Читать книгу Thirst - Heather Anderson - Страница 12

When the alarm went off at 5 a.m., I sprang up and packed. Despite not eating dinner the night before, I wasn’t hungry for breakfast. I bolted down the trail, eager to put as many miles in as I could before the heat returned. Yesterday was sweltering—at least 95 degrees. As I walked the crest of the range, I reveled in the beauty of the Anza-Borrego Desert at sunrise, bathed in perfect morning light. The eastern slopes plummeted to the desert floor, thousands of feet below. From where I walked, it looked smooth and golden—like a field of California poppies in full bloom. As the trail swung westward, I began to encounter oncoming runners.

I cheered for each. Some cheered for me. I was impressed by their run and they were impressed by seeing a thru-hiker. The camaraderie of these ultra-endurance athletes encouraged me. I’d run multiple hundred-mile races myself. I knew the runners’ thoughts, emotions, and pain firsthand. It wasn’t all that different from what I experienced the previous day as I’d passed the forty-mile mark.

In the late morning, I came to the Pioneer Mail Trailhead parking lot, which was also an aid station for the San Diego 100. Large, white canopy tents filled the space. Runners were trailing in and out while volunteers passed out drinks, food, and first-aid supplies. I spotted trash cans and walked over, eager to toss out the empty wrappers I had. Silly, really, but the few grams of dead weight weighed on my mind more than on my back. I hesitantly asked a woman wearing a volunteer shirt if I could throw away my trash in their bins.

“Of course! Would you like anything to eat?”

“No thanks,” I said. I had plenty in my pack. In fact, I’d only eaten a third of what I should have by that point.

“What about a cold Coke?” asked another woman.

I accepted the drink, but refused to take a seat. I felt the seconds ticking away inside my head.

As I guzzled the sweet, icy treat, I listened to the volunteers talk about the record number of runners dropping from the race during the previous afternoon. The temperature had hit 120 degrees. My stomach did a flip-flop. No wonder it had felt so hot. They looked at me.

“It’s supposed to be the same temperature again today,” a man said. “Load up on fluids and electrolytes.” With that warning on my mind, I said goodbye and hiked onward.

I encountered a string of runners over the next few miles, and then there was no one. Alone in the desert again, I shuffled along the hot sand. A line of clouds directly above the ridge I was following did little to diffuse the harsh UV, but it was something at least. I imagined my mom at home, washing dishes over the stainless-steel sink and looking out the window at the weeping willow tree swaying in the summer breeze. She’d be praying right now for shade over her baby girl. Tears welled up. I wiped them away and pressed on. It was only my second day on the trail and yet I felt exhausted from the emotional roller coaster I’d been on in the months leading up to that moment. Trying to maintain optimism when faced with something that was certain to be a complete failure was a tight-rope I was tired of balancing on.

I reached a junction and left the PCT to look for a water tank just across the road. Instead, I found the remains of another aid station. The runners were gone, but it was full of partying volunteers.

“Which way is the water tank?” I asked them.

“You need water? Here!”

They offered me as much water and soda and food as I could hold. I drank another Coke and filled my water, but, again, had to decline their offers of food. I just was not hungry, and there was already uneaten food in my pack. A day’s worth of food weighed about two pounds. I’d eaten about half a day’s worth in a day and a half. Throwing the extra two pounds into the trash seemed like a good idea, but what if my appetite caught up with me?

I poured water into my water bottle and bladder, threw away the wrapper from the single granola bar I’d eaten so far that day, and thanked them. They cheered for me as I left to return to the PCT. I relished the attention and the human interaction. I hadn’t anticipated feeling lonely so soon.

Back on the trail, I plodded through the sand and the heat. Again and again, I climbed a ridge and descended. The sun beat down on me and I felt as though I would melt—or, at the very least, my brain would. As I fought to make progress against the wind, I felt a familiar concentrated heat on the side of my heel. A blister was forming.

