“But Daaaaaad, you said that Pop Tarts weren’t camp food!”

A kid was tugging at their Dad’s sleeve, pointing directly at Argonaut. Argonaut, standing near his tent at 8am, eating Pop Tarts and staring up into the trees, pointedly looked anywhere but at the family who had camped nearby. The Dad, thinking quickly on his feet responded,

“Well… they’re PCT Thru-Hikers, so they can have Pop Tarts for camp food.”

There was a short pause as the child contemplated this new information. Then, with the nonchalance of an adventurer who knows the treasure is just beyond the gate if only they can sneak effectively past the guardian troll, ventured casually,

“How do I become a PCT Thru-Hiker?”

“We’ll talk about it when you’re older.”

I can only hope that we just witnessed a PCT Thru-Hiker origin story. Where the draw of the wilderness lays not in the epic journey and phenomenal vistas, the triumph of the human spirit or the vast, untouched beauty of flourishing nature, but rather, in the promise of unregulated Pop Tart consumption.

Toasty was able to temporarily join us again for this section! He and Dumptruck wake up a little earlier than me and Argonaut every morning. The 2 of them make coffee together and giggle quietly, whispering of small things. They call it Toasty Dumps Café, and technically it’s open for Argie and I too, if we could only rouse ourselves before 8am. Impossible.

On the second morning I’d woken up from a beautiful dream of Christmas, images of sitting by a roaring fireplace dancing across the projector of my unconscious. I bolted awake earlier than usual when I realized the smell of crackling logs, so comforting in my dream, was instead the terrifying smell of forest fire. I went to shake Dumptruck awake, blinking blearily into the oddly hazy morning light, trying to rub the itchiness from my eyes. Dumptruck was already awake, and before I had a chance to say anything, he told me he’d already checked the fire map. As far as we could tell, the thick smoke in the air had blown in on the wind from a fire several hundred miles away. However, not unlike early modem internet agonizingly loading clipart images of dragons one pixel at a time, we didn’t have enough service to fully load the map. We had to make a choice: hike the 10 miles back to Trout Lake, or hike 4 miles ahead to a dirt road crossing, in the hopes of finding a local with more information.

We attempted to load up quickly, though moved with an odd sluggishness either because we suffer from a dangerous lack of anxiety, or because we were all mildly punch-drunk from the smoke. Regardless, we made it to the road crossing without incident. After flagging down several locals all out to harvest huckleberries, any fear was assuaged via confirmation that the fire was indeed several hundred miles away. Once our safety was no longer in question, we spent an hour on the next mile of trail, voraciously scooping huckleberries into our mouths. My fingers were stained purple for the rest of the day. Though we had no danger of fire, we did get the pleasure of hiking for several more days through air quality the equivalent of powerhousing a pack of cigarettes.

As you’ll see with the photos, the smoke also utterly obliterated any views we may have had for this section. Each time we reached a peak with a gap in the trees, we were greeted with a flat gray nothingness, a computer game loading screen that is uncertain of what next to render. The sun glinted weakly through the haze, looking like an old orange skittle floating in a puddle of dishwater. The light that did make it through gave everything a dream-like, surreal oddness, as though not entirely in this realm of reality. Adding to this strangeness was the fact that this past weekend was PCT Trail Days in Cascade Locks (a festival for hikers that we elected not to attend), which meant that the trail was a ghost town. We normally pass at least 10-15 Northbounders a day, but on Saturday and Sunday we saw no one. It would have been creepier were it not for the fact that we are all extremely goofy and loud most of the time. Laughter works better than a bear bell anyway.

We enjoyed this section as well as we could, Argonaut playing Mariners baseball games on the radio as we hiked. The night we camped at Blue Lake, a young kid’s shrieking meltdown on the other side of the lake happened to coincide with the end of a Mariners/Astros game in which the Mariners won 10-2. I mused to Argonaut that the kid must be an Astros fan. Argie then told me to kneel, and used his toothbrush to knight me a true Mariners Fan. I am honored, and as I was born in Seattle, I will wear it with pride.

