A summer in my own backyard (the Pacific Crest Trail)

I wintered over in Bishop.

A few days into Washington's Pacific Northwest Trail, in September, I got the call that the little tiny hospital in Bishop, California was looking for a travel labor and delivery nurse. Then the second call came- they needed one right NOW. I shrugged, hitchhiked back to my car in Washington, and drove South.

Bishop is a very special place. Located in the middle of the deep Owens Valley underneath the highest mountains in the continental United States, four hours north of Los Angeles, this town of just under 4,000 feels like it heard all of the hubbub of the past few years, pulled its door quietly shut, and went on as if nothing had really happened. World-famous for rock climbing, the town somehow manages to just go about its business without anybody really seeming to notice that it's there.

I worked quietly through the winter, satisfied and connecting to old and new friends in my new little home. Then, in March, the unthinkable happened.

I was sitting at the nurse's station in the middle of the night when my roommate Bri called me.

"There's been an accident. Joey fell rock climbing. They're saying he's not gonna make it."

I felt all of the blood draining out of my face. "Where is he? What hospital?"

"UMC Trauma. Las Vegas."

Joey was sixty-two years young, a wild-hearted guy who seemed not of this world, happily living out of his car, climbing and hiking full-time. We had met him in 2020, right as the world shut down during an international pandemic. For months, I would work my shifts at the hospital in Long Beach and then LA, and then drive every single week up to the Owens Valley-and we would go into the mountains. We would talk about climbing, and relationships, and anything that popped into our heads-and without really meaning to, Joey carried me through the darkest hours of my life, with his loving companionship on those trips. Joey had climbed almost 700 lifetime peaks, all over the world. He was trying to get to 777.

Climbing a few weeks before his passing, in the Buttermilk mountains near Bishop.

On Steve Roper's Sierra High Route with Bri, summer 2020.

I left the hospital, and drove to Las Vegas through the night across Death Valley. We lost him on March 14th, 2023 at 12:28 am.

Joey, my heart has lept out of my chest in grief at imagining life without you. Everything has seemed brighter, and I have felt my own soft humanity and my connection to this earth, because you left us so suddenly, and you were so loved. But, no one could hold you-it's just the way you are-it's the way you always have been. I love you so much, but really, I know you never left the Owens Valley-I feel you tap me on my shoulder, I hear you make a dry little joke- I hear you laughing at us with all of our fumblings as we continue our silly little lives-I feel your spirit playing in the warm wind as it bats the sagebrush about-I see your rainbows you make as you wave at us across the Valley. Hi, Joey. The Owens Valley is your home, the Range of Light your stomping grounds. We just didn't expect you to go so soon.

Joey in his Range of Light.

And so, I leave in a few days to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, for the second time-in this Spring, the Trail's snowiest year in history. I'll take six or so weeks to hike from the Mexican border back to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and then look forward to the Unknown-hundreds of miles of snow, raging snowmelt-swollen rivers, challenge, pristine beauty. I know Joey will be happy to see me walk back towards home.