The View from Home (guest post)
Wisconsin may not have any mountains to offer, but we do have lush greenery, ample water, and, importantly, consistent internet access.
I know, I know, the internet access isn’t visible in the photo, but can you spot the green, water, and lack of mountains?
Tenney Park is a bit less than a mile from our home and is one of my favorite spots in Madison.
The resilience and muscle power of the hiker are not to be underestimated. The rest of Brian’s blog is about those things, and more, of course. But here’s my contribution from behind the scenes.
I love connecting people, I enjoy cooking interesting foods, and I take great joy in making packages. It’s an important part of a relationship to support one’s partner. Plus I don’t really like carrying a lot of weight on my back or being alone for really long stretches of time or not knowing what’s next. Being the behind-the-scenes person for Brian’s hike has been a fulfilling way for me to participate in the adventure. It’s just one piece in the mountain of logistics that rivals Mt. Whitney in scope, if not actual elevation or rock composition. (No granodiorites were harmed in this process.)
First, I have to thank the United States Postal Service. One time, they let me mail a package at 3:58pm on a Saturday, just before the post office closed at 4pm. (That was the bear canister mailing, which was the most stressful because I had short notice due to Brian’s jump northward and because I had to smush a week of food into a volume a little smaller than a 5-gallon bucket, with space for the food Brian already had. Not recommended.) The USPS has probably made this whole hike possible. In some town stops, you might be lucky for more than a pack of Pringles and a candy bar from the gas station. Enter: General Delivery! The post office can hold packages for people. Here are some glimpses at resupplies.
I made some flavor-enhanced Lembas-style way bread, based on the Elven bread from The Lord of the Rings. There’s a recipe in the vegetarian backpacking cookbook Brian got! Apparently hikers like to know how much their pack weighs and the caloric density of their food, so sometimes I weighed the components of the resupplies.
Flat-Rate boxes are really excellent, but this one had shoes that were too big for the flat-rate options. Robin was helping me pack up a box, which always included some orange duct-tape for easy discernment among the many boxes for PCT through-hikers in resupply towns.
I haven’t yet told you Step 1 of the resupply process: Find out when Brian wants the box, where to send it, and what he wants in it. When he had phone reception, that was all pretty easy. Luckily for energy consumption and some semblance of wilderness, even Verizon doesn’t have coverage everywhere. When we needed to coordinate resupplies, rides, and lodging without phone connections, we used the texting service connected to his Garmin mini inReach. I call it inReach outReach. Remember when txt msgs were limited 2 160 char.? Yep, we got to relive the 2000-aughts texting experience. Here’s an example of trying to coordinate meeting up for a mini-vacation before I start teaching.
In the background is another service that was a worry-reducing mood saver for me. I could look up where Brian was anytime I missed him. If I’d already caught up on the blog and it had been a few days since we talked, I could check out what he might be seeing and hearing. Sometimes I even got really into it and looked up the local geology. Did you know that there are rhyolite domes in the southern Sierras that have olivine and garnet phenocyrsts?! Wild, I know.
Having consistent internet access was pretty handy for connecting with Trail Angels on Facebook, looking up hotels and hostels, eventually booking Brian’s flight from Reno to Seattle…. You already know that Robin is a great pal, but just in case you were wondering if he’s STILL the best pal, he is.
Robin “halping” me look stuff up online. (I was also working on a crocheting project during online class shortly before. Shhhh, don’t tell!)
Thank you all for reading along on this journey with Brian. I’m so glad I convinced him to write a blog.
“What, you think people will actually want to read my writing?!”
“Yeah! People read Wild, or at least saw the movie, didn’t they? And you’re 1000% more prepared for this adventure. Give it a try. See how it goes.”
40 entries later, here we are. More to come!
—Naomi Barshi (Naomi-at-Homie)