tcmauer

CS1517.4 to CS1548.2 (1517.4 to 1548.2)

Daily miles: 30.8

Air cooled, Shasta still in a haze, easy walking and pass up Porcupine Lake and Toad Lake.  Don’t need liter after liter to keep up with my body today.  Enter basin after basin and book it to Dead Falls Lake.  Go for a swim, a nice long swim far out so that I’m in the deep water and can’t feel the slimy slippery rocks and logs that make up the shore.  Eat lunch on a rock and air dry.

Pass a family on the way up, little boy crying and refusing to move and it reminds me of David, so I laugh.  I speak to the dad and we talk about Ashland, where they’re from.  Ashland us my first town stop in Oregon.  Oregon!  It’s a real place, and it’s less than 200 miles away.  I’ve been in California for 3 months now.

Walk down to a parking lot, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s Coppertone!  We talk for a while and I eat a banana and apple that he offers to me.  I decline a root beer float today, don’t know why.

Walk on, put on pop music and cruise along the side if the mountain, lip-syncing.  Rain threatens, wind picks up, and there’s old Mt. Shasta, haze lifted.  It looks so tall and clear and proud of itself.

Make my own campsite, down a ways from the trail.  Dead crunching pine needles and packed earth, perfect for driving stakes into the ground.  Wind calms, stops, and the night is as silent the space between my breathes as I lie in my tent.