Third grade teachers may very well be the happiest, nicest people on earth. (Full disclosure: My sister, Michelle, is one of these angels.)
At her elementary school they have a program to promote values by focusing on a word every month. “Gratitude” was the word last November. Michelle taught the suggested lessons about gratitude and they were helpful. But one afternoon as she walked over to a small group of kids an idea popped into her head. She looked at one of the girls and said: “I’m grateful for you.” The kid’s face just lit up. Michelle hadn’t expected such a powerful reaction but knew she might be on to something. She turned to the next kid and said: “I’m grateful for you.” He also began to beam. Then she said those magic words to each and every student in the group. They all beamed. That in turn guided her to visit everyone in the room to say those words: “I’m grateful for you.”
Needless to say, the “gratitude” lesson has continued in Michelle’s classroom long after the school values ended. It’s now an everyday part of her curriculum. Kids now naturally turn to one another in class and say it. Michelle communicates it every day. It was like the power of catching a big wave while surfing. The class visited the library one day, and on their own turned to the librarian and said, “I’m grateful for you.” She was touched. They told the principal, she cheered. Everyone that visits the classroom get an earful of gratitude.
But I like this story the best: Every morning, third grade starts with sharing. Often a student raises her hand to share what happened at home or on the playground. Michelle’s favorite is when one little boy raised his hand to say that at dinner the night before that he told his grandmother: “I’m grateful for you.” Grandma started crying, and the whole family joined in.
“I never expected that just saying this simple phrase would be so powerful,” Michelle said. “It’s been like a giant wave of love expanding and growing outward from our classroom out into the community.”
Martina and Jek are people you can count on. They are poor by western standards, but they have big hearts. They are raising four kids of their own, but also have taken care of dozens of their nieces, nephews and aunties who come from even leaner circumstances. It’s who they are, and it’s what is expected in their community.
Martina is originally from the island of Sumba. Thanks to our friend Ibu Gedong, she lived with us in Berkeley for three years, and helped raise Max when he was a baby. She had met Jek before coming to America and planned to marry him. However, Martina was a careful young woman, and vowed to make sure that Jek didn’t play around too much while she was away. Fortunately, he lived up to her high expectations, and she married him and moved to his home island of Flores. We have visited them several times over the past several years at their simple home in Maumere and have admired their generosity and the love and service they give to their family and community.
Jek and his daughter Ike talking to a fisherman
I’ve traveled to many places in the world that are destitute, so I wasn’t particularly shocked that Maumere was poor but it was also very dry. Probably poor because it’s dry since there’s very little rainfall on the coastal plain where it sits and only a few puny streams flow down from the mountains. That means meager water resources to grow food or support industry.
Martina and Jek rank among the middle class in Maumere mainly because Jek earned a college degree and worked for many years for development organizations building schools and hospitals throughout eastern Indonesia. Martina is an enterprising woman who has raised pigs and chickens and ran a small snack shop outside their front door. Jek had also bought a two-hectare piece of land he hoped to farm which is located a mile from their house. Middle class in Maumere means they live in a simple tin house with an outdoor kitchen where they cook over a wood fire. Importantly, however, they can afford to take care of their family members from both Flores and Sumba who need a home and a meal.
Martina, Jek with their family + Ibu and Pak
When I visited them in 2019, they were having a hard time. A few months before Jek had refused to allow a corrupt government official to skim money off a hospital project he was directing. The price he paid for this honesty was his job. He decided to focus on turning his property into a farm and he was raising goats and trying to grow corn. But there wasn’t enough water and the crops died, and soon after so did the goats. Martina’s pig business also hit hard times after a wave of Asian swine flu killed all her animals.
