Part 23

Stateline Campground to Looking Glass Basecamp

We found the monument. No one else was there.

I gave her the ring. She said yes. The Heavens didn’t open, but the future did, an almost palpable split from one universe to another.

“We’re engaged now,” Ice Cream told me as we set up our tent.

I smiled at her and winked. “Yes.” It’s all I could say. I banged in a tent stake with a rock; she went around tightening guylines. “Could you pass me another stake, please?” I asked as she passed by the door.

Ice Cream dug around in my pack for another tent stake, and for the first time I didn’t panic about her messing with my pack. The ring, once hidden at the bottom, now adorned her finger. For 800 miles it had weighed on me, an unanswered question, a riddle in the dark. Now she knew, and so did I.

I finished setting the last stake.

Now settled, we went back up the trail to check out one of the campground’s overlooks. Nothing amazing, but more than I expected.

Four people sat at one of the benches there. They looked like hikers, but not like they’d been hiking. Clean mellies, shoes without the telltale crust of the Devil’s Mud, no packs at their feet, no tired adventure in their eyes.

One, a friendly man in his thirties with black hair poking out from under a trucker’s cap, waved us over. “You just finishing your thru?”

We said we were.

“Congrats!” he said. His three friends said the same. “We’re waiting on some friends, Trip and Dogleg. You know them?”

I shook my head. “No, afraid not.”

The dude shrugged. “Anyway, we were Trip’s tramily on the PCT. We’re having trail magic for her when she gets here. Plenty of food if you want to join us later.”

Ice Cream and I shared a glance and a grin. “Perfect. What’re your names?”

The leader’s name was Handy; the other three were Partway, Uncle Sam, and Wit the Brit.

While Handy and crew waited for their friends, Ice Cream and I went back to the tent, shared a little box of wine, and broke bread with cookies we’d picked up at Jacob Lake.

With our engagement sealed, the trail’s end felt like a beginning, pointing us toward Vegas and beyond. The rest was a whirlwind.

First came a terminus party. Thunder growled in distant hills, but no rain fell. Handy was the Camp Dad, happily slaving over a grill that had seen rivers and roads. Drinks flowed, smoke curled; laughter and tears mingled as old friends swapped stories and new ones shared Instagram handles.

Two Hayduke hikers joined in: the eccentric and hilarious Mastermind—a legendary hiker who wore a Wal-Mart sweater and a buffalo hat—and his friend Many Names, who chose a new trail name every day, and whose face changed with every name.

In the morning, we were surprised to see A.Z., our trail-running pal from Kearney, rolling in with Stumps and Huck, hikers we’d met or heard of through hiker grapevine. We traded tales and weed while we ate last night’s trail magic leftovers. Huck ate an avocado with scissors, hiker trash at its finest.

The rain that had been holding off finally came. Little more than a drizzle, but it was enough to ruin Handy and friends’ plans. They’d wanted to explore a nearby slot canyon, a death trap in rain due to flash floods.

Despite his disappointment, Handy, ever the kind soul and trail dad, gave Ice Cream and me, as well as Trip and Dogleg, a ride a few miles up the dirt road.

Trip and Dogleg went south toward Flagstaff; we headed north toward Las Vegas. Another ten miles of dirt road remained, but there were plenty of tourists traveling to and from The Wave, a famous nearby rock formation.

Before the rain could soak us, a French couple on vacation with their toddler daughter picked us up and took us to the highway.

We stuck out our thumbs.

A Mormon man and his son picked us up first. The son insisted that we eat leftover donuts; the father asked if we were armed and shot suspicious glances through the rearview.

Next were more Mormons, a woman in traditional garb and her son in plain plaid. They didn’t ask any questions; maybe they’d had their fill, or else never questioned at all.

Finally, we were picked up by a kindred spirit, a hiker chick and van lifer with a broken foot. Kindred Spirit took us to Saint George, where we caught a shuttle to Vegas.

The desert must have been in a mood, for it was raining hard by the time we arrived in Sin City. Casino lights played off shiny streets as our shuttle splashed through the waters of overwhelmed drainage systems.

A casino called the Strat became our home base, from which we cleaned up, got haircuts, bought some clothes from Ross, and got married by Elvis in the Chapel of Little Hearts.

It was a lovely ceremony. Elvis sang us a song as we walked hand in hand through the Chapel. Most of the tears were Ice Cream’s, but not all. Though an Elvis wedding is lighthearted, our Elvis made sure to provide the same advice any holy man would, with his famous accent and pointing finger.

