From the top of Steven’s Pass, I got a ride from Sticky Fingers’ dad and cruised down the mountain to town in the best way possible: with a corgi sitting on my lap. We were dropped at the post office to pick up our resupply boxes for the next stretch (this town had few choices in the way of grocery stores). Brown Streak and I met in town and found we were both planning to stay the night at a local trail angel’s house. Jerry Dinsmore is a long-time trail angel who started Dinsmore’s Hiker Haven with his late wife, Andrea Dinsmore. When Brown Streak and I found a hitch and arrived, we found a tricked-out bunkhouse and separate laundry building. Inside, the walls were spangled with flags and previous years’ PCT bandanas, a tradition linked with other trail angels, the Andersons, who started Casa de Luna in Southern California. As we explored, we found exactly two CD’s for the boom box: Britney Spears’ …One More Time and The Eagles, Their Greatest Hits. We were jamming to Britney when Flora and Jukebox walked in. We chatted together for a while before separating to make calls to home, start laundry, or set out gear to dry. Stuck on the Ground showed up a little later and we all got into some loaner clothes, each of us ending up in pajama pants, big sweaters cinched with our fanny packs. We got a kick out of it and took some pictures together. I later donned an adult sized dinosaur onesie, an incredible find.

It was really fun to hang out and the others decided to take a zero the next day. I wished I could have stayed, but that would’ve left me with a not so comfy 27 mile per day average necessary to reach the border in time. I left them and got a ride back to the trail with Carrie and Mary, two sweet ladies who came up to the group of hikers at the café just to ask if anyone needed anything. As they drove me back up to Steven’s Pass, we figured out that Mary grew up near my dad in Detroit, which was cool. As the trail started, I must have been the only hiker around for a while, because everyone was acting like I was a big deal. There was a group of young boys whose chaperones asked me a bunch of questions and had the boys applaud me as I walked away. Highly embarrassing. Later, as I was eating, a group of older ladies stopped to ask me what I was doing and were very complimentary. They must have talked to the next group that passed me eating soon after, because the next group of guys asked, “Are you the one who walked from Mexico?” They took a picture of me and moved on. This kind of attention gave me, and still gives me, a sense of imposter syndrome. People think that the trail is an impossible feat which takes a special kind of person. I tell everyone that more people could do it if they really wanted to. The only difference between others and me is that I was lucky and privileged enough to have had the ability, opportunity, and time to do it. I felt that luck every step of the rest of the day as I took in the views. I passed the day surrounded by fields of burgundy leaves of huckleberry bushes with their navy berries, bushes turning bright red and orange, against a backdrop of snow covered green and grey mountains with layers of fluffy clouds overhead. I had been listening to a podcast, but had to stop and pay attention to the scenery and my feelings of gratefulness. Those feelings followed me as I got into my tent and watched the sunset turn into night.