Day 37: divine blessings

Friday 5/25/12
Miles 478-490
Elevation 4,532ft

1pm
It rained throughout the night. I felt bad for all the people cowboy camping. I know what it's like to get rained on in the middle of the night while cowboy camping, while its windy. It totally sucks.

I woke up around 6:30am, Joe Anderson made some coffee and cooked us all pancakes. They were awesome! I helped out with dishes for a while then ate.

All morning I was debating whether I should stay or leave. I really did not want to be around for memorial day weekend; I don't want to deal with that kind of madness right now. However, the weather forecast called for scattered showers throughout the day. Ugh.

So all morning I was having an internal debate with myself, basically whether I wanted to chance being in rain or not. The temperature also has dropped a lot, it's cold and windy. Brrr. There were about 4 or 5 of us that were debating on leaving or staying.

I eventually decided to go. A trail angel at the saufleys called the andersons and said there are 60-70 hikers that will be showing up at Casa de Luna soon. Holy crap!! Prior to this I already made up my mind to leave, this just confirmed my decision. I hope I don't get rained on!! :)

10:45pm
I did about 12 miles and decided to camp. I originally wanted to night hike to do 20 miles, but I ended up stopping instead. Right after I got my tent up it started raining.

I am so grateful to the Universe for always helping me out. Paulo Coelho, my favorite author, says "when you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it". I truly feel exactly that way right now. It's like the stars keep aligning for me, and everything happens exactly as it should. I am so incredibly blessed to be on this trail. It is such a life changing experience for me, in so many ways.

There are 3 activities I've intentionally done that have dramatically changed my life and/or perspective on things: 1)running a marathon, 2)doing the Master Cleanse (look it up online if you don't know what that is), and 3)doing this thru-hike. It's ironic that one of my main goals for doing this hike was to get away from humanity, yet in doing so I have encountered the most beautiful and amazing aspects of humanity, in both other hikers I've come across as well as random kind strangers I meet on the trail.