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.
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August 28, 2016 Mile 1543.4-1571.2 27.8 Miles I thrash, zip, stuff, crinkle, and crunch with abandon. Milk said to make some noise, and I’m hoping that means they want to get an early start, too. I won’t be able to keep their pace, but they break a lot more than I do. I prefer to do some of my hiking alone anyway, but it’s nice to have friends for the breaks and to camp with. It’s a beautiful morning. Blue skies, a few wispy clouds, cool air. There’s nothing as wonderful as waking up outside on a day like this, knowing that you have the whole day to spend outside, and that in the evening, you’ll get to rest your head outside, too. Colors are brighter and the day seems full of possibility. When I’m all packed up, I look over at Hoot—still asleep—and Chocolate Milk—awake, but bleary-eyed. Milk stares at me with listless eyes but doesn’t say anything, so I don’t break the silence. He’s awake, so I’ll let him decide whether to wake Hoot now or if both of them will sleep a little more. I crunch my way back to the trail. They’re so fast, I’m sure they’ll catch up to me within a couple hours even if they do sleep in. As it turns out, I don’t see them for the rest of the day, or ever again. A few months later I will read some other hikers’ blogs and see them in a picture with a few other hikers in Ashland. It’s not entirely clear, but from the tone of the blog it sounds like Ashland was the end of their hike. This morning, though, I have high hopes that I will see them during my next break, so I hike fast, but take leisurely breaks. At breakfast I sit crosslegged on a slab of cold granite and look over the country to come. Two bowhunters climb the trail in front of me. They are in their 50s, and carry themselves with the friendly confidence of firefighters. They are boyish in their eagerness. If I were to guess, only one of them has ever been bowhunting before, and it’s a fairly new sport even to him. The other one, the one who holds his bow like a new toy that he hasn’t had a chance to use, asks me if I’ve seen any bucks around. I try to think back to the last time I saw a buck. It’s probably been four or five hundred miles. I tell him so, with false regret. I don’t think they are bad people for wanting to hunt and kill a deer; hunting is a natural human impulse, and I’m sure they have plenty of good reasons to justify hunting. Still, I don’t think it should be a weekend escape, entered into lightly. Hunting is an inherently violent act, and like any violence it strains the psyche. I worry about the damage that hunters create in themselves and society when they treat violence as sport, when they react to the death of a living creature with bravado and pride instead of sacred solemnity. It is another symptom of our extractivism, our belief that we are the spider rather than part of the web. These two men are not unkind, though; they are simply part of a culture that values bravado and sport over subtler ethical distinctions. They live in a society that seems to only recognize relationships and connections between humans, as if we are somehow disconnected from everything else. If they are to blame for anything, it is that they accept their culture’s norms too readily. The men hike on, heavy-footed and garrulous. I am comforted that they are unlikely to kill anything, carrying on as they are. I pack up and move along, too, wondering as I go, what norms do I blindly accept? How are my choices like theirs? There are so many. If I were in the thick of society, I’m certain I would find it overwhelming and exhausting to try to identify and examine each of them, not to mention make changes to the norms that have become habits. Out here, though, I have nothing to struggle against. I am simply taking inventory. I’m mostly thinking about waste, because every day I look at the garbage I’m carrying out with me, and wondering what it would be like if I were responsible for keeping and dealing with all of my waste back home. I discover that many norms are part of our discussions as a society already: single-use plastics, for example. Some are things that we think we have no choice about, or don’t easily see an alternative to: the plastic wrappings that keep foods hermetically sealed, owning and regularly using a car. Then there are norms that we never think about: the necessity for multiple sets of clothes for example, or turning on lights when we are in a room, even if there’s plenty of natural light for what we’re doing. I’ve been hiking in the same clothes for months now, and the sunlight is plenty for everything I’m doing out here. I start to think about ways I can change and reduce my impacts. Things like buying fewer clothes and wearing them more often, buying produce that doesn’t need to be sealed. I can already see that overcoming the cultural norms will be hard work and will make me stand out (After the trail, when I sit in the living room and read a book in ample natural light, my wife will walk in and laugh “don’t you want some light?” She’ll think that I’m being weird by not turning on the light, and she’s right, for that’s all that weirdness is—being outside the norms). Norms have always been flexible to me. When I was 14 I became a vegan. Growing up in California, that was just a little unusual; most people knew at least a few vegetarians, and vegan was “sort of like that”. When I moved to Iowa for college, I was more of a rarity. There were few vegetarians. I almost never mentioned it except when people offered me something I wouldn’t eat, and then you could see their discomfort. People get uncomfortable when you break the norms of society. It creates tension when people realize that there are other alternatives. When they realize there are options, they have to make choices, and that’s uncomfortable. As the world changes, our norms have to catch up, and the only way they can do that is if someone breaks the norms first, and others follow. Once enough people break the old norms, the culture shifts and adopts new norms, but those first few people are weirdos until the rest of the culture joins them. We need our weirdos, even if their weirdness never becomes a new norm, because we can never know for sure which new idea is going to work best with the changing world. I emerge my mental churnings and look around. The landscape has become rockier and reddish-brown. The elevation has been fairly constant all day. I try to stay present in the moment, but my mind seems to have other ideas and it dives back down into all the different norms I can adjust. To what purpose? To live a more ethical, less wasteful life. I fully recognize I won’t be able to do it myself, but perhaps I can be one of those weirdos just on the edge of culture who shifts a few people around him, and that small group can shift the people around them. I once learned about a thing called a trim-tab. On one of those giant cargo ships, the rudder is too big to turn, so they put a little rudder on it. When the captain turns the wheel, it turns the trim-tab, which changes the flow of water enough to help turn the big rudder, which then turns the ship. That’s the type of weirdo I want to be. A small descent brings me into more trees, and soon I’m crossing a road: Highway 3. A campground is just a little ways off trail, with pit toilets and water. It’s completely empty, so I set myself one of the picnic tables and read my book while I make and eat my lunch. Why is such a pretty campground empty in the middle of summer, I wonder? After lunch I climb back up to the ridge line and continue that way for hours, dipping away for brief stretches of time but always returning to the big views. The mountains drop away to the North (I am still headed West), and I can see a large plume of smoke, big enough to be a wildfire, off in the distance. I sure hope that isn’t near the trail.
