John Muir Trail Day 20 – Lost Touch (Mile 143/211)

In a completely unprecedented move, I lolled around and left camp late. The trail was downhilly, I had a couple of slides but no falls. My feet are not terrible (and nowhere near as bad as I imagined they would be on this hike), but still blistered and sore today. The last two satellite checkins to my trusties and my location map had not sent, so when I strolled into some satellite signal there were some worried messages that I hadn’t been heard from. I reassured and continued. Down into a different type of valley, where for the first time on the JMT I saw ferns. A glacial meadow. Some big smooth boulders. 

I also saw two snakes on the trail – black with yellow/cream stripes lengthways. Lizards. Bushes with disc-shaped leaves encoaching on the trail. Sylvan smells as I came down into evergreen forests. It seemed burned or blown-down trees had been recently sawn off the trail, leaving piney-fresh shavings and fragrance. The other day I walked passed a downed, cut tree with a 5ft-plus diameter trunk. 

Although the majesty and weirdness of this trail is definitely worth some discomforts, today I was a bit frustrated with the constant foot pain, the almost-painful uncleanliness (sand and grit has got in all my facial orifices, my hair is a hat-mat hazmat). And most frustratingly, the intermittent functioning of satellite messages. Being disconnected from my loved ones feels horrid, knowing I’m causing worry. In daily life, I talk to my sister every day, waking up to a little burst of green WhatsApp bubbles. Vastly reduced screen-time has been a bonus of this trip, but the loss of connection in the last 48 hours has me feeling annoyed and vulnerable. 

The trail forked up out of the glacial meadow and started climbing. I picked up some pace and was wondering whether I’d make it past the Golden Staircase to camp high up tonight. I passed my shuttle-buddy and her mum, already set up to camp by a broad river. I pushed on a couple more miles. I considered, and declined, a solo campsite among tall clean pines. I came up on a big site where a group were lining up their sleeping bags to cowboy-camp under the stars. “We’re social! You could camp here too!” they said. I stood in the middle of the trail, procrastinating. Different voices from the other side of the trail. “Be done walking! You can camp right here!” It was a father-son duo from New Hampshire and Vermont – I’d met them back at the Muir Trail Ranch and the dad had been making a sandwich for the son while he ran back up the trail to retrieve their forgotten fly-sheet.

Like the mother-daughter duo further back on the trail, the guys were head-to-toeing in a small, light tent. I felt a little ridiculous setting up my king-mattress-sized castle adjacent. “So, you can have your backpack and all your stuff in there with you, eh?” That night the black groundsheet of my tent seemed like it stretched away from me, wide-open and too-big. Space for a few ghosts.