In April 2023, I visited them again with my Balinese friends Puji and Putu joining me. I warned them that they would see a generous but very poor family. However, when we arrived, I noticed a new brick house under construction next door. I inquired if they had new neighbors, but Martina said it was their new house. In the backyard, the pig stalls were once again full of grunting, hungry and growing animals. After a sumptuous meal, we all decided to take a walk up to the farm. Again, I warned Puji and Putu that we were likely to see a tangle of dry and dying crops and some skinny goats. It was getting dark when we arrived, but as we rounded the last hill, the landscape was bathed in bright lights from a structure above the farm. And instead of the scrubby goat pasture I’d seen before there was row after row of healthy corn stalks with pipes and irrigation ditches bringing the plants a bountiful supply of water.
I was flummoxed by the transformation of the farm, not to mention the new house and thriving pig farm. It took a while for Jek to tell me the story because my Indonesian language skills are weak. But here’s what he told me: About a year before he was stressed because after losing his job and the pig farm, there just wasn’t enough money to provide for his family. He had hoped to make a go of farming, but there was no chance due to the lack of water. So, he had gone up to the top of the farm and sat on a rock where he often meditated. This time he asked God for a miracle. He specifically asked for water to help grow his crops and feed his family. Jek and Martina have close relationship with God and Jesus. Like most of the other people on Flores they are Catholic, a religion which arrived with the Portuguese colonists. It’s a different kind of Catholicism though because it overlays the original animist religion that was here before. It’s a religion alive with ancestors and spirits which are everyday parts of Martina and Jek’s life.
Yes, that’s Mother Mary looking over Martina and I
About two weeks after his prayer, Jek met a man walking around his property. The man said he was a water surveyor and wanted to do a test well. Jek agreed. A few weeks after that he found out that there is a vast aquifer under his farm which would supply enough water for the entire town of Maumere. The municipal water authority said they would like to lease the rights to the water. While Jek considered this, the water agency also found an aquifer on another property. That owner wanted a substantial sum of money for the water rights. Jek didn’t think this discovery was about money. “This was a gift from God and an answer to my prayer,” he told me. “I didn’t think it would be right to take money for what God had given.” The water agency and Jek worked out an agreement in which he would lease them the rights to the water in exchange for water for his farm, and his house. The rest would be sent by pipeline down to the thirsty town of Maumere.
Jek was already well respected in Flores. But his gift of water to the people of Maumere was a very big deal on the island. He was at his house one day when a delegation of local leaders arrived. He served them tea while they asked him to be a candidate to the provincial parliament. He subsequently agreed and will be on the ballot this February when elections are held in Indonesia.
As a retired political consultant, I quizzed Jek how he planned to remind the voters of the bounty he had given to his community. He failed to take my very valuable advice and reminded me: “Pak Dave this water was a miracle from God. It’s not for me to brag about.”
Eight years ago, Tangkas villagers like people throughout Indonesia tossed their household waste into the river. They really had no other option. There were no government or private waste management alternatives. Semarapura, the biggest city in the region, had trash pickup but it was indiscriminately tipped into the local dump in Dawan which often caught on fire and polluted the village’s air and water.
Ketut Darmawan
Our friend Ketut Darmawan from Tangkas decided he would find a solution, and in 2016 he did. He established the Tangkas Village Recycling Program (TPS) which picks up garbage every two days from the 300 households it serves. TPS staff then recycles 93% of the waste. The organic materials are turned into compost which farmers use in their fields and the plastics, glass and metals are recycled. Darmawan was the engine behind this effort, and he built a coalition of supporters including the Klungkung Regional government who paid to build the recycling center, the Tangkas village government who helped pay for its staff and operations and Keep Bali Beautiful which set up an Airbnb Tour Experience to cover the remaining operational costs. An award-winning video by film-maker Jillian Li beautifully describes the system. You can view the video here.
After TPS proved successful, the question arose: Can this operation be scaled up to be used as a model for other villages and regions in Bali?
Klungkung Regency Governor I Nyoman Suwirta
You bet it could. Thanks to Klungkung’s innovative Governor, I Nyoman Suwirta, funding and leadership by Indonesia’s federal government under President Jokowi and most especially Darmawan’s gifted management skills, there is now an efficient regional waste management system that has replicated the Tangkas village success.
