Pacific Crest Trail, Mile 1,094
Yosemite, California | 1999

Most people are on the world not in it—have no conscious
sympathy or relationship to anything about them—
undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of
polished stone, touching but separate.

—John Muir

I’ve been sick for days. My weakness is increasing. Today I wake up feeling ravenous. I fill up on oatmeal and walk. Within minutes, I throw it all up as I start down the trail. I do the best I can to maintain my fast pace and high mileage. The queasiness never leaves me. I haven’t held food down in a week. What can be wrong? I figure it’s the flu and will disappear in a few days. The trail is wearing on me, I can tell. I am also distressed by my financial situation. I need cash to see a doctor, but I have none.

Thinking to rest, I continue with my plan to detour into Yosemite National Park, a place that has forever been on my list of destinations. I jump on a free bus tour operated by the Park Service to bring me farther into the park.

My stomach holds out until fifteen minutes from the end of the tour. While the bus is still moving, I leap out to run to the nearest bathroom. My stomach doesn’t wait, and I puke right there in Yosemite Village. I spend the next half hour on the toilet. I am humiliated.

I run into Paul, a fellow hiker who has been keeping pace with me on and off for the last few hundred miles. He offers insight into my health crisis saying, “I bet the giardia bug got you from a bad water source a ways back.”

The trail out of Yosemite is at least five feet wide, the typical minimum tourist standard. It is beautiful out here—Yosemite National Park the way people should experience it, hearing the encompassing rush of the raging, ever-changing Merced River. I vow to not take the river’s multifaceted demeanor for granted. It is now full of life, and sometimes you can hear it flowing through the veins it has carved out in the earth. If you listen long enough, voices ring out through the constant water chorus. Laughter and drums seem to form a backdrop for an unusual orchestra, providing the ear with delightful compositions—at first in fortissimo, shouting through to your consciousness, but as your ears meld to the Merced’s song, the subtleties shine through. Its underlying melodic intricacies forever impress their gifts on the listening soul.

Truth lingers in the heart, and the heart senses the message of the river: Remain wild and free. This truth sings out beyond the canyon walls, beyond the sequoia forest, beyond the snowy mountain passes, beyond the mysterious blue of a twilight sky, beyond vibrant Venus shining bright upon the sleeping world, beyond the starry sky, and straight through to the heart of the universe, where my heart resides in peace, there to remain wild and free.

After twenty-five miles, my stomach calls it quits. I set up camp, and a short while later, Paul comes along and decides to join me. I start a fire and relax under the open sky of stars. It is Paul’s birthday today, so I use toothpaste to decorate a cake for him, which I fashion out of Bisquick and Hershey bars.

“It’s the thought that counts, right?” I say.

It is a dry night out, so there is no need to set up a tarp over my sleeping bag. I lie down in my bag with my backpack under my head, and as I drift off into deep dreams of ice cream, something nudges me and shuffles my bag around. I peek open one eye and see a big black bear’s head hovering over my own. It is sniffing my hair and my backpack. I left something in my bag. Oh no—the toothpaste!—I forgot to tie it up in the tree with everything else.

I call out to Paul. For some reason, I am not afraid and feel no danger. I realize the bear doesn’t want to hurt me but is only hoping for a midnight snack. The problem is that I need his midnight snack and can’t give it up. As Paul wakes and stands up, the bear grows alarmed. It grabs my backpack in its teeth and takes off with it. I am in shock but uninjured.

“Wait, I need my pack!” I yell out to the bear. I jump up and chase after it, yelling at the top of my lungs, “That’s my pack! Drop it!”

The bear stops, looks back at me, and calls my bluff. I keep screaming, stomping my feet, and waving my arms like I am having a temper tantrum. The bear drops my pack and runs off. Paul and I stand in stillness for a long while.

“What just happened?” he asks,

“No clue,” I say. “Can you believe the bear dropped the pack and ran?”

“What just happened?” Paul asks again.

I laugh, and that helps to drive away the terror hovering over this in-the-moment survival scenario. As a hiker, I have been taught, “If a bear is black, fight back. If brown, stay down.” There is no catch phrase for when a bear has snatched everything you own in the world from under your head while you are sleeping.

I find myself looking over my shoulder with increased frequency during the rest of the hike. I was lucky that time, but I need to be more trail-smart if I want to get through this in one piece.

A few days later, my stomach condition only deteriorates further. Things go okay until I eat. Breakfast lasts about a half hour before my stomach goes though contracting convulsions. I don’t bother with lunch. The terrain has changed now from mountains to rocky canyons full of color and life. In this glaciated land, there are steep climbs with only a few passes in between and more rivers to ford. Brooks meander through the canyons, offering a haven for heinous mosquitoes.

The last six miles from Benson Pass to Benson Lake is a steep trail down, and the ground is under water or snow. I slip twice and get covered from head to toe in mud (see fig. 11).

It is hard to find the trail. I stop around five o’clock for dinner. Weak yet starving, every bite I eat hits me hard. I can’t even breathe. My stomach cramps up so bad I puke at least three times. Needing money to get to the doctor, I will have to take a break from the trail to find a job for a couple of weeks. Lake Tahoe is sixty miles away—if I can make it that far.