At one point, Strayed was about to go to bed on the trail and gratefully realized that for the first time, she hadn't had to put on her fleece anorak or any other shirt to keep her warm after dark. Her feelings changed in the morning when she realized how intense the daytime heat had become. "By noon the heat was so merciless and the trail so exposed to the sun I wondered honestly if I would survive," she wrote. "It was so hot the only way I could keep going was by stopping every ten minutes to rest for five, when I would chug water from my bottle that was hot as tea. As I hiked, I moaned again and again, as if that would provide some cooling relief, but nothing changed."