You have to give a lot of credit to Governor Suwirta. He provided seed money to the Tangkas village program, and watched to see if Darmawan could achieve his goals. When the TPS proved successful, he plucked Darmawan out of the private sector and gave him the government job of creating a regional waste management system. Most importantly, the Governor gave Darmawan the capital funds to build it out. About the same time, Bali’s provincial government also pitched in with funds as did the national government. Jokowi’s administration also wrote policies to establish federal recycling and waste management standards. And perhaps the hardest step of all: Balinese citizens began to change their minds and became very supportive of efforts to clean up their villages and towns.
Organic waste converted into fertilizer
In less capable hands this mashup of village, regional, provincial and federal agencies, plus the private sector could have spelled disaster. But Darmawan with his rare combination of management and political skills wove together a workable and efficient system. It works like this: Capital funding from the Klungkung region, operational funding from the Bali province and federal government, villages which provide the land for building waste and recycling facilities and help from private sector partners such Bali Waste Cycle which retrieves recycled materials from Klungkung and arranges for their transformation into new products.
I saw the system in operation at the region’s central waste processing facility, whose acronym ironically is TOSS. This is where the City of Semarapura’s waste is processed. Every two days a truck picks up waste from the city’s households. (Commercial operations like the local market receive every day pickup.) They return to TOSS where workers sort the waste into four categories: 1) Organic waste, 2) Recyclable materials (glass, metal and plastic) that can be sold, 3) Residue that is sold in bulk, and 4) Leftover waste that is trucked to the dump.
Workers sorting plastic for recycling
In addition, village recycling operations similar to the TPS in Tangkas have been set up in 42 of the Klungkung region’s 53 villages.
The operation has been an unqualified success. Before, all of this garbage would have been dumped into the river, burned or piled up at the dump. Now, nearly 97% of it is recycled or reused. The organic waste, which makes up the bulk of the waste stream, is made into compost which is provided to farmers. Darmawan is continually improving the system. For example, after touring composting operations in Japan last year, he tweaked his system to make it even more efficient.
Loading fertilizer composted from organic waste for delivery to farmers
The recycling operation requires a whole team of workers to first sort the materials into bags for glass, metal, and the many types of plastic that can be recycled. These range from high value plastic which sells for 1,200rp ( eight cents) per ton to lower value plastic bags which sell for 300rp (two cents) per ton. The sorting is supervised by Bali Waste Cycle staff. Every day one of their truck arrives to pick up the recycled products. Klungkung’s share of the recycling revenue goes back into the program. Bali Waste Cycle then combines Klungkung’s recycled products with those from its other clients in Denpasar and other places.
The residue waste stream is composed of bits of plastic, dirt and other junk that cannot be composted or recycled. Villagers often burned this junk or tossed it into the street. But now collects it and sends it to a manufacturer in Surabaya where it’s mixed into cement and becomes part of Indonesia’s expanding road and freeway infrastructure.
The remaining 3% is trucked to the dump in Dawan village. The goal is to reduce this amount to zero.
Education is also an important part of Darmwan;’s mission. There are regular tours of TOSS by school groups who receive a tour and learn about the benefits of recycling and how it really works. Darmawan also works with Eco Clubs at Klungkung’s high schools which help in spreading the word and supporting the syste
Darmawan giving a tour to school kids
For the most part, Klungkung citizens are enthusiastic about the system. Pak Gus Gangga from Dawan is enthusiastic about the improvements noting the reduced truck traffic in his village. He is also excited that a new village TPS recently opened in Dawan. He’s observed that the village is cleaner and free from the trash that once was freely tossed. Currently, Klungkung citizens are paying very little for the program. Federal law sets household costs at 3,000rp a month (about 20 cents US). By contrast, a 20kg bag of rice costs 250,000rp. Commercial and industrial waste pickup costs are also established by federal policy.
The low prices charged to citizens and businesses create support for the program, but they hardly pay the cost for the operations. For example, while monthly operational costs are about 310,000,000RP per month, fee revenue is about 17 million RP or about 5%. Government subsidies make up the difference for now.
