May 6
Mileage 25
50 miles from Mexico

The full moon rises heavy and yellow and bathes everything in silvery light. The birds go crazy, like it’s morning. I don’t know how I’ll sleep, but then I do.

In the morning I feel like shit. It’s a hangover- a desert hiking first-week-back-on-the-trail hangover. Oh well, at least the sunrise is brilliant and I have nice friends. Not every day can be awesome. Time to walk.

There are no cute clouds today and the walking is flat and exposed and so the sun sort of cooks us. I am good at autopilot so I do that. Plod plod plod. We alternate between traversing cross-country amongst the lovely yet stabby plants and cruising on jeep roads. In the afternoon we reach a cow pond and meet a couple other hikers while lounging in the shade there, swatting flies- their names are Squarl and Holly and they tell us that the pot we keep smelling on the breeze is bales of marijuana stashed in the desert by the cartel. This makes for a lot of jokes about what one would do with a bale of pot that one found in the desert on a thru-hike. We are advised not to touch the bale should we find one, because “they have people watching in the hills,” but for the rest of the afernoon I can’t help but look. I really want to find a bale!

I poop behind a ghost town and then wander cross-country alone for a while, pretending it’s a long time ago or sometime in the future. The CDT feels lonely so far- even though I’m hiking with three friends it just feels like their should be people around. I guess I’m one of those ones who loves the social aspect of the trail. At least there are lots of good people ahead to try and catch.

Camp is a big metal tank with a spigot on a hillside- this much water means I can wash my ass chafe, which is a godsend. We sit around eating dinner and tending to gross hiker chores, trying to be funny but getting the timing wrong, because we’re all so beat. I have one blister, on one of my toes, and some heat rash on the tops of my feet. Feel good otherwise. Just tired.

Photos on instagram.