I had my alarm set to wake me up early for the 40-mile hitch back to the trail. I was eager to start hiking again – the gravity well around Republic had sucked me in. This day would be my opportnity to get back on track and catch up to my trail friends.

The first hitch I got out of Tonasket was with an older woman, probably 80 or so. Somehow we got onto politics, and she talked to me about her support for Elizabeth Warren, and how difficult it was to exist in a very right-wing area.

After a while, she revealed to me that she was heading into Republic for a funeral for one of her close friends. This 80-year-old woman, driving through the middle of nowhere in Eastern Washington alone on the way to her funeral, decided to pick up a rando hitchhiker. Incredible.

That wasn’t the weirdest hitch I got that day. After a quick grocery stop in Republic (during which I ran into two more PNT hikers, Justin and Kate from Madison, WI), I got back on route 21 and started trying to hitch back to the trail. The road was deserted, with about one car passing every 10 minutes, so I found a spot of shade to rest in while I waited.

After about 2 hours of hitching, a little white Toyota stopped in the pullout at the side of the road about 20 feet from me, kicking up a cloud of dust. My heart leapt, and I walked over to the car. I tried the passenger side handle, and it was locked. The old woman in the driver’s seat hit the lock for me, and I got in. I thanked her for picking me up, and let her know that I wanted to be dropped off at Ten Mile Campground, appropriately located about 10 miles south.

We sat in silence for the first part of the ride, and after a few minutes, the woman finally confessed: “I didn’t mean to pick you up.” I felt horrified. She hadn’t seen me standing in the shadow, and only pulled over to check her map. She didn’t see me until I was directly outside her passenger side window, and only unlocked her door for me out of fear. I apologized to her profusely for scaring her like that, and in the end we had a laugh about it.

There was no better feeling than getting dropped off on the trail after a long resupply. No more complicated logistics, no worrying about hitches. I had everything I needed to take care of myself: Shelter, a water filter, and a heavy ziploc bag full of gorp. I took a map page out and tucked it into my hip belt pocket in preparation for the maze of gravel roads ahead.

The canyon grasses glowed orange in the late afternoon light. I followed the serene Ten Mile Trail, climbing for about a mile until I reached a dusty dirt road. I navigated the labyrinth of forest roads for 8 or 9 more miles, awkwardly leapfrogging with a couple of hunters in a Jeep that seemed to be in a married-couple-type conflict. I found a flat spot near a spring to settle down soon after forking off onto the less-travelled Forest Road 500, which had a nice view of the valley to the south.

My campsite was covered in cow pies, which made me feel pretty anxious about drinking from the stream. I bushwhacked far upstream to get away from where cows had clearly trampled all of the vegetation, using my pot to scoop the trickle of water into my leaking filter bag.

I set up my tent on the lumpy, cow-trampled ground, and when to sleep hoping that I’d catch up to Bugs and Moose the next day.