Deep Creek

Day 21: Holcomb Creek to Deep Creek Hot Spring, 22 miles

One of the things that nobody bothers to explain in any of the guidebooks is the law of Hiker Hubris. The minute you congratulate yourself on having finally "figured it out"--say, for walking a solid twenty miles with a full resupply and a fair load of water, and then and NOT feeling like you're going to curl up and die as you pitch your tent that evening--the trail gleefully responds by handing you your ass the next day.

The hike through Deep Creek was like that for me. I'm not even sure why. I started well enough, and water sources appeared at regular intervals--which sounds foolish but makes the whole day easier--but some imbalance of internal chemistry or atmospheric pressure conspired to make a bad day.

It got hot early, and stayed that way. Around lunchtime I stopped under the Deep Creek bridge, in the welcome shade of some trees, to cook lunch and call Mom--and she sounded kind of lonesome. Mother's Day and both her kids pretty far away. At Splinter's Cabin, a picnic area, trail angels Donna and Jess had set up to serve cold drinks and food to thru hikers, and while I appreciated their generosity of spirit, I really didn't want any beer, or soda, or chips, or Famous Amos cookies--as kindly as it's meant, in my eyes that's just more trail food. It isn't what I crave, doesn't make me feel good. It's actually pretty difficult to find an even keel in your energy levels when you're eating garbage all the time. How do you graciously decline an opportunity to pig out when it's expected of you? My hiker hunger hadn't kicked in, anyway, and I suspected that not many other peoples' had, either--they were just seizing the opportunity to gorge themselves senseless for its own sake. I drank a Coke to be polite, and when a couple people lit cigarettes, moved on.

Deep Creek is popular among day hikers, and having a lot of clean, noisy groups of city folk in tank tops, carrying no packs, gawking at my unkempt, smelly person started to annoy me. I know I stink. I know I look like hell. No need to make a production out of it. I passed the 300-mile marker and couldn't make myself care. The trail climbed a narrow, sometimes crumbling ridge several hundred feet up the side of the river canyon--so you could see and hear the cold creek below, but never get close enough for a dip in the water, or a break in the shade of the trees. I got rattled at by snakes--twice--and I appreciate their courteous warning but it never fails to make my heart race. Poison oak joined the foliage along the trail. One damn thing after another, it seemed.

Did I mention how it was hot? Hot and exposed. It bores me to repeat it, but damn. The heat is forever a personal cross to bear. Early in the morning, with fresh legs and cool air, I can hike the first ten or twelve miles almost without a break; after it warms up, the next ten miles seem to take everything I've got. Too many Prussians, Swedes, and Englishmen in my genetic makeup, I guess; I can deal with lactose, but not heat. Other hikers walk on in apparent perfect ease, while I find myself dropping to the ground every two miles in order to cool off. It's maddening.

These are times when all the dumb, petty complaints rise bitterly to the surface. And it's never anything so straightforward as "why am I doing this, again?"

Stupid day hikers, leaving toilet paper everywhere like it's going to just evaporate.

Why am I only person drying underwear on the top of her pack? Convinced that nobody else bothers to wash underwear. Possibly nobody else bothering to WEAR underwear.

Why do trail angels put beer in caches? Alcohol very dehydrating. Also makes Assholes out of the otherwise Merely Annoying.

Wish I could jump in creek. Stupid trail. Why can't you just go in a straight line? Why are we always going west? Haven't been walking north in some time.

Does anybody really LIKE Famous Amos cookies?

Gah! Goddam lizard! Do you WANT me to step on you? What kind of dumb lizard runs toward a lumbering beast? Natural selection coming for you!

That night, it seemed, everyone was making for Deep Creek Hot Spring, both because they wanted a soak and because it was the only flat ground for several miles in either direction. I couldn't begin to fathom why anybody would want to sit in a hot spring after a sweltering day, but between the weekenders and the thru-hikers, the place promised to be crowded. I didn't relish the thought; nor could I see that I had any choice but to camp there. The terrain imposes limitations. Which also meant that it turned into the sort of day when you have to keep walking, no matter how hot its been or out-of-sorts you feel. Twenty-two miles, in my case.

And here I want to make a distinction. We use the term trail magic very freely. Too freely. Beer is not magic. No, I'm sorry, but it isn't. Someone leaving a bag of oranges looped over a fence; someone stocking a water cache in the middle of the desert; someone opening their house to shelter tired travelers; someone serving hot dogs and beer at a picnic area on Mother's Day. You know what? That isn't magic. It's something far more boring and far more valuable. It's kindness. It's hospitality. It's human generosity. The PCT could not exist without it. It blows my mind every time someone offers me a ride, or offers me a stamp from her purse when the post office is closed. It's extraordinary. And it is not magic. God help us that "magic" is the only frame of reference we know for describing such things.

But trail magic--instances when the trail itself seems to cough up something you need, right when you need it--exists, too. And in a small way that happened around the twentieth mile. I'd hit the wall some time before and still had two miles before camp--this is very common--and hadn't yet figured out how to deal. I was crouched under a tree along with a handful of others, all of us cautiously edging around the poison oak, refilling water bottles at the last source before we got to the [very polluted] hot spring. It felt crowded. It was still hot. I felt disgusting. I hated everyone impartially for existing. And slowly I registered that Mr Green and his cronies were talking to a woman a little younger than my mom--not quite dirty enough to be a thru-hiker, but very fit-looking and somehow not a casual picnicker--who turned out to be Ravenwing, aka Carol Burkhart. (I'm probably spelling that wrong.) She was the first woman, as far as anybody knows, to thru-hike the PCT solo. In 1976, or something like that, when she was 20 years old. And here she stood, still hiking, and amiably talking about return policies on shoes, while my grown-up self sat in the corner and felt miserable because the lizards were being jerks today.

Well there you are.

I got my water and hiked the two more miles to camp. Deep Creek was just about as awful as expected; I was just as tired as before; but I wolfed my tortillas feeling chastened. Go to bed, dummy. You hike again tomorrow.