Etiquette tip

When you set out hiking a long trail and along the way, in a hot exposed waterless stretch, someone gives you water and a place to sleep out of the wind and when next morning you are rattling around in their kitchen fixing yourself a cup of tea and they tell you that you need to leave because something has come up, you should cheerfully thank them for their hospitality, leave a donation and hike on. Staying on to do your laundry, stiffing the donation box, angrily huffing off, and taking a picture of you flipping off your host’s house is considered very bad form.

Yeah, I’m reading trail journals, again. Maybe, I understand the former resident a little better.


Kicking around logistical ideas

Trying to figure out a mailing schedule. I don’t need mail drops for food but I have a load of supplements and the guide books and data is a lot to carry plus there is the whole ice ax and bear canister thing.

Last year I just threw everything into a big box and kept mailing it along every 500 miles. It worked, but post office hours sometimes dictated my hike.

My sister said she would be willing to mail out some stuff for me. I don’t like saddling someone with sending my stuff. I’m off having a great summer and I don’t think it’s right to be adding to others burdens just because it’s easier for me, so I’m not sure I will take her up on the offer.

Another thing I have to look at is avoiding crowds. Crowds make me tired, irritated, and sad. In order to avoid them I have to predict where most of the hikers will be and make sure I’m not there; that further dwindles down my choices for receiving and sending on my box.

I keep thinking there is a perfect way to do it… but there might not be.

I have something to say….

Maybe you read, “A Walk in the Woods”, and when Katz throws his food over the mountain, thought, “What an idiot to not realize that he is jeopardizing the safety of animals and other hikers.”  Well, apparently some people thought “A Walk in the Woods” was not a comical tale of two inexperienced hikers stumbling down the trail, but rather a manual on how to hike, and filed that bit of information away under, “Tips for when your pack is too heavy.”

As a PSA, I would like to emphasize that when you are out backpacking, it is not okay to fling your English muffins off the mountainside because you don’t want to carry them.

“The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) cautions everyone that feeding wildlife, whether directly or indirectly, is never a good idea. Problems from wildlife often increase with the availability of food, and feeding could result in an attack, damaged property, and often the death of the animal. “

Yeah, I’ve been reading trail journals….sad, sad, sad…..

Promises to my feet

In 2001 when I first hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, almost immediately, I had terrible pain in the balls of my feet.

By 78 miles I had already taken the bus to a nearby town to buy new shoes. The next section was the San Felipe Hills which got a lot of ink as being torturously hot and without water. I started hiking it at 5pm when the bus dropped me back at the trail. The new shoes didn’t help, maybe even made things worse. I hiked until 10pm and had to stop for the night, not because I was tired but because of my feet. I lay down, just off the trail, and the pain started shooting through my feet and would make my whole body shudder. I was worried that my feet wouldn’t get me out of The Hills before the sun got high in the sky. I said, “Please feet, get me out of here and I will take two days off and give you anything you want” Pretty much the whole trail went like that— bargaining with my feet.

Last year they did pretty well, as long as I carried two pairs of shoes, kept the callouses down, grease them up with Carmex, Super-Glued the cracks together, massaged them, and kept them elevated while on breaks and while sleeping. I had some problems but a good improvement.

This year, for the past few months, I have had a new foot problem. At first I thought something was broken . Now, from reading stuff on the Internet, I think a hammer toe is the problem. I have been taping it down, splinting it to an adjacent toe with a rubber band and wrapping in an ace bandage. I think it’s getting better, but today I purchased a gel hammer toe straightener, hopping that I might experience a quicker recovery. If it doesn’t work I might seek out a foot doctor.

Already the bargaining has begun. Hiking with my feet is like hiking with a whining 5 year old.

.Whinny feet

Tax time

cabin-231.jpgOkay, I filed my taxes. Not that I made any money but some how, and this isn’t the first time it has happen to me, I have capital gains from mutual funds that I didn’t sell. So if anyone tells you that you don’t pay capital gains on mutual funds till you sell them, they are wrong.

I was able to use Turbo-Tax and e-file for free. There are a list of sites that have free preparation software at: http://www.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/index.jsp?ck I clicked on “Turbo-Tax FREEdom edition” from the list. If you want an exercise in patience and some time to reflect on how the requirements of society are ruining your life, I suggest you try it with a dial-up connection.

There are also programs where you bring your paper work in to a live person and they enter everything for you for free. For more information and to find a site near you, go to this easy to remember URL: http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=107626,00.html or call 1-800-829-1040 My sister volunteers at one of those places to do taxes for free. That says something about the vast differences between us: she volunteers to do peoples taxes and I was questioning, “Is life really worth living?” just doing my own.

This year the government has decided to shower free money on people, but if you–say–spent the whole year hiking and hanging out at your cabin, instead of working, don’t get your hopes up.

nun.jpgEvery year when tax time rolls around and I am forced to do paper work and remember PINs and passwords, and my small cabin becomes cluttered with paper work, I think, “This is not the life I want”. I start thinking I should just walk away and live the life of a wandering nun, with robes and a bowl.