It’s a huge success, but Darmawan is still working to make it even better. He’s working to build village recycling centers in places that don’t yet have them, and he’s continuing to make the system work better and more efficiently.
Where Klungkung has succeeded, other regions have not yet established workable systems. But there appears to be growing interest in following Klungkung’s example. In fact, people from throughout Bali and the rest of Indonesia are making the trek to Klungkung to ask for Darmawan’s advice and help.
My friend Ayu is a bright, young Balinese woman who works for the Bank of Indonesia. Last year, she took a business trip to Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. Her Facebook posts about these places were positive and showed off our country’s famous landmarks.
But over dinner the other night, she asked a difficult question: “Pak Dave, why are so many people living on the streets in America?”
I struggled to find an answer. I told her the problem just isn’t in those cities, but nationwide especially in California where I live, and in my town of Berkeley. “But what is happening Pak Dave?” Ayu quizzed. “I thought America is the richest country in the world. Why are these people on the street, and why are they hungry and very dirty?”
A little background…The view from a Balinese person’s perspective is that all Americans are indeed wealthy, even the budget travelers. How else could they afford to fly across the world to this beautiful island, live in hotels and eat at restaurants. Traveling is a luxury that only the well-off can afford in Indonesia, although that’s beginning to change some as it develops a middle class. Ayu wasn’t trying to dump on the USA. She was honestly trying to understand the disconnect between her perception of America and the reality she observed.
Homeless in Berkeley
I gave it a shot. “Well, housing is very expensive in my country, and the people who cannot afford it must live on the streets. Some cities and states provide temporary shelters for these folks, but there’s just not enough room for everyone.” Ayu shook her in response, but I could tell she didn’t get it. I tried again. “Also, some of these folks are mentally ill or are alcoholics and drug addicts, and they don’t know how to access services or don’t want them.” That seemed lame the moment I said it.
“Honestly Ayu, I really don’t know why this is happening, and I’m embarrassed I don’t know. I walk past a dozen or more homeless people every day in Berkeley. I give money to some of them, steer clear of those who are raving, and just feel bad when I see two older women packing up their tent every morning, so they won’t be harassed by the police. I’ve never researched the causes of why people are homeless, and why our governments can’t solve the problem.”
Ayu took pity on me and changed the subject. But I could not forget her simple question. Why are there so many homeless people in the richest country in the world?
In the weeks that followed in Bali and on trips to see friends on the islands of Flores and Lombok, I looked for homeless people and pestered my friends with questions of how they deal with poor people who don’t have homes. The truth is I never actually saw any homeless people on any of these three islands although there were plenty of poor people living in very humble places. Also, there are nearly an estimated three million people living in Jakarta. My Balinese friend Putu explained that in Bali the family takes care of its own, finding food and shelter for all, including those with mental illness. Backing up the family, is the banjar which is a traditional Balinese neighborhood organization that rallies the community for funerals, weddings and other key ceremonies. It also keeps track of every member, and notes who needs help including food, health care, housing… you name it. One of Putu’s jobs is to maintain a database of every member, noting who might need extra help. The banjar makes sure no one falls through the cracks. There are a lot of banjar rules and regulations to follow, and like any small group everyone knows everyone else’s business. The final layer of help is the government at the village, region and provincial levels who allocate funds and services for people that the banjar identifies as needing them. This four-layered support system works. Even during the COVID crisis when Bali’s economy tanked, no one went hungry or unhoused.
Martina & Jek and their big family.
A similar system exists further east on the island of Flores, which is a primarily Catholic population compared to Bali’s mainly Hindu population. Our friend Martina and her husband Jek both come from very poor families, but they have managed to take care not only of their four kids, but also dozens of nieces, nephews, cousins and others over the years. They cook on a wood fire, but no one goes hungry or without someplace to sleep even if it’s on the floor with a blanket. Backing up the family in their Maumere community is a uniquely Indonesia institution known as the Rukun Tetangga (RT). The RT in Maumere includes about 30-50 households and its function is like Bali’s banjar system. A Chair and Vice Chair lead the RT, and members take on various roles including identifying people that need services and resolving neighborhood conflicts. The government provides additional services as identified through the RT. The system is nationwide in each of Indonesia’s 13,000 inhabited islands.
