Here in Sonoma County where I live, they have closed ALL the parks, from little pocket parks in residential areas to the large regional parks and even national parks. All beaches are closed, too. That’s made it a challenge to find ways to do training hikes! But where there is a will, there is a way, and we have been able to find some good STEEP hills in residential areas of Petaluma where we can still do plenty of huffing and puffing as we carry our 20-25 lb. packs.

I thought of an interesting parallel. Last year, much of the PCT was deep in an insane amount of snow. Very, very few hikers were able to complete a thru hike due to those difficult conditions. Well this year, it’s not an insane amount of snow we have to deal with–it’s an insane SITUATION. If we are able to pull off a thru hike of the AT this year, I will feel like we are sort of in a similar group to those who pulled off a thru hike of the PCT last year. A friend of ours recently posted on Facebook: “ATTITUDE is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure.” Yeah!

The AT Conservancy has asked the hikers to PLEASE! GET OFF THE TRAIL AND GO HOME! So have the CDTA and now even the PCTA. We actually agree with them! The way that 99% of the hikers operate, they SHOULD get off the trail and go home! But we do not do things in the way of the 99%. We operate very differently.

Here are 3 differences: 1) We NEVER camp around other people. We AVOID them. Why? Because 99% of other hikers are seriously stupid. They COOK when they camp! That is like inviting every bear in the territory to come visit. They often build campfires–another way to invite every bear to pay a call. They sit up late talking. When we camp, we find a stealth site, set up our tent or tarp and go to bed, and that’s it. We don’t even EAT where we camp. 2) We MINIMIZE town stops. On both the PCT and the CDT, we easily kept up with and often even passed much younger, faster hikers. Why? Because they went off trail to every town they could get to and stayed there as long as they could, hanging out. We did much longer stretches on trail between town stops, and minimized our time in town. 3) We never joined a “tramily.” We hiked with just the two of us because we didn’t want the complications of trying to coordinate with a tramily. And on the PCT and CDT, there were often stretches where we saw no other hikers for days. That was fine with us.

So we are continuing to pack our boxes–a job somewhat complicated by the bare shelves in the stores; we’ve had to go online to order stuff instead of being able to just grab it locally. I continue to work on sewing our new raingear (I make a lot of what we wear). We answer phone calls from the kids in our Awana Club who want to recite their Bible verses to us over the phone, since they can’t do it in person at club. We train and train and train. And pray and pray and pray that God will open doors for us to be able to get to the AT and be able to do this thru hike. On both our PCT hikes and again on the CDT, we repeatedly experienced many almost miraculous occasions where we know God was working things out for us and saying, “I love you.” That’s how He is. He is truly awesome.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours on a training hike at Helen Putnam Park. Fixit did not join me this time, because he’s recovering from a minor medical procedure that was SUPPOSED to have been done a couple of months ago, but the doctor kept procrastinating. He should be fine in a couple of weeks.

The park has been renovating several of its trails, which were getting a bit gullied and “slumped”. I was able to walk on some of the renovations, including a whole new reroute that avoids a rather steep, messed up, old section of trail. Since Fixit and I were on a PCT trail maintenance crew a few years ago, and we got to learn a lot about building and caring for trails on that trip, I now have much more understanding and experience for looking at any trail maintenance and renovations I come across.

Being on a trail maintenance crew is an awesome experience! I highly recommend it!

Because Petaluma is under the “shelter in place” rule, and all “unneeded” businesses are closed, there were a lot more folks on the trail than usual, and I was able to do a lot of “people-watching.” Some people are so fearful that they literally are huddling in their homes and not even going out for walks (and hysterically criticizing those of us who do go out and saying we should be jailed!!!), but I would say the majority of Petalumans are being cheerful and making the best of things.

There is a rule about “six feet away” from other people, and on a fire road trail, that’s do-able, but on a narrow footpath, it’s not. There are lots of narrow footpaths at Helen Putnam Park. So what almost all of us did was keep to the right as best we could and pass quickly with just a wave and a smile. But there was one couple I met whose behavior was really sad. They were hiking towards me on a narrow footpath. I moved as far to the right as I could, and expected them to do the same. Instead, they suddenly started RUNNING off the trail, up the hill into the grass, and as I passed, they yelled at me angrily. I was thinking, “Are they crazy? That grass is full of ticks!” (Which is why I did NOT move completely off the trail into the grass). I hurried by while they yelled and I wondered. Finally I realized, “Oh, duh, they wanted ME to move OFF the trail about 3 feet, then THEY would move OFF the trail about 3 feet, and that way we could keep the 6-foot distance. And then we would BOTH have to stop and do a tick check.”

