Been a long time a write and stroll.

Today I find myself sitting down to a phone with Internet service for the first time in several weeks. And sadly, I log on with no great backlog stories to post. The great high Sierra and all of it’s snowy misery swallowed all of my energy and most of my creative juices. The 34 days of all out physical exersion and constant deadly exposure has left me with large blank spots in my memory. Epic battles against snow and gravity slip my mind and I find I only remember small details. What creek did I almost drown in? Where did I see that backpack? Where did we meet the Boise firefighters? We met the challenge of the Sierra head on armed with only our t-shirts and tennis shoes and survived. In our catatonic recovery period we managed to walk 400 more miles. Now the days end and begin with a little more energy.
The miles have become hikeable on auto-pilot and we regularly cover 12 before noon. We find fond memories from our snowjourn and talk of them over muscle milk and poptarts in the morning. The names around the campfire have increased and changed. -On one of the last days in the Sierra we were faced with several obstacles, river crossings, numerous downed trees, steep climbs and snow. After 18 miles of keeping our racecars in the red, the light was visible at the end of the tunnel. Snowless patches and rolling hills awaited ahead, only four more miles. Before our four mile mindless stooper towards dry trail ended Caveman had his pack on the ground and was climbing up an escarpment for an epic leisure boy photograph. Photo made, stooper continued. At the fire that night Bird had horizontaled early, leaving just cman and I around the coals. We laughed and sighed and marveled at the feat we were sitting on the finish line of and thought about how cman had had the energy to climb an extra mtn and not even mind it. “why the hell am I not called leisure boy?” cman asked. And that was that. Here ye here ye, Caveman is now Leisure Boy. It was an obvious name and we fell asleep wondering how it could have taken us that long to come up with.- On the outside of the Sierra the brave souls who staggered through the snow solo began to clump up and travel in convoys. Like cholesterol, the small convoys (‘disraeli gears, the boise firefighters, the zero kings) bumped into eachother and stuck together. We camped around a fire together one night and at one point or another everyone said everyone’s names for some reason or another, “Woodward, Smokie the Beard, Digger, Bird, Leisure Boy, Salty, Beaker, Zoro, Andrew, Eishi, Thom, and Yuvall.”. The twelve of us woke up, walked past the half way point marker and disbanded in the town of Chester.
Here, fortyish miles past Chester in my camp chair under a tree house I am slurping coffee and waiting for the heat to pass. The trail angels here are fantastic cooks and the trail ahead is bare from a fire and made out of volcanic glass. We’ll sit here till 3 then hike five miles to a lava cave and wait there till 5:30 then make it as far as we can before the night makes the glass too trecherous to walk on.
Who are the firefighters? Why doesn’t Andrew have a Nick name? ‘Disraeli gears? All questions could be answered now if I could find a spot where people don’t want to talk to me about how much they love writing. Instead I am going to put this down and freestyle over some ukulele music.

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