Day 3 - Matt

Matt here - I know my body too well. There are no more intimate surprises. And so I knew, without a doubt, that day three of this journey would mean low morale and low energy. The first ten miles were a battle of lyrical mantras. Under my breath brewed "How I dearly wish I was not here." With every rolled ankle, collapsed trekking pole, and relentless blow of wind it became harder to drown the out the line. Its contender, a simple lyric that got me through the Stagecoach 400, "If you're going through hell, then just keep going." I dropped back from Jenn and Cam and listened to this song on repeat, singing at the top of my lungs, stopping every so often to throw a rock down into the desert below. Come lunch time I was steady crawling my way out of the black hole that is, at times, my head. We broke for lunch in a green meadow and talked about what the rest of the day would look like. With no real destination in mind, our path was centered around water resuplies. We'd reach  our last of the day high up on Sunrise Highway. A community of hikers had gathered, spread throughout the tall grass that surrounded a horse trough like strange wildflower blooms.  I'd skipped a water resupply earlier in the day because I didn't feel like filtering. I wanted to chug. I asked a half-slumbering sack of sleeping bags and packs where the spigot was and they pointed to the trough. The water was green and had collected a diverse range of flying insects. I begrudgingly helped Jenn filter 6 liters to split between us and resigned myself to the warm backwashed Gatorade I'd been carrying since yesterday. It wasn't all bad though. I felt high as a kite. The scenery was so beautiful it had completely cured me of my blues.  The sun lowered in the sky, but something compelled us to continue on. We walked for another hour on the trail, covering about 3 miles, and kept telling ourselves that we'd stop at the next clearing. 1 clearing turned to 3 and eventually we hit a fire road. This was my high point of the day. I'd been here before. No more than a month ago I rode across this ridge during the Stagecoach 400 and texted Jenn a picture of the PCT sign. I also knew that down the road 50 yards was the most epic camp spot of all time. An abandoned fire tank receded into thick manzanita. A goat trail ran up along the side and dropped you atop a perfectly flat cement pad that over looked the next three mountain ranges we'd be climbing on this journey. The sun fell to our left and turned the hills golden. The full moon was a golden orb above us rushing across a now purple sky. We ate our assorted dinners in silence, taken back by the beauty of it all. Coyotes howled and a song bird sang until the sun rose again. 

Sleepy and dehydrated,

Matt