It felt very freeing to walk as far as I could go in a day, drop down, and sleep out in the open, ready to get up and start walking as soon as I awoke. That’s one of the advantages of cowboy camping, or camping without a tent. The cons were the anxiety that spiders or snakes would crawl all over you when you were sleeping or a pack of coyotes could find an easy snack. I didn’t cowboy camp very often (I think only three or four times in total), but that night I did, waking frequently to watch shooting stars and listen to the coyotes yipping in the distance. Hence the fear of becoming dog food. I got up with the sun at six to see a “No Camping” sign about 30 feet away that I’d missed in the dark. Whoops. I left early, having slept in my clothes, and walked a short mile to the 2000 mile marker!! To mark the occasion, I just wrote “Crazy.” in my journal. There’s never words adequate to the experience. In the moment, it’s the same narrow strip of dirt I’d been walking on for the last 20 minutes, but a moment to which nearly four months of walking had led. I stopped to take a picture with my MacGyver’ed trekking pole tripod, then kept on walking. The next days brought many burned areas. I kept getting glimpses of Mount Jefferson through a haze. It was a very cool feeling to see the mountains growing closer and then further as I passed them, more tangible evidence of progress than the miles I kept track of on my app.

In addition to the coyotes, I had a few experiences with animals over these days. One lunchtime, I ate my VERY poor resupply choice of sardines. As an aside, I’d like to expound on my hatred for sardines, in homage to the expletives I used in my journal. Food was extremely important to me in this period of my life. Necessary for my survival, but also a source of joy. Choosing tinned sardines to mail myself while in Ashland, I was cursing my future self to choke down the horrible, BONE-IN, whole, overly fishy fish. I missed my beloved, flavored Starkist Tuna Creations as I chewed on the chalky bones. I HATE sardines. Anyway, on this day I had to throw stuff at chipmunks again to keep them away from me as I ate. As I was hiking through a forest of very tall pines, I heard a loud huffing and cracking sound. About thirty feet away, I saw a bear cub virtually running up a tree, it was moving so fast. I stopped in my tracks, looking around for its mother, then ran back the way I came, keeping my distance. I never saw the mother, but eventually, the cub climbed down and ran off. I blame the sardines for attracting the bear because as I so eloquently put it in my journal, “my whole life smells like fish.” When I continued, I banged my trekking poles together for about fifteen minutes, so I wouldn’t catch any more animals off guard.

The next encounter could be very upsetting to people, so if descriptions of a dead horse aren’t something you want to read, please stop here.

The way hikers know where water sources will be on trail is called the PCT water report, an excel sheet that a trail-famous hiker named Halfmile maintains with reports from hikers. Ahead of this, I’d read that there was a dead horse in one of the sources, Russell Creek. Leading up to the creek, the area that had been recently burned, so that there was still ash visible on the ground. It felt apocalyptic and the signs that warned of increased animal activity because of a carcass didn’t help. As the trail descended to the creek, I saw what looked to be a white boulder with moss, until I noticed the legs. It was a bit shocking. The water crossing didn’t feel the safest to begin with and that didn’t lend me any confidence. I prepared to cross, unhooking my hip belt and looping my emergency beacon to my pants. I had to take a few lunging steps across, but I landed all of them. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t get the thought of losing my balance and falling into the horse out of my mind. I later heard that the horse had been a part of a search and rescue operation and had to be put down after falling into the creek. I hated to think of what the owner felt, or anyone else who was involved in the situation. That definitely stuck with me in the days after.

My last in the trio of animal encounters was with the ubiquitous chipmunk. The next day, I skirted around Mount Jefferson through open, flat fields and up a ridge. I arrived at Olallie Lake Resort, bought myself two sodas at the store, parked my stuff on a picnic table, and went off to make use of the pit toilets. While I was in there, chipmunks had been trying to get into my stuff, as the French guy who had been scaring them off told me. I thanked him, as he probably prevented my pack from getting holes chewed into it. I took advantage of the water pumps, so I didn’t have to filter for dinner that night! I finished the day camped next to Maddie, a young hiker just out of high school. We were both looking forward to reaching Mount Hood in the next couple days, not to mention the beginning of Washington!