I don’t want to be too gushy about all this. I’m sure there are plenty of places in Indonesia where the system is a mess especially in Jakarta where there are large ghettos with high-rise buildings next door. But for the most part even in the poorest villages, people have something to eat, can access health care and have some kind of shelter even though it may be a tin roof shanty.
One of the key takeaways is that at least in Bali, Lombok and Flores people are seen. Someone knows who they are and their family story. There is not the same level of isolation and alienation that we have in America. And there appears to be a system in place that identifies those in need and provides services even if they are meager compared to what we have.
Not long after my trip to Indonesia, we were having dinner with a new friend in New York City. I was describing Indonesia’s support system. Initially, she was impressed as I was, but after thinking about it a moment she said that the banjar system seemed a little too intrusive for her with everyone in the neighborhood knowing your stuff, not to mention all those social rules to follow. She preferred a little more independence, and I could see her point.
I cherish freedom and independence too, and life in the banjar might be a little too restrictive. But maybe we need to stretch our comfort zones. Sure, we need to take care of family first, but perhaps we need to learn from our southeast Asian friends that a more systematic approach to community that sees all of our neighbors, most importantly those in need, might help avoid people falling through the cracks. It might be a start to solve our homeless problem and also the isolation, loneliness and alienation that so many Americans suffer from. I wonder how Ayu would suggest we get started.
By day she is a mild-mannered hotel owner and chef, but when night falls she dons her black tights and T-shirt and becomes a super hero as a fierce defender of the Tortuguero Beach turtles.
We spent a late evening on the beach with Nolly as our guide to observe female green turtles wade in from the sea and then ponderously climb up to the beach to near the jungle and scour out a large nest from the sand. She instructed us to stay quiet so we wouldn’t startle these skittish turtle moms.
Nolly told us the story of how she has defended these turtles against poaching for more than twenty years. She volunteers to safeguard the turtles from those folks who violate the midnight to 6am ban on visiting the beach which was established to give turtles a chance to lay their eggs without bothersome tourists watching them. She said it’s less dangerous work now that most locals understand the value of eco-tourism for their families. However, not long ago turtle poaching was more common. She says that she then patrolled the beach with a machete to enforce the ban against aggressive poachers. “I remember once there was a big group of Costa Ricans on the beach. I went up to them and said, “f you take one more step, I’ll cut off your arms. Take two steps and you’ll lose a leg too.” They took one look at Super Nolly and another at her machete and took off.
Ironically, Nolly’s family arrived in Tortuguero as turtle hunters around 1940. Nolly’s family was the first to settle in what is now the village of Tortuguero. Her grandparents originally were from San Andres, an island off the coast of Columbia. At that time Tortuguero was very remote. It was a tough place to raise a family. Her grandmother, Sibella, had to walk eight-hours up the beach to Barra Colorado to trade coconuts for supplies. Later, Miss Sibella cooked for the loggers and others who arrived in Tortuguero.
But it was Sibella and Nolly’s mom, Miss Junie, who helped transform the village into a place where natural resources were extracted to where they are now protected. They helped establish Tortuguero National Park to protect not only the turtles but also the other wildlife and the rainforests that are their home. Junie became a cook for the park staff, and later opened a small hotel and restaurant (Miss Junie’s) where we stayed on this trip.
Miss Junie kneading bread
Nolly’s and her siblings still run the place, and Miss Junie, now in her nineties, supervises them. Miss Sibella’s and Miss Junie’s cooking skills were passed down to Nolly who cooked up the best food we’ve eaten in Costa Rica including her specialty dish, a fish soup known as Run Down.
My advice when visiting Tortuguero. Eat and sleep at Miss Junie’s, and if you want to keep both arms, don’t violate the beach curfew.
