Rush Creek

I would prefer that morning lasted all day long. The early hours are cool and agreeable, and the light is pleasing, and I feel at my best…. The trail climbed steadily, up again to eight then nine thousand feet, and I crossed into Ansel Adams Wilderness. After a long traverse across a sagebrush slope, I was back in forest and climbing more steeply….

Late in the morning I took a side trail to Badger Lake, a small dollop of water, and sat down on a slanting rock apron with my feet in the lake. A mallard with a single duckling drifted away from me, and I thought, she must’ve started with more, and what happens if she loses the last one too.

I considered spending the hot afternoon at Badger, but it didn’t feel like quite the right spot…. I went on, the path rising still, a couple more miles to Thousand Isle Lake, one of the most brilliant spots on the JMT/PCT. The large lake is indeed sprinkled with a whole lot of rocky islets, and over all looms mighty Banner Peak, an impressive dark rocky spire…. The lake is popular enough that a “No Camping Zone” has been established around its eastern shore, where the trail passes. But numerous people were congregated at the lake just the same, many of them fishing along the edge or along the lovely outlet stream…. I admired the view and kept moving, not stopping to rest until I reached Island Pass, two miles further on.

This pass was a large and broad flat, not as sudden as previous passes (or, at 10,200’, as high), but with lots of enticing patches of short thick grass, a tundra-like turf, in among the boulders and scatterings of lakelets. I threw down my pack and took off my shoes and stretched out in the grass. This was a good spot for a long break…. But I didn’t take one.

For the first time on the trip clouds were gathering, along the north and west horizons, and the wind was rising…. Whatever was coming, if it did develop into a storm, was coming slowly. But still, it discouraged lounging. I could’ve made camp, but I figured if the wind came up the open pass might not be best. A windy night in a small tent can be a noisy and sleepless experience….

So I soon moved on, descending the pass. After only a mile and a half, in the bottom of a wooded defile, I came to Rush Creek and found a campsite beside the third of three crossings. I’d come fifteen miles since the morning start, a little less than planned, and it was only three o’clock, but I wanted to get the tent up before it rained. Plus, the campsite was fetching, set among a grove of pine trees, with handsome and useful boulders along the edge, and right on the narrow and fast and picturesque stream. The only problem was the mosquitoes, which were thicker and more importunate than any place along the trail so far. But no big deal. I put on a long-sleeved shirt, put on my rain pants and a head net, and then they only had my hands and feet to congregate upon, and I tried to keep the latter submerged as I sat on an obligingly flat slab of rock by the creek. I washed my shorts and socks then had some reading time….

The sky clouded over completely by the late afternoon, and rumblings of thunder rolled in from the north. But only a sprinkling of rain fell, on and off, for a couple hours, not even enough to drive me into the tent. By six the clouds had drifted away and the sun returned.

I cooked dinner beside the creek, ramen with a packet of tuna, and I was hungrier than I’ve been on previous nights…. I read, alternating between a John Irving and a Thomas Hardy novel…. Occasionally hikers passed on the other side of the creek and headed up towards Island Pass, which I figured must be getting crowded with tents. Sometimes I waved, or they waved, but the stream was too loud for cross-water conversation….

After I’d eaten a man appeared on my side of the creek, having come up the Rush Creek Trail from the east, the first to do so. I stood up and we stood together talking for almost an hour….He had a massive pack with lots of stuff tied onto the outside, including a large blue pad on top, a tent on the bottom. He’d been out just two days, climbing up from the trailhead, and they had been tough days for him, carrying so much weight.

He was 61, he told me, and he lived in L.A. (Luverne, specifically). He was about my height, medium-build, well-browned by the sun and with strong-looking forearms and biceps; he wore a t-shirt, and the mosquitoes landed in squadrons on his bare arms. He didn’t seem to mind, calmly and only at long intervals brushing them away.

He told me he was a “route salesman,” a “cake and bread” man for Hostess. He drove around southern and central Caliornia on a regular route, making deliveries, work he’d been doing for 35 years. “A lot of gas stations,” he said. For most of his three plus decades he’d been strictly a “bread man,” bringing Wonder bread to the people, via small-town grocery stores. But the business had changed. “It used to be there were bakeries all over, most good-sized towns had one. But now it all comes from Sacramento, or from Henderson, over by Las Vegas.” Apparently this means there’s less need for the more local routes like his. Plus, Wonder bread is less popular than it once was. So he does “cake” too.

He spoke slowly, with long pauses, with no sense of rush or impatience, either his own or mine. Not that I had any either.

He told me he was diabetic—I noted his medical alert bracelet—and he wasn’t supposed to eat the Hostess products but he still did sometimes. He liked the cinnamon swirl rolls best, but he’d have a Hostess fruit pie occasionally. I told him I had loved the cherry pies when I was in junior high.

“Do you eat them now?” he asked.I had to admit that I did not.“No,” he said, musingly, a little sadly, “they seem less popular nowadays, Twinkies too…. But they’re still good”—I nodded in agreement, what else could I do—“but I don’t think the kids eat them much…. They all go for those energy drinks. But what do they eat? What do your kids eat?”

I said, apologetically, that I didn’t think they ate much Hostess.

He told me he gets six or seven weeks off a year, and he does a lot of hiking. On his current trip he was heading for Lyell Glacier, and he planned to be out about eight days.

At a pause I told him my name and he introduced himself as Keith. “Two Ks,” he said, pleased, referring to our first names as a sort of connection. I didn’t correct him.

At 7:30 he finally removed his gaze from the middle distance—the place and direction for an ambling conversation—and looked down at his pack. “I guess I should think about finding a campsite….” Mine was large enough, and I suggested a spot for his tent on a small bench just uphill from mine. “You don’t mind?” he said. No, I assured him. And I didn’t say it, but trail etiquette demanded hospitality. Plus, just basic good form.

After he had his tent up, I went over to say good-night, but he caught me in conversation for another half hour. Not that he was a bore, I enjoyed talking to him; he seemed a good man…. He showed me his Spot, a device that allows one to call for help (Test, the woman I met back in June on the trail, had one of these too). You can also send a standard message, a sort of email, that assures loved ones you are okay. “We don’t really get along any more, he said, “but I send a signal to my wife in the evenings.”

I nodded because again what else could I do…. Eventually I said good-night and we shook hands, and I left him sitting outside his tent making his dinner and I got in mine and soon fell asleep to the noise of rushing water.