May 19th Mile 454.4-471.3   (17 miles)

I left the Sauffley's in the early afternoon, enjoyed a breakfast at a local bakery and returned to trail.  The day started out with a few mile road walk, with traffic zooming by, dogs barking at me through rickety fences, and the sun reflecting off of the pavement.  Unpleasant.  I soon returned to a typical southern california stretch of the PCT:  a meandering trail looping up and around medium sized hills with low bushes everywhere.  The day began heating up, and since I was not carrying much water I decided to take a break during the heat of the day.  With limited options of shade, I walked a few hundred yards off trail, draped all of my gear and clothing on the bare branches of a low shrub, and crawled inside of it in my underwear.  I spent the next few hours looking and relooking at maps, and trying to start text message conversations with everyone I possibly could. (Thanks to those I talked to for keeping me company!)

While I was in Agua Dulce I forgot to pick up toilet paper, and so, back on trail I was faced with a crisis: an urgent need to have a bowel movement and nothing to use to clean up afterwards.  I considered my options.  Could I  drag my hindquarters on the ground, like I see my dogs do?  Probably not.  Dog butts are unlike my butt, and the desert floor is littered with ants and things with the potential to spear things I do not want speared.  What if I just did nothing, and 'walked it off' so to speak?  Possible, but it seemed as if I had not yet devolved to quite that level of derangement.  So I laid out every item of gear I had in my pack and considered each for their potential as a toilet paper substitute.  I quickly decided that my best option was cutting up a pair of dirty socks in strips and using that.  The results were positive.

Eventually the heat of the sun died down and I returned to trail to knock out a few more miles, with the intention of hiking into the night(joyfully using my new headlamp!).   After nightfall, I found myself in the midst of a canyon densely packed with desert plants.  Often times while hiking alone at night I can work myself up and give myself the creeps, but the feeling passes after 30 minutes or so.  Tonight, the feeling lingered.  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I could not shake the feeling that I was being followed.  I studied the ground and saw TONS of big cat tracks and predator scat.   I tried to talk myself down, seeking to calm myself with the impossibly low chances of mountain lion attacks, but the feeling remained:  I was being hunted.  I quickened my pace, and started to shine my headlamp behind me at regular intervals.  I stood still, silent, and listened.  Did I hear a rustling on the trail, or was it the imaginings of a frightened mind?  Only silence now. I continued walking for a few minutes, came around a bend in the trail and then turned my headlamp off, waiting and listening for anything following me.  Again I heard a soft sound coming up the trail.  I turned my headlamp on, and pointed it up the trail where I heard the noise.  My light was reflected in a pair of green eyes, standing nightmarishly high on the trail.  I see a long tail, and a feline shape.

Alarms bells start echoing in my mind.  COUGAR! THAT IS A MOTHER FUCKING COUGAR!  I hear some sort of loud, gorilla like bellow, and quickly realize that it is coming from my gaping mouth.  My body took over.  "Chill out mind, I know what to do," it seemed to say to my brain.  This is what it knew to do:  continue yelling, throw my water bottle, and run at the cougar.  "A gutsy bluff, body, hope this works," my mind responded to my body. 

It worked fabulously.  The cougar ran off trail, retreating into the dense desert scrub brush.  I continued hiking for a few minutes, before I came upon a group of hikers camped out on the side of the trail. Hoping to avoid any further excitement I camped next to them, and fell asleep surprisingly easily.  In the morning I asked the group if they had heard me yelling.  None of them had.  Another exciting day on the PCT.