It was a hard job. Take our packs. I thought because I had been carrying a backpack on our vacation trips for more than 10 years that I knew how to assemble one. Nope. I didn’t know squat. Gary had shown me how to pack, but somehow I hadn’t absorbed the reasoning behind the lesson. Finally, he had to line up Mary and me and give us a demonstration: light, bulky things like sleeping bags and down jackets in the bottom. Then the heavier things higher up, and close to the body. He repeatedly emphasized that point: Everything heavy should be packed so that it’s in the top half of the pack, and as close to the hiker’s body as possible. Water bottles should be arranged so they won’t slosh—and on hot days, they should be insulated with clothing to retain their morning coolness. Gary is a slow, meticulous packer, much to the irritation of more slapdash packers—me, for example. But once Gary gets moving, he doesn’t have to stop to adjust the contents of his pack. I started each day determined to emulate him, but it never seemed to work out. When Gary distributed items of mutual use among us, I ended up carrying each day’s food bag and the trowel bag, which contained the trowel, toilet paper, baby wipes, and Ziploc bags for used toilet paper. (We carried out all of our toilet paper so that it wouldn’t be dug up by animals or uncovered by wind and water. Too many popular backpacking routes nowadays are lined with used toilet paper, and we didn’t want to contribute to the unsightly result.) Every time we stopped, I had to pull out at least the food bag, probably the trowel bag, and frequently smaller items such as the foot-treatment kit, sunscreen, and insect repellent. I never could seem to get everything back in quite the same order as when I’d started. As a result, my pack would gradually become unbalanced and tilt to one side, adding to any other resentments I had picked up during the day.
A few weeks later, Gary gave us another lecture, this time about toilet paper. We had been on the trail more than a week since Kennedy Meadows and still had several days to go before reaching Vermilion Valley Resort, our next resupply point. I was suffering from a bit of diarrhea, so I was using more toilet paper than planned. Gary was shocked to discover we were getting low on the precious stuff, and even more shocked to learn that Mary and I fell into the category of people who wad up their t.p. before using it (a wasteful habit, in Gary’s opinion), rather than tidily and frugally folding it. Fifteen years of marriage, and he’d just now figured this out. This time, Gary lined us up and proceeded to give a drill sergeant’s rendition of Personal Hygiene 101. “You don’t have to use more than eight sheets of paper per day!” he exclaimed. “You don’t wad it up! You fold it in half, and use it, and then fold it in half again. And then you use it again, and fold it up and use it one more time!” All of this was accompanied by appropriate hand gestures and body posture to indicate how to accomplish the goal. Gary was dead serious about this. Running out of toilet paper is no laughing matter. But Mary and I couldn’t help ourselves. We kept seeing him through the eyes of a possible stranger traipsing down the trail and coming across our little tableau. We just couldn’t keep from giggling. However, we did take the lesson to heart, and rationed our cherished toilet paper carefully until we got to Vermilion Valley.
Stream crossings brought out the worst in me. Gary has good balance and can cross rushing streams on slippery rocks or teetering logs. Mary can, too. I take one look at anything less sturdy than an Army Corps of Engineers bridge and freak out.
Usually, our stream crossings went like this:
Captain Bligh: Well, don’t just stand there, look for a good way across.
Nellie Bly: Hmm …
Scrambler: I’ll just wade across.
Captain Bligh: No, you won’t. You’ll hurt your feet on those sharp rocks. And it takes forever to get your boots and socks back on. Here, look, this log goes halfway across, and then you just step on that boulder, jump over there, and you’re done.
Scrambler: Hmph.
Nellie Bly: Looks impossible to me.
Captain Bligh: Just watch. … See? All done.
Nellie Bly: Hmph.
Scrambler: Hey, look at me!
Captain Bligh and Nellie Bly: Be careful!
Captain Bligh: Very good, Scrambler. Now you, Nellie.
Nellie Bly: I’m sure there’s a better place downstream …
Captain Bligh: No, there’s not. Now just come across or we’ll be here all day!
Nellie Bly: I’ll try … Oh! … Ouch! … Oof! … Aaaaggghhh!
Stream: Splashhhh!
THRIFT: Frugality was another family value that disappeared. It vanished long before we even got on the trail. On the “You might be a thru-hiker …” list posted at one trail angel’s home in southern California, an item reads, “If your REI dividend last year was over $150.” REI, or Recreational Equipment, Inc., is the giant co-op based in Washington state. (I think of the Seattle store as the REI mother ship.) It returns to each member a dividend of about 10 percent of what that person spent the previous year. For a family of three determined to replace every last piece of heavy, outdated gear with the lightest and most modern stuff possible, $150 is chicken feed. Our dividend from REI for 2003 was $318.18, and REI was only one of the many places we shopped. When it arrived in the mail, I just stared at it. I couldn’t imagine how we could have spent more than $3,000 at REI alone.
Gary and I dislike spending money. He buys his jeans from Goodwill, just like fashion-conscious high school students, although not for the same reason. I’m still wearing outfits to work that date from the Carter administration. (The trick is to change jobs every time the White House switches parties. That way, co-workers don’t notice how your wardrobe never changes, year after year.) But when it came to equipping ourselves for the PCT, money was no object. I had to stifle my objections every few days when I’d come home from work and Gary would tell me he had tracked down just the right jacket, or the world’s lightest ice ax, or that he had finally found a tent that would hold the three of us but still weigh less than 6 pounds. The credit card bills began mounting. And that was nothing compared to our on-the-trail expenditures. I’m famous for tracking down inexpensive motels—I once wrote a newspaper article about the techniques involved in finding cheap but comfortable lodging—and I’ve been trained since childhood to scrutinize the prices on a restaurant menu a whole lot more carefully than the menu items themselves. But those habits of a lifetime soon disappeared.
We started out well. Our town stop plans called for lodging at Motel 6-type establishments and eating at diners or fast-food places. But, oh, how that changed as we worked our way north. As most of the other thru-hikers fell by the wayside, so did our sales resistance. In Mojave, in southern California, we paid about $60 for a night at White’s Motel, and ate at McDonald’s. At Echo Lake, we bought sandwiches and fruit smoothies at the lodge, but eschewed the temptations of a motel night in South Lake Tahoe, camping at Aloha Lake, instead. At Belden, we cheerfully paid $85 for a cabin, ate any hot food the bar had to offer, and scoured the little store for extras. And by the time we’d suffered the rains of Oregon, we were ready for the Timberline Lodge on the slopes of Mt. Hood. I’m glad we slept and ate at Timberline, because we’ll probably never do it again. We could never afford it. Pay $125 for one small room? Fork over $25 for a plate of fish and veggies? Granted, fish at the Timberline isn’t anything like the stuff Long John Silver’s calls fish. Oh, no. Fish at the Timberline is baked Alaskan halibut in chipotle apricot glaze, with lobster risotto, pickled onions, and organic asparagus on the side. Or it might be Pacific ahi, crusted with toasted coriander and ginger, paired with a crispy macadamia nut sushi roll, Chinese snow cabbage slaw, and sweet orange soy reduction over more of that organic asparagus. And it’s not served by a pimply teenager stabbing a finger at the food symbols on a cash register, but by a waitress who’s pursuing a Ph.D. at Oregon State University in her spare time. On the other hand, we probably came out ahead by the time we finished breakfast the next morning. For $12.50 apiece, we got the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, and by the time we finished, all we could do was lie on our comfortable beds and groan. While we were eating, other lodgers came in, ate, and left, then more came in, ate, and left, then more. In all, we gobbled our way through the equivalent of three shifts