The evening brings a colorful sky, and I find a campsite in a little wind-protected saddle that looks out into the expansive basin to the north. I can see some farms and the edge of a town starting to glitter in the falling darkness. As I sit and eat dinner in the beauty of the fading sunset, I think about how grateful I am to be out here. To get perspective, to see all this wild, beautiful land. To work my body to exhaustion and to give my mind space to stretch out, unencumbered and undistracted. To think. To play simulations in my brain of different ways to relate to society. To examine my convictions. To pause from the daily grind and step outside of my own life and hold it in my hand like an object and to think, is this a good life? Here in this campsite, I think, it is. August 27, 2016 Mile 1512.3-1543.4 31.1 Miles The days are shorter. 5 am is now firmly in the dark, and the first thirty minutes of my hike are just gradually getting light. Hiking in the dark is empowering—a reminder that we are generally safer than we think we are. The morning dark is palpably different than the evening dark, which probably has more to do with my shifting moods than anything inherent in the time of day. In the evening, it feels like I am asserting my personal power and banishing the dangerous animals with my noise. It is like I am dispelling danger. The pre-dawn morning feels refreshing, hopeful. It feels like there is no danger. All the predators are bedded down and I have the forest to myself. It’s a quiet, meditative time when I don’t have to be on alert. It’s all in my head, I’m sure—predators are as likely to be about now as any time—but I’m still grateful for the hushed, peaceful quality of my morning hike. As the light slowly rises and changes, Castle Crags is silhouetted in a number of ever-changing colors. I’m up high with big views to the south for a while, then the mountains turn southwest and the trail follows. I see the campsite where Hoot and Chocolate Milk were headed. It’s perched on a precipice with huge views to the east. Castle Crags contains the other end of the horseshoe basin, and Shasta peeks above the ridgeline to the North. Either they missed the site in the dark or they woke up early, because they are already gone without a trace. I haven’t encountered open ridgelines like this for weeks, and it is refreshing. I’ve heard many past hikers complain about Northern California, but I’m certain they were talking about the wooded tunnels of the last several days, not this colorful land. There’s always something new to look at: ever-changing rocks, distant layers of mountains, brilliant wildflowers, enormous basins with pristine lakes. This is a part of California that I never knew existed. Around 10am I catch up to Hoot and Chocolate Milk at Picayune Lake. They’ve already gotten their water, but they continue to break while I make the steep climb down to get mine. When I get back they’re talking about making a stop at Deadfall lake, a few miles ahead, for a swim and they ask me if I want to join. Sounds great, I say. We’re close to a dirt forest road, and a truck comes by. Someone leans out of the passenger window and asks for directions. Hoot heads over and chats with them for a bit. When he comes back, he says “They just offered me an envelope full of pot.” We laugh about the strange container, then Hoot and Chocolate Milk head on while I finish pumping water and rest a bit. When I arrive at Deadfall lake in the afternoon, I have had to go to the bathroom for hours. On these open ridges, there has been nowhere hidden, and now it’s getting to be an emergency. I hate to skip swimming in the lake, but it’s just not in the cards today. Tree cover or some other privacy is first priority. In the evening I hopscotch with a family a couple of times. I’m breaking a little more often this late in the day, with sore legs from a lot of miles, and each time they catch up to me the dad asks me a couple more questions about my hike. I ask him a few questions too, and it’s clear he’s passionate about hiking. He and his family have traveled down from Ashland to explore the area.
