ORT#2: Day -1 -- Slipping the surly bonds

I have a late start. I'm nervous. I keep replaying that night at Desolation Lake. Don't want to do that again. Never, ever.

I shouldn't be worried. Doc says I'm fine. I've got two full days to acclimatize. Tonight I'll crash 4,000 feet. Tomorrow at 5,000 feet. That should be good enough. It will help anyway. Besides, I've got Diamox. I ought to be safe as a kid with floaties in an empty tub. At least that's what I casually told Lilalee.

I drive the usual route out of La Canada. I pop through the valley haze at about 3,000 feet. A gust buffets the car. The creosote bushes lean back and pop up like fans at a game. The sky is bright, blue and dry. The humidity is low. My skin is scratchy. More fire weather. Maybe I should be home.

A constant reminder

I've been this state all morning. It was the same all weekend. What a lousy holiday! I was in a fog; my thoughts adrift. The friends, the bar-B-Q, the fireworks — all annoying distractions. I must have gone through my gear list a hundred times. My pack felt crappy; it pulled off my shoulders like it wanted to escape. And, then this morning Lila left for work in the most perfunctory way. She seemed indifferent, like I was just going to work and not soloing over 10,000 feet. Why do we ever part that way? Partings suck. The best leaves no scratch of memory or feeling. The worst is the last — no matter what.

I figure I'll mellow when I figure out what I've forgotten. That's usually it. Something is always forgotten. You always find out; it's just a matter of time. Better sooner than later.

I reconstruct the list: Doors locked. Windows closed. Oven off. Cat fed. Coffee pot unplugged. Phone charged. Camera charged. Gossamer gear loaded. Hat, cannister, sticks, boots... boots...

I'm a sudden blank. I can't remember. I can't fucking hike without boots. Shit! The realization pounds me in the gut and releases a burst of adrenalin and a heart-pounding panic. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" My hand hurts from pounding the wheel. Deep doubt. Spreading dread. The whole fabric of life seems about unravel.

I pull into the first turnout. I recover a bit and look up Hoyt Mountain towards the indigo sky. The rock in the road cut is tilted, intruded, twisted and toppled into a frozen tumult. Rock is nothing to time and nature. I am less. It is reassuring. It's just fucking boots.

I climb out and catch a gritty blast in the face. I grab the latch and pop the hatch. There they are. Glory! I am drained, then relieved, then giddy. I breath. I'm in the mountains. I'm going on a hike.

---

I cross the summit a Mill Creek. The Mojave spreads out below. The Tehachapis loom in the shadowy distance. That's where I'll be tonight. I'll be at Anne's place. She an old friend from back at the Lab.

The Mojave. Tehachapis in the distance

Palmdale and Lancaster pass in a blur of aggressive traffic. North of town the horizons stretch east and west through a brown rippling heat. I turn west at Rosamond. What there is seems sad: desert-battered homes sitting on a big lots landscaped with the rusty detritus of abandoned ambition, walled-in urban development stuffed with cookie cutter houses on cramped lots, a windowless grade school that resembles a bunker and a strip mall with sand drifts swirling in an empty parking lot. The place seems abandoned except for the full parking lot at the Wingman Bar. Apparently fighter pilots need an early bracing.

I turn north up Willow Springs Road — a route once taken by the twenty-mule teams from the Owens Valley. The road is flanked with stately new power poles linked by miles of ropey 300 kilovolt cable. I pass the picked over remains of the butte behind the Cactus Queen Mine. There was gold here once. The road curves northwest over an inconspicuous gravel track that covers the LA Aqueduct and climbs the hills where a legion of giant wind turbines turn together in a graceful hypnotic dance. The PCT crosses here. Three PCTers are munching snacks in a huddle under a lonely strippling pine. None are hitching. They must be among the very last of their class; they will be hard pressed to make Canada before the snow.

I stop in Tehachapi for a couple of steaks and salad makings. It's the least I can do. Anne lives high above Bear Valley on 60 acres an hour from town. It was her plan. She's a highly-educated, carbon-free, off-the-grid, energetic woman of principle who has designed and built a solar passive house, makes pottery, drives an electric car and will plant a hundred fruit trees, raise goats and chickens. She is not a normal person.

The road into Bear Valley is guarded by a check point. It's said that CIA operatives and Mafia Dons have getaways up here. There is an eerie potential here like there once was at the Ground Zero Hot Dog Stand that sat in center of the Pentagon. When it is my turn a hard-faced woman with a very-large, reinforced bust steps out. Her too-tight T'shirt has a printed yellow badge over her heart.

"I'm here to visit a friend." I say. "She called in a pass."

"License please," demands the lady wearing the badge.

She takes my license, steps back into the kiosk and starts rifling through an accordion file. A box-shaped, rosy-faced fellow sits next to her on a high stool. I can hear him talk over the fan.

"Don't tell me it's fair," he complains. "When was the last time you got the good shift? I'll tell you when. Three months ago. That's when that little slut went to LA. She's giving some on the side."

The lady wearing the badge ignores him. She pulls out my yellow pass and hands it to me. "Keep this on your dashboard. We give tickets."

Bear Valley is cozy. There are big houses with fenced in acreage for horses and a golf course. The road up Bear Mountain to Anne's place ascends through an oak forest to cool and shady stands of fir and pine. I pass two elk. I stop and watch from the car. They stare at me impassionately.

Further on, I summit a ridge. The Central Valley spreads out for hundreds of miles below. I turn a bend and the first peaks of the Sierras come into view just across Tehachapi Pass. As I pull up to Anne's gate, she is waving from the shade of her front porch.

It's great being on the road again. This is going to be a good hike. Nothing to worry about.