Leaving town to head back to the trail is sometimes hard, fortunately this was not one of those times. After a few days of relaxing in Santa Fe, I was chomping at the bit to get moving again. My body has responded well to the daily pounding of trail life and I have thouroughly enjoyed exploring New Mexico on foot. The walking has been, at times, a bit challenging but changes in topography, plants and wildlife, and a steady diet of podcasts and audiobooks have kept my mind occupied when the road-walks don’t.
Sock Drawer, Red Stripe, and I resupplied and caught a bus from Santa Fe to Espanola. From there our plan was to walk to the intersection of Hwy 84, stick our thumbs out, and hope that someone would gather us up in a pickup truck and drop us at the trailhead. If fact, this exact scenario came to pass, except we did not even have to stick out a thumb. A woman who had hiked the PCT in 2011 recognized our situation and scooped us up on her way to a nearby reservoir.
My pack felt heavy, despite the very reasonable amount of food and water sloshed into it in front of the Sprouts grocery store in Santa Fe. The patch of wet shirt beneath my pack grew as I crawled up one of the last canyons in New Mexico. I found a rhythm and looked for mushrooms, while enjoying an audio book.
Over the next two days, the terrain morphed from a thirsty, sandy, desert, into lush stands of aspens and pinón pines. The trail, no longer sandy, absorbed footprints into stiff mud. Having spent the last few days in close quarters with other hikers, the quiet routine of the trail felt like a hug from a good friend. As I walked into the weekend, I stubbled into groups of family’s car camping on Forest Service Land. Some folks were friendly, even offering cold beverages and snacks, while some seemed to wish I hadn’t walked by at all.
On the third day north of Hwy 84, with 667 miles on my feet, I finished my first month on the trail. Thirty-one cold windy miles, hard won in steep terrain, clicked off as the dark sky threatened thunder and lightening. This first month on trail flew by like a long-haul flight, with minutes ticking by slowly and hours disappearing into days as if they never happened.
As day broke on the June 7th, I covered the last few miles in northern New Mexico. One state down, four to go. Next up, snowy Colorado and the San Juan Mountains. In Chama, NM I’ll pick up my ice axe and microspikes, reload on calories, and get ready to play in the snow.
