April 2024
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PCT 2024: The Desert (Finale)
April 19; Miles 47-59 Day 1 The sky was an azure blue streaked with thin, wispy clouds as I arrived at the viewpoint where I had hitched to Julian two years ago. I was wearing the exact same pair of shoes that had given me so much grief in the desert heat, perhaps as an emblem of my belief that the forces which had knocked me off trail in 2022 would not stop me this year. Or perhaps I wanted to give them a proper send-off after they’d served me well for hundreds of
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Something Old, Something New
Years passed. I had returned to a world where time moved in hazy stretches, while each day from the five months I’d spent on trail was seared into my brain. Life continued, and I was back on the “normal” path. I got married; we bought a house. Meanwhile my sleeping pad, lying unused in the closet, grew covered in mildew. A few weeks after I returned home from trail, I finally tallied up the miles I had hiked and the sections that I’d missed due to closures. 2182 miles hiked; over 500 PCT miles remaining.
