Creek Running North

With yesterday’s Diablo climb, I am at just under 205 miles hiked in 2006 and just under 45,000 feet ascended. That’s about 25 or thirty miles more than my previous best year. Probably twice the feet climbed.

Yesterday’s climb was deceptive. It was 81 degrees in Concord, and probably a few degrees more on the switchbacks at the head of Mitchell Canyon. Though two weeks ago I climbed those switchbacks without stopping, yesterday I found a place to sit in the shade on the way up. Let my heart slow, sipped water against the heat nausea. Coffee for breakfast, was all, and some yogurt. I’d told myself that eating at the in-laws Saturday night was sufficient calories to get me up the mountain. And another rest between Juniper Campground and the summit, to let the more energetic dayhikers disappear ahead of me.  If I see hikers in front of me I try to pass them. Slowing to let them disappear around three or four bends in the trail removes that urge to compete.

And then touching the summit, and eating an orange, and hearing tourists talk about the rattlesnake in the parking lot (I looked and failed to find it), and then back down. A pair of hikers stopped me to ask about poison oak in the usual spot where pretty hikers stop me to ask me about plants. Four miles later, at the bottom of the switchbacks again, I caught myself punishing my feet unduly and veered off-trail, walked through wild grape and poison oak to a shady part of Mitchell Creek, took off boots and plunged my feet into a pool. I expected to see steam rise off them. The water was agonizingly cold: perhaps 37 degrees.

At the truck, the truth emerged: in a hike that seemed full of exhausted delays, forced halts to let my heart slow or numb my feet, I had shaved an hour off my usual time. An odd feeling: pride, and yet regret that I had taken so little time to enjoy myself. Calochortus superbus in the rocks north of Juniper Campground, upright and firm like species tulips but I was preoccupied, writing in my head a note I will never send to someone I no longer know. It was only on the road back down to Deer Flat that it came to me: this walking is all I do, the varied busyness between walks a distraction, and I emerge from mundane dreams to walk again.