Miles Hiked: 21
Start Location: Mile 1797
End Location: Mile 1818
End Location GPS: 42.86427, -122.16285
A quick and easy 21 miles on mostly flat terrain to Mazama Village, a large campground with a restaurant, store and gift shop on the outskirts of Crater Lake. We grabbed a few soft drinks at the mostly packed store while we waited for a clerk to retrieve our resupply boxes. It was a treat seeing an extra box sent by my mom which contained the most delicious chocolate chip cookies in the universe.
The Village was like a beehive. The hikers lay sprawled outside of the store like seals basking in the sun, dirty legs glistening in the afternoon glare as white specs of light reflected off alumnum beer cans as they took quick sips of craft beer and chatted with one another.
There was a long line to do laundry so we skipped that. We were too tired to take a shower in the mostly muddy and dirty public shower stalls so we skipped that too. We walked to the free hiker/biker campsite and set up our tent instead and went through the ritual of refilling our food bags.
We later went to the overpriced restaurant and got veggie burgers and fries and 1 trip to the salad bar. It did the job but it wasn’t anything to write home about.
As the sun submerges into the earth the hikers are filtering into their hive (the hiker campsite) in droves. There are so many here it almost atonishes me. There’s engineers and graphic designers and cooks and waiters and bakers and physicists and lawyers and rafting guides; people from all corners of the world and all walks of life converging on a singular 12 foot wide path through the piny woods. Everyone has their own reasons for hiking the trail even if they don’t know what it is. Perhaps it is for adventure or a line item on a bucket list. Perhaps it is for a nature experience or to test ones limits athletically. Whatever the reasons are they melt away in the stream of consciousness of the everyday. You are not a lawyer or painter or businessmen out here. You are merely a participant in the experience of walking from one border to the other- a shadow among the trees and sky and earth, melting into something much larger and grander than anything you could ever imagine.
