Wild

I hiked the rest of the afternoon thinking about Hawaiian screwdrivers. I didn’t know exactly what they were but they didn’t sound all that different from Snapple lemonade to me. When I reached the top of the road, the red pickup and the men’s camp came into view, perched above the westernmost of the Three Lakes. The PCT was just beyond it. I followed a scant trail east along the lake’s shore, finding a secluded spot among the boulders that were scattered around the lake. I set up my tent and ducked into the woods to squeeze out my sponge and put it in again. I walked down to the lake to filter water and wash my hands and face. I thought about diving in to bathe, but the water was ice-cold and I was already chilled in the mountain air. Before coming on the PCT, I’d imagined countless baths in lakes and rivers and streams, but in reality, only rarely did I plunge in. By the end of the day, I often ached with fatigue and shook with what felt like a fever but was only exhaustion and the chill of my drying sweat. The best I could do most days was splash my face and strip off my sweat-drenched T-shirt and shorts before swaddling myself in my fleece anorak and leggings for the night.

I removed my boots and pulled the duct tape and 2nd Skin off my feet and soaked them in the icy water. When I rubbed them, another blackened toenail came off in my hand, the second I’d lost so far. The lake was calm and clear, rimmed by towering trees and leafy bushes among the boulders. I saw a bright green lizard in the mud; it froze in place for a moment before scampering away at lightning speed. The men’s camp was not far beyond me along the lakeshore, but they hadn’t yet detected my presence. Before going to see them, I brushed my teeth, put on lip balm, and pulled a comb through my hair.

“There she is,” shouted the man who’d been in the passenger seat when I ambled up. “And just in time too.”

He handed me a red plastic cup full of a yellow liquid that I could only assume was a Hawaiian screwdriver. It had ice cubes. It had vodka. It had pineapple juice. When I sipped it I thought I would faint. Not from the alcohol hitting me, but from the sheer fabulousness of the combination of liquid sugar and booze.

The two white men were firefighters. The Latino man was a painter by passion but a carpenter by trade. His name was Francisco, though everyone called him Paco. He was the cousin of one of the white guys, visiting from Mexico City, though the three of them had grown up together on the same block in Sacramento, where the firefighters still lived. Paco had gone to visit his great-grandmother in Mexico ten years before, fallen in love with a Mexican woman while there, and stayed. The firefighters’ sons flitted past us, playing war while we sat around a fire ring filled with logs the men had yet to light, making intermittent shouts, gasps, and explosive sounds as they shot each other with plastic guns from behind the boulders.

“You’ve got to be kidding me! You’ve got to be kidding me!” the firefighters took turns exclaiming when I explained to them what I was doing and showed them my battered feet with their eight remaining toenails. They asked me question after question while marveling and shaking their heads and plying me with another Hawaiian screwdriver and tortilla chips.

“Women are the ones with the cojones,” said Paco as he made a bowl of guacamole. “We guys like to think we’re the ones, but we’re wrong.” His hair was like a snake down his back, a long thick ponytail bound in sections all the way down with plain rubber bands. After the fire was lit and after we had eaten the trout that one of them had caught in the lake and the stew made with venison from a deer one of them had shot last winter, it was only me and Paco sitting by the fire as the other men read to their sons in the tent.

“You want to smoke a joint with me?” he asked as he took one from his shirt pocket. He lit it up, took a hit, and handed it to me. “So this is the Sierras, eh?” he said, looking out over the dark lake. “All that time growing up I never made it up here before.”

“It’s the Range of Light,” I said, passing the joint back to him. “That’s what John Muir called it. I can see why. I’ve never seen light like I have out here. All the sunsets and sunrises against the mountains.”

“You’re on a spirit walk, aren’t you?” Paco said, staring into the fire.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you could call it that.”