I pass them one more time, then I don’t see them for a couple hours. There’s a dirt parking lot at the top of a pass with plenty of cars. 26 miles today. Time to stop for dinner and maybe camp nearby. My Spanish rice is just starting to boil when the family shows up. The dad comes over and offers me a couple of mandarin oranges and wants to share a joint with me. I accept the oranges and we talk for a bit while he smokes and I eat. He only stays for a couple of minutes, but I’m appreciative of the company. When he leaves, the sky is starting to get some color. The solitude doesn’t pain me anymore. I focus on the flavor of my food and the changing colors in the sky. About ten minutes after the family leaves, Hoot and Chocolate Milk come through the parking lot. I’m in the process of cleaning up. “Do you want to play frisbee?” Chocolate Milk asks. My legs hurt. My feet hurt. I’m tired beyond belief. But it could be a lot of fun. In my tired stupor, I take entirely too long to try to figure out whether I actually do want to play, and I don’t respond for several seconds. Chocolate Milk is just staring at me, waiting for a response. I realize how awkward I’ve made this now, which means I’m not thinking about whether I actually want to play frisbee, and now my brain is like a skipping record, unable to make any decision. “Was that a hard question?” Chocolate Milk laughs. It’s enough of a shove to get me unstuck. “Yeah— I mean no— I mean, yeah, let’s play,” I stammer. “Sorry, I’m just really tired.” “We can just do easy throws. No big deal.” Hoot makes dinner for the two of them while CM and I toss the aerobie frisbee back and forth on the top of this wide open pass. Whispy clouds are lighting up in unusual colors. We start out with easy, fairly close passes, but it doesn’t take long before we’re making long, heroic throws and running to capture stray throws before the frisbee gets away. My legs strain to run, but I also feel the muscles begin to loosen again, grateful to be released from the monotony of a one-size-fits-all stride. The light begins to wane, and I am captured by the enormity of the scene, the ridiculousness of playing our little human game atop a glorious mountain in the sunset. This is a moment I will remember as long as I live. Hoot comes to join us for a bit while he waits for their freeze-dried food to rehydrate. Now there’s a pause between each catch and throw, and I notice that my legs have started to limber up. I’m astonished that they can still run after 26 miles of hiking, but if anything, they feel better than they did before. We play frisbee until it’s almost too dark to see. I stay with Hoot and Chocolate Milk while they finish their dinner, and they tell me they’re only heading about 4 and a half more miles in the dark; do I want to come with? If they had asked me before frisbee, I would have told them no way—too sore, too tired. But now? I feel like I have more energy and my legs are ready to go. They lead the way, our headlamps bobbing in the dark, and I can barely keep up. They have a pace that is only 1% slower than a fast jog. Can we still consider this walking? I might not be able to keep up this pace over 4 and a half more miles. Still, I feel good. Between wheezy breaths, I manage to say “my legs haven’t felt this good all day!” “Yeah, me neither,” Hoot says. “I have a second wind.” Chocolate Milk chuckles under his breath. I’m never sure whether he’s laughing with us or at us. We wind around a great valley. Am I missing something beautiful? It has its own beauty, though, here in the dark. The dropoff is so sheer that it seems like there should be stars below me, too. The ones above are so bright and piercing that the blackness between them seems to glow. There is no feeling of freedom quite like hiking in the dark under crystal clear starlit skies. No feeling of humility quite like it, either. On nights in the city, stars often seem like pierced holes in a great dome. Out here there is no dome to wall us off from the universe. The stars are in three dimensions, and we are but one location way off in a distant corner. Mostly, though, I’m looking at the trail and willing my body to move faster than it believes is possible. I just want to keep up. Mid-stride, Hoot stops suddenly and Chocolate Milk and I almost crash into him. He backs up a step and scans the side of the trail. “I thought I saw something,” he says. We look with him and find where someone has written “1542” in rocks. We’ve seen one of these every hundred miles, and some other special places too, like at mile 1111, mile 1234.56, and of course, mile 420. But none of us can figure out what special significance mile 1542 might have. I suggest it might be placed there as a joke, simply to make people wonder why it’s there. No matter. We plow onward at the speedwalking pace Hoot enforces on us. Finally we come to a small wash where there is supposed to be a few campsites. We search around in the dark and finally find a couple near the rim of the valley. Hoot and Chocolate Milk both cowboy camp, but I set up my tent to keep off potential condensation. “Hey Zigzag, what time do you usually wake up?” asks Chocolate Milk. “5,” I reply, “But I think I’m going to push it back to 6 tomorrow.” It’s almost 10pm. “Make some noise when you get up.” August 26, 2016 Mile 1499.2-1512.3 13.1 Miles Note: I’ve had to change a few minor facts, due to the public nature of this blog. A savvy reader may be able to figure out what I’ve changed and why I’ve changed it. By 6:30 I can no longer sleep, so I sit up in bed and take care of some emails that have been piling up. Then I pay my credit card bills. It feels a little unfair, to be honest. Captain Ahab never had to pause and pay the bills when he was chasing Moby Dick. Jedediah Smith wasn’t plagued by emails when he was out exploring the western frontier. The problem with technology is that once people start to use it, everyone expects you to use it, too. After another shower, I check out and lug my pack up the road to get breakfast. It’s a 24-hour diner at the absolute edge of town. It looks like a giant silver bullet. I’ve always been curious why so many 50’s-style diners take this look. Did they used to make them out of Airstream trailers? The cook/waiter calls most of the patrons by name. It’s that sort of place. I order a breakfast burrito, then when I finish that, I get an omelette, too. I can’t quite make it through the hash browns that come with it, though. After breakfast I walk to the post office. It’s time to send some stuff home, and I have to mail Yogi Beer’s bear canister back to him like I promised. The stuff home takes me a while to pack. The hardest part isn’t fitting everything into the boxes, it’s making decisions. Will I really not want my umbrella anymore? Sure, I have rain gear, and I’ve mostly used the umbrella to keep off the sun, but I haven’t been in any torrential downpours yet and Washington