CDT Days 3-5: Hachita to Lordsburg

For being in the absolute middle of nowhere in it’s purest form, I thought Hachita was quite the town and I’m surprised that every hiker doesn’t stop there. Even the post office was filled with small-town charm, with its one heartwarming employee and her trusty dog Jasper, who provides you with a full show when you go to mail a package. Jasper can retrieve her different animal toys by name, and then proceed to grab her bag of treats off the shelf when she’s ready to be rewarded for being the goodest girl. The community center is quiet and you can feel the love for the hiking and biking community that those who maintain it possess throughout the large building. The homemade Mexican burritos and coffee at the market are so satisfying that both Bullwinkle and myself went back for seconds. What more could a thruhiker in the desert want?

I smiled at the EconoLodge hiker logbook this morning when I saw that Bullwinkle had made it to Lordsburg. Him and I had spent time in Hachita together napping and rehabbing out sun-sick bodies, while talking about our mental game for getting through these water-barren sections. The first portion if the CDT provided a pretty mentally daunting start. The ground seemed to turn into an actual convection oven by about 10 a.m., and there wasn’t much change in scenery to keep your mind off of it either. Occasionally you’d get a herd of cows to deviate around, or a Border Patrol car creeping by. For the most part it was just you and the desert, a wide open expanse that felt like it could swallow you up if you weren’t careful.

Vulnerabilities are at their peak for a thruhiker when not even one section has been completed yet. I remember this from the PCT, when people were telling me how amazing and brave I was and I wanted to crawl under a rock and hide because I hadn’t even completed two miles yet! During one of the few water stops at a cow pond, I met Beacon and a friend of his who was just hiking this section to Lordsburg. I was in awe of the 60-something-year-old coming out here just to do what I perceive to be the hardest section of the trail. They mentioned seeing hiker Special K, who began with my same shuttle group and wore the same thruhiking dress as me in another color. “She’s been crushing it, doing like 25 mile days,” Beacon stated. I felt crushed. Was I not crushing it because I’d only hiked 13 miles the day prior after resting? 

I was so proud of myself when I finally got to the EconoLodge in the heat of the day on Friday, as I’d limped for probably 30 miles in order to get there. Since my legs had been so stiff and painful from my sun exposure, I’d been walking funny and the right side of my body, especially my IT band, was not enthused. After taking a full zero day yesterday and icing my inflamed legs, I’m excited to push on towards Silver City and see how my body has adjusted or not. Here’s to pushing ourselves and finding our limits.