We ended up staying in Sierra City for most of the morning today. Jim Duffy kindly treated us (once again) to a very nice, leisurely breakfast down at the Buckhorn where we had eaten dinner last night and we were joined by Roy, a friend of his, who just happened to be there when we showed up. The four of us had a nice time. They both had many encouraging words for us and expressed over and over again how great it is that we are out hiking this trail right now, doing what we want to be doing with our young lives, living and doing and being active before it started to hurt too much to do so in life. Jim summed up the sentiment that we've heard from many of the retired folks we've met along the way that "one day you'll be up to here in responsibilities -- kids, family, work, a home -- and you'll look back on this trip and probably wish from time to time that you could trade it all then and there and just find a simple, easy happiness sleeping out on somebody's lawn, or sitting alone out in the woods, or swimming silently under a purple evening sky without having given a prior thought to the moment at hand."
Roy nodded in agreement. He advised us to stay out of debt. Never owe anyone your time or money.
We left town by 10:30 or so and, bellies quite full, started up out of the valley. Up and up and up some more was how it went all day long. We are climbing now into the high country. The Sierras. It will continue to be like this through to the finish. No more dropping down into hot valley floors to pass through towns. No more fruit flies. No more of the scrubby, fragrant black oak that we've been passing through at around 5000 ft.
The Sierra Nevada are around us and before us. Grand, serrated mountains have appeared in the distance today, as we walked the windy, rolling crestline at around 8000 ft. Alpine lakes speckle the nearby valleys and basins. The winds pick up and the descending sun leaves us with a goose-bump raising chill.
Chasing Shade. We hardly stopped moving today. The sun arched high and beamed down brightly, lit the world with a golden white, turned and hid within the wind and soon sunk back over our shoulders, highlighting the orange and yellowing, dry husks of the ubiquitous homogenous plant life up on top of the balded, craggy mountaintops.
Forgetting to plan out the day's water stops, we passed up a mid-day refill at a campground and ended up flying through the afternoon and on up into the mountains light and parched, hoping that the next seasonal creek would carry a trickle, but each time, just turning and shrugging to one another, and without more than a pause pushing on forward down the trail. Finally we hit a babbling tributary to White Rock Creek at sometime after 9:00, already shrouded in the deep darkness of the moonless August night. I drank water directly from the stream, as I have done more than a few times these past few days. Our filter is broken and I am playing roulette, I know. It'll serve me right, I suppose, when I end up spending next week's vacation hunched over, sweating on a toilet rather than gorging myself on huge home cooked meals and going out to eat at the old Ithacan favorites.
We never caught Shade today. He had said that he would be here at White Rock Creek, but may have moved on if he had gotten here with a great deal of light remaining.
We hope to see him in the morning and make good time to Donner Pass and arrive early on at this last Trail Angel's door. And that will be it for the angels and the magician of his trail; the last we can expect to see of their unremitting hospitality and generocity -- Pooh Corner, the final stop that we know of on this great length of trail, the PCT.
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