Wild

But he was wrong. There were no buses that went all the way to Sierra City, we learned. We’d have to catch a bus that evening and ride seven hours to Reno, Nevada, then take another one for an hour to Truckee, California. From there we’d have no option but to hitchhike the final forty-five miles to Sierra City. We bought two one-way tickets and an armful of snacks and sat on the warm pavement at the edge of the convenience store parking lot waiting for the bus to come. We polished off whole bags of chips and cans of soda while talking. We ran through the Pacific Crest Trail as a conversational topic, through backpacking gear and the record snowpack one more time, through the “ultralight” theories and practices of Ray Jardine and of his followers—who may or may not have misinterpreted the spirit behind those theories and practices—and finally arrived at ourselves. I asked him about his job and life in Tacoma. He had no pets and no kids and a girlfriend he’d been dating a year. She was an avid backpacker too. His life, it was clear, was an ordered and considered thing. It seemed both boring and astounding to me. I didn’t know what mine seemed like to him.

The bus to Reno was nearly empty when we got on at last. I followed Greg to the middle, where we took pairs of seats directly opposite each other across the aisle.

“I’m going to get some sleep,” he said once the bus lurched onto the highway.

“Me too,” I said, though I knew it wasn’t true. Even when I was exhausted, I could never sleep in moving vehicles of any sort, and I wasn’t exhausted. I was lit up by being back in the world. I stared out the window while Greg slept. Nobody who’d known me for more than a week had any idea where I was. I am en route to Reno, Nevada, I thought with a kind of wonder. I’d never been to Reno. It seemed the most preposterous place for me to be going, dressed as I was and dirty as a dog, my hair dense as a burlap bag. I pulled all the money from my pockets and counted the bills and coins, using my headlamp to see. I had forty-four dollars and seventy-five cents. My heart sank at the paltry sight of it. I’d spent far more money than I’d imagined I would have by now. I hadn’t anticipated stops in Ridgecrest and Lone Pine, nor the bus ticket to Truckee. I wasn’t going to get more money until I reached my next resupply box in Belden Town more than a week from now, and even then it would be only twenty bucks. Greg and I had agreed we’d get rooms in a motel in Sierra City to rest up for a night after our long travels, but I had the sickening feeling I’d have to find a place to camp instead.

There was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t have a credit card. I’d simply have to get through on what I had. I cursed myself for not having put more money in my boxes at the same time that I acknowledged I couldn’t have. I’d put into my boxes all the money I’d had. I’d saved up my tips all winter and spring and sold a good portion of my possessions, and with that money I’d purchased all the food in my boxes and all the gear that had been on that bed in the Mojave motel, and I wrote a check to Lisa to cover postage for the boxes and another check to cover four months of payments on the student loans for the degree I didn’t have that I’d be paying for until I was forty-three. The amount I had left over was the amount I could spend on the PCT.

I put my money back in my pocket, turned my headlamp off, and stared out my window to the west, feeling a sad unease. I was homesick, but I didn’t know if it was for the life I used to have or for the PCT. I could just barely make out the dark silhouette of the Sierra Nevada against the moonlit sky. It looked like that impenetrable wall again, the way it had to me a few years before when I’d first seen it while driving with Paul, but it didn’t feel impenetrable anymore. I could imagine myself on it, in it, part of it. I knew the way it felt to navigate it one step at a time. I would be back on it again as soon as I hiked away from Sierra City. I was bypassing the High Sierra—missing Sequoia and Kings Canyon and Yosemite national parks, Tuolumne Meadows and the John Muir and Desolation wildernesses and so much more—but I’d still be hiking another hundred miles in the Sierra Nevada beyond that, before heading into the Cascade Range.

By the time the bus pulled into the station in Reno at 4 a.m., I hadn’t slept a minute. Greg and I had an hour to kill before the next bus would depart for Truckee, so we wandered blearily through the small casino that adjoined the bus station, our packs strapped to our backs. I was tired but wired, sipping hot Lipton tea from a Styrofoam cup. Greg played blackjack and won three dollars. I fished three quarters out of my pocket, played all three in a slot machine, and lost everything.

Greg gave me a dry, I-told-you-so smile, as if he’d seen that coming.