If you’re grossed out easily, number one, you probably wouldn’t have liked hanging out with me on trail, dirty, sweaty, and unshowered. Secondly, skip to the next paragraph. On a normal day in NorCal (read: 4:45 wake up, 2 hours of great hiking, then very hot and dry 10 hours of hiking), I stopped to pee. As I started walking back to trail, I noticed a deer I hadn’t seen before. As though it was waiting for me to leave, it went straight for where I’d done my business, nonchalantly consumed the entirety, and then looked at me expectantly. How do you respond to that? Stop? Gross? You’re welcome? Sorry, that’s all I got? I followed the deer’s lead and nonchalantly kept walking.

These were the days that bugs were becoming more and more of a problem. Not mosquitoes, surprisingly, but gnats and, worse, wasps. It was so dry that they were crazy for our sweat. For two days, gnats buzzed in my ears while I was walking and wasps swarmed my sweat-soaked backpack straps whenever I took it off. At lunch one day, they tried to get to my food so aggressively that I set out my empty salmon packet to occupy them while Tinkle and I took a break. Eventually, that section ended at Dunsmuir and one of the greatest places we stopped on trail.

Crossroads, owned by trail angel Kellyfish may be the chillest place I’ve ever or probably will ever encounter. There are beds all over the yard, an outdoor kitchen, an outdoor shower, yoga classes, massage, fun loaner clothes to wear, bikes, options for sailing excursions, and tons of food. Tinkle and I rode bikes to a restaurant in an old train, then went back to change into dresses, listen to old vinyl records, and hang out with the other hikers. We were with Jetpack, who we’d met in the desert, Dish, Aurora, Jazz Hands, Sugar Bear, Wink, Pink Panther, and Down Dog.

In the morning, I got to make pancakes and drink french press coffee to the sound of Kellyfish playing a handpan drum and do some yoga stretches with her and Down Dog (if you hadn’t guessed, she got her name for being a yoga teacher). On the way back to trail, Kelly sang us a goodbye song. If I’d had any time to spare, this is a place I’d have wanted to take a zero day to recuperate. As it was, I left feeling grateful for such a cool and unique experience.

When we were in town, the Carr fire had just started getting underway. In the days following Dunsmuir, it felt like we were outrunning the blaze. It was almost assuredly just a figure of our imagination, but Tinkle and I both felt as though the smell of smoke was stronger in the mornings and then waned throughout the day, only to become stronger again the next morning. Obviously, it was probably that we got used to the smell as the day went on, but it definitely caused some uneasy feelings in the moment. We had some ups and downs that would take us in and out of the smoke, granting us better views. The elevation also changed the terrain multiple times in a day, from rocky and sandy, with low bushes, from spongy forest floors with mossy trees, to open rocky heights above the smoke.

Tinkle and I had our highest mileage day thus far at 31 miles! They say when you start the trail, you get “trail legs” after two weeks, but this felt like we got a second set after a few months. The miles came pretty easily, especially in the morning. Tinkle and I had great lunch breaks, napping, playing music for each other, and I finally figured out how to filter my water in the laziest way possible, something I’d been trying to perfect for a long time, using my trekking pole against a tree to create a gravity filter. Lazy lunches became even lazier from that day on…

Cool rock textures and colors