The other thing I noticed was a family of dad and 2 kids, one a 6 year old-ish girl and her big brother (I’d say he was about 8 or 9). They were just starting up what we call “The Face”, a long, steep hill that is greatly loved by Petaluma runners, who come there to train. The boy saw the hill, and being a boy, started to CHARGE up it! I cheered and said, “Go, go! Way to go!” Boys LIKE a challenge! They like to take it on! But little sister stopped and began a piercing, whining cry of “Wait for me! Wait for me!” Big brother ignored her. Little sister made no attempt to keep up, just stood and whined. Finally the dad made big brother come all the way back, and little sister looked triumphant. I was horrified. Little sister was being trained to be a selfish control freak. A far more sensible arrangement would be to say “Big brother, once you get to the top, wait up!” That way he would be able to do what every boy needs to do–meet big challenges–while at the same time, practice reasonable courtesy. And little sister should NEVER be allowed to whine and control, but instead be encouraged to do her best, with the idea that if she is diligent to work hard and run and climb, someday she ALSO will be able to charge up a big hill!

Well, I went up and down The Face myself, a couple of times, figuring “There will be a lot of this on the AT!” And I want to be ready to face that challenge!

Last night I decided to have a look at TrailJournals to see the reaction of current AT hikers to the doom ‘n gloom “get off the trail” message of the AT Conservancy.

I looked at a lot of journals, and discovered that the responses fell into one of 3 categories. 1) Fear: these hikers were scared or even terrified at the thought of getting covid-19 and also very worried at the thought that there would be no ridgerunners or rangers out patrolling the trail. They have quit and gone home. 2) Oh well–I’ll just wait a couple of weeks These hikers have done just that–gone home temporarily, while continuing to do training hikes to stay in shape. 3) Ain’t nuthin’ gonna stop me, no way: these hikers are just continuing on, with the reasoning that “I’ll have way less contact with other people if I just stay out here on the trail.”

Fixit and I are in category 3. As far as “no rangers, no ridgerunners”, we are not a bit concerned. On the PCT in 2005 (before the movie “Wild” came out) we would often go for days in very remote wild country without seeing another human being. People would ask, “Ooooh, isn’t that scary?” And we would raise an eyebrow and wonder, “What’s scary? It’s really nice to have the whole backcountry to yourself!” And no rangers? Some rangers are helpful (like rangers who looked for better places to cross roaring whitewater and marked them for the hikers) but many others are just annoying, like the ranger lady Fixit and I met one afternoon, on the PCT north of Tuolemne Meadows in Yosemite. Of course she wanted to see our permits, but then she demanded, “Where did you camp last night?” We said, “Tuolemne Meadows” (which was about 18 miles behind us). The ranger lady frowned. “That’s not possible”, she said. We replied, “We are PCT thru hikers. Our minimum mileage per day is 25 miles, except when we were in the southern Sierras and it dropped to 19 or 20. We do 30 mile days if the trail is good. Yes, we really DID camp at Tuolemne Meadows last night!” She frowned again, mumbled an OK and headed on.

That’s the kind of ranger we DON’T like to see.

Fixit and I have been having lots of practice lately in facing down tough situations. Here in Sonoma County, California, the last 2 years have thrown one stressful thing after another at us. First there was the awful fire in Santa Rosa (we know several people who lost everything in that fire); we were working with the Salvation Army to provide all kinds of things needed by the survivors. (I about wore myself out on that one and learned a good lesson about working in disasters: Take care of YOURSELF, too!)

One year later came the “Camp Fire” that destroyed the town of Paradise and even our home town of Petaluma was inundated with smoke for weeks. Fixit actually deployed with the Salvation Army (he is a sergeant) to help run a center for evacuees in the city of Chico.

Then this last fall, ANOTHER wildfire and 100’s of thousands had to be evacuated in our own Sonoma county. Plus vast areas had all their power shut off. Our own town of Petaluma was mostly shut off (our house was OK; we were in a little “island of light’ in the middle of a sea of darkness at night), and even the evacuation center where we deployed with the Salvation Army was running on generator power.

