Get yourself an alter ego

And blame it all on them

This is the sixth in a series of stories and essays from the Pacific Crest Trail—a 2600-mile hike from Mexico to Canada. If you’d like to support Dressing Like a Kangaroo, share this post with someone who drinks too much coffee.

gulp, ahhh—A swig of instant coffee down the hatch like gravel clanking through the pipes. I winced.

It wasn’t even that good instant coffee. It was the real kick-in-the-pants stuff that I needed to beat the midnight slugs and the slight headache that kept creeping up with every few hundred feet we climbed.

I mean, we were gaining altitude swiftly. We had to be about twelve thousand feet above sea level, and the milky way was still dizzy up above.

“I think it’s gotta be that one.” I didn’t point. I didn’t have to. We were both staring up at the crest of the range, head and shoulders above the rest of the Sierran peaks.

“maybe,” Mugs said gently. He was always a gentle presence.

I gave Mugs his name. On the Pacific Crest Trail, everyone gets a fresh start, a new identity, and with it a trail name. Countercultural and food-obsessed, hiker’s trail names usually lie at the cross-section between a grocery list and the headliners of an indie music festival: Pickles, Pringles, Grit, Maltodextrin, Mugs, Road Soda, Disco Fever. Those are all people I know.

Mugs earned his name by hunting down hand-made mugs in every trail town we visited. And because there’s something like a warm drink about him.

glug, glluug—I took another couple gulps of gritty instant coffee.

My trail name is Roo, short for Kangaroo, because my jacket had a pouch like a marsupial. I was described as laid-back, but I was never described as gentle. I guess I had more of a kick-you-in-the-pants, ice-cold, half-dissolved instant coffee brewed with stream water in a crumpled plastic bottle. kind of energy.

Mugs and I met four miles into the trail and hiked together on and off all the way to Canada, but sometimes we’d go the better part of a week with no sign of the other. While I was busy running myself into the ground and fixing myself back up, he was picking berries or watching the clouds or some shit. He was cool like that.

I don’t really know what Mugs is like in real life, whatever his real name is. I just know Mugs, his cucumber-cool alter-ego.