Meet a couple of true heroes…Trail Heroes…We met Kurt and Tom one afternoon in Central Oregon after they’d spent the day clearing downed logs blocking the trail. For the young hikers those logs are no more than stepping stones, but for us old farts they are OBSTACLES. These valiant volunteers have been clearing trail for years. They are really the unsung heroes of the PCT. And did you notice the tools they are using? A giant handsaw and a homemade pry bar (by Tom).
Hitchhiking was one of the highlights of the PCT experience last year. You meet some characters when you stick your thumb out…most of them interesting and delightful.
After a solo backpack trip through the Trinity Alps in mid-June, I found a ride from the trailhead to historic Weaverville, and headed straight to the town’s universe level ice cream parlor (Crockett’s UpNorth). After a big cone full of mint chip ice cream, I emerged with a sugar high and stumbled out to Highway 299 where I combed my hair and stuck out my thumb. This was a Sunday afternoon and there were lots of cars on the road; so I thought I had a good chance to catch a ride to Redding. Instead, all the nice couples in their SUVs rolled up their windows when they saw me, admittedly looking a little grungy after several days on the trail. The local Weaverville drivers hand-signalled me that they were just going a short distance.
Feeling the pain of rejection, I walked down the road after an hour or two, and stopped at the Weaverville museum which was filled with memorablia about Trinity County’s gold-mining history. Well worth the time. The friendly docent suggested I try my luck at the east end of town so I walked down the road and stuck out my thumb again.
I considered the pros and cons of visiting the Tangle Blue Saloon to ask the patrons for a ride, but figured this should be a last resort since riding with a guy who’d been drinking all afternoon might be riskier than meeting bears on the trail.
And just then, a white station wagon with an American flag in the rear and graffiti on the side (Vote for Darla’s Tacos) slowed down and a couple took a look at me. A woman was driving with her partner who asked where I was headed. I said Redding, but they were going only about ten miles down the road to Douglas City, so I declined the ride. I cussed myself as soon as they pulled away because I should have offered to pay for gas if they took me all the way to Redding.
But then a miracle occurred. The car made a U-Turn and came back. The guy said: “If you pay for gas, we’ll take you to Redding.” I said: “Deal.”
It took awhile for them to clear their gear out of the backseat to find a place for my backpack and me. Then before we took off, the guy turned to me and said, “I’m Ben and this is Stacy and you’re riding in SnowWhite. You aren’t gonna pull any funny stuff are you?
“Nope, I’m old and safe,” I replied. After that security check, the conversation was fun and free-wheeling. They told me the story of how a friend had given them SnowWhite, a 2009 Mercury station wagon. While talking about how long they had been together ( nine years) and how long they had been married (6 years), they casually mentioned that both of them were bi-polar and that Stacy also suffered from schizophrenia. I told Stacy I liked her purple hair to which she replied that she didn’t like orange or red hair. “Why is that?” I asked. “Because I’ve never tried those colors,” she replied. To which we all roared with laughter. In a more serious moment, Stacy said that she loved Ben because he knew how to take care of her when the bi-polar and/or schizophrenia symptoms hit. In turn, Ben said that Stacy was his best therapist. “He’s mine too,” she said.
“But she was planning to leave when I got hooked on meth,” confided Ben. “Two months ago she told me I had two options, kick my meth habit or lose her,” he said. “I stopped it cold right then and there. One of the toughest things I ever did, but Stacy’s worth it. Even fucked up on meth, I was smart enough to choose Stacy. I’ve been clean two months now, and I feel clear and free.”
We all cried a little after Ben’s story, and then high-fived him for his courage. Stacy found the cheapest gas in Redding ($5.81), we filled up and then headed to the airport where I found a flight back to the Bay Area. I regret that I don’t have a pic of SnowWhite.
Badass is when you traverse the Sierra High Line trail on skis.
Badass is when you hike and bike up Mount Diablo twice a week.
Badass is when you hike Apache Peak on San Jacinto Mountain in snow and ice with an ice pick and trail runners arriving in Idylwilde after midnight.