So we’ve had one tough, stressful event after another. Facing down this kind of thing is not fun, but wow, it sure gives us the opportunity to rely on God and not on ourselves. One of the biggest lessons we have learned on our three thru-hikes is that God really does care about us. One of the “colorful characters” of the PCT is Joe Anderson of “Casa de Luna”. He lets hikers camp in his large yard (the “Magical Manzanita Forest”) and he and his wife Terri feed everybody, too. We were hanging out with Joe & Terri and the other hikers in 2010, when Joe said, “Lissen up, you guys! I get to hear a LOT of your ‘trail magic’ stories about how amazing things would happen when you needed something or you were in trouble. Well, lemme tell you–don’t give me that BS about ‘magic.’ Give credit where credit is due–it’s GOD. Because He really does care.” Fixit and I cheered a hearty “Amen, Joe!”

So we are still packing boxes and training every day, and we still do plan to hike the AT!

I’ve now received TWO very depressing emails from the AT Conservancy. Wow, are they in doom ‘n gloom mode! Contrast that with the PCT Association, which is very upbeat. The PCT people sent an email today saying, “Oh bummer, we’ve had to cancel our trail team maintenance projects for March and most of April–but NO WORRIES! We have a full schedule of projects in line for this summer!” And their advice to PCT hikers is “OK, you guys, you be careful and observe the guidelines about not bunching and all that, and have a great hike!”

What is with the AT Conservancy?

The only concern I have right now is that after some bad experiences with mailing resupply boxes to post offices (limited hours that force you to wait in town plus overzealous postal workers that only keep a general delivery box for 2 weeks, then send it back), I now AVOID mailing to post offices. Problem: all my resupplies are at private businesses and hostels. From what the AT people are saying, sounds like those places are currently closing and hurting.

But we are not starting our hike till April 24, so I am going to wait a bit and then phone to find out who is open and who isn’t. I may end up having to mail to some post offices. Sigh.

And yay for the PCTA! Those guys have a GREAT attitude!

Another all-day hike, this time to Annadel State Park near Santa Rosa! This is where we go for not just hills, but seriously rough ‘n rocky trail.

Driving toward Santa Rosa from where we live in Petaluma, we could see the mountaintops were dusted with snow, and brrrr, it was cold! When we headed out from the trailhead, we were wearing all our layers plus gloves.

Thanks to a bit of rain recently, the plants were really perking up, and the wildflowers are starting to bloom, though not with the size and vigor and profusion they usually have. Most blooms were rather small and sparse. I saw a lot of wild forget-me-not and the first of the shooting stars.

The route we like to follow includes a trail named “Rough Go” and that is a very accurate description! It’s extremely rocky, and the rocks are mostly all volcanic. This whole area was once the scene of volcanic eruptions. Mt. St. Helena, just to the north and dusted with snow today, actually is a volcano, and even has a petrified forest at its foot. The many hot springs in this area are a pretty good indicator that “it ain’t over yet”; there is molten lava deep within the earth below us.

On really rocky trail, Fixit (Bill) just goes bopping along at full speed regardless, while I am picking my way and choosing where to put my feet down. The reason is that I’ve had several falls (one pretty bad) on the rocky trails in this park, and have learned that I just have to slow down. It is really frustrating when I know I COULD be going a lot faster, but dare not do it. Part of the problem is that I have really BIG feet in proportion to the rest of me, plus I have bifocal glasses, so if I look through the top of the glasses, the ground looks like it’s waaaaaay far down, and if I look through the bottom part, the ground looks like it’s at my knees. I depend a lot on my trek poles to let me know where the ground actually IS!

But aside from that, I love hiking here. There are so many different aspects to this park: tree-covered mountains (Douglas fir, all kinds of oaks & madrones & laurel, plus occasional redwood groves) as well as a lake and a marsh, and many lovely, open meadows. Today we saw many, many wild turkeys. It’s pretty obviously the time of year when the boy turkeys are looking for girl turkeys! We heard gobbling off and on all day and saw many of the toms strutting their stuff. One of them looked like he was practicing–he would “buff up” and hold it for a few seconds, then go back to normal, then “buff up” again. He kept doing this over and over.

