I'd really wanted to see Coyote and Grasshopper this afternoon, but the prospect of waiting at McDonald's all day was too much to deal with. Still in pain, I had no desire to rush all the way to Guffy Campground, but walking at a calm limp away from chatty hikers and gawking tour bus riders sounded fine. I said this to Mover many miles back, "I eat when I'm hungry, sleep when I'm tired, and walk when I'm anxious." He said he felt the same way. Everyone has some issue that might be categorized in the DSM, and I believe that exercise and the outdoors can help most of them. As I type this, my social anxiety from earlier today seems like a strange distant memory.

Over the train tracks and through the culvert.

Tonight, I camp blissfully alone at mile 347.5. There is perpetual wind carrying the voices of three people ho took a campsite below me, but about a quarter mile away. They don't know that I'm up here, which pleases me. They sound young and in good spirits. Good for them. David and I once discovered that we both independently began trying to go for days without talking to anyone, even in casual or retail situations. One can still be polite without saying a word. I am feeling that way now. Steppenwolf-ish. Not the band.

Looking down on the San Andreas just after the trail crosses it.

At any rate, the ground here is level, there is comfortable small gravel, and one of the desert's many buckwheats is waving its flowers in the breeze right in front of me. Meadowlarks are successfully drowning out the other campers and are competing with the sound of trains a couple miles back. The trail crosses the tracks there, and I'd hoped to be next to them when a train went by, to feel the rush of air in that boulder-filled canyon. My train didn't come, but hearing it now still makes me smile.

17 water-less miles when I wake up tomorrow. Hope my feet get their shit together.