Badass is when you hike the Pacific Crest Trail one year after major surgery to get back in shape.
Badass is when you ride a bike for the US Olympic Team at the Mexico City Olympics after taking up cycling just a few years before.
Badass is when you summit Mt. Baker at 72-years old while long-jumping crevasses and passing younger climbers.
I could go on, but that might embarrass my new friend HikeNBike who I met last year in Belden while hiking the PCT. You see HikeNBike is not a bragger. It took me several months of knowing him to learn these few nuggets about him. It turns out we live only a few blocks from one another in Berkeley.
Trail Angels take good care of OG’s in the wilderness. This angel baked cookies for the hikers that day.
There aren’t many PCT hikers my age on the trail. In fact, HikeNBike has a little more seasoning than me, but he’s a nice guy and slows down to my OG pace. We were walking the Hat Creek Ridge just north of Mount Lassen. This is usually a brutally hot and dry stretch but fortunately we were trekking in early June and it’s cool and cloudy. We talked traveling. He’s traveled, hiked and climbed on just about every continent, including some 20,000-foot peaks in Nepal and the Carpathian Alps in Romania, a place I’ve been trying to get to for years. We talked philosophy. He completed all the graduate work for his PhD in psychology, but instead of making it a career, he steered into construction instead and became a master carpenter which gave him an outlet for his artistic talents, and the time to indulge his passion for climbing and hiking.
Back in Berkeley, he’s invited me on some of his “easy” hikes, like the Burma Road trail on Mount Diablo which heads up 4,000 vertical feet in less than four miles…in other words very steep. He does it as a training hike, and likes to run some sections. I call it cruel and unusual. I prefer training that involves carrying my clubs on a round of golf.
So, if you’re hiking Mount Diablo or Mount Tam and you see a guy cheerfully chatting to an OG behind him whose sweating and breathing heavy that’s likely to be HikeNBike and Pak Dave. Give him a high-five. Give me oxygen.
For more than 2,000 miles I was cautious with my food… carrying a bear canister even where it was not required or hanging my food from a tree.
Most other PCT hikers slept with their food inside their tent or used their food bag for a pillow. I thought they were dumb and asking for trouble, and in fact witnessed incidents of bears crashing tents to steal food while terrifying sleeping hikers.
But then 90 miles from the Canadian border and fed up with hanging my food every night, I decided to follow normal PCT practice, and left my food in my pack inside the tent.
The first night, no problem. Same with night two. But around 3am on the third night, I woke up to a rustling noise, and then went back to sleep. The noise woke me up again, and this time I shined my light at the pack down near my feet. A pair of green, beady eyes stared right back at me.
I stunned that poor mouse with a blizzard of cuss words. It scurried around by my feet while I slowly became fully conscious. So now what to do? Fortunately, it wasn’t raining so I pulled out my sleeping bag, pack, clothes. The poor mouse was freaking out and racing up and down the tent looking for a way out. Once all my stuff was out, I started whacking the bottom of the tent with a hiking pole. It scampered out. Now I had to figure out how it got into the tent. I found a two-inch hole which it had gnawed into my expensive Big Agnes tent, and repaired it with Tenacious Tape and then went back to sleep for a couple of hours.
What a pain. The next day at camp I was telling the tale. Another hiker had an even better story. Her mouse friend had twice gnawed its way into her tent. The second time, she trapped it in her titanium cooking pot, put it outside with the lid on so it wouldn’t bother her again that night, and went back to sleep. A true bad-ass.
It isn’t easy to reveal this stupid mistake. I felt like such a dummy, and guilty that the little mouse will need Xanax to recover from the stress of our encounter. At my final resupply in Stehkin a hiker gave me some rope and I hung my food the final five days to the Canadian border.
I was pumped. It was March 8, 2021, and after months of training and dreaming, I fist-bumped the southern terminus, and headed north for Canada. Never mind that I got lost and walked a mile out of the way before even finding the terminus. Forget that my feet blistered up after only ten miles. Just ignore that my pack was too heavy from carrying about 5 pounds of extraneous gear.