is still ahead. I decide to mail it home anyway. There are five or six more difficult decisions; in almost every case I decide to send the item home. I really want to get lighter, and I know I can live with less. What’s more, I know I’ll be happier with less. I never would have believed it before I started this crazy trail, but despite all the pain, the hunger, the loneliness, the lack of conveniences, or perhaps because of them, I feel better about my life than I ever have, more secure and self-sufficient. I can see more clearly what parts are essential and what are not, what adds to my life and what does not. I can feel suffering in my feet and know that it is temporary, it will pass. Same with loneliness. My relationships are still important, but they no longer define me; I recognize their inherent intransitiveness. All of this from parting with a few items out of my backpack. I write Yogi Beer a note to thank him for the use of the canister and include my number. He will leave me a voicemail when I am still somewhere in Washington, and a few days later, when I need to make space on my phone to download more podcasts, I will delete a bunch of old voicemails and photos and only realize later that his was among them. I will never return his call. When his hometown of Paradise burns to the ground two years later and dozens of people die in the fire, I will think of him and hope dearly that he made it out alive. After the post office, I pop across the street to a grocery store for a few more supplies, then to a brewery for an early lunch. Yes, I’m already hungry again. After lunch I walk to the south end of town. A septuagenarian flags me from across the street, then crosses to me when I wave back. He’s carrying a brown lunch sack that looks stuffed to the seams. He holds it up and asks “do you want some pot for your hike?” I chuckle and tell him no thanks. I’ve heard this region of California is full of pot growers, but a seventy-year old man is not who I expected. He tells me to have a good hike and continues on his way. I start to hitch, and the first person to pass pulls over. It’s a big black truck with 4 people in the cab, so I hop in the back. There are hunting bows and other gear. The driver asks me to lie down when we get on the freeway so he doesn’t get a ticket. I do. We’re flying down the freeway when I suddenly see a sign on the other side of the freeway for the exit we needed. We’ve already passed it! Am I being kidnapped? What do I do now? I’m about to knock on the back window when he pulls off at the next exit. We come to a stop sign and he calls out the window “I missed the exit, sorry!” Oh good, not being kidnapped then. He drops me off at about 2pm and I’m on my way. It’s a hard uphill, but the dirt feels far better under my feet than the asphalt of the town, and I’m happy to be back to the solitude, the simplicity. Town is a nice treat, but it makes me a little crazy with all the talking to people and all the choices to make. The forest is thick on my climb, and so are the bugs. Little gnats so numerous that every few minutes one of them gets sucked into my airway and I go into a coughing fit trying to get it out. They seem to love my eyes, too, so I’m constantly batting them away. A couple times I hit myself in the face with my trekking poles. Still, it’s beautiful here. As I climb higher, the forest begins to thin and I start to get views of the granite spires above and the Trinity Divide to the west. These mountains have a violent geology like I haven’t seen since the Sierras. I’ve missed this drama. I pass Hoot and Chocolate Milk napping on the side of the trail. I don’t want to wake them, but I’m happy to see their familiar faces. I push on for a little longer before dinner, then a few more miles of uphill. It’s after dark when I set up my tent in a small clearing. I’m just drifting off when I hear talking and music coming up the trail. I rouse myself and look out the screen. By the time the headlamps come into view, I can recognize their voices. I call out to Hoot and Chocolate Milk when they get close; I think I may have startled them, but they come over and chat for a minute.
“We thought you were long gone by now.” “I stayed in town last night. Just got back this afternoon.” “A southbounder told us about an campsite about 4 miles from here that has an amazing view. We’re gonna try to head there.” I think they’re asking me if I want to join them. I do, but I’m tired and I don’t relish the idea of breaking down my tent and then putting it up again. Or hiking 4 more miles, to be honest. “Cool, maybe I’ll run into you guys tomorrow.” “Alright, have a good night.” I can trace the next mile of trail from the sound of their music and talking, which I can hear for another half hour. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but it’s easy to tell whose voice is whose. I’m amazed at how well sound travels here. A few hours later I’m awakened by something in the woods, close by. I shout at it and I can hear crashing sounds for several minutes as it runs down the mountain away from me. Probably just a deer, I try to convince myself. August 25, 2016 Mile 1474.9-1499.2 (+2 mile roadwalk) 26.3 (+2) miles It takes me twenty minutes to make the decision to get up and start moving. Lying here in my sleeping bag just feels so good, and it’s chilly outside. I don’t make a decision to stay in bed so much as I fail to decide to get up. The pressure of time lost and of the looming miles ahead of me builds up until a switch is flipped and it feels harder to stay in bed than to get up and hike. How many of our decisions are made this way, I wonder. There’s really no decision at all, just an ever-changing path of least resistance to which we ascribe choice after the fact. The morning uphill is wooded and pleasant. Whatever chill I felt before is quickly pushed back by the combustion engines in my warming muscles. I climb and listen to the quiet woods. Birds make relaxed calls across the distance to one another. Sunlight plays among the dust motes in thin stripes. Aside from one rushing creek, there is little spare water in this forest. There is no dampness, there are no muddy trails. No dewy ferns adorn the trail. But neither is it overly dry, like many of the northern California forests. Near the top of my climb stoic Shasta appears again. It’s only been a few days since I first saw it, but already the way that mountain stays put makes it seem like I’m on a treadmill. I zone out, listening to podcasts and thumping over miles. My feet are a little tender today; 30-mile days often do that. In the late morning, I encounter a southbound hiker. “How far is it to the green pipe gate?” he asks. “A half hour maybe? I honestly don’t remember how long ago I passed it.” I remember seeing it, but I’ve been so zoned out that I have no idea if it was five minutes ago or three hours ago. He thanks me anyway and we both cruise along. Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that when we sit in traffic, we imagine brakelights to be the eyes of the Buddha winking at us, reminding us to come back to the present moment. I’ve always loved that image. It’s time to come back to the present moment. This southbound hiker has buddha nature, and he has called my attention to my inattention, just like buddha’s brakelights. I turn off the podcasts and recommit myself to the breath as I walk. 100 mindful breaths. And then, because I am out of practice and struggle to focus, 100 more. I go through 5 cycles, losing the thread every time, but feeling better from the process. Next I focus on the tenderness of my feet. I have gained some new blisters in the last few days, and the long miles have taken their toll on my arches. It’s easier to avoid thinking about pain, but that’s part of the experience, too. I can be aware of it without complaining about it or trying to make it different. Just to experience life as it is, without judgment or resistance, that is the practice. I make another big climb and gain my first views of Castle Crags around noon. It’s a massive granite pluton that emerges from mountains otherwise blanketed in green, a mess of spiky turrets and jagged shark’s-teeth that seems out of place. California is endlessly surprising, endlessly fascinating. I check my map: ten miles until the interstate and my next resupply. Ten miles of downhill. I can do this. The soles of my feet start out tender, and the downhill pounding doesn’t help. Still, the forest is beautiful. Tall trunks widely spaced with a high, thick canopy above. It’s dark and quiet. Occasionally I can hear the sound of a small brook. This is the sort of forest I think they had in mind when they invented forest bathing. The air seems thick with peace, as if I can’t help but breathe it in and it will flow through my blood, permeate and soften my cells. Ten miles float by, punctuated by several stops to rest. I feel the dull pain of every downhill thump, but I’m also completely enamored with this forest. We are capacious creatures, I think, to hold both pain and pleasure, simultaneously and distinctly. I’m not sure I had the capacity to distinguish them before this hike, but the daily practice and my constant focus on internal states has grown this within me. When I finally reach the bottom I discover that my resupply is still two miles to the south along I-5, in the town of Castella. Just a simple hitch, I think. I remember what the police officer told me in Chester: hitchhiking is only illegal along the interstate. The problem is, there are no cars coming by this exit. After about twenty minutes, I decide to take my chances on the interstate.
There are far more cars up here, but they are speeding down a slope and it’s the interstate, so they’re already moving fast. Most of these cars are whipping by at 80 mph. There are also broad curves in the road, so by the time a car sees a hitchhiker, they would have to slam on the brakes to stop anywhere near me. I keep my thumb out, but I keep walking. It’s two miles to Castella, and I end up walking the entire way. The asphalt smarts with every step. By the time I get to Amarrati’s market, I’m hobbling. A picnic table is outside, with four hikers. Hoot and Chocolate Milk are among them. I can’t believe I’ve caught up to them after that 53-mile day. When I ask them about it, Hoot says they had to sleep most of the next day and barely got any miles done. They’re staying at a nearby campground. I should really join them, but I’ve been wishing for a hot shower and a good meal all day, so I’m gonna hitch up to Dunsmuir after I resupply and get a hotel room. Inside the market, which is a basic gas station convenience store, are great big stacks of resupply boxes, right in the middle of the floor. I find one of mine quickly, but I can’t find the other box, the one that contains my new shoes. The shoes I’m wearing have been a disaster—first they gouged out the tops of my feet, then the holes I cut in the tops to solve that problem started letting in rocks and dirt, now the arch support seems to be gone. If the new ones aren’t here, I’m going to be wearing these shoes until Ashland, Oregon. Not a happy thought. I ask one of the people working at the register if they have more boxes in the back. “No,” he says, “but let me help you get to some of those boxes at the bottom.” He does, and down near the bottom of a big stack, the name and address facing away from view, is my box. I am so relieved I could weep. I chat with the other hikers for a bit. It feels great to be around other hikers, people who understand what it feels like to be out hiking for days, and what it feels like to be back in town. There’s a sort of guilt-free pursuit of pleasure in town, an unfettered bacchanalia of gluttony and sloth. It would make us feel terrible if we did it all the time, but as disconnected points along an otherwise unbroken line of asceticism and effort it is exactly what we need. For a brief time the table is covered with bags of potato chips, bottles of beer, pints of ice cream, and candy wrappers. At the same time, we are not an ebullient group. I’ve heard the thru-hiker look described as a thousand-mile stare, and mostly our conversation is filled with these. Brief punctuations of conversation, followed by long stretches of silence. Our conversation muscles are atrophied, replaced by strong powers of reflective thought. Someone says something, someone else responds, then we all sit and think about it for a bit as the words echo around inside of us. The other hikers peel away one at a time, headed back to the campground, until I am the only one left. Dark is right around the corner and I decide not to hitch; I call a shuttle service based in Dunsmuir. At the hotel, the clerk tells me that he’s really not supposed to rent to hikers, but he’ll rent to me as long as I promise him that I won’t wash my gear in the bathtub and leave a mess. It’s a little offensive, but I can sort of understand. With a room secured, I continue my bacchanalia. I walk down to a liquor store for a couple of tallboys, order a pizza (which I demolish), and stay up until 11:30 watching reruns of the Simpsons. My cousin Natalie asked how it is that I read so much each year (43 books in 2019, which is down from average), and I thought I’d share in case other people are interested. I don’t think I’m a particularly fast reader. The average adult reading speed is about 250 words per minute, or 2 minutes per page. I usually read about 35 pages in an hour, so I’m a little faster, but not much. I think mostly I just spend a lot more time reading than most people. I would guess that the average reader spends 15-20 minutes a day. My best estimate is that I read about 45 minutes a day, more on the weekends. I’m also consistent about it. I probably skip a total of 2-3 days a year (and it makes me uncomfortable every time).
