Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
~ Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day” from New and Selected Poems, 1992
When it comes to travel and adventure, I’m a planner and organizer. I love it when I have everything dialed out—details researched, decisions made, lists created, piles gathered, bags packed—well before departure day. It’s probably obsessive, but it bolsters my confidence and sense of control when all my ducks are lined up. I’m free to be spontaneous in the midst of an adventure and enjoy the moment when I’ve allowed myself to be obsessive beforehand.
Of course, this has also been my approach to my memoir writing project, Force of Nature: Three Women Tackle the John Muir Trail. To kick off entering the final leg of this writing journey—the very first steps of the challenging final leg—I'm sharing a chapter that didn't make the editor's cut. Stephen King calls that culling process "killing your darlings." This "darling" of mine is a bit of a prologue to the grander adventure story.
It was June 2006. I sat on the dark Oriental rug in my living room amidst mounds of the food and supplies that were destined to be packed into four shipping boxes. My food caches would be mailed ahead to specific pick-up locations along the two-hundred-mile trail. One cardboard box, already packed, taped, and addressed to Red's Meadows Resort, where we'd be on Day Five if all went according to plan, sat off to the side. It contained five days’ worth of meals—four planned days of hiking plus one extra day, just in case we didn't make the distance we intended.
I filled in the label on a second box, addressing it to myself at Vermilion Valley Resort, where I intended to pick it up on Day Nine. It contained meals for four days, one for each walking day, plus an extra. Red's Meadows and Vermilion Valley (known among hikers as Red's and VVR) were both commercial campgrounds situated on the border of the wilderness, a short hike off the JMT, and they would, for a moderate fee, provide caching services to JMT and PCT thru-hikers. When I finished addressing box number two, I set it next to number one and turned my attention to the third.
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| Picking up food cache at Muir Trail Ranch. |
Container number three would travel to Muir Trail Ranch. Located halfway along the trail, at about the one-hundred-mile mark, Muir was more remote than Red's or VVR, so charged hikers more for its caching service. They also required supplies be packed inside a heavy duty, five-gallon, plastic paint bucket with a secure lid. It seemed they had a rodent problem, and plastic kept the wildlife out of the people food. I pulled the bucket to my side and began the packing process for the third time.
I'd started a few hours earlier with several shopping bags filled with the food and supplies I'd purchased over recent weeks spread all over the floor. Slowly the bags' contents became mounds, which were sorted and organized into smaller piles.
Then I'd begun organizing the food, measuring and packaging individual portions into bags for thirty traveling and eating days. Thirty little bags of mocha or chai. Thirty of Gatorade. Thirty medium bags of nuts with dried fruits. Thirty of assorted powerbars. Thirty of cookies. Thirty lunches. Thirty freeze-dried dinners, all pre-tested and chosen for cooking ease and savory flavors. Each of those placed into larger Ziploc bags, one for each of the five legs of the hike. Five little bags of hard candy.
All measurements and calculations were based on a three-thousand-calorie-per-day diet that included plenty of proteins (for keeping muscles strong) and ample fats and carbohydrates (to maintain consistent energy).
“Three-thousand calories a day. Now that’s a lot of food!” I said aloud, though no one was there to observe me sitting like an island in a sea of Ziploc bags.
I'd learned when hiking I'm rarely very hungry at breakfast time and never in the mood for breaking out the stove in the morning cold, so I planned to eat a pair of protein bars. My chilly morning’s true pleasure came from a steaming hot beverage, so I’d put my efforts into measuring and pre-mixing various coffee ingredients into the smallest Ziploc bags.
For lunch, when I’d be starving, I planned high protein options with lots of carbohydrates. Summer sausage, spicy and fatty, was my favorite backpacking lunch protein, but once opened it would only last two days unrefrigerated. I’d eat it first, then alternate between the tuna and peanut butter.
For dinners, I’d fire up the stove and cook hearty dehydrated entrees. I'd used Enertia brand before and loved their savory, no-mess meals. Hot tea would top off my evening meals. Between meals, I planned to snack on nuts, dried fruit, and more bars. Tangerine-flavored Gatorade and hard sugar candies mid-afternoon would give me that extra energy boost I’d need. I measured, weighed, counted, and packaged until I had ten sets of bulging plastic bags.
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| Making dinner on the trail. |
Nine days finished, two shipping containers to go. Still arrayed across the floor on three sides of me, were twenty-one days’ worth of food in little organized piles. I’d carry six of those remaining in my backpack on the first leg. For leg three’s nine days of walking I prepped ten sets of meals for the plastic paint bucket going to Muir Ranch Resort. That left five for the final box being mailed to the packhorse service.
Just thinking of the packhorse service made me a little nervous. The location along the trail where we wanted the fourth food cache was nearly twenty miles away from any town or supply facility, so we’d arranged for a horseman to pack in our food and meet us right on the trail. Those arrangements were causing Cappy and me anxious concern. The other three advertised their services online, and we’d made arrangements over the phone, but the packing outfit had been difficult to contact. Our first calls went unanswered. When they did respond, their messages were garbled and missing key bits of information. The fee for a horse and rider to make the trip out to the trail was expensive, and meet-up directions were vague. The food drop was a necessity, however, so we were determined to make it work.
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| Packhorse & Cowboy after delivering food caches. |
"We’ll meet the man on the horse without difficulty. I'm sure of it," I told myself out loud like an aphorism—things said aloud sound more certain.
I refocused on packing. Despite my concerns, I was excited. Packing boxes for mailing was a tangible step towards making my adventure dream come true.
I put the food in first, sturdy dinners in a pile at the bottom, then the more fragile lunches on top. I stood the bags containing protein bars around the outer edge, circling the stacked meals. That would hold them tight without jostling during shipment. On top, I placed my personal care and first aid supplies, with the softest bits—undies, socks, and shirt—on the very top. Last, I filled the empty space with crumpled newspaper and sealed the lid.
Cappy, Jane, and I planned to step onto the trail on Wednesday, July 19. I’d drive down to Tuolumne Meadows Campground in Yosemite’s high country early to acclimate, on Sunday, July 16. I’d mail my food caches two weeks before D-Day on July 5. So, I intended to have everything ready to mail before the Fourth-of-July weekend began.
[First two photos were taken by my hiking partner, Caroline. Third photo was taken by "Zoe".]
