Missing Out

The air was good at Crater Lake, but I did have to get out. The question was which way. 

Originally, I had wanted to follow the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) across Oregon but got turned off to that idea for a few small reasons and one big one. The small ones were mostly about other hikers: I didn't like the competition, the fast pace thru nature without looking otherwise (forty miles a day!), the conversations about miles and gear (anybody want to talk about wildflower? Birds? Zeppelin?). Early August is when the first of the thru hikers come thru Oregon, so to be fair, later on I may have met more of the people who consider the trail less of a trophy or sport and more as a long meditation. It may just have been the time of year. I won't say it's wrong, but it's certainly not my thinking.

But hikers can easily be overlooked. One mostly does the PCT alone, seeing people only at the edges of the day. The mosquitoes, however, could not be overlooked. According to the park rangers at Crater Lake, there were at least another hundred miles of bugs north of the park. These would be bugs as bad as what I came thru, clouds of mosquitoes that you breath in, that find any exposed flesh and eat it, no matter how furtively exposed. I tried, once, to relieve myself in the 70 miles before the park. It was one of the more hellish experiences of my life. My derriere was porcupined with sucking probosces. I tightened my abs and wrung my digestive tract like a tube of toothpaste so I need never crap again, then ran for my tent and spent the next half hour scratching. I wasn't worried about infection. I figured my skin would come off first. 

So it was an easy chpice to take the road instead of the trail. The open space of asphalt, and probably something in the tar, keeps the mosquito population down to just about nothing. Bliss. According to the park rangers I'd be missing out if i skipped the next section of PCT. And they were right, I'd be missing out on one hundred miles of blood loss and constipation. The PCT is not, and has never been, my goal. What great country am I seeing if I have to flail myself with every step? Considering I can see the same lands, or others equally great, when conditions are more favorable, then wading thru insect clouds to do it would give me bragging rights on stupidity and nothing else. I wanted to get to Crater Lake, and I was there. Now it was time to leave. I took the road to Eugene, found a hotspring the next day, and at sinset soaked myself for an hour by the bug free banks of the Willamette. Yes, I was missing out.