Rebecca Hikes

Last Sunday we chose a trail run around the perimeter of the Briones Reservoir. The trail is about thirteen and a half miles of gently sloping ups and downs through grassy fields and oak trees, with some openings into valleys with views of the delta to the north. My legs felt leaden and heavy, and it was warm out. There were clouds of black flies in some of the more shaded sections along the trail, and a sign warned of ticks. We had to choose something different this time, because I could not handle a third weekend in a row base to summit run of Mt. Diablo. But just the same, every so often, there to the east, looming, we could see Mt. Diablo. The reservoir is just east of Tilden and we could just make out the ridge where Inspiration Point meets Wildcat Canyon Road, where the day before we had walked from that parking lot on a grassy East Bay MUD trail down probably fifteen hundred feet to San Pablo Dam road. We were sometimes on part of a contiguous stretch of trail that star...

I had been planning to hike the PCT this year. I had gotten a real good spot in the online lottery to request permit dates to start the trail at the Mexico border -- my start date was April 21st. I mostly like my job, and in many ways I love my life here. But I knew that hiking the trail for five months would make me happy in a way that the constraints of normal life cannot. My partner would take time away from his doctoral studies to join me. And I know that there aren't many opportunities for taking out the kind of time needed for a journey like that. My partner and I had hiked a couple of months on the trail in 2016, from Idyllwild in the San Jacinto mountains to Tuolumne in Yosemite. That experience was one of the hardest things that I have done. We walked from deliberately chosen places in California, carefully chose for sentimental reasons. It made me fall in love with California again, after having been away for so many years -- a seriously misguided decision to live in...