I recognize that we all have different priorities and values, and I don’t necessarily think everyone should read as much as I do, so keep that in mind if my advice starts to sound preachy. Sometimes, I think maybe I should spend less time reading too. There are downsides, like becoming a horrible know-it-all and forgetting how to communicate out loud. But on the whole, I love to read and I think it’s served me well over the years. When to read In the morning while eating breakfast—I think this is the primary reason I’m able to read so much. I’ve learned that if I don’t read in the morning, I don’t feel the urge to read for the rest of the day. But if I’ve started reading in the morning, it feels like an interruption to do anything else, and all I want to do is get back to reading. I developed the habit early: my parents didn’t allow us to watch TV before school, so I was either reading a book or the back of the cereal box, and the back of the cereal box gets boring in a hurry. Before bed—not every night, but when I do I always wake up more refreshed. I usually read from a book of wisdom from one of the major religions. Waiting time—In waiting rooms and on public transportation, when everyone else is staring at their phones, I’m reading a book. When I drive somewhere and get there early, I read a book. When my car breaks down and I have to wait for a tow-truck, I read a book. I carry a book with me almost all the time. Down time—Reading is my default activity. A lot of people clean their houses or play video games or text a friend or search the internet. I pick up a book. I’m not saying it’s a better choice—I have a messy house and I don’t talk to my friends often enough—but it’s my habit, and it definitely allows me to get a lot of reading done. Motivating yourself to spend more time reading -It seems obvious, but read stuff you’re actually interested in. -Start a tsundoku. Have several books lying around that you crave to read next. There’s a natural tension that develops when you see those books. It makes you want to finish the books you’re already reading so you can get to the next one. -Read many different books at once. Sometimes I think I’m going to be really interested in a book, but a different one captures my attention. Then I’ll come back to the first one and it’ll interest me more than it did the first time. There’s a natural ebb and flow to curiosity and interest, and I try not to force a book too much. I often dip in and out of a book several times, while finishing other books, and then suddenly something will click and I’ll finish it in a couple days. There’s also something magical about the connections you can make between two very different books. -The last half of a book is almost always easier to read than the first half, like I’ve climbed over a peak and now I’m cruising downhill. When I’ve got several books going at once, I’m usually close to finishing one, which will motivate me to come back to it more often. Some other stuff that I think helps, even if I don’t know why -I did once teach myself to speed read. I hated it. But it trained me to focus better and did make my regular reading a little faster. -Read books above your level from time to time. You get better at comprehending complex sentences and increase your vocabulary, so you’re less likely to zone out, lose focus, or need to go back and reread a passage. -Look up words you don’t know. Also look up the words you think you know. What’s the difference between the word the author used and the synonym that seemed like a more obvious choice? Get curious about etymology. It’ll slow you down in the short run, but over a period of years your knowledge starts to compound and reading becomes more interesting. -Read from a wide variety of subjects. You make more connections and you also understand more of what you read. Charlie Munger (Warren Buffet’s investing partner and one of the smartest dudes on the planet) says that we should learn the “freshman course” in all the major disciplines, because those provide the mental models that help us understand the world. I agree. -Read at least as often as you eat. On the rare occasion when I skip a day of reading, I find it much harder to get back into it and to stay focused. -Write or journal. You’ll get a better feel for language and start to pull more understanding out of your reading. I have a theory that it helps you predict what words are coming up, too, so you’ll read and comprehend a little faster. It’s also good therapy and helps stop negative rumination. -Avoid the recent bestseller lists like the plague unless you have a strong urge to read a particular book. Natural selection will weed out the crap over time, and you won’t waste your time on a sucky book. It’ll weed out some good stuff, too, but there’s already too much good stuff out there for one lifetime. So there’s my advice. I hope some of it resonates with somebody. Let me know if you ever want a book recommendation. August 24, 2016 Mile 1444.8-1474.9 30.1 Miles A note: Somewhere in the last couple posts, my mileages have stopped lining up with Guthook’s mileages. I think that’s due to a change in the trail between 2016 and now, or perhaps new surveying has changed the mileages. Whatever the reason, if you’re looking for these places on a map, they are off by about 3 miles. A “late” morning. I’m up at 6. The clearing, which I had entered in the dark, is smaller than I had thought. It is grassy, with a few cut logs providing seating and boundaries to the campsites here. The grass is long and dewy, and soaks my pant legs when I go to fill my water bottles. The couple camped nearby is just waking up when I come back. We chat for a bit and laugh about the girl’s exclamation last night (“Get out of here, you fucker!”). She’s a little embarrassed; she didn’t realize there was someone else camped nearby. They are friendly and headed northbound, so I consider waiting and hiking with them for the company, but they’re section hiking and not doing as many miles, so I would lose them in a hurry anyway. I have started examining everyone as a potential hiking partner. It’s not that I need to be around someone all day; in fact, I’d probably prefer to spend most of my time hiking alone, but it would be nice to have a little company now and then, to break up the monotony of