Annadel State Park is also a favorite destination for trail BIKE riders. We meet lots of them here! They are brave. You could not PAY me to go careening down these trails on a BIKE. We’ve stood by and watched as paramedics had to helicopter out a bike rider who wrecked his bike and himself. The medics told us that about once a week they have to go in and rescue injured bike riders. I believe it. These trails are rough & tough. I prefer HIKING them!

Our favorite lunch spot here is at Ledson Marsh, where we are practically guaranteed some good birdwatching–water birds in the marsh (a lot of geese today) and raptors as well as smaller birds.

Two years ago, during the awful fires near Santa Rosa, a large part of Annadel Park was burned. We went through some of the “burn zone” this morning, and the afternoon part of our hike today took us through a part where the burn was pretty bad. Almost all the trees were killed. Some are resprouting from their roots, but many magnificent oak trees are completely dead. It is so sad. You can tell how bad the fire was in any given area by looking at the tree trunks. In the badly damaged zones, the trees are black and burned all the way to their tops. In other areas, the black burned bark goes only partway up the trunk, and in other areas, there’s a bit of black on the trunk, but only on one side.

But we really like seeing how everything is slowly recovering. There were even some oak trees that last summer looked dead, but this time, on maybe one small branch, they are sprouting a few leaves. Amazing!

Back home, we continued “collating stuff for the AT” and collecting boxes to put it in. I just finished drying a lot of slices of leeks and I’m crumbling them up into little bits to bring with us and add to our dinners on the trail. We are both feeling strong and looking forward to when the adventure begins!

The past few days we’ve been getting a flurry of emails from the headquarters of the PCT, the CDT and the AT, about COVID-19 and what they are doing about it. Their plans range from “No volunteer trail projects for awhile and y’all be careful” (PCT) to “Sorry, folks, but we are shutting down our center in Harper’s Ferry and cancelling big trail events” (AT) to “We hate to say this, but you should probably consider cancelling your 2020 thru-hike; many of the people in the trail towns are elderly and we don’t want to put them at risk” (CDT)

Our only concern is we hope they don’t cancel airline flights between San Francisco and Atlanta on April 23. And to be honest, we are kinda hoping that the trail angels who show up along the AT with food for hikers will still be out doing their thing. We enjoy trail magic!

Here at home, we are highly amused at seeing people going out of local grocery stores with a load of……toilet paper! Fixit and I figure, “Hey, if we have to, we’ll just go into “hiker mode” when we have to go to the bathroom.”

“Hiker mode” is: 1) GUYS don’t need TP. Fixit does just fine with leaves and stones, occasionally assisted by a bit from his water bottle. 2) GALS (like me) have a bit of old bandana for what we call a “pee rag”, which gets rinsed every day. It never gets stinky and is not a bit unhygenic. Then for TP, I personally find that on the trail, 2 squares a day of the thicker, tougher TP is all I need. I get maximum use from each square, then put the used ones into a plastic “snack size” ziplok. This little ziplok then is put into a quart size ziplok (that also has my UNused TP). I then carry this along till I get to a garbage can, and dispose of it.

Of course we always finish up with a bit of Purell, which we carry in a tiny travel-size container.

We are not at all freaked out by COVID-19. We went to church today and everyone was being careful to practice “social distancing” (6 ft) and there was no coffee hour to hang out with your friends and meet new people, but there was still joy, there was still laughter, there was still love and peace and the presence of God with us.

A Salvation Army officer friend of mine told me about her experience in helping people who had survived the horror and devastation of a severe tornado event a few years back. The people who were true Christians, who truly and for real knew Christ, were able to look at the monster tornado heading right at them and say, “Well, Lord, You know where I am. I guess I’m coming home.” And then the tornado veered away and they said, “Oh! I guess not. OK!” They were at peace and thankful to still be alive. The people who were just religious or had no religion were STILL in shock and terror and trauma, days after the tornado. They had no spiritual resources.

It’s the same thing with COVID-19. The people who know God, for real, can look at it and say, “OK, I’ll do my bit to help stop the virus from spreading, and I will do everything I can to help other people and encourage them and let them know that they CAN really know God, but if COVID-19 gets me and I die–I know I’ll be going home to be with Jesus and that will be totally awesome!” The others….. are huddled at home in fear. That is no way to live!

