you walk all day, and have to prepare food, in freezing weather.

So what do I actually eat on the trail if I don't use a stove? Well ...

Breakfast: 

• That muesli I just mentioned. Ideally, it's soaked in water for a long time beforehand, overnight if possible. Sometimes, if I have to buy granola or cereal from the store and it doesn't go well with water, I'll soak it in peanut butter instead. (You see, when you're a hiker, it's okay to write sentences like that.)

Snacks/lunch: 

• cheese
• summer sausage/pepperoni
• Nutella
• peanut butter
• chocolate bars
• Snyder's flavored pretzel bits (Buffalo wing + honey mustard and onion = ambrosia)
• jerky
• mustard
• sometimes a bread medium like bagel-thins or tortillas. My consumption of bread decreased as the AT went on; I found I rarely desired it and it was too dry to ever want to eat. I envision a similar issue on the PCT.

Dinner (if it's not more of the above): 

• couscous
• instant refried beans
• instant mashed potatoes (Idahoan only)
• powdered hummus
• ramen (without the flavor packet)

These can all be rehydrated nicely without hot water. They also all benefit from an enthusiastic application of olive oil and spices—the spices added at home, the olive oil added on-trail. The couscous and beans that I have been experimenting with, both from the Winco bulk aisle, take about 25 minutes to come fully back to life with cold water. The ramen I'm not sure about yet, but I've heard half an hour. I plan on using either a screw-top tupperware container or perhaps something like an empty plastic mayonnaise jar to let the rehydration take place as I hike, rather than after I've stopped. Again, waiting around sucks.

Going stoveless takes away some of the burden on Kristin, my maildrop coordinator and self-appointed Dehydration Doyenne, which is probably a good thing. We're way behind on learning the dehydrator, and there's only a month left to figure it out, in which time we each have only a hundred other things to take care of. The new food strategy is easier to manage logistically, but still leaves plenty of room for experimentation and variety. After the AT, I thought I might not like to go the no-cook route again, but I hadn't really paused to consider how much I could improve on my food options if customized maildrops are thrown into the mix. Luckily, I have someone who is willing and able to assume that role for me. 

Keeping in touch with the world of words on-trail

That store-bought white is pure,

Not destined to endure

The hiker’s daily flood

Of sweat and dirt and mud.

Some grimy, smelly blight

That ten washings will not smite.

So radiant garments gray;

Nothing white can stay.

People who know me well know that I can sling cute poetry all day. The above is one of my efforts from the AT, and the only one that I bothered to record in my own journal. The rest were scattered in trail logbooks up and down the East Coast, and those don't end up in a centralized location, so they're basically lost and I don't remember any of them anyway. It turns out that someone out there thinks a lot like me, because there was a poem posted on WhiteBlaze a while ago called "Sand and Snow" that was a takeoff on "Fire and Ice," also by Frost.

I remembered a few days ago that I had written that little ditty and it got me thinking of how I handle literature while I'm hiking. The practical concern of weight infuses every decision: most thru-hikers are not willing to carry long books because they're heavy and don't pack well. I'm no exception. When I was on the AT, I didn't really have the urge or necessarily the attention span to be caught up in a novel most of the time. I did finish a few, but what I really needed--and what I pretty much always need, and always come back to if I'm away for it for any time at all--is to see the English language wrought by a skilled artist from time to time. The form in which this is accomplished is immaterial. Long-form feature articles, poems, books, well-crafted entries by the anonymous wordsmiths who wrote in trail registers before me--on the AT, I ate all of these up as they became available to me. Kristin sent me articles that she knew I'd like from The Browser's Best of the Moment feed, printed out in 8-point font and squeezed onto a few sheets of printer paper. I'd read them and then either pass them on to someone else or burn them in a campfire. This worked well, but that was in the Paper Age and I was limited to hard copies for anything I wanted to read.

Fast forward two years and I now own a smartphone and a Kindle. My strategy for reading on the PCT was originally going to be to pack the Kindle, but I decided against it because it's of limited utility to me. To a voracious reader who inhales whole novels every few days, an e-reader absolutely transforms hiking. But for me, I just need to sip from the well of the English language often enough to keep my mind from shriveling up. Therefore, I just have two items, The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry and a Complete Works of William Shakespeare, synced to the Kindle app on my phone (no novels: reading those on a phone would be too eye-intensive). There should be plenty to chew on within those, especially in the opening sections of the hike when I'm too excited to concentrate on books before bed. Maybe later when I calm down and the novelty of the trail existence has worn off, I'll want to sink into novels and I can have the Kindle shipped to myself.

