Day 121 : The fawn

18th August 2013
Mile 1762.5 to mile 1794.5 : Big Spring to Red Lake trail junction
Mileage 32
Average mileage since day 101 : 21.8
I started late today as I had camped in a grove of pine trees that had kept the light levels down meaning my body woke me up a bit later than usual. I had been joined late last night by another hiker called PimPlimp, who headed out before me. We were both ready to hike at about the same time, but as I prefer to hike alone I let him go first so waited a few minutes to let him get ahead. There is a weird trail phenomenom in which hikers leapfrog past each other but without seeing each other, and this is what happened with PimPlimp. I wouldn't see him again until Crater Lake, where he surprised by turned up behind me at Mazama Village at the main park entrance. The trail is strange sometimes. Setting out into the cool of the morning my main thought was what I would put in this day's entry. It is difficult trying to find ways of spicing up blog entries describing a day on the trail which is pretty much identical to the previous day. I hope I manage to keep you all suitably entertained! Just as I was thinking about what to write, I came across the fawn. On the face of it deer encounters, and even fawn encouters, are far from unusual, but this encouter was unusual in every way. As I cam round the corner I could see a little blog of brown in the middle of the trail. I clicked my poles together to let whatever it was know I was there and give it time to get up and disappear into the trees. As I got closer however I could see the little guy was lying unmoving in the trail and did not move a muscle even as I got close enough to touch him. He was lying with his head pointing up the trail, so although he must have heard and smelt me, he hadn't lifted his head up to look at me so I gently stepped past him to let him know I was a hiker and not a bear about to take advantage of a prone little fawn. I took off my rucksck and knelt down next to the fawn to investiage a bit further and could clearly tell something was wrong. I could see his heart and lungs moving, so knew he wasn't dead, but apart from that I had know idea what was wrong with him. Wierdly, I sort of felt that he was just absolutely knackered and could go no farther at that moment, and just did not have the energy to even react to my presence let alone stand up and run away. I can empathise with that sort of fatigue and tiredness well, but there was obviously something more to this little guy than that. He literally didn't even blink or flinch as I stroked his head, or felt his legs to see if anything was broken. I wondered if he was thirsty, as this section of the trail is very dry, and so scratched a small hole by his mouth, put a spare ziplock back down to form an impromptu bowl and used a little of my water to try and get him to drink something, but there was no response. I rubbed a little of it on his muzzle to let him know what it was, but to be honest I had no idea if he was old enough to be drinking water and not his mother's milk as he was small and still covered with the bambi-like white identifying spots of a fawn. Given the total lack of response from the little guy, I realised there was little I could do for him. AT&T, my mobile phone service provider, has unbelievealbly poor coverage at the best of times in Oregon and Washington, so calling an RSPCA type body was out of the question, even if i had known the numbers to call. I could hear some rustling in the brush near me and assumed mum was watching me nervously from just outside my field of view so decided the best way I could help the two would be to just leave them to their own devices. I put on my rucksack and looked back at the fawn one last time before heading back up the trail. I would like to think that once mum had turned up he would get up and disappear back into the forest, but the feeling I got from him was that he had just given up and accepted that the end was nigh. When I met up with Pimplimp a couple days later he had no idea what I was talking about, so presumabely the fawn had stumbled on the PCT in the 10 minute interval between the pair of us. My encouter with the fawn that morning had cost me a good couple miles of hiking time, so I upped my pace and tried to claw some time back. This proved difficult during the middle of the day as I had to contour around a volcano called Brown Mountian, but which I couldn't see due to the denseness of the forest. The trail was difficult contoring around this volcano due to huge lava flows which periodically cut across the forest, and across the trail. Lava, as per my experience on the Hat Creek Rim, is difficult and tiring to traverse, and this was no different. In the hot sun I carefully threaded my way across the lava trying my best not to stress my feet or ankles any more than was absolutely necessary. After a couple hours of this I was sore and tired and in need of a welcome break by one of the few creeks coming down off the next volcano in my way. Thankfully this volcano, Mt McLoughlin, was forested and devoid of lava flows so traversing was no problem, and by the evening I was well past it. Just as I was looking for a camp spot I began to smell smoke everywhere, and it began to even obscure the hillsides around me. I was aware that there were big fires west of me, but thought I wasn't sufficiently far enough away from them for them to not be a threat. I couldn't see where the smoke was coming from so had to assume it was not close, and therefore not an immediate threat. Evenso I decided to get a couple more miles in that evening to try and get away from the smell at least, in case it was actually nearby. It was fully dark by the time I had stopped and I had to make the best of a campsite almost right on the trail. I started my evening routine and before long was tucking into that night's dinner. Dinner tonight however was so salty it was inedible. I had a Bear Creek potatoe soup with 8 servings adding up to 1200 calories. Unfortunately each serving had almost a whole gram of salt in it and was supposed to be heavily diluted and was not intended as a hiker meal. I only managed about half of the meal before having to reluctantly through it away knowing the effect of not eating would be detrimental to the following day's hiking, but being unable to stomach the salt. I dug a hole a few meteres from my camp and buried it before settling down for the night. Sleep for whatever reason did not come easily that night. For a start the smell of smoke was still in the air and made me uneasy, and also i think in the dark i had pitched up on top of, or at least clost to an ants nest and was constantly flicking inche long black ants off me. 2 of them even managed to get between my sleeping bag and the liner waking me up periodically. At some stage, I don't know at what time this occured as I hate looking at the time during the night and knowing I only have an hour or two left in bed, I heard a large animal in the forest nearby. I have encountered so many deer in these forest that I know what they sound like, and this did not sound like a deer. I suspect it was a bear coming to investigate the food i hadn't eaten that night, but I didn't manage to get a look at it as my head torch is just a cheapy one that doesn't penetrate very far into the forest gloom. The animal, whatever it was, lurked around my camp for some time preventing me from getting back off to sleep before it finally headed back into the dark. The combination of disturbances that night prenvented me from getting any real much needed sleep, and fnally just as the first rays of the dawn started to lighten the forest, i packed up and headed up the trail in a bad mood.