August 29, 2016 Mile 1571.2-1604.7 33.5 Miles A strange dream pulls me from sleep. I’m in high school, but I can’t convince anyone that I’m supposed to be one of the teachers, not one of the students. That’s one part of it, anyways. It’s already fading from consciousness as I open my bleary eyes. I have a minor headache that I recognize as dehydration. I suck down water from a waterbottle and then check my watch. 4:40am, almost time to get up. Not yet, though; this sleeping bag is warm and the air outside is cold. When my alarm goes off at 5, I have to make myself get out of bed. I pull off my longjohns, brace myself against the cold air, and pull on my hiking clothes. There’s something about this morning ritual, this daily brace against the morning cold, that makes me feel stronger. At home, exposing myself to cold like this would be a source of dread, but out here, especially after so many days of the same, it’s a lot like splashing cold water on your face to wake up. It helps to know that my muscles will be pumping hot blood into my skin very soon. After I pack up and start moving, I encounter two other hikers, one male, one female, still in the process of packing up. They are no one I recognize, but they are only camped about 200 yards away. I had no idea other people were camped nearby. Hiking is easy today. Even after two long days in a row, my muscles feel no soreness or fatigue. When it gets light enough, I even break into a trot on the downhills. The sunrise is filled with color and I am light on my feet; it’s going to be a wonderful day, I can feel it. I pass a forest road early in the day. Roads always seem to pop up out of nowhere. If I have been surprised by the huge amount of wilderness is in California, I’m at least as surprised by how many roads slice it up. It’s difficult to conceive of the enormity of our species’ reach until you’ve walked the expansive land for months and seen our touch everywhere. If the freeways and railroads are our species veins and arteries, moving large amounts of resources and people from one place to another, these forest roads are the capillaries, branching out into the farthest reaches of the land. To follow that analogy to its conclusion, we’ve made most of the land our stomach and our bowels, extracting resources and leaving waste. Often on this trip I have also found remnants of roads, leveled but overgrown. When I see trees and other plants growing out of these roads, I feel mixed emotions. I am glad that they are rewilding, and also saddened to see that after twenty or thirty years (the time it has taken for a tree to grow to this height), the scar on the land is still so present. We could consider a few decades a blink of an eye in the scope of geologic and ecological time, but I have to weigh those few decades against the speed with which we are extracting and extending our reach. Rewilding will only have an opportunity if we slow down the pace and limit the scope of our extractivism. The views have become far more open in both directions. As I skim the tops of mountain ridges, I pass an ever-changing mountainscape. Mountain chaparral, pine forest, and sierra-like granite all make an appearance for a brief period, then fade into the receding distance. To walk the land is to experience time writ physically. Past, present, and future aren’t abstract concepts, they are physical places in the world, and you can literally see the speed at which life glides by. Curiosity becomes experience, which passes into memory. Even as a place becomes my past, it becomes a part of my imagined future again as I wonder “will I ever return to this place?” I know that even if I do, I will remember it differently than it is now, and my emotional experience will be different. This moment will never return, no matter how much I crave it. If there is a wisdom that comes from thru-hiking, I think, this is it. This recognition that all life is sliding past us at every moment, that every relationship, place, and experience will happen but once, that everything constantly changes, including our own selves, nothing is permanent, and trying to hold on to anything will only bring us sadness and suffering. The afternoon brings talus. Long stretches of talus that occasionally jump up from underfoot and bite me painfully in the ankles. This, too, is temporary, I think. But it’s not as temporary as I would like. Lakes appear far below the trail, turquoise and translucent enough to see their rocky bottoms. Sometimes they appear through trees, and the contrast of green and blue electrifies the hairs on my skin and sends waves of chills through my body. This is California? I’ve spent most of my life in this state and I had no idea this existed. I make up my mind. I have to come visit the Trinity Alps again. The trail weaves along the sides of valleys for a while. It stays mostly level, except when it jumps over a mountain pass and into another valley. Some of the valleys look like they’ve been scooped out glacially, some by the natural flow of a river. Some of them are scattered with granite and talus, others