One thing that I look forward to in this setup is the chance to memorize poetry, which is something I used to do more often but haven't undertaken since high school. Someone in the New Yorker wrote a piece recently on the virtues of memorizing poetry but, in a move which will just shock readers of the New Yorker, he did not actually explain any of the virtues, instead finding several ways to state that it's something he's done a lot of and enjoys. I, similarly, can't come up with a good reason for doing it other than that it comes somewhat easily to me and I like it. I do know that it would make for great mental exercise while hiking. For instance, iambic meter is just crying out to be recalled at the rhythm of one's own footsteps: "When IN disGRACE with FORtune AND men's EYES"; "To STRIVE, to SEEK, to FIND, and NOT to YIELD"; "ToMORRow, TO fresh FIELDS and PAStures NEW" and so on.

I've heard that people who hike with FM radios develop lifelong trail associations with the popular songs from the summer of their thru-hike. I didn't even have a radio, but I will never again be able to hear "Strawberry Wine" without thinking of Manks and Perro in Connecticut on the AT in 2011 ... it's a long story. Who's to say poetry couldn't function the same way? If I decide to have a go at memorizing "If—" one sunny afternoon in the Sierra, I would probably remember that sunny afternoon every time I see or think of that poem for the rest of my life. Not bad.

I will close with this unrelated funny story about books and hiking:

In recent years, there have been a lot of Germans on the AT after a National Geographic-esque thru-hiking documentary was made auf Deutsch. One such German was on the trail in Virginia one day in 2011, cleaning out some books and magazines that had been left behind at a shelter. He had just started a campfire and was right in the middle of tossing one of the books into it when his friend (American) walked up and, without missing a beat, said, "Oh, you guys still do that?"

Hiking as a gay man and hiking with a significant other: two guest perspectives

That thing about trail love from a few weeks ago has seemed flimsier and flimsier each time I've looked back on it. I had such grand designs on a three-part series filled with all manner of wit and anecdote—I was all set to deploy some of my favorite terms, like "onanism" and "hide the salami"—but it's never going to happen. What is going to happen is that I will reprint, here and now and without much additional commentary, the contributions of two friends who, prior to me giving up, had produced very thoughtful answers to some of my questions.

First is my AT friend Soulslosher, who was the only openly gay thru-hiker I knew. I asked him to write anything, anything at all about hiking through Appalachia as a gay male, and he gave me this awesome response:

My sexuality, it was one of the last things on my mind when I stood atop Springer Mountain. Yet when my thru hike was fully underway, in my mind, I was confronted with just how I was going to handle my sexuality while hiking the trail. I was far removed from my comfort zone in the liberal Northeast and felt as if I had to dial myself down. Rural communities can be unwelcoming to LGBT people and I was slightly concerned if the inevitable thru hiker feelings of loneliness, sadness, etc. would be amplified since I likely wouldn’t have many, if any, gay people to relate to. 

In the very beginning of my hike, I considered if I should promote my sexuality, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, by having some sort of LGBT orientated patch on my pack. I also contemplated trying to hide it or be honest and open about it when the time was right (if I was asked, etc.). I decided to opt for the last option, mainly because I didn’t want to risk a conflict by being too open. Yet being gay is something that is a part of my identity and it was the approach in which I felt the most comfortable. 

I had the assumption that if anyone was willing to go hiking in the woods for 6 months with a bunch of strangers from all over the world—through unfamiliar towns and territories—that most people would be open minded. I was correct in this assumption. Whenever I discussed my orientation with fellow hikers, it never was an issue. If anything, a few hikers were astonished, yet supportive, that a young gay man was out here … in the middle of nowhere, dirty and smelly, hiking from Georgia to Maine. However, I’m unsure if I broke anyone’s perceived stereotypes about gay men. But by deciding to be open and honest about my sexuality, there was a sense of pride in being accepted into the hiking subculture in which masculinity is such a huge factor. 

