There was only one obvious answer.
I pulled out my SPOT tracking beacon and opened the cover on the SOS button. All I had to do was push it and help would come. Local emergency personnel would receive my coordinates almost instantly. They would bring me fluids. Fly me to safety. I would sleep in a cool room and eat and drink until my body recovered. I wouldn’t have to walk anymore. I could forget that I’d ever attempted this.
“I might die of thirst out here,” I said to the orange SPOT in my hand.
CHAPTER 2
SOUTHERN TERMINUS
On June 6, I boarded a plane and flew from Seattle to San Diego, soaring over the length of the mountain ranges I would soon traverse on foot. As the plane swooped over brown hillsides and stucco homes with tile roofs, I realized how very far I was from Washington, which had become my home. Staring east, where clouds and ridges were visible, faint and low on the horizon, I remembered the last time I was here, eight years younger and vastly inexperienced. I had faced the same distance, but this time I knew the enormity of the land extending between myself and Washington. I felt the pull of the mountains I knew like friends, and the people there that I loved.
A small voice inside me whispered, “All that’s left to do then is walk.”
DAY 1 / 42 MILES
Two days later, I stood at the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail. Three square wooden pillars marked one end of the trail where it met the border with Mexico, just outside Campo, California. Seeing the monument peeling from years of baking in the desert sun, I wondered if I had enough sunscreen. It was barely 6 a.m. and I was already sweating lightly. The friends who’d driven me to the trailhead were excited. I was scared to death. I wasn’t sure why I had decided to attempt to set a Fastest Known Time on the PCT. When most people hit age thirty their crisis involves spending a lot of money—not hiking over forty miles a day alone across the country. I pretended to make sure I had everything in order to delay the inevitable.
When I had stalled as long as I could, I wrote my intention vaguely in the register, “Well, here goes.” After a moment’s thought I decided that, for posterity, I should make it a little clearer. I added in smaller print to the side, “To Canada!” I couldn’t bring myself to state that I was attempting a record hike because I was certain that I would fail.
I closed the book and my friends took some pictures. Standing in front of the monument as I stared at the desert, I recalled how foreboding it had seemed last time. But right then, looking at the bare landscape dotted with scraggly bushes and cacti, I remembered that the desert is beautiful too. Finally, I could stall no longer. I strode confidently for my friends even though inside I was screaming I can’t do this!
I was embarking on a relentless quest that was quite possibly more than I could handle. I’d never consistently hiked forty miles per day before and yet now I intended to do so for two months straight without taking a single day off. Although I’d become an ultramarathon runner over the prior three years, I hadn’t done a multi-thousand-mile trek in over six. I’d been in my early twenties then—still full of the unquenchable energy of a child. Now, I was over thirty, and far removed from the life of a mile-crushing nomad. I imagined what it would be like the day I gave up, stuck out my thumb, and rode into town. Tears tracked down my face. I’m anemic, I haven’t been running or training in months, I’ve never done miles like this . . . What am I doing here? The slight ache in my left knee reminded me why I hadn’t been able to run or train for months. Despite a multitude of doctors and specialists visits, I still had no idea what was wrong with it. I’d run out of patience with my own body. I needed this hike, even if I didn’t know precisely why. A knee injury and anemia were not enough to keep me off the trail.
As the Pacific Crest Trail wove past the tiny hamlet of Campo and into the Southern California desert, I was surprised to feel a sense of fluidity in my body. Soon, the trail was gliding underfoot, despite the heat and the weight of my water-laden pack. All the worry melted away. I am home. Everything is gonna be OK. My stomach was full of butterflies and yet there was no longer any dread or worry or fuss. I was finally walking. Whatever was to be would be. There was nothing more to think about except putting one foot in front of the other and drinking deeply of the natural world around me. I’d walked this trail once before, as well as thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and Continental Divide Trail. It had been a long time, but my body had not forgotten the rhythm of the day in, day out of crossing the country on foot. The half decade I’d spent trying to conform to society was a charade. Hiking was my reality. Walking into the desert alone felt like waking up from a long nightmare. With each step, I felt closer, not only to my home in Washington, but also to my true self.
I saw the rattlesnake long before it perceived me. Its three-foot length was sprawled nonchalantly across the dusty track as it basked in the midmorning sun. After all, the herds of northbound hikers, having mostly started in April, were long gone. The rattlesnake had no reason to expect another hiker. I stopped and backed up, fumbling for my phone to take a picture. Instantly, the snake was coiled and rattling, somehow gliding sideways off the trail in a ready-to-strike position. I laughed as it vanished into the scrub, realizing the irrationality of my fears. Everything about living in the wilderness seems so terrifying from the comfort of a home. Yet, on the trail, nothing is ever as scary as it once seemed.
“Distance makes the heart grow fearful,” I said in the general direction of the snake as I passed by.
I reached Hauser Canyon, which was bone dry. Passing by trees clustered near where water once flowed, I remembered when my partner and I had gotten water here in May of 2005. The desert had been much more welcoming then—an abnormally cool and wet spring. We’d never lacked for water or suffered too much beneath the sun. I already knew that this first seven hundred miles—until I entered the High Sierra—were not going to be anything like my last journey. California was in the death grip of a drought and I was crossing parched land just as summer was burgeoning.
The average thru-hiker—one intending to hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail in one season—would work up to walking twenty or so miles per day. An April start would get them to Washington in September, just in time to dodge early fall snows. I would be moving twice that fast. My start was timed so that I didn’t hit lingering snow in either the High Sierra or the Pacific Northwest. The sacrifice necessary to have snowfree travel through the high mountains was to sweat my way across the desert long after spring rains had subsided.
After the laborious climb up from the canyon floor, I relished the descent to Lake Morena. I moved quickly, eager to hit the halfway point of my day. When I reached the campground hugging the shore of the wide lake, I refilled my water bladder from a faucet. Very few people were outside. Most were hiding from the heat. The hum of generators running AC units in every RV drowned out the sound of anything else. I felt out of place standing there drenched in sweat. Hot and a little tired, I poured water over my head and braced myself for another twenty miles. But I also felt awash with a sense of accomplishment. I was on pace to reach my camp before nightfall.
As the temperature rose, I found it harder to focus. The terrain began to meld into one long stretch of scrub, brown, and sand. I vaguely marked my progress by road crossings. I kept moving even though I felt dizzy. Thirty miles passed, then thirty-five . . .
I started encountering race markings. I knew the San Diego 100 was taking place in the area and I felt confident that, at any minute, runners would fly past me. My pace slowed as I began to climb. The landscape was stark and the heat unrelenting. No runners materialized. I felt a deep hollowness forming in my gut. There is no one out here. No one but you. It’s too hot. You shouldn’t be here either.
It was the same voice of fear that had spoken up repeatedly throughout my preparations—practicing setting up my new tent, weighing my clothing, purchasing six pairs of trail runners, packing and mailing numerous resupply boxes full of food, batteries for my headlamp, and maps. It was warning me that I was doing something