my own thoughts. Another uphill to start the day. It happens more often than not. I have some clear views of Shasta and the basin around it as I climb. It’s a bright sunny morning, my spirits are high, and I’m charging up these slopes easily. A hiker appears ahead of me, headed the same direction. When I catch up, we both break to chat and catch our breath. His name is Roadside. He’s a bigger guy, with dark skin, a scraggly beard, and thick glasses. We trade bear stories—one was circling his tent the other night and he didn’t realize it until he woke up the next morning and saw the footprints. He’s a nice guy and seems as happy to see another Northbounder as I am. I’m hoping he’s fast enough that we’ll see each other again, and maybe have some more conversations. For now, though, I power my way uphill while he keeps resting. The ridge line is open to both sides. The trail weaves in and out along it; on one side is a view of Shasta and the surrounding basin, on the other, folds of mountains extending into a distant haze. Hunger gnaws at me enough to catch my attention and I look for a place to stop. It’s a glorious spot that I find—sunny, perched on a rock outcrop a little off-trail, views all the way to Lassen, with an enormous river valley and open air below me. I sit cross-legged on dark granite and cook my oatmeal. Roadside comes up a little while later and sets up nearby on the trail. It’s an enjoyable conversation. I had him pegged for Latino because of his darker skin, but it turns out he’s a Native American living in Canada. He used to work as a truck driver, moving tractors and other large equipment between sites, but he was recently laid off and decided to use the time to do the PCT. He likes the trail, but he admits he’s struggling with the solitude. I know the feeling. I pack up. “Great talking with you, Roadside. Hope we meet again.” “Yeah, you too Zigzag.” He’s still eating his breakfast. The next section of trail surprises me: chapparal and scrub oak. The mountain ridge turns south and the trail follows, lots of short ups and downs without a lot of big elevation change. I’m flying this morning, miles whizzing by. Then, before I even notice, I’m on a long, steady, endless downhill. It’s so constant that the soles of my feet begin to hurt. After months of hiking, it’s a rare event that can still make the soles of my feet hurt. A couple of friendly section SOBO hikers stop briefly to chat with me about halfway down, and then I see no one for hours. The chaparral has given way to oak, pine, and now, giant redwood groves. I can see glimpses of clear blue sky and sunlight way above, but the redwood canopy is so thick that it feels like dusk. Some of the rotten tree roots and ant colonies have been dug out of the slope, probably by a bear. Occasionally I hear something crashing around just out of sight, and I am regularly on edge, but I never catch a glimpse of anything, only deep, fern-covered valleys and redwood trunks holding the steep slopes together. For some reason the deep shade feels lonelier than open sunlight, even though I’m just as alone both places.
As I check my map, I notice there’s a parking area below. Maybe there will be someone to talk to when I get there. Maybe they’ll even have food, or sodas. Mostly, though, I just want someone to talk with. I hold this hope in my heart for a long time, long enough that it begins to seem like a certainty. Of course there will be someone there. The trail provides, right? And what I need most of all right now is someone to talk with, to make me feel like the world is more than just the thoughts in my head. I reach the parking lot in the early evening, and it is completely empty. Not a single person, not even a single car to give me hope that I might run into a dayhiker. I am dejected. The Buddha’s second noble truth: the root of all suffering is craving, aversion, and delusion. I am suffering from all three, and badly. Craving company, aversive to the experience of solitude, deluded by my expectations to find people here. I can’t say why this suffering affects me so badly today. I’ve been alone for a long time, and at times it is quite pleasant. For some reason—or perhaps for no reason at all—I just feel a craving to be seen, to be acknowledged as a person. All these temporary friendships give temporary relief, but what I really want is to be remembered, to create lasting bonds that will outlive my presence on this earth. I am unsettled by a feeling of groundlessness, and I am confronted in every thought by the impermanence of my own mind. Moods, desires, thoughts, emotions; each one arises for a time, then eventually falls away, pushed aside by some new experience. For three or four days I have been completely excited about some new career path I’m going to follow after the PCT, then I’ve become disillusioned with the idea and search around for something else. Hell, even my physical pain, as real an experience as I can have, goes through these cycles. What part of all this is me? If I can’t even pin down who I am, how the hell can I expect to leave a lasting impression on anyone else? I sit for a while next to the bridge, eating snacks and hoping that someone else will arrive, but I no longer believe that they will. Eventually that hope passes too. I do the only things I can do. I fill up my water, I let go of my expectations, and I hike. August 23, 2016 Mile 1416.5-1444.8 28.3 Miles Loamy soil, augmented with decomposed pine needles, makes for a warm, soft bed. Some dirt just feels better. I don’t want to get up, but our conversation last night touched on how many miles are left, and how little time, so I need to do another big day. I pack up in the pre-dawn light, which is softened by the tall pine canopy. Habit is stirs and starts to pack up just as I finish. We wish each other well, quietly so as not to wake the sleeping siblings. On the way out I stop to photograph Burney Falls. It really is spectacular. Water spills from a split channel at the top and hundreds of smaller waterfalls pour out of the cliff walls themselves, as if from a colander. According to a nearby sign, the water seeps down to an impermeable layer of stone. It travels there underground until it reaches these cliffs, where it finally releases into the air in a dramatic spectacle. The world is strange and