May 25 Mileage 25 Mile 716.5 to mile 741.5 I've been on the trail for a month! I wake at 5:15 a.m. feeling fucking fantastic. I slept like a happy tired log and now I climb up into the hills, take a giant dump, and then return to my sleeping bag where I sit, happily … Continue reading Day 31: one month in, feeling fucking fantastic

May 24 Mileage 14.5 Mile 702 to mile 716.5 We'd decided to double zero but now we're all restless, kennedy meadows is full of hikers we don't know, it's not ours anymore, we want to get back on the trail. We've been sitting for too long and our identities are starting to waver, our understanding … Continue reading Day 30: the promised land

May 23 Mileage: zero A zero in kennedy meadows is a zero well spent. I wake at six in the cold, well slept, frost all over everything. I walk to the general store and sit on the porch. Tiny and Guthrie are there. "They're not open?" I say, peering in the dark front door of … Continue reading Day 29: a zero in kennedy meadows

May 22 Mileage 28.7 (28 + .7 to the Kennedy Meadows store) Mile 674 to mile 702 When we wake the sun is rising over the most beautiful view, the granite earth falling away to fresh open space, everything clear and new, the flat red mojave way below, the lights of civilization. We uncurl our … Continue reading Day 28: oh happy day

May 21 Mileage 23 Mile 651.5 to mile 674.5 The weather is perfect climbing out of walker pass. Cool, still, a handful of clouds gathered on the horizon. The sort of benign weather we've rarely seen this year. I feel great, climbing up and up and up, looking down on the flat desert way below. … Continue reading Day 27: sudden storms and a hypothermia situation

May 20 Mileage 27.5 Mile 624 to mile 651.5 I wake at 5:30 feeling amazing- that's two nights, now, that I've slept without alarms, that I've been able to get a full night's sleep. I think I'm learning something about myself- I can do long miles, I can hike in the heat and the wind … Continue reading Day 26: walker pass and a storm rollin’ in

May 19 Mileage: 22 Mile 602 to mile 624 Today I've decided to do a short day- 22 miles. And not only that but to take breaks- real breaks, lazy breaks, breaks that stretch on for hours. Everyone is exhausted so it's not hard, when we reach a shady, leafy pine forest where spring water … Continue reading Day 25: a short day and the flayed toe challenge

May 18 Mileage 33 Mile 569 to mile 602 The wind batters us while we sleep but we sleep well- I negotiated before bed with Sherrif Woody and Twinkle for "no four a.m. alarms" and so I am lost in blissfull, blissfull sleep until 5:25 a.m., which is blasphemously late by hiker standards. After I … Continue reading Day 24: hiking like a boss and crying like a four-year-old

May 17 Mileage 19.5 Mile 541.5 to mile 569 I'm having the loveliest dream when I feel Sheriff smacking the foot of my sleeping bag. I sit up. "Your hair is full of sticks," he says. Twinkle is gone, up at 4 a.m. to make it to Tehachapi in time to get his box from … Continue reading Day 23: out of the windmills and into tehachapi

May 16 Mileage 24 517.6 to mile 541.5 In the morning we sleep in until 6, there's pancakes, a period of lazing about. I look longingly at the people on the couches, hikers we don't know, slumped over as if they've been here forever, as if they'll always be here. It would be nice to … Continue reading Day 22: Los Angeles Aquaduct Death March