I wasn’t thinking about the trail anymore.
Somewhere around mile ten, walking into the Mogollon Rim Ranger Station for a dollar ice cream and three sodas, my body kept moving forward, but my mind had already left. It was fixed on something warmer. Tastier. Alive in a different way.
Empanadas. PIEbar. Thirty miles off trail if you drew a straight line and ignored the reality of getting there.
I filled my water anyway, just in case, but the decision had already been made somewhere deeper.
I stuck my thumb out on 87 and waited.
Two hours in the midday sun. Heat pressing down. Traffic slipping past like I didn’t exist. And still, I couldn’t stop smiling. There was nothing logical about it. No guarantee it would work. Just that feeling of stepping slightly outside the script and seeing what happens.
The first ride came eventually. Ten miles down the road with a man who couldn’t hear much but didn’t want the windows up. Wind tore through the cab, both of us existing in our own separate silence.
Then it shifted.
Slips pulled in while getting gas. AT. Long Trail. She clocked me immediately, the look, the dirt, the way I stood there like I belonged nowhere and everywhere at once. She was heading to The Monster, an ultra happening down by Phoenix, and without hesitation, she helped me close the gap. Twenty miles. Just like that.
Strawberry appeared at the end of the road like it had been waiting.
Red chile beef. Green chile pork. Chorizo and bean.
One of each. Covered in habanero cilantro chimichurri, bright and sharp and just enough heat to remind me I was still here. I sat there eating while the place closed around me, charging my phone, stretching the moment as long as I could.
I thought about staying. Sleeping behind the shop. Waking up to breakfast empanadas and doing it all over again.
Out here, the lines blur in a way that’s hard to explain. Hunger isn’t just about food. It’s movement. Novelty. A reminder of being alive.
You make decisions that don’t make sense when held up against everything society taught you to value.
But they feel right in your body.
Even if it’s just for empanadas.
Even if it’s not.
#AZT #ArizonaTrail #hitchhiking