Related Post: Peace Pilgrim

Cows

Out where I live, it’s legal for cows to go anywhere they want. You can spend thousands fencing your property in a four string barbed wire fence and hanging up “no trespassing” signs but people will just cut your fences and drive right through them. They say they are looking for their cows but they are poaching game. Lots of people poach out here. They say they need the food but I say, “Why don’t you kill a cow then?” Some people do kill the cows but mostly the cows just spend their whole lives roaming around like they own the place—which is not to far from the truth.

I don’t want cows around my cabin so I get rid off them by screaming and running after them when I see them. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I will wake up and just sense things are not right. I know that means there are cows surrounding my cabin. I throw open the window and scream, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArh! GET OUT OF HERE!” It works. The last time it happened, my son was up visiting me. I forgot that he was serenely sleeping six feet away from me on the guest couch, when I threw open the window and screamed. He woke up screaming. We laughed a long time about that.

It doesn’t work with the bulls though. Once I came home to find a bull outside my cabin. I screamed and ran after it but it didn’t budge. So I started honking my horn at it—still nothing. I got into my truck and ran at it—it waited until the last minute to move; it didn’t run, it just moved a little. I got my big wash pan and stood there banging it and finally the bull moved on.

The other day I was walking down a one-lane dirt road with fences on both side of it, when I met a bull. We both stopped and looked at each other. I yelled, “Get out of here!â€? It didn’t move. So I picked up a big rock. It looked a little worried and started to turn around but then it changed it’s mind. Finally after a long while of both of us not moving, we just walked pass each other, him going his way and me going mine. He had an obstinate nature that rivaled mine own—in a strange way it was like looking in a mirror.

Wilderness Medicine book

My benevolent son bought me this Wilderness Medicine book. I’ve wanted it for a long time but didn’t want to part with the money. I have the field guide by the same author but this book has a lot more detail, better pictures and more information. It’s a great book for people who might want to form a plan for when they get hurt in the wilderness besides lay in the dirt and mewl for helpClosing up a gaping head wound.

It has lots of ways to improvise first aid treatment. For instance, this nifty way to close a gaping head wound.

Wilderness medicine

Food bags should be emptied after your hike.

Everlasting cheese

My son came to visit me. He brought a lot of my gear back to me that he had stored. I emptied out the pack he used last summer, when he joined me for a week on the Pacific Crest Trail; inside was his nonempty food bag–7 month old food bag! I threw it all away, pretty much just on principal but –look– that string cheese looks fine. The red bag in the upper left hand corner is very gooey and has an odor– but nothing recognizable.

Resupplying from small stores

At first look, a small store may appear to not have much to resupply with. You need to look at everything. Just keep circling the shelves and look at every single thing in the store. Soon you will find plenty to resupply with. The smaller the selection, the more times you may need to circle the shelves. Know that a good resupply is there, but you need to discover it. Be creative and flexible.

I didn’t send myself any food for the entire Pacific Crest Trail and I didn’t meet anyone who had a better food bag than me.

Related Post: My PCT resupply schedule 

Trail update

I’ve bought my plane ticket to San Diego. I leave in two months. I think I will skip doing the Grand Enchantment Trail(GET) this spring as I haven’t done all my chores. Also, the logistics of doing back to back trails makes me sleepy. I can always do the GET in the fall after hiking the PCT(Pacific Crest Trail), if I have a bunch of energy left.

The logistics of doing a long trail are much easier than doing a bunch of small trips. It’s also cheaper. Like for the PCT, all you need is a ticket to San Diego ($116), a thru hikers permit($5), a bus to Campo($15), guidebooks, data book, and town guide($92) and you are all set for 3-5 months of non-stop hiking. You can take side trips, go where ever you want…just moving through the world–free. Walking and sleeping high up on the crest with a sunset and sunrise everyday. No, securing the proper permits to move or camp. You are home.

Blue plastic tarp tent.

I just discovered this site last night called minibulldesign.com. This guy makes a huge variety of pop can stoves, a Heniken can pot (with lip guard), and has instructions on how to turn a cheap blue plastic tarp into a 20 ounce tarp tent for two.10 dollar tarp tent

Even though I hike with about 2 grand worth of gear, I have this dream of being able to outfit myself for a couple hundred dollars . When I go to Walmart I always think, “Now what if you had nothing, and you needed to outfit yourself for living completely out of your pack and you could only spend like 100 to 200 dollars and it had to be lightweight. What would you buy?” So, blue plastic tarp and contact cement would now be on my list.   Build your own Hasty Hooch!

He also has a blog. It looks like he makes a lot of youtube videos.

 

Spring snow

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Most of the snow is gone here. The buttercups are blooming. Yesterday, when I woke up there was 3 inches of new snow, but by afternoon it was gone. This morning everything was flocked with new snow and the sky was pink. Now it is a gloriously sunny day.

A few days ago, thinking that spring was here and that I should be able to find some good trails to backpack on around here, I went to the ranger station. He said everything is under at least 1 1/2 foot of mushy wet snow. He said he had tried going out this early one year, and he was cold, wet and miserable.