Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76

by Mary E Davison

  Mentally, I sang a lot of the day, which helped me cover the miles. On a Sunday, I switched from Girl Scout songs to hymns.

  Three rain-drenched weekend hikers passed me on their way out, envious of my umbrella arrangement. I loved to have male hikers come up to me all excited, asking how I’d attached the umbrella so it could be up at the same time my hands held hiking poles. I told them, with a somewhat straight face, the first thing they needed to do was to get a sports bra, then tuck the pole of the umbrella under the pack chest strap and then into the sports bra for the second stabilization point. After laughing, a few male hikers said they thought they should consider doing just that if it worked that well.

  Heading into Bennington began with a downpour. After that ended, the afternoon was devoid of raindrops. Yay. Losing the duct tape holding my shoe together, I walked back on the trail to find it but no trace of its silver could be seen as far back as I walked. I hated the thought of leaving trash on the trail and mentally apologized to trail maintainers, or whoever would find that wad of duct tape.

  On my last full day on the trail, I’d so wanted to have my feet only a little wet instead of soggy. After a morning of bounce and weave over mud pits or water streaming trail, I stayed mostly dry, that effort all for naught as some beavers dammed the next stream. The puncheon boardwalks were a good eight inches under water through an extensive swamp. There was no way through except to wade on top of the boards. On the bright side, at least temporarily, my shoes were much cleaner.

  I saw no people, but heard from and saw a huge flying wedge of geese far above me. The trail ranged from pretty good to absolutely crappy with mud and rivers flowing where trail should be.

  No views.

  Death board puncheons over marshy areas had no cross-hatching on them, leaving them like wet glass in the rain. A few days earlier I’d seen a big, burly day-hiker crash painfully on slippery boards. So when I walked on them I slowed to the pace of a little old lady on ice.

  Are you Medicare Pastor?

  For my last night on the AT, the clouds disappeared, leaving a clear sky and cold temperatures. I was barely warm that night, wearing everything I had, including dry-but-mud-covered rain pants in my relatively clean sleeping bag. In the morning, the reward of finishing the trail and transportation to somewhere warm lured me out of the sleeping bag and down fairly good trail into Massachusetts.

  At the green footbridge, Bag Lady, sent by my friend Amoeba, was holding a bundle of bright, colorful balloons. "Are you Medicare Pastor?" How fun to be met with balloons!

  I’d not realized, when I made my hike plan for the AT that year, the ALDHA (Appalachian Trail Long Distance Hiker Association) Gathering was meeting in North Adams, Massachusetts, two days before I was to finish. When Amoeba sent me news of the Gathering and also invited me to her own prior mini-gathering, I walked long days in Vermont, arriving four days earlier than scheduled.

  Giving me the balloons, Bag Lady picked up another hiker, Patagonius, stopped for burgers, and drove us to the pre-gathering party in Amoeba’s family farmhouse. I had my shower and borrowed clothes while mine washed, spending the rest of the day eating and talking to the group of hikers gathered there. Billy Goat was there along with Captain America, Memere, Gray Feather, Pipesmoke, Frog Caller, Queen Diva, Tiger Balm, and many more. Some I’d met along the AT or PCT. Many were in my age bracket. What a hoot. They celebrated with me, and we all talked trail long into the night.

  For two more days, hikers filled an extensive meadow with a forest of tents while we attended the Gathering in North Adams. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect ending to the AT.

  Oops, the Medicare Pastor forgot it was Sunday morning and failed to show for the hiker worship service in the dewy wet meadow. How embarrassing. At least I had no responsibility for the service. And OD Green had indeed found me a ride all the way back to West Point with JB, a thru hiker who had completed the CDT.

  Once in a Lifetime?

  The 2011 hike on the AT was a strenuous hike, definitely the most difficult part of the trail, although the entire AT was challenging. I am a western girl and an old lady, partial to trails one can walk without having to use hands as well as feet scrambling over rocks. Still, the AT, while having an Eastern Forest feel instead of a Western Mountain feel, was a beautiful trail.

