Day 33: Tylerhorse Canyon and a Moment of Freedom — Mile 550

Miles hiked: 21.6

Mile marker: 563.1

4:00 AM came way too quickly.

The good news: I woke up free of black ants.

The bad news: Let’s just say that I’m going to avoid sleeping on slopes from now on.

My first thought: I’m so tired.

I just feel beat. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the heat, maybe the diet, maybe the accumulation of 24 mile days, but I am exhausted!

The moon shines brightly amidst the starts. The sky last night was absolutely beautiful. It looked like Van Gough’s Starry Night, and I saw two shooting stars! Oh, how I wish I could still be stargazing, safe in my sleeping bag.

On flat ground.

I spent the better part of the night scooting up onto my sleeping pad. Other than that, I did sleep pretty well.

There’s a slight breeze that makes it chilly to one who’s just gotten out from under the covers. The ants are sleeping, too, so I don’t have to worry about brushing them off of my things.

To prevent sliding on my mat last night, I laid out some of my clothes and things under the mat. This way, it helped to even out the slope.

I feel lost, once again, as I wonder where half of my belongings are.

A little sand colored spider-looking thing crawls on Rafiki’s hand. I’ve seen this once before.

Early on here on trail, this same type of bug was crawling around. I flipped it over with a stick.

“Be careful,” Dad said. “A lot of the animals out here look intimidating, but they’re quite delicate.”

It reminds me of a nocturnal bug, or an animal that lives so deep in the ocean that it takes on a fleshy look.

It’s a few minutes after five o’clock when we start walking.

Yup. Not feeling it.

It’s dark, but a faint blue light is in the saddle of the hills. I turn my headlamp off. The ground is loose sand as we wrap around the hills. My foot keeps slipping on the eroded path. I sigh in irritation as my foot gives way once again, my trekking poles saving me.

Why am I so tired? I’m working on my breakfast drink: a chocolate breakfast essential, instant coffee, and hot chocolate (in which I picked a couple marshmallows off of the sand to eat this morning after I spilled it in the dark).

I walk for a while, finally able to break out my breakfast cookie for some energy. We’ve been walking uphill all day. As soon as I rounded another corner, it was another uphill.

Does it ever end!?

We pause at the top of the hill and I sit down with the others. We spend a few minutes trying to plan for tomorrow. Since I’m on the Tehachapi Trail Angle Facebook page, I try to post a message requesting a ride. I tried yesterday twice, but it didn’t post for some reason. Now, I’ve posted it twice again and it’s just now pending.

“There’s an umbrella and chairs by the water cache. Let’s move there.”

We get up and move. I decide for the first time on trail to listen to music. I was going to wait until I was finished with the desert, but that was primarily said because I wanted to listen for rattle snakes.

Music is magical. I’ll tell you more about it shortly.

We get to the cache, where an uncle and niece from the Netherlands are hiking. They don’t hike with trekking poles! I’ve seen them around and tried to chat with them — they didn’t seem the most keen to chat with strangers — but since I made a small rapport with them the other day, I pick up another conversation.

The uncle, High Five, moves his chair over for me so I can join him in the shade.

I chat with High Five and his niece, and they are quite friendly and open! They say the Dutch culture is quite direct.

My type of people!

Dad makes a ram-bomb, even though it’s only 9:00 in the morning. My group is splayed out in the shade under the other umbrella while I chat with the Dutch duo.

The water gallons are lined up on the shelf, and Dad reorganized it all so the empties are on the top and the full gallons on the bottom. A QR code is posted, so I grab a liter and Venmo a couple bucks to the cause.

Dad sits next to me when the Uncle-Niece duo are gone. “What’s your philosophy on skipping miles?”

“Don’t,” I say. “I mean, unless I’m injured or something, I wouldn’t do it. I came here to be challenged, and the miles are challenging.”

“The suffering here is what makes the Sierras so beautiful. Then there’s the NorCal blues, because you’ve just come out of something so stunning.”

