4/27 We lingered in camp, because, why not? It was such a beautiful spot. My birthday/Christmas present of a home freeze dryer had led to all sorts of recipe experimentation for this trail. This morning was the first taste test of biscuits and gravy: I’d freeze-dried a smoked white bean and soysage gravy and used …
4/26 I slept terribly, awakened by any sound. In the morning I learned it was the same for Prana, and we splurged our extra packet of coffee, as well as accepted some from the Burro Mountain public pot. This helped immensely. At least the sounds last night were never bears. We packed up the tent …
4/25 It was cold this morning, surprisingly so, and I hobbled out of camp ahead of Prana to warm up my body and my ailments. The blisters sting sting sting, and oh my god I’m tired of taking these stunted little steps. I can’t even move fast enough to generate heat. I stop, take a …
4/24 The morning was slow-starting as I built log cabins of tape around my blisters, flossed the thread, squeezed again, and finally bandaged. “Ok. This doesn’t last that long,” I reminded myself. Just get through each day, and before I know it I won’t even realize I’m not thinking about my feet. The yucca fields …
4/23 Day Coming down out of the hills, the first things we encounter are a ghost town and its cemetery, both called Shakespeare, and a veterans park with old military vehicles. It’s funny we were worried about having enough food for this last half day, because when we reached downtown Lordsburg we’d only eaten breakfast …
4/22 Who digs all these holes? This desert is just full of them. Large, small, cobwebbed, fresh, multileveled. I guess any creature seeking shade with the capacity to dig is going to excavate out here in this shade-less, sun-blasted, wind-blasted land. The Bootheel is so dry compared to other deserts I’ve hiked through- Utah and …
4/21 Clouds striped the sky, making the morning walking almost chilly. I’ll take it! I pump-primed my leg, drank much and refilled everything at the water cache, and then followed single track on again. Prana plugged in an audiobook, and I piped music to my ears. The clouds cleared too soon, but a strong breeze …
4/20 A band of jewel-toned fire lit the horizon as I lit the coffee water. Cherry lights whirled again in the dawn, and I wondered if Dan and Rita still hadn’t gotten a ride. We were hiking by 7, an hour and a half earlier than yesterday. “So, are you in love with the CDT?” …
4/19 It rained last night, in this extreme drought of the New Mexico desert. I woke to percussion on the tent fly, the smell of freshly dampened sand and sage wafting in. In the morning I had to manually bend and straighten my knee - like priming a pump - several times before I felt …
4/18 Dry. The New Mexican desert is dry, reeling by outside my window, much drier than the start of the PCT or even the Arizona Trail. The morning had detoured a few times, our shuttle handing off cyclists to another driver in Hachita, where luckily we ran into Radar - the guy stocking the water …
muddy shoe memoirs 