  The Rhodie forests of the south, the Hobble Bushes of the north, pastures and farmland, history and stone fences, lakes, rivers, snow in the spring, snow in the fall, fall color and not so much fall color, all were worth seeing.

  And the people. People are always on the AT. Almost every day I saw at least one other person, even when hiking in November. Some of the people I met, I am fortunate to call friends. As the years went by, knee problems made me walk more slowly, and I had less opportunity to know as many people, especially going in the opposite direction from the flow of hiker traffic.

  But there were always people, no matter the time of the year. They brought companionship and joy as only hikers sharing what they love can do. I experienced plenty of trail magic, trail angels appearing when I needed them. On the AT, even the most macho, independent hiker, who’d begun their hike soured on life, came to realize kindness and help freely given by total strangers is the norm, not the exception. Many hikers, so helped, go on to give that help to others.

  Completing the AT, I wondered what should come next. There were times on both the AT and the PCT when the thought of buying a travel van and doing a few day hikes now and then certainly seemed appealing, especially on long slogs uphill or when walking on snow or with wet feet. Yet I didn't think I was quite ready to hang up the backpack.

  I’d become accustomed to taking long hikes every year. I was no longer taking a section hike. My mindset had changed. I’d become a regular long-section hiker, a different mindset than a thru hiker or a day hiker. I didn't take out five months to do an adventure of a lifetime. After finishing a hike, I started planning the next year's hikes. Doing 300-400 miles on each trail each year was a doable yearly adventure, not a once in a lifetime opportunity. I didn’t thru hike and didn’t consider hiking a complete lifestyle change followed by re-entry into the non-hiking world, but I’d developed a lifestyle that included hiking two long sections of some trail each year, every year.

  I still had about 80 miles to finish the PCT, but I was used to planning two long hikes every year. There are a great many trails in the world I have not yet walked. God blessed this world with beauty, wilderness, and people. I hoped to see more of it. I needed a spring hike.

  Chapter 30 Fall and Winter 2011-2010

  CDT Planning

  I planned to head to New Mexico in April of 2012. I didn't know if I would have the physical ability or the time allotted to me in life for completion of the Continental Divide Trail. At 70, I considered living a year-to-year, month-to-month and day-to-day opportunity. But what the heck, I might as well give it a try. If I were not to finish, at least I would see and experience more of the wonders of the trail. If I were to finish, that would be spectacular.

  One can’t finish without beginning, but beginning the CDT was really just a continuation. I section hiked. I wasn’t ready to stop section hiking. While I could, I would.

  The older I became, the more I needed to prepare the body for backpacking. Among other preparations, I found myself walking 7 1/2 miles, through a bit of rain and snow, pack on my back, through the streets of Puyallup. I mailed food drop boxes. Getting a lot of strange looks, I walked through the South Hill Mall with a pack on my back to get my grandson's birthday present. I didn't see anyone else in their rain gear hefting a backpack while buying grandchildren's B-day presents. I now had six grandchildren and would soon have a 7th.

  At the time I began the Continental Divide Trail, hikers chose from three places to begin. At that time, about half of CDT hikers chose the official start at the Crazy Cook Monument, which had very difficult access. About half chose the Columbus route with easy access. A few diehards began at Antelope We
lls, the farthest south point in New Mexico’s boot heel. I chose the Columbus Route for the ease of access. I also read more journals of hikers on that route who enjoyed it, and several who did the other, not enjoying it as much.

  There were not many purists on the trail then. One of the challenges on the CDT was choosing your route. It wasn’t a matter of following every white blaze as the AT, or of following one established and marked trail (except for alternates in Oregon) as the PCT. No two CDT hikers hiked exactly the same trail. Checking out at least three different maps and a guidebook I made choices. Map and compass skills were considered very important and a GPS handy. I was only mildly accomplished with a map and compass, but I carefully laid out all routes on my GPS.

