PCT Day 39: Have you ever seen the rain?

Day 39 6-26-2015       Sleep   2230 – 430
Miles 1745 – 1782

            It is actually a nice temperature in the early morning darkness.  I know this will not last and I wish I could get up earlier and crush more miles, but I have to wait for my resupply.  I reach the road and it oddly feels soft and easy on my feet.  I get to the lake resort and grab my package.  Quickly changing out my shorts and t-shirt behind a garbage can.  You tend to get very used to trail life and forget you are in public.  But it is 700 and anyone up should jump start their day with a dirty naked emaciated dude half crouching behind a garbage can.  I get out of there quick and am relieved when I hit the trail and am out of “public” So nice to vanish back into the woods.  I am having to stop every hour to change my socks.  It is so difficult for me to stop.  As soon as I sit an overwhelming feeling of fatigue hits me and I just want to stay put.  Even changing my socks every hour, my feet are just swimming in misery.  I am sweating and fading in the midday heat…well, it is only 1000.  I decide to take a thirty minute nap in the shade and maybe that will refresh me.
Hyatt Lake
            Nope. I wake feeling half awake and even more dehydrated.  I truck on, but my legs feel like a million pounds and my mind is melting in misery.  Everything bugs me. I try to stay positive but I am just overwhelmed but feeling shitty.  This is shitty.  Why can’t it just rain?  Be cool again.  I feel like I am trying so hard but only going a mile or two an hour on easy trail.  Ok, maybe another nap.  I try to get my feet dry while I am sleeping and I keep my legs elevated to siphon the blood back to my heart.  I wake again 30 minutes later, half awake and feeling absolutely depleted.  Geez Joey.  Why do you keep doing this, it is not helping!   I know, sorry.  I thought I would try.  Why don’t you just try harder? Fine.  For about an hour I was moving well again.  I don’t know what triggered it, but all of a sudden I was absolutely dead.  I laid down on the trail.  It is like my body is shutting down and I just keep trying to fight it.  I think of a million things that could be causing my body to break down.  Then my mind goes blank.  Nothing.  Absolutely peaceful.  Nothing. …. Hello.  Are you okay? Hello.  Oh yea sorry.  Just thought I would lay down for a second’ I say to some day hikers who stumbled upon me.  They ask me if I need anything, I said No and hiked off.  In reality, I needed a lot.  A lot of what I wasn’t quite sure. 


Scorpion on Volcanic Rock
            I was moving okay again as the sun was getting low.  I was thinking, “Yeah! Feeling good again.  I will just hike most of the night.  Make up for this stupid day.”  But not after long, I hit the volcanic rock around Brown Mountain and I was hurting.  Every step was like needles in my foot. I was wincing, crying.  I wasn’t sure if I was crying from pain or from frustration of how things were falling apart on me.  I was breaking down, mentally for sure, physically it really only seemed to be my feet.  I was moving too slow for anything else to really speak up.  But why? What did I do wrong?  Who cares?  Just sleep it off, you will feel better tomorrow.  And so I went to bed at the early hour of 2000. 

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