In another aspect, I found trail romance to be quite abundant for the heterosexuals. But being gay, I’m always asked about my experiences of romance or hookups. Honestly, it wasn’t something I sought out because I didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. I am uncertain if I would have accepted even if the opportunity did present itself—all the dirt, smells, and muscle cramps would likely make for an unpleasant experience. Plus, I felt that the odds were stacked against me … you don’t go fishing in saltwater for freshwater fish. I was primarily focused on hiking and just being out there. 

Being a gay thru hiker never put a damper on my hiking experience. In fact, I think it helped me create special bonds with other hikers since I often revealed a piece of private information about myself.

In addition to wanting to write about LGBT issues on-trail, I also wanted to tackle the idea of hiking as a couple, which I've never done. The first thing I always think of when this topic comes up is Mitch Hedberg ...

“I got into an argument with a girlfriend inside of a tent. That's a bad place for an argument, because then I tried to walk out and slammed the flap. How are you supposed to express your anger in this situation? Zipper it up really quick? Zzzip, zzzip ... 'Fuck you!'”

But I decided that, as authoritative as Mitch can be on some issues (koalas and acid come to mind), I'd better get a second opinion from my college friend Eva, who tried to thru-hike the AT with her boyfriend in 2011, the same year that I did. Things were going well for them until her knee cartilage began to demonstrate the structural integrity of Jello and she had to leave the trail. But I asked her to say a bit about what it was like to hike as a couple, and this is what she wrote:

I've almost always hiked with friends, so I don't feel like couple-hiking was anything special. For me, hiking the AT as a couple didn't seem like a departure from the norm so much as a continuation of what I've always done. This sense was reinforced by the fact that Ben and I met and became friends as counselors, leading hikes for kids in the ADKs. 

I also think of my AT arrangement not as Eva and Ben the pair, but as the trio of Eva, Ben, and Glide. Ben and I met Glide, a middle-aged, former Ford employee from Detroit, on the Approach Trail. The three of us became instant friends based on our mutual longing for switchbacks and blistercare. Glide, Ben, and I hiked together for essentially my whole time on the AT. Glide was hilarious and also interesting in that he was really the first friend that Ben and I had made as a couple. Before, I had become friends with Ben's existing friends and vice versa, but on the AT, Ben and I entered as a pre-formed unit. In some way, that made me think of Ben as more a part of myself than I had before. Of course, Ben's refusal to take a trail name was a constant source of disappointment, especially since I had the best ideas for sickly-cute, matching aliases: Zenith and Nadir, Crescent and Gibbous, Apogee and Perigee, etc. (oddly, they were all astronomical, I'm not sure why).

I can't really think of any witty/interesting/telling couple-moments. I think that hiking as a couple must be very similar to hiking with the people you become friends with on the trail. One benefit of starting the trail as a pair is that everything (food, shared gear, shared beds in towns) is cheaper, which is nice. And hiking as a pair was convenient when one person could hang a bear bag while the other primed the Whisperlite (yeah, no JetBoil for us). But yeah. No grand insights. Honestly, I would be more interested to read about what it's like to hike alone. Sex on the trail was like sex in civilization: more tasteful in private and I'd be more likely to acquiesce if I weren't in the middle of cooking dinner. Also note that I also lost my virginity in a tent, so, the woods are familiar territory for me. To directly address some of your questions: I personally didn't feel the need for privacy—during the day, we didn't see many people. There was plenty of time for hiking in silence or conversation or singing or "having a moment," etc in the privacy of the the vacant forest. And I don't feel like people treated Ben and me differently than they would have had we been hiking as friends or separately. Again, unfortunately and all too often, Ben and everything else on the trail felt like an afterthought compared to my knee saga.

Mitch Hedberg jokes aside, I don't see why her experience shouldn't hold true for any well-established couple, especially if they've lived together before (because that's essentially what a thru-hike would be). I think a disparity in the enthusiasm for actually hiking long distances would be more of a problem than just being around each other 24/7. I definitely witnessed this disparity once on the AT: eager woman really enjoying her hike, man just going through the motions tagging along. I've also heard other stories, like a man thru-hiking with his wife's pack on his front, and his pack on his back (presumably the wife carried her own whip). But those people probably have other problems not specific to hiking. I'm guessing happy couples stay happy on the trail, for the most part.

That's all for the whole Trail Love deal. Other topics of sex and romance will be touched on in future asides, no doubt. Thanks again to Eva and Soulslosher for their contributions.