blanketed in a uniform green. Unlike the Sierra, though, these valleys seem remarkably uniform in their height. There are no huge hanging basins, and so far there have been no 7000 foot climbs. It seldom dips down to lakes or up to passes. In fact, it has stayed almost entirely between 6000 and 7000 feet of elevation all day, which makes for easy hiking and fast miles As the day gets later and weariness sets in, I stop for dinner at the road to Etna. I like to stop at roads when possible; there’s a greater potential for a conversation. In the past when I’ve gone backpacking, I’ve avoided roads and people—my daily life was full enough of these things, and I needed a break. Now my daily life is filled with solitude, and the break I desire is a little conversation. It’s all about balance, I suppose. There is no one at the pass, though. There’s a small shed-sized building made of cement blocks. It’s covered with graffiti, and a radio antenna sticks up from the top. I use one of the walls as a backrest while I make my dinner. There is broken glass around, and it’s sort of an ugly spot, but I don’t much care. It’s a backrest, and right now comfort supercedes pride and aesthetics. It’s sort of freeing, really. Through sheer exhaustion, I’ve let go of some of the trappings of status that we hold unto unconsciously. If anyone were to see me now, I would look like a homeless person, not a hiker out on an adventure. There’s a reason we thru-hikers affectionally call ourselves hikertrash. These little experiences remind me of the trappings that aren’t me. I am not defined by where I sit, I am not defined by what others think of me. I am not my roles. I am not my status. While I’m making dinner, I realize two things: This is the last of my water, and I am almost out of fuel. I look at my map while I finish my dinner. The last water was five miles ago. The next water is another seven miles. I’ll have to night hike again, and it’s going to be an uncomfortable seven miles with no water. I start across the road and up into the Marble Mountain Wilderness. A couple of section hikers told me that this was their favorite section of Northern California, so I’ve been looking forward to it. I see the 1600-mile marker on the climb to the first pass, and I have enough reception at the top to make a call to Lindsey. I can’t talk long, because dark is falling, but it feels really good to hear her voice. While we’re talking, the sky lights up pink, then orange, then electric orange. I send her a picture of the sunset after we hang up. She texts back “Wow. That’s amazing! I wish I was out there with you.” Me too. Darkness engulfs me slowly. The twilight deepens imperceptibly, and each time I pass through a copse of trees the shadows seem a little thicker, heavier. Eventually a few stars pierce the blue-gray vellum, then it seems like they’re everywhere. Time for a headlamp? Not yet. I want to push this as far as it can go. The trail has turned toward the North again, and charcoal valleys plunge off to my left side. Eventually it is dark enough that the trail is difficult to see directly, though I can still make it out with peripheral vision. The copses grow longer; they are almost groves now, but always they break open to talus slopes. Each time my eyes adjust a little more, until it is no longer difficult to see the trail in the starlight. The talus shines a dull silver.
The trail turns at a shoulder and I pause to take in the richness of night. A billion points burn above me in perfect clarity. Behind me, the solid certainty of the mountain. In front of me the coolness of the black abyss radiates up to me. I feel powerful. It’s not a physical power or a power from status or community, but something internal. It’s a poise. A stance, perhaps, ready to respond rather than react. I feel more comfortable in my skin than I ever have before in my life. I just stand there for a minute, taking it all in and enjoying this private moment of darkness. No one will ever see this view quite like this again, I think. Yet it doesn’t feel like my view or my experience, it feels like a shared experience with this place. Eventually my mind returns to thinking and processing, as it always does, and I continue walking. The junction to Cub Bear Spring leads me uphill, away from the gentle slope of the main trail. The terrain is less even, so I finally turn on my headlamp for the short hike up the side trail. I pump a couple liters at the top by the light of my headlamp and then set up in one of the flat campsites nearby. There is space for 3 or 4 tents, but I am the only one here. As I finish setting up my tent, something rustles down the hill. Probably a deer or something. I throw a rock to scare it off, just in case it’s a bear, but a few seconds later it’s rustling again. Whatever. Worrying about it isn’t going to change anything. I climb into my tent and fall asleep a few seconds later.
1 Comment
Shane
2/8/2020 10:06:39 am
Nick, you are also a son, husband and father!!
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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