Rainy Days

My alarm goes off on my wrist. 

Rain still pounds on my Six Moon Designs Deschutes Tarp.

I take some deep breaths, I’d rather be in below freezing in the snow than in rain. The temperature is about 45 to 50 degrees, which isn’t cold, unless you’re soaking wet. 

I took shelter from the downpour at 10:00 a.m. yesterday, sleeping a bunch and watching a few horror movies on my phone. 

I am dry and warm despite the rain. All my gear, however, is soaking wet. My sun hoody and Trek shorts are dripping wet.

I sip my last little bit of water, I’m probably dehydrated. I can’t hide in my tarp anymore, I can’t wait for the rain to stop. I’m out of water and I don’t have enough food to cover the miles I’ve lost trying to wait out the rain. 

I strip down, putting my dry sleep clothes and puffy in a Dyneema sack. The most important thing in the rain is keeping dry things from damp things and damp things from soaking things. It’s so easy to end up with just everything wet. 

I breathe deep and pull on the soaking wet sun hoody. I hate it, I wish I could go back to sleep. I’d love to throw my puffy on over the wet sun hoody to warm up, but I need to keep the puffy as dry a possible as long as possible. I slide on the wet shorts and wet rain jacket. I’m no longer dry and warm. 

I sit in my tent, miserable. Of course nothing dried in the least. I was warm in my sleep clothes and puffy, but now I’m shivering. I just entered California, so I sent my alcohol stove home. I daydream of a hot coffee. 

I don’t even have water to make cold coffee, not that it would even scratch the itch. Plus, even if I had water, my cold soak container is filled with urine from the night and needs to be washed with soap. I absolutely wasn’t leaving my tent in that downpour.

Definitely wishing I had a tent with bathtub floor rather than a tarp with no floor. I did get flooded, but luckily not enough to go over my three-inch-thick Therm-a-Rest inflatable pad. The flooding did cover the bug new skirt of my tarp in dirt and debris. No point in putting the tarp or tyvek ground sheet in the pack, I just strapped them on top, so hopefully dirt and water would fall off a little. Although the rain would keep anything from drying.

Wet feet are always the worst part about being wet. The constant reminder of water squishing under every step. The water also wreaks havoc on the old blisters and dead skin. You work hard to build up tough leather feet and then the water breaks the skin down and it just comes off like wet wallpaper. I was confused the first time I pulled off wet socks and there was something odd that wasn’t dirt, it was lots of skin. 

I try to think of worse times, other wet and miserable times. Type 3 fun times. I remember crawling through sewage with my classmates, that was a punishment for something that I no longer remember. In defense of the Master Sergeant, he didn’t know it was sewage, he just wanted to torture us by having us low crawl through mud. Although the photo of the whole detachment posing covered in mud and sewage does bring back good memories. 

I think of combat training in North Carolina in the winter. We would wake up with all of our water frozen and hike to the next training area. We were constantly dealing with hypothermia and dehydration. We were running movement under fire drills and I was partnered with my close friend Adam. He started hallucinating bodies all over the field before we started the live fire drills. I was going to be running while he was shooting live rounds past me. I had to shake him.

“Look at me, don’t shoot me, shoot anyone else but me, focus on me.”

There’s not much worse than being dehydrated with canteens full of frozen water – besides being dehydrated and cold with your hallucinating friend shooting past you.

I guess the difference between my current predicament and those I remember is comradery. Currently just suffering alone. I’ve gone back and forth on this trip between large trail families and solo missions like this. I am quite a solo person but suffering in solidarity is not the same as crushing miles and pushing myself solo.

Still, I’m alive. While it may be cold, this can’t kill me. About 30 miles back to the last town and 25 miles to the next town. The only way is forward. As much as I can I embrace the suck. 

Would I rather be laying on a comfy couch watching horror movies or trash TV? Maybe, but then how would I know I’m alive, how would I know I am still resilient?

Tough times on trail force you to adapt and overcome, use the tools you have to the best of your abilities and improvise.