When I reached the next water tank on the flank of Granite Mountain, I sat in its paltry shade, pulled off my sock, and looked. The skin was already puffed with fluid. Not much I could do now. I put my sock back on. I took stock of my water and decided to bypass the tank, figuring I had plenty to get down to Scissors Crossing and San Felipe Creek.

As I wound along the shadeless mountainside, far in the distance, I could see the brown trail slicing across the bare, gray slope. I descended slowly toward the ancient alluvial plain that fanned from the mountain’s gullies across the desert floor. Soon I realized that my “plenty of water” was rapidly diminishing. I still had no idea how much water I needed to walk these distances in the extreme heat, and my westward progress in the heat of the day was sucking me dry.

I came to San Felipe Creek only to find that it was nothing but a sandy wash. Questionable red water had flowed here in 2005, and I’d been counting on it again this year. I realized I wouldn’t be able to let my guard down in the desert this year—yet determining just how many liters that guard equaled would still require some trial and error.

I considered my options as I floundered through loose sand toward the highway crossing. I could walk into Julian a few miles away and get water there, or I could press on to the cistern by the Third Gate in the hills ahead. Under the highway overpass I saw hundreds of gallon jugs and I walked toward them as a moth to flame. It was a giant water cache left there for thru-hikers by an anonymous person. Some of the caches along the PCT were in the same location year after year, some were only infrequently managed. As I sat down and flipped through the register full of thank you notes from the hikers ahead of me, I remembered that this cache had been mentioned in the water report. Beat from the miles and the heat, my mind wandered to blankness.

A few minutes later I realized I was staring at the register without comprehension. I looked at my watch. It wasn’t even 5 p.m. yet and I’d covered almost forty miles. I poured half a liter of water into my hydration bladder. I couldn’t possibly go through that much in the next thirteen miles to the water tank at Third Gate . . . could I? It would be dark soon, and cooler. I chugged the water I’d just poured and replaced it with the same amount.

It was soon obvious that I had again misjudged my water needs. Five miles from the cache, my water was gone. I was drenched in sweat and my pack worked in conjunction with gravity to pull me backward at every stride. Everything felt like a fight. I hadn’t peed in hours.

I strained my eyes looking for the Third Gate until darkness fell. I had no water, but at least it was finally cool. I pulled my headlamp out of my pack and slipped it on—my first real night hike. Every few minutes, I nervously looked around for mountain lions, fearful of every noise. I became keenly aware of how lonely I was in this big, open landscape. I knew that my fear of them was irrational, that people who had hiked many more miles than me had never seen one. Yet, the elusive cat embodied my fear. They both lurked out of sight, pouncing only when they deemed their prey defenseless.

Has it really only been two days? It felt like it had been a week. Washington seemed like another planet. I imagined what my friends were doing in their daily routines right then—getting home from work, eating dinner, playing with their children. I couldn’t quite comprehend that others were proceeding through their days without real physical difficulties, when I was struggling. I finally stopped to pee: it was a deep orange.

I heard the familiar sound of two rattlesnakes to the left of the trail. I couldn’t see them, even when I panned my headlamp across the sand. I stood uncertain for about thirty seconds. Finally, I sprinted past the rattling. The noise died off and I returned to a walking pace. Soon, I reached the saddle by the Third Gate and scoped out the camping. I jumped each time I swung the beam of my headlamp into a new space and discovered a rattlesnake. First a rattlesnake coiled in a campsite. Then a rattlesnake on the edge of the trail. They seemed to be everywhere I looked.

Walking quickly, I descended from the PCT while sweeping my headlamp around, looking for the cover of the in-ground water cistern. Near it, I spotted a huge water cache. It only took a few seconds to decide on the fresh water right in front of me over scooping water out of the tank. A sweep of the area revealed it to be snake-free and I set up my tent, dragging a gallon jug inside with me. Then I drank and drank and drank.