I wake several times during the night – a few times to the sounds of Saturday night revelry, another time to silence, during which I take out my earplugs. I regret this when, during the hour of 4am, the family in the site next to ours starts up the party again. Loudly. In Spanish, which, not understanding, my brain tries really, really hard to decipher, keeping me awake. I fumble for my earplugs, but once I get them in, it seems like my 5:30 alarm goes off pretty immediately. Continue reading
When 4am rolls around, a pickup truck rolls up to Paradise Valley Cafe, lights off – so I assume he knows there’s a smattering of hikers sleeping on the porch. But he and his buddy pop out of the truck and, I shit you not, one of them starts giving a tour to the other. And not like an inebriated tour, with slurring and overly annoying attempts to keep quiet, which would’ve almost been forgivable. Nono, these two sound stone cold sober. Apparently, I just need to get up, so I do so, refraining from throwing dirty looks in the direction of the tour, though only just.
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I enjoy cowboy camping, with the swirling stars and the traveling moon and the warmish evening. I’ve got my alarm set for 5, but someone walks past me at 4:30 and then again at 4:45, headlamps in my face1, so I just start getting up. It’s easier to pack when you’ve been cowboy camping, so I’m out basically by 5:30.
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It’s less freaky than I expect it to be, sleeping in my shelter without the rain fly – even when a person walks by after an undisclosed amount of time, my anxiety about the whole thing just seems unfounded. This is the most normal thing, even when I wake in the middle of the night and see the stars instead of a roof. Continue reading
I can tell the Aleeve has worn off when my alarm goes off at 5:30 – my knees are achy again, but not so achy as to be unusable. It’s a bit of a struggle to pack up since I’m one of the first ones out, again, but that’s the only way I make miles. Today, especially – Yogi’s guide warns about the “long, hot, dry climb” out of Scissors into the San Felipe Hills, and I’m hoping to make the 14 miles to the Third Gate Cache before the sun gets too high in the sky. Time to officially implement plan “Sleep all night and also some during the day”. But first, I gotta get to my next sleeping place.
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I say I’m going to be up and out by 6:30, but 6:30 rolls around and I’m barely out of bed. I want to get out though, want to be back out there as soon as I can be, so I’m grabbing thankfully-dry bits and bobs, stuffing them in my pack hoping, hoping that I can get a hitch back out to mile 47.5. I’ll roadwalk if I have to – it’s an early morning, and who knows who’s going to be out and moving – but that’d be a rough way to start the day.
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Sure enough, I wake around what a groggy look at my clock says is 2am, and it’s raining, though I’m still warm and dry. It’s raining when I wake again at 1am, and at actual 2am, and again when my alarm buzzes in my sleeping bag at 5:15am1. I listen to the rain for 15 minutes before I decide that its steady, soothing pace means it isn’t going to let up anytime soon. I look around, take stock of everything, but it seems something’s missing – oh. oh no. I did not do my idiot check last night as well as I had hoped. I peek under the vestibule, and yep, sure enough, there are my shoes and socks, sitting out in the rain, like they have been all night. Ehhhhhhhhh.
So, sighing, I pack up inside and bundle up against the cold and stuff my feet into wet shoes before dashing outside to take down my tent. It’s a Sisyphean effort to get it completely packed without getting any water inside, so I put it away on the outside of my trash compactor bag, to keep the dry stuff and the wet stuff separate. Then it’s oh-god-get-out-of-camp-or-I-might-freeze, ten miles to the Desert View Picnic Area and Mount Laguna.
My alarm is set for 5:30 – I want to beat the heat for the climb out of Hauser – but someone else’s alarm goes off loudly at 5:15. I try to roll over but soon the whole camp is alive with movement, unpracticed hands packing up camp slower than what will probably be usual. It takes me a full hour to get out of camp, but I’m off and moving at 6:30. Continue reading
Someone’s alarm goes off at 5; someone else is already packing up under the large open-faced tent I called home last night, so there’s no getting back to sleep for those last five minutes before my own alarm goes off. I feel like I should mind more, but it is what it is, and so I’m up myself, unplugging and packing and doing a million idiot checks1 before Frodo calls us all in for breakfast.
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I barely get any sleep – my mind’s constantly bouncing from one incidental to another, and it’s hard to get it to calm down. I know it’s really just avoiding the real start of my journey – leaving Colorado, leaving Spesh, leaving home. Another thought crosses: maybe if I never go to sleep, then tonight will last forever! But I don’t want that, I want to go, want to hike, even if it’s throwing my life into a shambles to do so. Or, at least, the state of my apartment, all a-covered in gear.
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Brown Girl on the NST 