PCT Day 49 – Early Bird

Zero day in Kennedy Meadows – no hiking

I first saw Early Bird on the trail outside of Casa de Luna – I couldn’t help but think there was a person who was having a bad day, groaning and inching down the descent as she was. Later, from time spent with her and stories told to me by others, I would come to regard Early Bird as the toughest person on the trail.

The second time I saw Early Bird on the trail was the day we hiked across the LA aqueduct. I slowed my pace to walk with her, something she was unexpectedly grateful for. She told me that people usually just rushed past her, barely saying a word, and that she’d cried in her tent last night thinking that nobody liked her. How she’d started with two friends, but quickly fell behind their pace. Getting the trail name Early Bird because, in an effort to keep up with the people she started the trail with, she’d often started hiking long before sunrise. A retired Los Angeles fire fighter Early Bird would beam at her phone as texts and pictures from the men at her old station came in. She called them “her boys”, they were rooting for her, and now I was too.

I last saw Early Bird at a campground above the aqueduct, singing quietly to herself as she set up her tent; but I think of her often. How she’s willing to get up at two and three in the morning in order to get her miles in. How she’s often hiking alone because her pace doesn’t match the other hikers – either those she started with, or the packs of young people rushing past. She seems capable of marching along through circumstances that would push many hikers off the trail. I desperately want her to find her trail family, or even just one other person who she can hike with, I want her to finish as badly as I want to finish this trail myself. And I think she can, I believe she has it in her, she just might need a little help, as we all do from time to time.