I woke up with a headache again. I decided to walk anyway — just very late. It was already early afternoon by the time I got moving.
I tried something new for breakfast: chopped dates mixed into my oatmeal. I’d bought them somewhere along the way. It was really good.
After about 4 miles I stopped where the trail crosses a creek. I’d planned to just drink some water and move on — maybe it would help with the headache. Instead I got talking with a hiker who’d been walking a bit behind me. We talked about food, hiking experiences, all sorts of things. At some point we decided to just stay and make camp there for the night.
She uses the cold soak method — no cooking, just rehydrating food in cold water. That evening she made couscous with oil and garlic. I mentioned she was using what looked like too much oil. It didn’t go well for her. Not as bad as the time I put too much oil in my food on a hike in Switzerland and got sick the same night — but she felt it. The stomach simply can’t process that much concentrated fat at once. I think the rule of thumb is about a teaspoon per meal. That’s different if you’re frying something, but if you’re just adding raw oil directly to food, keep it small.
Since I’d only just packed up my tent a few hours earlier I couldn’t face setting it all up again. So I decided to cowboy camp — just roll out the mat and sleep under the sky. That was a terrible mistake.
Not because of animals or insects. I’d kept my hat on and pulled an insect net over my head just in case, and that was fine. The problem was the creek right next to me. That was the first and last time I cowboy camp directly next to running water. The moisture settled over everything during the night. When I woke up at 1am I genuinely thought it had rained — my sleeping bag was that wet. Even the inner mummy liner — a silk sleeping bag insert I use inside the main bag to protect it from dirt and make washing easier — was completely damp. A wet sleeping bag doesn’t keep you warm, so I was cold on top of everything else. It was a truly miserable night.
Everything else would have been perfect. I’d switched to using my clothes stuffed in a bag as a pillow instead of the inflatable one, which was much more comfortable. But the moisture was something else. Even my e-reader, which I’d left on top of my pack, looked like a cold drink on a hot summer day — condensation all over it.
My headache was better by evening than it had been that morning. Small win.
