The Last Word On Nothing

This week Elise and I completed one of our lives’ great adventures, the John Muir Trail, the legendary footpath that wends along the granitic spine of California’s Sierra Nevadas. In point of fact it’s more accurate to say that she completed it, walking virtually the entire 200-mile course from Yosemite National Park to Mount Whitney’s talus-strewn flanks, while I was merely privileged to serve as her sidekick for the last 140 miles. It was a spectacular, transformative trip, graced by pikas and golden trout and black bears and so much granite — vast, towering, monolithic blocks and wedges and spires of granite. Even the pall of wildfire smoke felt oddly appropriate, a reminder that our journey took place within climate change’s all-devouring context.

Having never before attempted a through-hike, I didn’t realize what a collaborative endeavor it would turn out to be. The writings of Cheryl Strayed have perhaps conveyed the impression that long hikes are solitary endeavors that test individual mettle. Not so. Perhaps we’re less self-reliant than most, but our hike was abetted by a pit crew of trail angels: Nick and Alicia kept our plants alive; Carl and Emily minded our dog; Michael and (a different) Emily doled out advice; Terence and Cecelia offered us a Bay Area basecamp; Jeremy and Owen put hundreds of miles on their Volvo in support of our elaborate logistics. Apparently it takes a village to convey two people through the mountains, or at least these two people.

And then there was Charles.

A few words here about the mechanics of hiking the John Muir Trail: Unless you’re traveling exceedingly light and fast, the JMT is too long to finish on a single load of food. Instead, you need to resupply — at least once, usually twice, or even three times. One popular resupply point is at an area called Onion Valley, which JMTers must depart the trail to access, in the process hiking eight miles over a fearsome 12,000 foot saddle of rock called Kearsarge Pass. It’s an arduous, exhausting headache that costs hikers a day or two, not to mention a few gallons of sweat. 

We, however, had an ace in the hole: Charles, a lifelong friend who also happens to be an experienced outdoorsman (as well as a programmer, medical entrepreneur, Chinese scholar, and general polymath). Charles and his partner, Alexis, live in Santa Monica, which puts them a fairly easy drive from Onion Valley. Months before the trip, Elise emailed Charles and asked if he might be willing to restock us, a proposition to which he cheerfully agreed. Thanks to his generosity, we wouldn’t have to drag our asses over Kearsarge and back; instead, Charles would meet us on the trail with a bundle of precious foodstuffs. The mountain would come to Mohammed. 

The mountain would also come bearing gifts. In an email, Charles confirmed that, in addition to the dried and prepackaged schlock we’d sent him — oatmeal, dried chili, energy bars — he and Alexis would bring us something considerably more appealing: Mystery Treats. The Mystery Treats would remain, by definition, unspecified. But Charles and Alexis are epicures, and we were sure that any goodies from their cupboard would be worth the wait.

***

Now, weeks later, more than 100 miles of High Sierra trail are behind us, and we are ravenous. We have arrived at the agreed-upon place — Bullfrog Lake — at the agreed-upon date — August 20. Brook trout dimple the lake’s surface; nutcrackers holler from scraggly whitebark pines. I’ve been on the trail for eight days, Elise for more than two weeks. We are both hungry as hell, having reached that point in a backpacking trip where most of our fantasies, as we amble along in a sort of half-waking fugue state, revolve around food. We are sick of bars, sick of tuna packets, sick most of all of rehydrated mush that runs through our guts like water. We crave the solid, the carb-laden, the fresh.

We have been sustained to this point by visions of Mystery Treats. Our imaginations have run wild. Might the Mystery Treats include beer? Bread? Cookies? Arugula? Mile after mile, as we have hauled our weary selves up mountain passes and down forested valleys, it is the thought of Mystery Treats that has kept us upright. Now the afternoon is slowly wearing on, and we’re getting antsy. The sun rolls along the rim of the Sierras like an orange in a fruit bowl. Or a tangerine. Or a grape. Man, remember grapes? 

At last, two distant figures break through the scruff of pine. I raise my arms in greeting; they raise theirs. Charles and Alexis, our friends, reliable as always. They traipse down the mountain and across the flat lakeside plain. Hugs and backslaps all around; we’re almost manic with the joyful improbability of our rendezvous, the lengths we all went to in order to be here, in this moment, by this lake, unaided by the phones sitting useless in our pockets. It feels less planned than serendipitous, somehow, like we just happened all to stumble upon each other, so far from anything.

