Root Beer Floats, A Light Punch in the Face, and A Magic Lake

The Pacific Crest Trail Day 26

We see Coppertone’s RV and pump our fists.

Rootbeer floats are imminent this morning, served up by a trail angel in the middle of the desert.

“You know,” I turn to Black Widow thoughtfully, “I would totally accept a solid punch in the arm every hundred miles just to walk this trail.”

“Or a light punch to the face every 500 miles.” I add after a moment of thought. “Just seeing this view alone is so perfect. Instead we’re getting rootbeer floats.”

Widow thinks this over.

“A light punch.” She nods, considering the trade off. “Yah, sure. Ok.”

Both of us still can’t accept how much we are being rewarded simply for walking through paradise. This morning’s accomplishment was crossing a bridge made of branches without falling in and ruining our electronics.

Then filtering water beside a peaceful stream as sunlight flickered across a low branch.

We’re not paying rent. We’re not contributing taxable income or providing any social good.

However, after the past year of my life, I’ve learned that sometimes you just gotta shut up and accept when things are good. Times like these are in limited supply.

Lizards scurry out of our way as we cross the last 100 feet to Coppertone’s RV. He welcomes us into the circle of folding chairs. Bananas, strawberries, apples, and donuts are laid out on a dinner trays in the center.

Tall, lanky, and sun-worn, Coppertone looks like if Bob Ross was a Hell’s Angel, but with a voice that’s somehow even less threatening.

We sit in the shade with rootbeer floats cooling our hands as the rest of our group shows up: Grizzly, Dirt, Gumby, and Borat. We are missing Magellan, Turtle, & Black Swan, who left the trail days ago due to an infection risk with Turtle’s blistered foot.

After our floats, Black Widow and I head back on the trail. As Dirt has already noted, we have matching paces and abilities to sit still. We’re hoping to beat the afternoon heat.

There was no need to rush. The temperature spikes early and stays there.

It quickly becomes the worst kind of hiking. Rounding one side of a valley only to look ahead and see the trail a quarter mile ahead, still in the same terrain.

Scorched from a forest fire, the blackened trees stick out like wiry hairs from the pebbled earth.

We are fleas traversing an elephant’s skin. The vastness of the terrain only brings more attention to how far there is to travel.

It’s eight hours swaddled in heat while the sun nips at our shoulders. Long miles. Long silences punctuated by groans as the next curve of the mountain is revealed to also have no shade. Fire consumed the branches that would have provided it years ago.

There is one thing to look forward to: Turtle, Magellan, and Black Swan are ahead of us. By sheer coincidence, a trail angel put them back on trail exactly where we were planning to camp that night. We’d coordinated via text to meet up that night and order pizza from the campsite.

The rest of the texts are puns about pizza.

However, both the campsite and the pizza are still miles of hot sand away.

Black Widow and I recover in the cool darkness beneath a low overpass where a scummy trickle of a stream oozes past. We look at our phones. Tomorrow will be hotter. The day after, we’ll have to go 23 miles without water.

With a groan we rise and continue along a busy highway with gravel and broken glass crunching beneath our feet. Then there’s a long climb that just keeps going.

I turn to Black Widow. The magic of the morning’s rootbeer float is long gone.

“You know, I think this is the first bad day I’ve had.” Guilt follows the words, but burnout’s been creeping in as I near my first month on the trail. “I mean, I love it here. There is no place I would rather be. But today, I’m just not feeling the trail. I guess it was bound to happen.”

Widow shrugs in agreement. It’s an objective fact. Today just kinda sucks.

And with the words having just left my mouth, I turn back ahead, we crest the hill, and out of nowhere appears the most gorgeous lake.

Motor boats skim across the calm waves and children’s laughter carries across the surface as they’re dragged behind in inner tubes.

We both gasp and clap our hands in delight.

“What the fuck is a lake doing in the desert?” We exclaim, grinning at the sudden boost to our day.

And at the lake’s excellent timing.

And then, a half mile later, there’s a beach.

We splash into the water. It’s heaven.

Grizzly comes down the path and we yell for him from the water to join us. Dirt and Borat see us from the path. Borat waves back excitedly and Dirt squeals with joy. Through sheer force of will she doesn’t leap over the bushes the ten feet down to the beach. Everyone bounds into the water. Everyone except Gumby, who stoically watches us from the trail. He’s still refusing to enter the water. I can only assume his hockey player instincts distrust anything non-frozen.

He smokes a cigarette as he watches us celebrate, then continues on to the campsite.

We are ecstatic in the water; laughing, splashing, diving, and swimming.

It’s the opposite of the past eight hours.

Cool.

Reviving.

Weightless.

A world without sun baked stone and ashen wood.

We swim giggling to the edge of the cove and sun ourselves on the beach as ants dominate the sand around us. Our knees are weak, our breaths short.

Borat gazes in fascination at the Mallard ducks swimming around, declaring that if he could choose his skin color, it would be “Green, like that duck’s head.”

I nod, having never considered the question. It’s an odd opinion, but a solid skin color.

We dry out on the beach and talk about Chinese food, then continue on to the campsite, where we throw up our hands in joy.

Magellan! Turtle! Black Swan!

We hug, the group reunited. Stories of our past two days fly through the air. They stayed with a matronly British lady and her husband who fed them tea, drunken noodles, and marathoned British movies including Kinky Boots. We walked a lot and swam in a lake.

We order pizza, wings, and beer delivered to us. The time fills with laughs, jokes, and more stories until the pizza arrives with the wings and beer and we cheer.

4 pizzas, 24 beers, and 2 orders of wings disappear between 9 people in a half hour.

As we’re finishing the beers a cop pulls up without his flashers on. We are drinking in a public park long after dark which is not 100% indisputably legal. Turtle and I instinctively straighten up and slide our beers behind us, reminding ourselves that we are over 21. The weed is also hidden.

The cop welcomes us to the park and tells us we’re free to sleep beneath the gazebo.

Then he asks how our hike has been.

Then he makes sure the water in the spigot’s turned on.

Then he wishes us well, waves goodbye, and leaves.

It takes us a second to process what just happened. The cop saw we weren’t causing a problem, made sure we were ok, and left. It was a nice cop. This day moves from magic to near-miraculous.

We talk late into the night and sleep peacefully on cool concrete beneath the stars.

Sometimes, you don’t question why things are nice. Why you’re being rewarded for walking through a paradise. You just grin and accept it. Life is not always this good to you. Take what you can get.

There’s always a punch in the face coming.

My book is available here:

https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Monks-Burning-Mountains-Misadventures-ebook/dp/B00PG7GM2W