One night we overlapped with a Northbound section hiker named Mary, who had dinner with us and shared stories. We had set up camp near a water source, and several other hikers wound the way through the obstacle course of our tents to get down to the side trail for water. One of those hikers was a tall woman with a bright red braid. When Toasty saw her, he called out “Wait, are you Tiny Bladder?”

She broke into a grin and said “Well yes indeed I am, who are you?”

Toasty introduced himself, and Tiny Bladder broke out laughing, overcome with joy. “Proton told me about you!”

On Toasty’s road trip back from New England to the West Coast, he stopped in Vermont to do a 22 mile loop through a section where the Long Trail and the Appalachian Trail overlap. While out there for only 1 day, he met several AT thru-hikers, including a gentleman named Proton. Proton told Toasty that his girlfriend (Tiny Bladder) was currently thru-hiking the PCT, and if he sees her, to say hello for him. Toasty happily agreed, though knew the odds of him crossing paths with Tiny Bladder were very low. And yet, it happened. Like the scene in the animated Robin Hood where Robin shoots an arrow to knock a different arrow into a perfect Bull’s Eye, somehow Toasty and Tiny Bladder overlapped for 3 minutes. We snapped a photo and immediately forgot to exhange any information, which means we’ll likely never see either of them again. But that’s the magic of the trail, and the beauty of small but meaningful meetings and partings.

This entire section has been overrun with bees and gigantic, sleek black bald-faced hornets that rumble through the air like an armada of cadillacs. By and large they’ve left us alone, swarming us when whenever we sit down but then moving on. It has taken a lot of dedicated mental energy to ignore them and not be in a perpetual state of low-level panic. This is especially escalated when we’re laying down to go to bed, and we watch the hornets sting, rip apart and eat alive every little fly and bee that has the misfortune to have flown up into the open space between our tent and rain fly. It’s pretty gnarly, but it’s a bit like having an Animal Planet show unfolding right before your eyes.

Yesterday morning we had hiked about a half a mile when out of nowhere I dropped to the ground with a shriek, a blossom of electric pain exploding across the back of my right calf. I knew I’d been stung, and after a second of being on my knees, I hauled myself to my feet and stumbled another 50 feet down the trail to get away from the bald-faced hornet that had stung me. There I chucked my pack to the ground and curled forward over my thighs, looking at the rapidly swelling sting, gritting my teeth and biting back the tears that sprang to my eyes. Argonaut immediately jumped into action, applying a cold water bottle, washing the sting with warm soapy water, then cleaning it with a sting-relief wipe. I also took an antihistamine, and though we hiked on, we stopped regularly to check and make sure I wasn’t having an allergic reaction. For the rest of the day my calf kept sending me screams of “you’re being attacked!” It felt like trying to open a browser on WindowsXP, and when it doesn’t open, you click on it 67 more times in frustration. Then a moment later 67 browser windows flood your screen, fritzing out your entire system. No matter how quickly you close the windows, there just keeps on being more. So it was that I spent the rest of the day repeatedly, tiredly reminding my nervous system to calm the heck down. The pain finally subsided about 12 hours later. Dang hornets.

Sometime later that day, I mused aloud,

“You know what’s weird? My calf is numb from a hornet sting, my feet are being pinched in too-narrow shoes, I have a bunch of new blisters, we’re hiking through thick smoke, and somehow, I’m still having so much fun.”

Last night we had trail magic, camped in a grove of trees that 100% felt like being in Jurassic Park, and played Texas Hold ‘Em, using our remaining candy as chips. Truly excellent, and no one has gotten eaten by a TRex. Yet.

Love,

Thresher

P.S. We’re taking the next several days off! We all have injuries that need more time to heal. Also, we’ll be seeing one of my best friends from college (Eby!!!) who lives in Portland, as well as seeing mine and Argonaut’s Dad who is out West for a workshop, and will be going with us to a Mariner’s Game! What a boon!

P.P.S. I re-cut my mullet in the motel 6 during our last zero with a pair of tiny scissors. Let me know if you ever want a Motel 6 Mullet, I’m an expert now.