“Repeat after me,” the King commanded.

We obeyed, and we made the oaths of marriage with the same earnest devotion we would have under the dome of St. Peter’s or in front of the waterfalls from which the world was born.

Only the King, a photographer, and ourselves were present. In a perfect world, our families and friends could have been there, too. But my family and friends are spread out across the U.S.—nearly impossible to assemble—and Ice Cream’s, while more centralized, are, let us say, in need of a few warm-up years before they learn to love Yours Truly.

As I said in the previous article, Ice Cream and I were born galaxies apart. I descend from impious sons of the British Isles and lost Catholics of Sicily. Bright souls, but wild and prone to pilgrimages and problems. In contrast, Ice Cream’s ancestors escaped the Holy Roman Empire to the new world, intent on pacifism, piety, and plainness.

Nothing can stop true love, so they say, and once bonded forever by the power of the King, we celebrated. Dinner at a local pizzeria with two of my old friends, now unwilling citizens of Sin City.

One took us on a tour of Old Vegas after dinner. We saw a giant praying mantis spewing fire and scantily clad women dancing on tables, gyrating with enough erotic energy to get John the Baptist killed.

Under a digital sky, a black man brandished a rock at a racist who had mentioned Voldemort’s name aloud—a jarring reminder we weren’t on the trail anymore, Dorothy.

After Vegas came Trail Days.

Our AT crew has been attending since ’22. For us, it’s an event of greater significance than Christmas—a family reunion, church, and festival combined. This year, Ice Cream’s and my goal was to put on our Jehovah’s Witness hats and recruit as many of our friends to the CDT as possible.

We did this using The Way of our Lord, Herman the Cat. Herman belongs to Tina of the Quarterway Inn, or so it seems. In truth, he is a holy creature, like the cats of Old Egypt. Mayhap he was one, and his chubby visage is carved somewhere in the Valley of the Kings or in a lost pyramid under the sand. Whatever Herman is, cat or god, he can make Frito the Atheist speak like a southern preacherman. Tina of the Quarterway would be delighted if anyone reading this were to mention that they too are of the Church of Herman.

This may make no sense to you, but if you know what happens at Trail Days, then you know, and if you don’t, then I’m not telling you. Suffice it to say at Trail Days, beef is the best vegetable to grow in the apocalypse, drums can be tools of transcendence, and creative people are far more common than usual, as are kind ones.

As we sat by the fire and watched the last light die, Frito agreed to join our quest, bringing our number to four, a serendipitous match for Glacier’s backcountry permits, capped to protect fragile ecosystems.

Now it would be Ice Cream, Toolman and Frito—her first AT tramily who’d weathered storms together—and me, her last. Three years later, she’d brought us all together for another adventure.

After Trail Days came a road trip from Damascus to Vermont.

Ice Cream and I returned to the farm where she sang to cows and helped them turn organic grasses into milk and Mennonite money. “Hey, girls!” she called across the field. They followed her to the barn like disciples.

We saw Mt. Belvedere, where I had once cast the ashes of lost love into the wind. There’s poetry in them there hills, and something more than wind now turns the nearby turbines.

While Ice Cream called to cows and drove a hay truck, I wrote, as you might have noticed. I was caught up in the passion for words and desperate to finish telling this tale before the next started. When we left Vermont, I had one more AZT article left to write, and this is it.

I write this now from Luna’s, the northernmost hostel on the CDT. It’s a spectacular place, reminiscent of Terra Sol on the AZT or perhaps a little like Angel’s Rest on the AT. Luna, the proprietor, is telling us how we might sleep on the floor of a Many Glacier hotel after we are inevitably caught in the storm that’s brewing. We’re ready for type 2 fun—rain and snow, blisters and bears, hills and hunger.

If you’ve been reading, you know the drill, but Mother Nature, ever creative, always finds a way to put a unique twist on a familiar tale, and I look forward to telling it.

Authors Note: Thank you for joining Ice Cream and me on the AZT. The kind comments have warmed our hearts, and it would warm them further if you would join us on the CDT. We start tomorrow. See you soon, friends!

Unless given express permission for their use, all names and trail names in my articles have been changed. Any resemblance to real people is coincidental. If you enjoy my writing, please feel free to subscribe or buy me a coffee using the Tip the Author button.