There was a section of hills in the desert during the PCT where I remember I was too slow to be walking with the rest of the group. The walk felt like it was not going slower than it should, just maybe the normal speed at which it could. I felt like my thoughts were going at 2.5 miles per hour, or whatever my walking speed was in that moment. Awful.
I slipped in my headphones (how many different gas stations had I walked to in the course of a month before I caved and asked my parents to send me a pair of headphones (probably in Wrightwood?)) and put on Doja Cat’s latest album. I loved that album. It made going up those hills covered in joshua trees and cacti and scrubble and trouble bearable. Late afternoon, dusking, the prickly trees that shadowed the ridge that I had been following are no longer nice for shade.