What Lingers

Hunter Fogel
Aug 24, 2017 · 4 min read

In my childhood home in Pennsylvania, a map of the Pacific Crest Trail hangs on the kitchen pantry door. My mom has marked spots on the map with little blue stickers, place-names I’ve given when I call home.

I walk up to the map and let my eyes wander up the spine of California, Oregon, Washington. National Forests and Parks, Wilderness Areas and BLM parcels, which are rendered abstractions of purple, green, and yellow shading. What they symbolize to me hangs like poetry. What the land has imprinted on my feet and my soul burns like a cattle brand: sweet and hot and real.

What lingers is a longing for the roving wildness I know to be my truth.

What lingers is the memory of embracing fellow hikers.

Me and Airplane Mode, reunited as I jump on the “moving train” in NorCal.

What lingers is a conversation with a man my age who gave me a ride from Lone Pine to Mammoth Lakes.

I made a sign to hitch out of town. I stand at the edge, just before the speed limit goes up by 15 mph, by an ice cream stand. No hitches as 50 cars go by. 100 degrees, and I’m ready for a break. After a rest in the park, I move my operation to the gas station, and 10 minutes later, Ryan pulls over.

Ryan is an Air Force recruit from the Bay Area. He had a long weekend off, and drove to Lone Pine to hike Mount Whitney. Since his hiking partners bailed, he decided to take a less extreme hike around the alpine Cottonwood Lakes. He has a military-issued pack and Big Agnes backpacking tent. He’s about my height, has cropped hair and strong, lean arms. Sunglasses obscure his eyes and much of what I could have read.

We share age, interests, perhaps not philosophy, and we share an hour and a half car ride in his sleek black Audi.

I know I smell. (This is just after I posted the blog about feeling smelly and homeless and forlorn.) He smells…differently. I think he smells like coconut and vanilla. Maybe some of it will rub off on me.

Ryan plays music. It is relaxed, technic, and thrumming. It’s a remix of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” The rhythm feels perfect for the gradual, ascending drive to Mammoth. Plains stretch on either side of US 395, and the Sierras tower to our left, the Inyo and White mountains to our right.

Towns called Independence, Big Pine, and Bishop roll by. We cross several Paiute Indian reservations.

He tells me about his drive from the Bay, through the Sierras via Lake Isabella and Inyokern. I know those places.

He’ll go to Reno, he says, to meet a friend who recently moved there. I’m bound for Reno, too, but don’t mention this, since I already asked to go just as far as Mammoth. I want to ask him if he wants a companion for another 3 hours, but instead let the air hang with his music and shampoo.

It feels like we are floating. It feels like we are partners on this journey.

He talks about California. “Best state in the Union, in my opinion.” I laugh. Recently I’ve been pondering the ludicrosity of those artificial political boundaries we call states. I look around, though, and after 15 or so minutes of silence, “I think you’re right,” I say.

Owens Valley where Lone Pine and 395 sit. This region lingers in my heart’s memory.

With this memory, I cling to something. Something lingers. What is it?

Freedom. Pride. Joy.

Wildness is that which is proud and free. Proud of my wild journey, free and liberal in my pride. The way I talk and the way he listens makes us both feel good.

Perhaps more hangs in the air, the abstraction of strangers having dissipated…

When we get to Mammoth, I want to kiss him on the cheek. Not as any advance, but as a thank you.

With a shake of hands, I depart, and he pulls away.

What lingers?

https://youtu.be/cyDOUPz0hpA

Sunrises against the East face of grandmother Whitney.

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