06/05

I wasn’t kidding about the migraine. It kept me tossing and turning all night, leaving me with a grand total of maybe three hours of sleep. Not exactly ideal after a 15 mile day, especially with another 10 ahead.

The first few minutes of my morning were spent negotiating with a wasp that had trapped itself between my tent fly. I eventually beat it to death with a shoe, then slid out of my tent and into the tall grass, my head still pounding and half asleep. I ate a protein bar while packing up in a fog. In lieu of Excedrin, I dry scooped a caffeine packet, hoping for a miracle. Sour apple stuck to the back of my throat for the next three hours.

The terrain didn’t help. A series of short, rocky bursts. Constant ups and downs that would make anyone queasy, migraine or not. I could feel the blisters forming with every uneven step. We moved slow, not because we wanted to, but because our bodies demanded it. Turns out you need more than three hours of sleep to hike thousands of feet of elevation gain. Who knew.

By the time we got to the shelter, I was cooked. I rolled out my pad on the shelter floor and pulled my buff over my eyes, just hoping for a moment of rest. Eventually I got up, wiped down, made a quick dinner, and organized my gear to make space for the slow trickle of other hikers showing up.

I would’ve preferred to tent and get a little distance from the rustling and coughing of strangers. I just didn’t have the energy to set it up. So I laid back down, put in my earplugs, and gave myself over to the kind of sleep that comes not from peace, but from complete physical surrender.