July 5.
After saying good-bye to my mom and sister, I hop on a flight from Long Beach to Seattle. On the flight I see all the different places I’ll be passing through: The Sierra, Northern California, Oregon, Washington. A 3 hour flight and it’ll take me months to get back home.
I land at SeaTac then take the rail and ferry to Bremerton to a trail angel’s house. Found her through a PCT sobo group. Turns out it’s a whole house of trail angels, thru hikers who had sobo’d in ’16 and become friends, moved in together, and wanted to give back to the community.
They let me and 3 other hikers camp in their yard, feed us dinner, and share stories about their own hikes. One of them had gotten violently sick with e.coli from not filtering water in The Sierra and had to be airlifted to a hospital. I make a note to always filter my water.
The three other hikers I’m starting with are from all over the world, Canada, China, and Germany. Me from Mexico. We make very international group. A United Nations of would be hiker trash. They are packing up boxes and putting together their resupplies when I get there. It’s strange but comforting to talk to them about gear, food, the trail. I’ve spent so much time researching the trail to the point of obsession but haven’t been able to talk about the minutiae of it with anyone really. It feels good to know there are others in the same boat.
We go up to the roof of our hosts’ house and watch the sun set. They live not far from The Olympics and we see a beautiful sunset from there. The first of hopefully many.
Plants Outside 