[photos and links coming in May]
Ice cream for breakfast at the Lazy Lizard. Now I have a Talenti jar for cold-soak meals and a bit of extra water storage. Scrubbed a layer of congealed sweat off my skin, charged everything, and away we go!
Except that I ended up not leaving the hostel til around 5PM, between laundry (I caved and did it), slow charging (I think something is wrong with my 2-port USB wall block), and typing these entries into my phone from my handwritten notes. A restful and productive day, but with the sun dropping I was stressed for time. I had miles to make out of town in order to find a decent campsite.
“That’s what settled this country, people in a rush. Go west, go west!” The innkeeper’s conversation from the next room. Never a shortage of personalities at a hostel. This one has digital nomad climbers, cleaning women my mom’s age talking in Spanish, a strummer with Einstein hair behind the front desk, “the woman plays the game because she wants a baby,” and an old man tubed into a puffing, sighing machine who’s risen from the men’s dorm bed by the door only once since I arrived 24 hours ago. I think he’s dying.
I bought groceries to last the 4 days to Needles Outpost but still needed to eat dinner before leaving. Saw a big building with signs for General Store, Hardware Store, and Grocery on the front. Perused the aisles for 2 minutes and left with a can of Cream of Mushroom soup to eat while I walked. I only made it two sips, which was about how many decades that stuff must have been in the exact spot I plucked it from the shelf. My impulse decisions around food are always the worst. Never buy dinner from a hardware store! I made the intentional decision to slow down, eat well, and feel good no matter when I left town. A food truck park saved me and I ate most of it while walking anyway!
Let me get this down while it’s still fresh. It happened at the last second I ever would have expected. Hustling down West Williams Way, hours later than I wanted to be, shoveling down hearty sesame chicken and vegetables from a takeout box, booking it straight into the blinding sun toward the Portal. I notice a vehicle slow down as it’s passing me, pull over on my side of the road. They’re probably going to ask if I’m doing the Hayduke. (Speaking of which, when I was walking down Main Street an hour ago I saw Sully who gave me a ride to the start of the trail! Happy reunion.) Anyway, the passenger side window started rolling down as I came up beside the car. I got up to the window, stopped, looked inside. Inside is a shortish man with sunglasses, a bit of beard, bit of belly — and a baseball cap that says Deep Desert Expeditions. He says to me, kind of elfishly, “Hey, are you doing the Hayduke Trail?” and I say back to him: “No. Way. Mike??!!!!!”
I just ran into Mike Coronella, co-creator of the Hayduke!!! On my way out of town, at 6PM on whatever day it is! It was like meeting Santa Claus (and not just because Mike resembles a snowbird Saint Nick). When I arrived in town yesterday I went out of my way to walk the official route because it goes down his street and I wanted to see if I could cross paths with him. Didn’t happen. I am so delighted right now.
“Where you from?”
“New York, originally.”
“Me too, I’m from the Bronx! I came out here to ski 30 years ago and never left!”
Hmm.
He signed my map! I was starstruck and forgot all my clever things to say and questions to ask (how’d they decide to name this trail after Hayduke?) and of course I missed the chance to get a picture with him or have him sign The Monkey Wrench Gang (which I brought with me intending to read, lol). All I could do was make sure he knew how delighted I was, and I did. After he drove off I walked for the next hour cackling and singing through the outskirts of town.
If I hadn’t stayed to do laundry then I wouldn’t have been running late, so I wouldn’t have bought the gross mushroom soup that made me stop at the food trucks, and I would never have been walking down the wrong street at exactly the right moment to run into Mike Coronella. If that can happen, then anything can happen.
That’s the magic I came here for.