May 23
Mileage 10
408.5 miles hiked from Mexico

Walking the 10 miles into town fast in the pre-dawn chill wearing all my layers watching the sun throw yellow/orange light on the sandstone cliffs. Edge of town is barking dogs in bare dirt pens, a handful of sheep, a foal. Picking up my stove from the post office! Everybody staring b/c I’m dirty and I smell bad but oh man, are they kind, and for this I am grateful. It’s three miles off-trail to the hotel where hikers stay and I put out my thumb as I walk along the closed-up storefronts under the brilliant New Mexico sky. A blustery wind is blowing. It’s still snowing in Colorado! How will any of us get through the San Juans. A woman with a toddler transports me to the motel where I get a room and shower, grateful for hot water, electrical outlets, this whole massive industrial infrastructure that allows me to play make-believe while I’m in the woods. The boys arrive and we find the Chinese buffet, a great deal of food is consumed. There are BNSF intermodals everywhere, thundering through. I go to wal-mart to resupply and wander the aisles, thinking about how everything in wal-mart is a little different in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. Besides my exciting new stove dinners I find a synthetic real-tree t-shirt and a pair of highlighter-yellow running shorts for all of seventeen dollars. The neon shorts are a bit of a gamble as I’ve just gotten my period but I think, what the hell. If they get covered in blood that well make them funnier/better.

Laundry, various organizational tasks. We all go to Taco Bell for dinner, the boys are drinking Limearitas, which comes in a can and is made by beer? 250 miles until Chama, the start of the mountains. And snow, there is so much snow, the snow is still falling. The snow looms ahead of us.

Photos on instagram