May 24: Back to the trail

After a day in Agua Dulce and a nice, long, four-day visit in LA, we returned to the trail tonight. My friend Dan drove us back to the Saufley's this afternoon from his apartment in Los Feliz and we set about preparations for leaving. By 9:30 or so, under cover of a hazy, warm darkness, we were back on the PCT, road walking out of Agua Dulce.

The week off has been really great. Time away from the trail and trail culture has been refreshing, relaxing, and restorative. The day and a half spent at the hiker heaven was a treat as well.

The Saufley's house -- this Hikers' Heaven -- is just a really laid back place. Jeff and Donna, the owners have put so much of themselves, financially and personally, into making their home a home to the hikers of the PCT. Thursday, after arriving mid-day, was spent hanging out, drinking a few beers in the sun, catching up with friends. The Saufley's have two extra cars which they allow hikers to use so people were always coming and going in little groups, heading down to the supermarket or to the pizza place, taking trips to the REI in LA, going to the Post Office. A carload even took a daytrip on Saturday to Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia. I can't say I wasn't tempted. A group of us got out Thursday evening to catch an opening day showing of the now Star Wars film (it was excellent, incidentally -- dark, exciting, well done).

The Saufley's home and property span a few acres, dotted with big open tents full of cots, a mobile home with kitchen, two bedrooms and a living room, an RV, a beautiful flowering cactus garden, horse corral and stable. Aside Jeff and Donna's house is a line of big, clear plastic bins, set up as hiker boxes for hikers to exchange food, gear, etc. I actually found a nice pair of used sneakers in there which am trying out now. It isn't often that I come across used 13s at all, let alone decent, comfortable ones. In the garage, on the south side of the house, there is a sign board with information about the trail, the vehicles, doing laundry, etc. Also, the garage acts as the postal receiving area. Boxes are stacked to the ceiling, five-gallon buckets wrapped in blue, eagle's head sihouette priority tape form a wall of their own. Our bounce bucket, unfortunately, never made it. We've been leaving forwarding addresses everywhere we've gone, but still no bucket. It's been particular frustrating, this missing bucket because everything in the bucket was put there for convenience sake, just in case, so we wouldn't have to go to stores in search of little things like Deet or sunscreen or Advil or batteries, everytime we got into a town. But here we are, still no sign of the damn bucket. We don't really even need a lot of the stuff in there. The whole thing has been one big, ridiculous headache. We've called the postal service and they claim to be looking into it . . . fill out the change-of-address form and keep on walking.

We were given the honeymoon suite in the hiker mobile home as we were the only couple in attendance upon our arrival -- we recalled that Angela and Duffy had enjoyed the same honor in their book, A Blistered Kind of Love. A copy of their book was actually right down the hall in the living room and Eliza enjoyed an evening of re-reading the first half of their journey, comparing our own trip, as a couple, fairly new to hiking, with theirs. We had been harboring some deranged, misplaced pride early on that we never needed to get hotel rooms in towns, we could just slip in, get our groceries, slip out and sleep back on the trail (we are actually just incredibly cheap), and we swelled smuggly, triumphantly after reading that Duffy and Angela desperately needed their first room on day three. We're so tough. It was very interesting to reread some of the book after actually seeing the trail and experiencing some of the same things as the two of them. We thought it was pretty cool a few weeks ago seeing the register forms that these two had filled out in the Hikers' Oasis. They are like celebrities out here, along with Meadow Ed, the Saufleys, and Yogi -- another woman who has written a book and is commonly revered as a trail guru of sorts. It's kind of comical, really. Then again, it is very cultural, very inclusive to have these figures whom everyone knows about, that everyone relates to to some degree.

***

The trip to LA was a great time, although it started off a bit rocky. We were dropped off in Griffith Park, just off the freeway, on Saturday morning, by Duck and Swift who were visiting their brothers. They were continuing northward on Sunday, so we said goodbye, wondering whether we would see them again. The trail this year may prove to be particularly divisive for groups of hikers. The weather and everyone's daily changing plans for how to deal with the Sierras is pulling everyone in a different direction . . .

So with our cohort left dissolving in Agua Dulce, we found ourselves wandering into LA's baked central park. It turned out to be a thoroughly miserable day, an ugly, sweaty transition. Once again we discovered how much more unpleasant it is to walk on roads than out on a trail -- not to mention how difficult it is to navigate a big city without a map. I thought I could get us around the park and into Dan's neighborhood, Los Feliz, but I was sorely mistaken. We walked and walked, but the roads stayed right with us, the crowds just got bigger, with more kids and more pinatas and louder music; the park never became a park. Finally we ended up calling Dan and leaving three messages from a bench across from the kiddie train ride next to the pony stables before getting directions to his place and setting off in the opposite direction.

The day got better. We found the place and by evening we were drinking beers, guitars in hand, cocked and loaded, catching up with new and old friends, officially off our feet and off the PCT.