Mile 1744-1771
The night was shorter than usual, but we were excited to get moving in the morning. I’ve noticed recently that my dreams have been a bit more vivid and memorable and have taken quite a creative/inventive turn. This past night I thought up a new game in my dream (the details are now escaping me 17 hours later), as well as a plot for a movie thriller. I’ll have to start taking notes in the morning and see if my subconscious has any bright ideas.
Hawkeye and I, now on the trail by ourselves, spent the entire day talking. He taught me some British history around the legislation that essentially ended subsistence/agricultural lifestyles. There are many “Bothe” (sounds like ’body’) huts off in the Scottish hills that hikers can now use as emergency shelters when the weather turns bad, but are the remnants of 1700s agricultural beings.
We pushed hard in the morning to make it 16 miles to the first of two shelters on the entire PCT! We arrived a little calorie-depleted and weary, but it was a wise choice. An elderly couple has been stocking the shelter for hikers, and four coolers held Gatorade, coke, beer, apples, M&Ms, and bananas. Best. Trail Magic. Ever.
We regained a bit of composure after scarfing down lunch and had the place all to ourselves for over an hour before a few other northbounders piled in. Kodachrome is a hiker from Switzerland carrying an enormously heavy DSLR camera. Another hiker from Germany, Gargumel, is a physical therapist and bike courier. We were surprised to meet the trail angels themselves as they came to restock the coolers and brought a huge tub of watermelon! My oh my.
We stayed as long as we possibly could, trying to calculate exactly how much time we would need to scramble the remaining 10 miles to camp before dark.
Now, to the bees. Let me set the stage. Ever since the halfway point, we have noticed a high number of bees near water sources. This was unnerving at first, to have bees flying all around you while you fill up your water bottles, but over the past 500 some miles we have become quite used to them and pay no more attention to bees than we would flies (approximately 0).
So, we’re walking along after an amazing afternoon, and the front of my shin had a very unfortunate feeling as I look down and swat away a yellow jacket. What!? After all this time, I’m just walking along, minding my own beeswax (oh that’s right, I went there), and a bee decides it’s finally had enough with smelly hikers filing past its home?
Well excuuuuse me. Aside from the oddity of being the FKS (first known stung), we kept on hiking down the trail. Right as I was easing up and forgetting the quite acute stinging in my shin, my calf is now on fire. Another sting!! One is a coincidence, two and we knew someone had put a hit out on me.
We threw around a bit of bro science and figured there were some pheromone deals that released upon a sting and alerted the tribe to murder me. We recalled Hawkeye’s research on killer bees a few weeks back: ”A non-allergic human can withstand 1,000 stings per pound of body weight.” So you know, I had another 144,998 stings to go before I really got worried.
The madness ended there, and I washed off my legs to get rid of the bat signal that emanated from them (bro science, but trust me, it’s all true).
