CDT Days 18 & 19: Angels in the Desert

Showers can change lives. I can get down and dirty, living on trail for weeks, but I like my hot showers. I think one of the best showers I’ve ever had in my life was at the Davila Ranch on my 18th day. My feet were hot and covered in blisters, and I had begun smelling something along the lines of cow carcass coming from what I believed to be my dress. My hair was caked with dust and presumably the cow pies I’d been taking breaks in and around. It wasn’t unusual for me to be sitting right next to a turd while eating a midday snack. 

Stepping into the large, concrete-floored shower and letting the perfect, hot water run over me was an experience I never wanted to end. Water is a unique magic that can calm aches and pains as well as the soul. If there wasn’t one of the worst droughts in recent New Mexico history currently happening, I’d have stood in there all evening. I re-emerged on the other size of the big metal shower door a new human, alive with hope and peace. 

That’s not even where it ends. At the Davila Ranch, they also keep stacks of eggs, potatoes and onions for hikers and bikers to feed their stomachs and spirit. I ate a borderline ridiculous amount of potatoes and slept as such. The people that do these sorts of things, they help others in such a human way. What I mean is that they see people struggling right there in their community, and they do something about it. In this case it’s exhausted travelers working towards a major border-to-border goal. They don’t ask any further questions for us to suddenly be a welcomed part of their team. You can feel them rooting for you in every bite of the real food you desperately needed or the fresh clothing you can find actual comfort in. It’s such a beautiful sentiment, and it’s that sort of community that we lack in so many of society’s spaces these days.

Another unshaded dirt road slog into town eventually led me directly to the Pie-O-Neer Homestead for some homemade apple pie that absolutely lived up to the hype of Pie Town, NM. From one of the best showers of my life to one of the best slices of pie in my life (and pie is my favorite desert), life was feeling pretty sweet.

Strolling up to the iconic Toaster House, I immediately got a taste of what the place was all about. One of the men who’d previously lived there had stopped by to pick up the trash, and to bring us a cooler full of ice cold beers!

It’s the little things that make our days, right?

It was so fun hanging out on the porch with fellow hikers and bikers, sharing stories and watching the incoming storm clouds roll by. And the upside to my trail shoes not working out is…I got to put them on the notorious shoe wall!! How selfless for a Pie Town family to donate their home for this.

If you’d like to contribute to my CDT thruhike fundraiser please visit this link.