end of day three

Wow, so much has happened. I'm laying in a grassy field as the sun goes down, camping alone, and the wind threatens to take away anything I don't either tie down or hold in place with my body weight. But this is normal in this place of extremes.

I've had brutal heat, where hikers share beloved memories of the tree at mile post 18, or the little overhang of rock that gives shade to three people. Wind storms, blowing sand... Everything is dirty and it's hard to believe it will ever be clean again. 

The landscape is too big to fit in a camera. It's not the scene before you, it's the totality of wind and sun and mountains visible in the distance for days. We keep pushing on...

There are five water caches along the route, refilled by volunteers. We still need to occasionally get water from a farmers tank. I slept by cache three this morning, and reached cache four after 12 miles. I'm sleeping with some of the water from cache four, plus I filtered water from an algae filled tank a mile back. Tomorrow I'll reach the last cache in three or four hours of hiking, then head north into Lordsburg.

I've met hikers Curtis, Caveman, Low Hanging Branch, Slim, Brainstorm, Noodle, GG, Ruiboos, Brock, Blue Jay, and shared shade, camps and stories with all of them. I named myself Sputnik, for my large round head and the fact that it's always in the clouds.

I love the way the land tilts in enormous planes, 10 or more miles wide. I go up and down these things, and after a mountain pass, a whole new world opens up.