Claire Henley: Adventures West (A Change Of Direction: Part 1)

  • Thursday, October 8, 2015
View along the PCT
View along the PCT

(Editor's Note: Chattanoogan Claire Henley started an adventure of a lifetime on the remote Pacific Crest Trail in April. Along the way, she had many adventures and found herself a husband named Big Spoon).

“But you can make choices and change your present circumstances. You can alter your future.”

-Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior

The 103-mile stretch from Echo Lake to Sierra City served as the opening to a new and unanticipated chapter in my and Big Spoon’s grand adventure. Because of the time we had taken off in San Francisco and Lake Tahoe, we were now behind schedule and planned to hike twenty-five miles a day to finish the PCT before the October snows of Washington sifted from the sky.

Therefore, through the Desolation and Granite Chief Wilderness, Big Spoon and I hiked from dawn until dusk, stopping every two hours for a brief bite to eat, neglecting to notice the beauty of nature around. I listened to books on tape to help pass the time of what had become an endless trudge. Big Spoon speared the fallen pine cones with his trekking pole and chucked them far ahead. His drive and morale on the way to Sierra City were uncharacteristically low. He wasn’t smelling the wildflowers he walked by like he usually did. He wasn’t stepping off the trail to explore the hidden treasures beyond. And when he came to a stunning view of glassy lakes and low rolling hills, he wasn’t even stopping to look.

My manner of hiking had also soured. I straggled behind Big Spoon while living vicariously through the stories of Jean Louise Finch and Boo Radley, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Clarisse McClellan and Guy Montag. Over the last three months I had heavily invested in my own true story of the trail. It began as something new and invigorating and had lasted in this way for many suns and moons. But now, after participating in mile after mile of this one continuous event, the journey had turned into a mundane chore of waking, walking, and setting up camp; an ongoing cycle of wash, rinse, repeat.

Hence, it was a nice break from the cycle to arrive in Sierra City the evening of July 23. The trail spit us out on the outskirts of the quiet town. We had heard the Methodist church allowed hikers to pitch their tents in the side yard and shower in the public restrooms down the hill. The sun slowly set as we hobbled along Wild Plum Road. The road eventually connected with Highway 49, and at the  corner of the junction stood the Yuba River Inn–a compound of cabins surrounded by sky-scraping pines and rocky brown buttes. Big Spoon and I were scanning the empty highway to see where we should go next when a plump man with a receding hairline, wearing shorts that exposed his column-white legs, walked over from his cabin to where we stood by the main lodge.

“I know the area if you need any help,” said the man as he delicately puffed his freshly lit cigarette. At the same moment of this exchange, the innkeeper walked out onto the front porch of the lodge.

“We’re looking for the church where hikers can stay,” Big Spoon said.

The man smoking the cigarette pointed down the highway and said it wasn’t but a hundred yards or so down the road on the right.

“And is there a restaurant nearby where we can get some dinner?” Big Spoon asked.

“Herrington’s is the only place open at this hour. But it’s way on the outside of town,” said the innkeeper.

Silence followed this statement as Big Spoon and I, hungry from our full day on the trail, thought of what to do.

“Alright you two, come with me,” the man with the cigarette chimed in. “I have leftover steak from earlier, and I can whip up some toast.”

“There you go,” said the innkeeper to Big Spoon and me as we turned to follow our dinner host back to his cabin.

“I’m Roy, and these are my kids, Thomas and Morgan. We’re from the Bay Area but come up here every summer to fish at the reservoir,” Roy said after we dropped our packs by the porch and entered the little log home. “And I don’t know what it is about the wilderness, but when we arrived this afternoon, we were instantly ravenous, so I bought all of this steak that, as you see, we weren’t able to finish.”

Roy pointed to a plate on the dining room table that displayed two juicy steaks. Big Spoon and I took a seat in front of the meat, and Roy instructed his children to pop in some toast and find us a beer from the fridge. The cabin smelled like a neighborhood cookout. And as Big Spoon and I ate these strangers’ steak and split their last beer while listening to anecdotes of their adventures at the Jackson Meadows Reservoir, I became more and more enthralled by the fact that there were people out there who, regardless of our unkempt appearance and blatant stench, were willing to help us out simply because they could. I began to see it wasn’t so much the hiking that made the trail the special journey it was, but the selfless generosity of the people we met along the way.

The stars had long been lighting up the sky by the time Roy escorted us out of his cabin and pointed us in the direction of the church. Big Spoon and I cowboy camped beneath stained glass windows and the next morning ran our resupply errands before seeking a ride back to the trail. A young man named Steven, who we met outside the grocery store, agreed to drive us in his beat up pickup truck. He wore a muscle tee that revealed his strong tattooed arms, and we learned he was one of the last gold miners in the area. As he drove us up the mountainside we inquired about his profession and how exciting it must be to strike gold.

“You know,” Steven responded after a moment’s pause, “I’ve found a lot of gold out there. And when I first started mining, I couldn’t get enough. But then, like anything, it began to lose its luster. Gold mining became my job and that was all. If it wasn’t for my dad, my mining partner who has a way of showing me the value in what we do, I would’ve left this field long ago.”

“People have that power,” Big Spoon said to Steven as he pulled over in front of the trailhead. “The power to keep you on task when you’ve felt you’ve had enough.”

“Of course,” Big Spoon continued talking to me after Steven drove away, “all the people we’re encountering now are those we meet off the trail.”

He and I looked down the empty path. Several minutes passed by before we started to move. We couldn’t quite pinpoint what was going on. But it was becoming harder and harder to muster the motivation to get back on the PCT.

* * *

Claire's first book on her adventures while living in Colorado can be ordered here:

http://www.amazon.com/51-Weeks-The-Unfinished-Journey-ebook/dp/B00IWYDLBQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394801373&sr=8-1&keywords=51+Weeks

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