Our best town day yet!
After 7 town stops, I’m finally getting the hang of how to swing ’em. It’s striking a balance between chores and leisure, food and sleep, wifi and social phone calls, route research and surrendering to a decision when you can’t bare to hem and haw anymore.
Kanab does an excellent job supporting all the above. As a town, it’s just compact enough to be walk-able (we love that for our legs). It’s just big enough that there are multiple compelling options for where we might eat each meal (we love that for our food cravings, which today stagger between sloshy burgers and crunchy vegetables). Kanab is also a welcome brain break. When we call Zion to run our planned alternate by a ranger, we get an immediate thumbs up. Good news? Confident endorsement?!
Everything’s coming up Team Double Weekend!
Come evening, we gather at Wild Thyme Cafe with our little Hayduke family for the last time. As we make for Mt Canaan Wilderness tomorrow, Silver is headed for the Grand Canyon, while Yeti and Melanie start their roundabout way home to Montana. As quickly as we formed, we disband in all directions. I’ll miss this constellation of hikers. We’re all so different — in age, story and the specifics of what brings us to the Haydyke. And yet, there’s so much we inherently share — in being fellow thru hikers and yearning for the same slow and independent method of travel through wild spaces. On a route that has felt emphatically solitary, it’s been a welcome comfort to count on community (and rides!) whenever we get to town. Community that has banded together to hunt/share whatever route information we can find. Community that has eaten very well together. Community that drinks beer together.
We circle outside the restaurant after dinner and hug each other in turn. The heat of unanticipated tears flickers in the corners of my eyes.
We shy from the finality of goodbye and instead reach for something light. Dare I say… ultra-lite. A hiker trash truism:
See you down the trail!
The Importance of Elsewhere 