Leaving town I felt better, but not complete.  Losing my phone had dealt a huge blow to my psyche.  I never would have thought that such a small thing could tear me down.  The thought of losing my phone wasn’t the problem, the names, numbers, messages could all be replaced.  The pictures on the other hand, could never be replaced.  That’s the hard part of using one device for everything, I could have potentially lost a month’s worth of photos and memories. The mere thought of having to rehike all those miles to get something close to what I had captured, floored me.

I was no longer up and excited anymore, I trudged on tired, beaten, and broken.  The heat sucked any and all energy out of me, I found a camp and had to sit down to cool off in the middle of the day.  It wasn’t long before Patches and Diesel caught me here sitting relaxing.  It was good to see Diesel again, I related the story of my phone to him and we both took solace in the message. God, the trail, the universe, or whatever you believe in will look out for you and certainly did for me.

The two of us pushed on another few miles, so beaten, even Diesels motivation was lost on me.  My feet felt like lead and I had no desire to go any farther. He eventually passed me pushing on to our goal of 20 miles. To make matters worse I found out that of all days for the guys to hike north instead of south, I’m Bob was hiking north this day.  There would be no way to catch him untill the following day, with me so tired all I could muster was half a day.  My mind was made up, I would stop at the first shelter and sleep, I needed sleep so bad.  Two nights without it and two hard days, physically and emotionally, had worn me down.

Reaching the shelter I was going to tell Diesel I was done, when I was suddenly surprised.  He had heard there was bad weather coming and wanted to stay here instead of hiking out in the crap.  I was more than ok with that, I hoped for a good night’s rest as I ate and set up my place in the shelter. About two dozen people sought shelter before heading out, leaving just five of us here in the shelter. The quiet night was a nice change of pace, but all I could think about was getting my phone back.  Each day without it would be lost pictures, lost moments.