Thank you Red's Meadow

The tree didn’t fall on me.

I did get up in the middle of the cold night, briefly, and there was no wind, and a skyful of stars reflected on the smooth and still lake like thousands of distant campfires on a dark plain.

In the morning I left the lake and climbed to a low ridge then descended to Purple Lake, where I sat in the sun on a broad slab of rock in the middle of a tall dew-wet meadow above the water. I ate my breakfast of muesli and powdered milk and read a couple chapters of Far From the Madding Crowd….

A couple miles along I stopped again, at a beautiful rushing creek to filter some water…. I dropped the cap for the filter’s outlet in the water and it disappeared before I could grab it from the shallow stream. I ran down along the side looking for the red cap, expecting to see it bobbing along. But no. I returned to the original spot and carefully moved stones aside beneath the water, thinking the cap had slipped between. But still, no. I looked for a half hour, but it must have gotten beneath the small boulder I’d been crouched on. I reached underneath as far as I could all along the edges, but I had no success…. I hate losing things.

I had met a pair of thru-hikers a couple times over the last two days, two older men, Flagman and Happy Wander. We had spoken briefly, as I passed them on a break or they passed me on one. From Lost Cap Creek, I traversed a long dry slope, through pine forest, six miles to a crossing of Deer Creek. Here I met up with Flagman again.

The day had grown quite hot, and I was sitting on a rock on the bank soaking my broiling feet. Flagman stepped out into the middle of the small stream. “See, you need a sponge,” he said, holding up his own small blue sponge. He dipped it in the cold water and washed his bald head, his face and neck. It’s perfect,” he said, “lightweight and effective…. And you need to keep clean, it’s important.” He took off his shirt and dunked it in the creek with one hand while he sponged his pale torso with the other. “And soak your shirt,” he said, “it’s like natural air-conditioning.” He pulled out the shirt and wrung it out, just a little, and put it back on.

Flagman was in his early sixties, small and spare, and wearing more clothes than I thought necessary, including knee-to-ankle gaiters; he had spent thirty years in the Marines but was now retired. His wife was a career Marine too, but she wasn’t interested in hiking. He had started the trail a month before at Walker Pass (fifty miles south of Kennedy Meadows). He planned to walk to the Canadian border, then fly down to San Diego and walk the desert portion of the trail in fall. “Just so I’m back with family by Thanksgiving,” he told me.

He told me he lived in North Carolina, but he and his wife were going to start spending winters in Sioux Falls, in South Dakota. “Doesn’t make sense, does it? You’re supposed to go south in winter…. But the wife has family up there.” He also told me that he would’ve started on the trail earlier but he he’d had to tend to his 97-year-old mother. “I’m the oldest son,” he explained.

Flagman talked a lot, but not so much about his own biographic details. Mostly he was offering advice or information about the trail and how to hike it. I heard him in several conversations with other hikers, and each time he was telling them what to do.

His partner, Happy Wander, was quite different. Slower, for one; he came along after Flagman and I had been at Deer Creek for some time. He was in his late 50s, a quiet man, even a little spacey it seemed to me; he came from Neelsville, Wisconsin and had a daughter in one of the Twin Cities suburbs. The first time we met he told me he was doing what someone else had named a “bas”: a big-ass section. He had started at Walker Pass and planned to go as far as the Oregon border, about 1000 miles. Last summer he walked the desert portion, next summer he plans to do Oregon and Washington.

We soon all moved on, spreading out and each moving along at his own pace (“Walk your own walk,” Flagman instructed me before he set off). The trail descended gradually, down below 9000’, eventually just below 8000’…. I considered the option of attaching myself to Flagman and Happy Wander. On the long hikes I’ve done in recent years I’ve found people to travel with, and it usually makes for a better hike…. It’s what I was hoping for on the PCT….

In the middle of the afternoon the two men stopped at Red Cones, a place in the trail between two tall, dark red volcanic heaps. They were making an early camp, saving the last few miles to Red’s Meadow resort for the morning. A road comes into the small resort, and there’s a daily shuttle bus out to the town of Mammoth, where they planned to spend the next day, to re-supply.