There’s a lull in the ecstatic greetings. I can’t help but cast eyes at their backpacks. I think back to all the times I raided the fridge in Charles’s childhood home, all those waxy cartons of leftover lo mein. 

So. Uh. What’s up with the mystery treats?

Charles, who’s still grinning like Jack Nicholson, lights up another few watts. Oh, do we have mystery treats. But first, he says, just lift my backpack. 

Me, I’ve been hefting a 40-pound pack for more than a week. No sweat. How heavy could his pack be? I grab the handle and tug. 

It barely budges. 

Holy hell. Are our mystery treats made of cement?

Charles opens the backpack and pulls out a plastic bottle brimming with brick-colored spice. We sniff. Chili, lime. I can’t quite place it.

Is it possible, he says, that this is a bottle of Tajín? And that the Mystery Treat is… micheladas?

He plunges into the backpack and procures a couple of limes. Then he starts pulling out Modelos — two, four, six, nine altogether. 

I’m awed. That’s a damn good mystery treat, I say, and prepare to crack open a can.

But wait! The mystery treats have only just begin to reveal themselves. Could there also be an appetizer of eight little faux-chorizo taquitos, just waiting to be fried up in a camp skillet? There could. And might there be butter to fry them in? Followed by tortillas, cheese, and, miracle of miracles, two pounds of seasoned ground beef — all the fixings for meat quesadillas? Indeed. And so these accoutrements reveal themselves, one after another, accumulating on the sand like the contents of Mary Poppins’s magic bag.  

And what of tomorrow, Charles asks. Surely a couple of hungry hikers require breakfast — perhaps some sausage? And certainly pancakes — with fresh blueberries, natch? And, come to think of it, what would pancakes be without maple syrup? Real, of course; none of that Log Cabin fructose for our starving friends. The Backpack of Requirement disgorges it all. 

To say that we’re grateful for this bounty doesn’t cover it — were the Israelites grateful for heavenly manna? But we’re also a bit perplexed. The beers are chilly with condensation, the ground beef just barely defrosted. How is such frigidity possible? Ah, Charles says, holding up a finger, and dives back into the pack to reveal the greatest miracle of all. In a soft-sided cooler stuffed in his backpack, he has hauled four blocks of ice, each the size of a large hardcover book, up the 12,000-foot face of Kearsarge Pass — probably twenty pounds of the stuff altogether. All of it made over days, he adds, painstakingly shaped in Tupperwares crammed in his freezer. Here in the Sierras, so far from any appliance, in the smoky heat of a late summer blighted by drought, the ice seems almost surreal, like a desert traveler’s hallucinated mirage. 

I touch it. Hard, smooth, cold, real.

We thank Charles profusely, of course, practically get down on our knees and kiss the cuffs of his hiking pants. Yet I also get the sense that he isn’t motivated primarily by our gratitude, or at least not entirely by it. He seems also self-motivated; he’s proud of his achievement, as well he should be. It was, he says, one of the best things he’s done all summer, all year, even. And I get it. He’d painstakingly planned and executed a preposterous scheme, proving the strength of his back and the iron of his will. He’d pulled off a kind of magic trick, conjuring beef and beer and ice in the backcountry not through sleight of hand, but through his own indomitability. He’d helped his friends tremendously, sure, but he’d also proven something astounding about himself. The word epic gets thrown around so much in the outdoor world that it’s practically meaningless — epic powder day, brah! — but this feat really was epic, in the Homeric sense: like fetching the Golden Fleece was epic, like building the Trojan horse was epic. The sheer audacity of this plan, I keep muttering. The chutzpah. Ice in the backcountry. Epic.

And what of the meals themselves? We spend the next twenty-four hours gorging; by the time we bid our farewells — us toward the next mountain pass, Charles and Alexis back to Santa Monica — we were feeling full for the first time since we embarked. But the pancakes and quesadillas and taquitos — even the micheladas — aren’t what I’ll remember most. When, decades from now, I think back on the greatest resupply that ever was, I’ll remember Charles’s perfect rectilinear ice blocks, their purpose now served, dumped onto the shores of Bullfrog Lake, slowly melting into the earth, as shocking as the footprint in the sands of Crusoe’s island, posing an unsolvable puzzle to whichever hiker happened to stumble upon them next.