  My pack would be a little heavier in 2012 than in 2011 as 1) I was afraid of freezing at night in New Mexico. 2) Water would be an issue. 3) I was older and slower and had to take more days (hence more food) in remote areas between trail towns than average hikers. 4) I’d gotten all techie. Both Pocketmail and then Peek had gone out of business, so I bought an iPhone. I added the smallest size Goal Zero solar charger, which I would carry on top of my pack, to keep GPS batteries and iPhone in business.

  My knee Doc might not have been too happy with the heavier pack, but I thought I could keep the weight down below 30 pounds if not below 20 pounds. It probably averaged 25 pounds through most of New Mexico.

  Navigation and weight were two of the challenges on the CDT. There would also be fewer people. Thousands of hikers were then starting on the AT each year and hundreds on the PCT. Only about 50 were starting on the CDT in those years, and not all of them started on the same end of the trail. Another challenge would be hundreds of fords of the Gila River. It might only be ankle-to-thigh deep. Or it could be too deep to ford. I wouldn’t know which circumstance would be mine until I got there.

  I needed flexibility on the CDT. Although I always planned more extensively than most thru-hikers, planning helped me be flexible when I needed to be, and I planned possible route changes, too.

  Some might consider these challenges to be dangers, but I find it healthier to consider them challenges, which I would try to meet with planning, good sense, and experience. Nothing was certain. But then, nothing is certain whether one goes hiking or stays at home. It was more fun to go hiking.

  Chapter 31 March 30, 2012

  CDT - Columbus Route

  Roads, Deserts and Blisters

  First, of course, was getting there. Two planes, a city bus, and a Greyhound Bus, and I was in New Mexico. El Coyote met me at the bus stop in Deming, and in the fading light he wanted to show me the road I would be on a few days later. I appreciated his efforts, but in the fading light of dusk we almost hit a cow in open-range country. El Coyote said we must have missed it because I was a pastor. Interesting thing for a professed atheist to say.

  Cowboy camping outside their trailer on my first night in New Mexico, I was ready to start. After a lovely sunset, stars and moon looked down on me, a dog or two barked in the distance, and the sound of traffic was sparse.

  After setting a water cache for me, giving me a lay of the land tour and stopping at Willy's, a ranch on the way, to let them know I would need water the next day, El Coyote drove me to the border. At the border he checked in with Border Patrol cars and customs, so they wouldn’t hassle me as I was taking my starting pictures at the border. Then I headed back up the black top highway 3 and 1/2 miles to Columbus. Yep, my CDT walk began on a blacktop highway.

  I was hot before I reached Columbus, the Chihuahua Desert in New Mexico near the Mexican border, not the same climate I’d left in cold and rainy Washington State. Stopping at the first of two museums in Columbus, the Columbus Historical Museum, the hostess was kind and gracious, sitting me down to cool off, while I watched a video about the Pancho Villa raid in 1916. A relative on my mother's side had fought Pancho Villa, giving me an extra interest as I enjoyed the museum.

  The spigot in the cemetery was the last water stop before trudging into desert heat, mesquite bushes, cactus, mainly prickly pear and cholla and a few yucca. Nearing South Peak of Tres Hermanas, I saw poppies, yellow daisies and palo verde beginning to leaf out.

  Having been warned about staying on the good side of ranchers by not scaring the cows, I took care not to camp too close to the water tank, I spread my gear in a sandy draw a little above an obviously dry stream bed with fewer pointy things to puncture my air mattress than the rest of the desert floor. The temperature an absolutely lovely 67, New Mexico was a wonderful place to be in early spring.

  Up off the desert floor on the sides of hills the next day, there was more obvious life: poppies, desert chicory and pincushion, five small deer, two jackrabbits and a turkey vulture. I also saw a couple dozen cows throughout the day. Few natural water sources in this part of New Mexico meant I shared water with cattle. I was grateful cows would share.

  Winding my way through tall mesquite bushes to the water cache, I wouldn’t have found it without having marked it on my GPS. Stopping at Willy and Rose’s house for more water, I needed the 2 ½ hour rest on their shaded patio more. Walking cross country for five miles following my GPS, I ran into the dirt road I was searching for just as daylight faded. I cowboy camped again in another sandy draw.

