The waiting game

Day 132

When you are injured and uncertain as to whether you will be able to get back on trail within a reasonable time frame, you are playing “the waiting game”. Should you give up your hike or should you hang around in whatever town you are at in hopes of things getting better at the cost of time and money? I’m playing that game right now. With the way I felt this morning, I decided right out of the bat that I was going to take at least two whole zero days here in Stehekin. I was able to book a room for the two nights, which was nice, as I was getting tired of all the noise and commotion either at the free campsite or at the landing where I hanged out a lot yesterday and even more today. If you eat every meal at the restaurant, that also becomes expensive, so for breakfast I had pop tarts bought at the general store (4 vs 30 dollars) and for lunch some food two other through hikers gave me for lunch. I asked them how they’d already gotten their boxes as the post office wasn’t to open before ten am. They had phones way ahead of time and made the post office leave their packages out as it was Labor Day today. I had totally forgotten about that. I checked my calendar, as I thought that I had put the US holidays in there. I had. The only problem was that hadn’t checked my calendar since i had put said holidays in there. Didn’t matter much, though, as I was staying for at leas two more nights. Unexpectedly, Bandit and Oldtimer suddenly popped up and we decided to have dinner together.

When I got my room I had a nice and long bath in the tub listening to “Explosions In The Sky” and drinking camomile tea. No wine or anything that could hinder the healing!

Went down to the restaurant for dinner and met not only Oldtimer and Bandit there but also RapidRabbit, and a young philosopher that I shared a laundry run with in Kennedy Meadows and accidentally almost made it of with one of his shirts but hadn’t seen him since, as well as a middle aged woman who had decided to work at Holden for a year but was going out to see Stehekin here on her day off. Being a group of mostly people much older than me, the talking fell upon the subject of seeing their kids as adults as their personalities matured and how proud they were of them. Oldtimer also told a heartfelt story about how he had overcome drug and alcohol addictions with the helping hand of God. He had at first asked God for guidance but felt none. As time went by, though, he first heard God telling him to stop smoking weed, and so he did. A bit later the same thing happened with the drinking. His life then turned around for the better.

As for the shouting man near White Pass several days ago, Bandit had also heard him and hurried up to avoid him like me. Seeing me getting out on the road, he briefly considered if I was that man, but he had found it unlikely. Oldtimer, having walked behind the man, confirmed that it had to be the man from Julian, who apparently was having a complete meltdown.

Anyways, for the hikers, they were heading out tomorrow, although they all felt quite beaten up and that “everything hurts”. That mirrored the small talk I couldn’t help but overhearing from two hikers earlier in the day, who were talking about how they were losing toe nails et cetera. It is easy to push yourself too hard.

As we left the restaurant, I wished the other hikers well possibly to never see them again. We’ll see in two days if I’ll take more zeros, call it quits, or make a go for it. I‘d put my chances of making it to Canada at 50% right now.

This day’s miles: 2572-2572 (a zero day)