I stopped with them and hung about while Flagman set up his tent and strung a line to dry his clothes, and Happy Wander sat on a log in the shade, phlegmatically chewing on an energy bar…. We chatted desultorily…. Flagman explained why his tent was of the best sort and how to best set up a campsite for the night…. And I debated with myself what to do…. In the end I wasn’t ready to stop so early, to spend a day in Mammoth, to change my plans, or to slow my pace (they were typically covering fifteen miles a day). I would’ve adapted for the right people, but I decided that Flagman and Happy Wander and I weren’t quite compatible….

The last couple hot miles before Red’s Meadow was through a vast burnt over section, the result of the Rainbow Fire in 1992, which stopped just short of the resort’s wooden buildings. I felt on the verge of heat stroke when I finally got back to the shelter of the forest…. Soon after I came to Red’s Meadow, a quarter mile off the trail….

Here there was a small store across from a small restaurant, a few low buildings with rustic rooms, a corral with horses, a campground nearby. The road that dead-ends at Red’s Meadow also provides access to Devil’s Postpile National Monument (the postpile is a short walk to the west, also just off the trail).

I somehow hadn’t known about the small resort, and most importantly the restaurant, until I had talked to Flagman and Happy Wander. They weren’t really interested. “Too many people,” HM said, “too noisy.” True, the crowd in the store was initially disorienting. But the cool restaurant proved, to my mind, preferable to a scorching afternoon between volcanic rock piles, even if they were pleasingly symmetrical. I sat down in the back corner of the small room, a little dazed and at first wondering, is this really going to work? The answer soon became apparent: yes.  The friendly waitress, a woman in tank top and knee-length camo shorts, brought me a huge glass of iced tea. Amazing…. Later she brought me a hamburger along with a small bowl of excellent potato salad. It would be hard to overstate the wonder and pleasure of this meal. And I was able to charge my iPod at an outlet on the wall. I felt terribly lucky to have come across this oasis, a respite from the blazing afternoon. And I stayed all afternoon, waiting out the heat….

At five I set off again, first passing through Devil’s Postpile before returning to the trail…. It was still warm but the sun was lower in the sky and that helped.

After about four miles I came to a footbridge across a stream, and just on the other side was an Inyo National Forest campground, Upper Soda Springs. But it was closed for repairs. Last November a huge and devastating windstorm hit this portion of the Sierras, and it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that it knocked down millions of trees. For the last few days it seemed I’d seen that many downed trees myself. Luckily, most of the trail I’d been on had been cleared, some of it obviously over just the last couple weeks. Before that, the other hikers coming though must have had a tough time, and that’s an understatement. Anyway, the campground was a jumble of huge, fallen trees, smashed picnic tables and bear boxes…. Much of it had already been cleared away, and a couple pieces of heavy machinery awaited a crew’s return the next morning….

I found a solo hiker already ensconced in one of the cleared sites, and I spoke with him for a moment before picking out a site myself. Besides all the downed trees, the mosquitoes were bad, but it still felt a luxury to have a picnic table. After I set up camp I went to the stream and washed up and filtered water for dinner and for the night…. When I was coming back I paused to talk to the other hiker again, and then we spotted a man in the green and tan Forest Service uniform making his way towards us through the campground. “Shit,” I said, “it looks like we’re going to have to move.” Signs were up indicating the campground was closed.

But in a rare act of forbearance he allowed us to stay, after quizzing us on our plans and getting our assurances that we would both be leaving early in the morning. His name tag read “Jon Reggellbrugge, District Ranger”—which meant, I learned, he was the head guy for the area. He had come down to inspect the progress of the crew…. We chatted about the windstorm and the Herculean efforts over recent months to clear the trails (and campgrounds; several others were closed too), nearly all of the work done with bucksaws and axes, since machinery is not allowed in wilderness areas…. And then he wished us good night, and I didn’t have to pack up and move my camp.

I had carefully chosen a spot unthreatened by any leaners or dead trees.