  The next morning was 38 degrees, and I was glad to keep clothes on, covering the sunburn I’d already acquired. I found the water tank as El Coyote had told me. But a fierce wind blew away my foam sit pad when I turned my back to pack up. It was out of sight and half way to Mexico in a quick moment.

  From the highway, the desert looks quite barren. Up close and personal while walking, I saw poppies and chicory in abundance, as well as phacelia, bright pink low-growing flowers, yellow and white daisies, rattlesnake weed, ajo lilies and purple vetch. Thanks to the flower app on my phone, I identified a flower I’d never seen before, a long-nosed rock trumpet. Several stands of ocotillo were loaded with buds not yet blooming.

  Ibex have been sighted in the Florida Mountains, but I knew of only a few hikers, who had chosen to walk cross-country through those mountains due to all the thickly growing pointy things to shred your legs. I took the road around as more befitting an old lady, finding a sheltered area in Headquarters Draw behind a 10-foot road berm breaking the 40-mile-an-hour wind.

  Stopping at a small lapidary shop and museum to use a restroom, I met two older gentlemen. The Geode Kid was well known in rock-hound circles and had written a couple books. His partner, the talkative one, was a tall, thin man with a long wispy white beard, who walked with the aid of a walker. I bought a little geode to mail home.

  On roads all day, I found I liked roads. I could walk faster on a road, but speed came with a price. A little blister developed on the bottom of my heel. After slack packing through the town of Deming, the blister grew to half-dollar size.

  Blisters come in two basic types: friction blisters and compression blisters. Friction blisters are common on heels, toes or sides of feet, friction blisters are caused by something rubbing on something else, shoes on heels, toes on each other, etc. Feet swell as the day goes on and often change sizes on long-distance hikes. Shoes that fit just right in the store when trying them on, often are no longer just right on the trail. Heat and wetness also contribute to friction blisters.

  Compression blisters are something else, but no less painful. Compression blisters are caused by repeated compression of a body part, especially heels on roads. Because the surface of a road is nearly level, feet make repetitive contact with the ground the same way at each step, giving an even, ground-eating rhythm, faster than the variety of step patterns required by an uneven wilderness trail.

  But the repetitive pattern, besides being fast, compresses the pad of the heel into the calcaneus (heel bone) over and over again, each step almost always repeating the identical impact as the step before, resulting in a compression blister on the bottom of your heel. Healing such a blister on the trail is difficult, if not impossible. Have you ever
tried walking on your toes to keep pressure off your heel? For miles? For days?

  It was a very good thing my hike itinerary included taking four days off to visit an old college friend in Las Cruces, whom I’d not seen for fifty years. I could hobble around her house on my toes while the blister healed.

  I also needed to deal with a few problems. An email from Lynnae, one of my trail angels ahead, said my bear can with food and medications had not arrived. Although I could buy more food, medications were another matter. Besides the knee replacement, I have all the accouterments of old-age conditions and needed my medications. After a phone call to my doc, Walgreens came through with more meds and a phone call to REI brought a new foam pad to replace the one blown away in the wind.

  My friend and I had a lovely time catching up on the last 50 years. An Ethnohistorian of Southern New Mexico and retired curator of the New Mexico State University Museum, she drove me 120 miles to see the International Center of the Camino Real Museum on the Jornado Del Muerto, a quite interesting museum in the middle of nowhere, three miles off the highway below Socorro.

  Before leaving La Cruces, an email brought the news my bear can with its food drop finally did reach Mimbres, after being lost in the mail for more than a month. Hooray. I could leave Deming with only five day’s food instead of having to carry for seven, and I would have extra meds. I was so relieved. My blister had healed, and after Easter Sunday services in Las Cruces, I was on the bus back to Deming.

  After a girl’s breakfast out with El Coyotes’ wife Mary, I headed out into rangeland and desert, passing multiple water sources, all for cattle. I stopped at Spyder windmill merrily pumping clear clean water from the ground into a tall tank, from which I dipped my water.