One of the things we’ve found in doing long-distance hiking is that yes, being in good shape physically is certainly needed, but what REALLY counts is where you are at “on the inside.” It takes real mental/emotional/spiritual toughness to hike the whole 2,700 miles of PCT or the 3,000 miles of the CDT.

Part of that includes being able to handle fear. Every long trail has times where it gets really, seriously scary. On the PCT and the CDT we had to face roaring whitewater river crossings with no bridge and very vertical snow “faces” to either climb over or traverse across, where a slip ‘n fall could mean serious injury or even death. There were times where we walked across “knife edge” ridges with huge dropoffs on both sides. And there were the bears (including “grizz” on the CDT), the poisonous snakes, plus the long hauls across desert terrain where no water was available.

If you’ve gotten in the habit of letting fear control your life, that’s really a sad situation. I’m not saying to not BE afraid (I myself was totally terrified a number of times on the PCT and CDT) but you can’t let fear CONTROL what you do. We are very sad to see increasing numbers of people we know becoming increasingly fearful about many things. A fearful person is an easily manipulated person…not good. A fearful person is destroying their own health and wellbeing…not good. A fearful person has no joy, no sense of humor, no ability to have back ‘n forth cheerful “debates”….not good.

We find that facing the challenges of a long trail is a GREAT exercise in learning to overcome fear. Are we concerned about the AT? You bet! We’ve heard about awful rock scrambles with horribly slippery rocks and big dropoffs, poisonous snakes, ticks and energy-draining humidity. Oh no! What will we do? Well, we will just do what we did with the other trails….keep putting one foot in front of the other and pray like crazy and cheer when we get through!

We got plenty of training on “hills” today, going up ‘n down, up ‘n down a LOT of stairs, because every Wednesday we are in charge of a Bible club for kids called “AWANA”. Kids come from many different churches and some from no church, to have a chance to learn about how to know God “for real” and how to really know the Bible, plus have fun.

So many kids today are in the situation of parents too frazzled and busy to really spend time with them or encourage them or help them. But we try to fill in that gap, with AWANA leaders who really love the kids and get to spend some one on one time with each kid to help them study and learn.

AND, we are so grateful that at ages 72 (3rd Monty) and 80 (Fixit), we can still run up the stairs two at a time and run around with kids.

Daylight savings time has started here in California, and for us that meant “Hooray, we can do THE LOOP out to the coast!” During the winter, the days are too short and there just isn’t time to do a 20 mile loop and finish with enough daylight left to make the drive home.

But some snafus happened first thing in the morning (unexpected things came up that required making phone calls and sorting out) so it was 9:30 am before we were at the Bear Valley trailhead at Point Reyes Nat’l Seashore. So we opted for a shorter version of “The Loop”, and shouldered our “training packs” to head out.

Point Reyes in springtime is just beautiful. Everything is green, the earliest wildflowers are out, and the creeks are running.

We did the moderate climb out of Bear Valley up to Divide Meadow (we call that part of the trail “The Icebox” because it is so COLD early in the morning) then to the junction with the Glen Camp trail, where we began the “short loop”. This involves a very long and often steep climb up to where we finally get a “view of the blue” (the ocean) and then a long downhill to what we call “Wild Kitty” (Wildcat Camp).

The ocean was very still–no wind, no whitecaps–and sadly, we could see offshore THREE large ships just sitting there. We figured they were cruise ships in quarantine because of the stupid coronavirus/Covid-19 thing.

We had lunch at one of our favorite spots–a perch high up on a cliff overlooking Wild Kitty and the whole coastline from Point Reyes and all the way south to where Alamere Falls comes tumbling over the cliff into the sea.

It is glorious. We scanned the ocean looking to see if there were any late migrating whales going by, but didn’t see any. (There are times we can sit there and see lots of whale “spouts”).

On the way back we met a guy with a Vermont “Long Trail Patrol” shirt on and said, “Hey! We’re headed your way this summer!” Turns out that yes indeed, he DID do patrol work on the Long Trail and he has also helped on the AT. So that was kind of exciting to meet him!

But thanks to the virus thing, our order of freezedried food is on backorder (the folks at LDP foods are pretty frustrated right now) and Delta Airlines (we are flying Delta to Atlanta) sent us an email saying, “No worries, you will be safe from the virus when you fly with us!” It will be so good to get into the woods and forget about all that civilization stuff and face the much more down to earth challenges of the trail!