The sun is out, fully shining with clouds painted onto the sky like watercolor.

We keep walking and I plug in my music. I’m listening from the top of my liked playlist. With the hills, winding path, and house in the distance, I’m reminded of something I might see out of a movie filmed in England or Ireland. Just dryer. And more dusty.

The music.

I haven’t listened to music in a month. Today’s been rough, so I decided it was time. I made it 500 miles without it, so now’s as good a time as ever, even though I told myself I’d make it through the desert with no audio.

I start with my liked playlist on Spotify.

Wow. Everything is so vibrant! The hills I’ve been dragging my feet on the past few days are beautiful! The flowers are so purple! And yellow! The sky is so blue! The sweet scent of pine fills my nostrils.

Empowerment rushes through me. I feel like I can do anything — not just anything in the world, like climbing a mountain or something I’m not too interested in. I feel that I can do anything that I want to do. I feel like I can go anywhere! Any country! Learn any language! I can succeed at the things at which I want to succeed!

The path unfolds before me. I’m zooming over the rolling hills — it helps that it’s mostly downhill. I power through the uphill looking like a professional skier. I am floating.

The hot sun doesn’t touch me. My sore shin from the 17 mile walk on a flat road doesn’t bother me. My popped blister that’s hurting from the pressure is unphased.

I am untouchable.

I’m emotional and empowered simultaneously. For the first time on trail, I feel completely free and unburdened by physical pain, the discomfort of my new and temporary life, and the anxiety of caring what people think about me.

I’m having fun.

Actual, real fun out here on trail for the first time. I feel like I’m flying.

I haven’t listened to anything in a month. My dopamine is flooding through my veins.

We hit the windmills. The sun shines down on one windmill like a beam from Heaven. There are two rainbows: one over and one at the low end of the windmill. I stop and stare at it — I’ve never seen a rainbow like this before.

Rafiki stops on a log to shake the sand out of his shoes. My left shoe is also full of sand.

“Is this shake-the-sand-out-of-your-shoe time?” I ask.

“There’s a big washout right there, so I’d wait,” Dad says. He points to a giant washed out crevice in the ground. The dirt is orange and rocky. “This is where I stopped to hammock last time I was here!” Dad says. He continues around the snaking path.

“You were flying out there!” Rafiki says as I’m about to leave. “I thought you took drugs or something.”

“Nope!” I say. “Just music!” Then I fly away.

We wind down the hills. The windmills look like a village. We pass through small bunches of Joshua trees. The windmills now look like a really large marching band practice.

We come to a creek and lay out just next to it. Dad and I sit on a log in the creek and rinse off our socks and shirts. Savannah joins us to clean up — we’re going to town tomorrow so I’m not so inclined to do laundry and wait around in wet clothes.

I wash the dirt off of my calves. As I splash water over the rest of my legs, I’m confused at why the water turns brown.

“It’s the desert!” Dad says. “Everything is so dirty!”

I chill my KitKat and Snickers bars in the creek, which is a challenge since it’s not all that cold.

We lay out and try to take naps. The ants are everywhere. Most are little black ants that just crawl over me. I can feel their tiny legs tickling mine as I rest. Well, attempt to rest. I brush the ants off of me.

The plan was to blog, but when a big gust of wind kicks sand into my eyes, I lay my forehead down on my mat and give up.

Savannah suggested that we play cards! We go to the table — she asked me a while ago to play but I was resting with the ants — and it’s so windy that it’s problematic to card games. We don’t know of any good games that will be sufficient in this windy weather.

I locked in a ride for us, but Bumper is going into town today. He has a really bad sunburn from yesterday. This is pretty odd, since he wasn’t even in the sun. He’s just so fair skinned, naturally.

We eat dinner and move through the windfarm. The windmills whoosh in the air and whistle and whine in a steady rhythm. The wind blows my hair into my eyes. It’s so loud out here.

The windmills now look like an army.