To Mazama

Every step hurt.  When I stood for the first time this morning, a sharp pain shot from my right foot to my brain.  I stepped gingerly, thinking it was something that could be walked off, like when a foot falls asleep, but it didn’t go away.  I decided to embrace the pain and consider it an allegory for life.  “Walking is painful, but all life has pain. I will be one with the pain and thereby grow in my humanness.”  Uh, no.  Instead I tried some breathing techniques left over from natural child birth.  I breathed deeply. I focused on trees and butterflies and other positive, uplifting things.  I breathed out. I winced, walked some more, breathed.  After a few hundred feet of this not working, I changed my strategy, partially because it is difficult to walk briskly and control your breathing.  I whistled. I sang. I went back to the pain allegory and tried to suffer through.  After two hours of trying to cope with pain I gave up and took  ibuprofen.  Not too long after that the pain was down to a dull thud instead of a loud roar and I was able to distract myself with the beauty surrounding me.   

Stopping for breakfast and snack was a welcome relief from the pain of walking.  Sharkie and Be Bo came around a corner just after our first break and greeted us with “Hey, it’s the Snickers and Veggie show!”  I wasn’t certain whether or not to be offended by that.  But we smiled and waved and said hi.  We didn’t really visit for long, they passed us, disappeared over a ridge, and we never saw them again.  I thought we would catch up to them again later in the day when they stopped for lunch, like last time, but we didn’t.  I did hear Snickers talking to someone while I was busy picking and eating berries (a nice diversion) and hoped it was them, but when I came around the corner it was a young woman in a farmer-style straw hat.  I thought she must be a South Bounder at first because we had not met her yet. We walked together for a little while getting acquainted and looking for a good place to have some lunch and get clean water.  The first water source noted on the map was rather sketchy- hardly flowing, pretty shallow and full of little frogs.  I know what frogs do in water.  Even with the filter I was not up for drinking that.  We moved on.

We passed one or two more questionable water sources before we climbed a little hill, stepped over a nicely flowing creek and found a nice flat place to break out our lunch.  A couple doing the Sky Lakes trail was just finishing their lunch break. They were taking a week to do thirty miles while stopping at lakes, swimming and enjoying themselves.  They had spent a day at Cliff Lake jumping off rocks into the water and stuffing themselves on berries. I was a bit jealous of these pleasure hikers until I saw the size of their packs.  The woman had bandanas stuffed under her shoulder straps to help add cushion, but I know from experience there’s not much you can do to make a heavy pack more comfortable short of dumping out extra clothes and gear. Don’t get rid of the extra food; it is never a good idea to give up your food. 

We enjoyed lunch with our new friend in the hat, whose name was Drop Biscuit. We shared some pudding, biscuit making tips and berry picking knowledge with her and she shared some blister pads with me.  I made another new friend too. A little copper butterfly fluttered about me and kept landing on my legs, my feet and my shorts.  I didn’t want to take time away from him to go wash my legs and feet, but finally decided to wash up, cool down and tend to my blistery feet. After our bellies were full and our feet cooled down we took off down the trail.  Drop Biscuit stayed to visit with a handsome young hiker who came in, stripped down to his shorts and washed up in the creek. The blister pads were helping, the new dose of ibuprofen had kicked in, the berry bushes were abundant, and the afternoon was pleasant.  We were walking at a nice pace and the forest was beautiful.  Not too long after we took off however, we were passed by some thru hikers.  There is a funny thing that happens when those fast hikers pass us. It is not intentional, but it happens quite often.   We call it being carried off by the brumbies.  If you’ve ever watched the movie The Man from Snowy River you might get the reference.  My oldest daughter and youngest child (17 years apart) both loved that movie, so I have seen it many times.  The brumbies are wild horses that run past ranches and cause all the nice, calm, tame horses to get excited and want to run off with them.  Snickers has become more tame and hikes at a pace comfortable to me over the years.  Sometimes, though, those brumbies tend to carry him off and he hikes much more like he did a decade ago.  Fortunately for me it doesn’t last more than a couple of miles.   

The afternoon wore on and we hit a long burned stretch.  Burns are interesting at first, but the appeal wears off pretty quickly.  So did my ibuprofen. Also, my foot started to swell and become very painful.  Snickers put me out in front so we didn’t hike too fast, and I concentrated on walking with my heel first and rolling through the ball of my foot.  For some reason the sugar plum fairy song was playing in my head, and the last two miles went along like that.   As long as I didn’t think about it too much, and just let the music play in my head, it was tolerable.  We were hoping to hike out of the burn before we camped, but we got to the point where we just didn’t want to go any further.  We found a small stand of trees that were not burned and made camp up there.  The sunset that night was a bright pink smudge across the azure sky and then the moon, very bright,  traversed the sky in a long low arc.  Getting up to answer the call of nature that night I didn’t even need to use a light; the moon bathed everything in a yellow glow.

The next day’s hike was done in three two hour sections.  We had just twelve miles to make it to Crater Lake.  With a good night’s sleep, a new layer of blister pads and more ibuprofen I was feeling pretty good, but Snicker’s foot was much more sore.  There was one long uphill section that was tough, but fortunately the last five miles were downhill, beautifully scenic, shady and soft.  I came up with a numeric judging system for trail condition.  Downhill, shady and soft is a three.  Points are deducted for the omission of any one of the three preferable conditions.  We did a -1 for a mile today because it was rocky, in the direct sun, uphill and we had to carry water.  We made good time and pulled in to the trailhead to Mazama Village at Crater Lake before lunch, and then walked the one mile along the road to the restaurant and store.  Sometimes we might try to hitch when we are on a road, but we had been informed on the “Welcome” sign that this was forbidden.  Also against the rules of the park were camping within a mile of the road, camping between the road and the rim, bringing pets on the trail, and other assorted do’s and don’ts.  Though the sign said welcome, we didn’t feel very well received.

Lunch was wonderful though! We ate on the patio of the Annie Springs restaurant among a gathering of hikers and resupply boxes.  Drop Biscuit was there; I made sure she had a big glass of beer as a thank you for the blister pads- she said you’re welcome with another package of blister pads from her ample resupply package.  I ate all of my huge (and delightfully tasty) veggie burger and shared my fries with Drop Biscuit while Snickers ate his burger and fries and drank a pitcher of diet Coke.  After lunch we found our way to the store, got our resupply box, and rented a room for the night since there were no camping spots available in the campground. This was a hardship for the thru hikers, as the welcome sign had made it obvious that they were not able to camp within a mile of the road. Thru hikers, however, are resourceful and clever; a small group of them pooled their resources and rented an RV site, moved in and created a little tent city. Others snuck off after dusk and stealth-camped at the edge of the woods.  The big buzz in all the hikers’ conversations was the hiker who had gotten a $600 fine the night before for sleeping between the crater and the road.  No one was sure whether the price of the ticket reflected the fine for illegal camping or the illegal smoking material the hiker had in his bag.  Either way, no one wanted to take any chances with the National Park rangers.