I only saw one other hiker that morning and afternoon. The sun was shining, the air was cool and the streams were flowing. I had hoped to camp at Lake Morena about 20 miles from the border that first night. But the blisters, a late start, a recent COVID vaccine and a final steep climb to the lake convinced me to camp near Hauser Creek at the 15-mile mark.
Dog-tired, cold and hungry I was looking for a tent-site when I met Dave, a huge mountain of a man with a beard to match. He gave me a jubilant greeting and told me about his first day’s hike, and how excited he was to be camping beside a veteran thru-hiker (Star) who he already greatly admired because her trail skills were top-notch as evidenced by her taut, perfectly tied-down tent fly. Dave’s tent looked amateurish by comparison.
Didn’t talk much to Dave that night, but he was up early and shouted out an enthusiastic good-morning and said he was excited because he soon would be eating a breakfast burrito at the Oak Shores Malt Shop in Morena Village. He also said he was probably the slowest hiker on the trail.
I caught up with Dave later that afternoon at the Boulder Oaks Campground. He told me a little of his story. He’s an electrician, and like a lot of guys during the pandemic, he lost his job. He also didn’t have a partner at the time, and to save money he’d left his apartment and moved in with his Dad. He was fiddling around on YouTube, and came across something called the Pacific Crest Trail. And then he began a deep-dive watching podcasts and videos from veteran trail hikers. A few days into this binge-fest, he decided that maybe this would be something he could do despite having next to no backpacking experience and being out of shape. He planned a hike on the PCT near the Cajon Pass where he ran into an experienced thru-hiker who told him her story of becoming a PCT trail junkie. He was hooked.
From that day he began to do training hikes in the San Jacinto mountains and elsewhere and to plot out what gear to buy and when to depart. Unlike me, who would have preferred a later start-date, Dave specifically chose an early date: March 8, 2021. He wanted to give himself time to work into physical shape and still reach the Sierras by Memorial Day. The next morning, a four-day snowstorm hit San Diego County. While I was trying to decide if I should just hunker down in the campground, Dave announced he was going to test his toughness and raingear by heading out into the storm. I thought he was a bit crazy, but after an hour of boredom in my tent, I broke camp too. I met Dave in the afternoon where he was setting up camp along a creek and trying to stay dry and warm in the snowstorm. It was a pretty location, but unsheltered so I pushed on to a campground about five miles north figuring if my tent failed at least I could stay warm in the outhouse. Turned out that wasn’t necessary for me, but another hiker spent lots of time drying out clothes in that five-star outhouse.
I hiked through two-feet of snow on the trek to Mt. Laguna where I got off the trail for a couple of nights to let the storm blow over. With two additional storms on the way, I flew back to Berkeley for three weeks to let the weather improve. That morning, I met Dave headed out again for the trail. The sky was clear but another storm was predicted to hit in two-days. Dave was concerned but thought he would soldier on.
I didn’t know if Dave had made it safely through the March storms and the treacherous San Jacinto Mountain. I re-started my hike from Mt. Laguna on April 5th. About a month later I walked into a spring just south of Tehachapi, and heard this booming laugh and their stood hiker Dave. There was much less of him now. He had lost weight and he was looking lean and strong. We caught each other up on our respective journeys. He had acquired the trail name, Tortoise. But I noticed when I walked with him over the next few days that he was anything but slow. However, he was still telling folks about how his pace was like…well a tortoise.
Tortoise and I were destined to meet yet again. This time I was walking southbound just before the Lincoln Chair Lift at Sugar Bowl. And who turned down the northbound switchback but a big, lean bear of a man, named Tortoise. He was strong but seemed a little tired from his journey through the Sierras and was planning to take a week’s vacation to the beach with his brother. I never saw Tortoise again. I hope he was able to get through California before the Dixie Fire blocked the path. But I bet he did because he was one determined dude, and after three months on the trail, in very difficult conditions, he proved he had the grit and the experience to finish.