wonderful. The morning starts with a big climb. I hike for about an hour, then stop to make breakfast in a pine forest. It’s all been pine forest this morning. Some rustling startles me, but it is only a doe and her fawn. I eat my oatmeal and silently watch them graze. If they notice my presence, they show no sign of it. I have a stillness to me, I realize, that I could never have managed a few months ago. The trail has tamed my impatience, my constant craving for something to happen. In this moment I have no desire to be entertained; I have no need for status; I am not scurrying toward a goal or avoiding something unpleasant. In fact, I do feel a small ache in the way I am sitting, but I don’t feel a particular hurry to fix it. It will resolve itself eventually. I just notice the discomfort and acknowledge it. Watching them wander and pick among the grasses, I am surprised to notice that I don’t feel a sense of unity or a shared brotherhood. I am watcher and they are watched—there is a clear hierarchy of power here, and I could startle them away at a whim. Yet nor do I feel that they are here simply for my enjoyment. They have intrinsic worth that has nothing to do with me or any other human, and my power over them does nothing to change that. If anything it ties me more powerfully to them, for my power comes with a responsibility to them and to the ecology that makes their lives possible. To treat them extractively, as something for human enjoyment, is a great sin. But to deny the existence of a differential in power effectively shirks responsibility and soothes us into complacence as those who with no compunction about their greater power—and who erroneously believe that power gives them greater worth—would extract economic gains from the forests, hills, and rivers without regard to the lives contained within. I finish my breakfast and leave the deer behind. The last bit of rise is over quickly and I begin the descent to the Pit 3 Dam at Lake Britton. Water jets out of a massive pipe below the dam, then settles to become a slow river that flows down the gorge, where it wanders between layers of mountains carpeted in a dark green. Eventually the river will find its way to Shasta Lake, and from there it will either be diverted for irrigation or join with the Sacramento river to make a long trip down to San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. This is knowledge that will come later, though. Right now all I know is that the noisy, violent force of the hydroelectric dam seems at odds with the calm power of the river. It is an opposition that one can intuit even without knowledge of the Salmon population that has been decimated, or the marshland habitats that are being poisoned by the ocean marching inward at Suisun bay, hundreds of miles south, no longer opposed by the freshwater flows from this and other tributaries of the Sacramento River. After the dam, another steep climb through the forest. Up and down, winding, meandering. The miles pass. The hours too. There are logging roads and sections of razed land, a sort of patchwork forest. One moment I am in deep forest, another in full sunlight with toppled logs and other organic wreckage scattered about. I turn a slope and a monolithic white mountain explodes into view, far closer and larger than I could have imagined. Shasta! It is a boost to the spirit, a tangible sign of progress. The late afternoon is easier, with occasional glimpses of Shasta. As the sun approaches the horizon I make plans for camping. There’s a campsite just past mile 1440. It’s close to water and it’ll make for a 24-mile day. Not a big day, but good enough. I’m approaching the campsite just after sunset when I hear big cracking sounds off to my right. I freeze and look up at a ridge about 70 yards away. At first there’s nothing except the noise. Then a bear crests the ridge, running full speed, parallel to the trail. I watch wide-eyed in awe and fear for a moment before it turns downhill, straight toward me.
Terror. Paralysis. I do the only feeble thing I can think of. I plant my feet in a lunge and lift my trekking poles like bull’s horns in front of me. They are certain to snap at the first impact of the bear, but what else can I do? It closes the distance. Forty yards away now. Thirty. Twenty. I shout. “Hey! Get out of here!” And improbably, the bear changes course. It runs past me, so close I could throw one of my poles and have some chance of hitting it—but of course I’m much too scared for such a stupid show of bravado. It continues running, past me and down over a steep slope. I wait until the crashing sounds have receded and then I try to call Lindsey. I need someone to acknowledge the crazy thing that just happened. Miraculously, I have cell phone service. “I just got charged by a bear.” “What?!” I tell her the whole story. When I get done, she’s silent for several seconds. “Did you have to tell me?” she says. “What?” “Now I have to sit here at home worrying about you all by yourself out there,” she says. Oh. I guess I didn’t think about that. “Sorry. I’m sure it’s gone now. I’ll be fine.” But I know she’ll be worried anyway. “Be safe out there,” she pleads. I assure her I will. After we hang up, I think again about camping. Not here, I think. I’m sure the bear is gone, but that doesn’t mean I want to stick around for it to come back. Besides, I’m too shaken to just make dinner and go to bed. I decide to make dinner, then hike until I can find someone else to camp with. It gets dark almost immediately after dinner. I’m a little nervous at first, but somehow it seems less frightening than camping by myself. It starts to feel more comfortable after a few minutes. The dark tunnel in the trees is comforting, like a cocoon. I know that things out there can come crashing into the beam of my light at any time, but it seems like as long as I keep making noise and moving, everything will only want to avoid me. If I were lying in my sleeping bag I would be imagining bears and mountain lions at the rustle of every squirrel and bird, but out here I can see some of what’s around me, even if it’s confined to the narrow beam of my weak-ass headlamp. An hour goes by with no sign of people. Adrenaline fatigue is starting to set in, on top of the natural fatigue that comes from hiking twenty-plus-mile days. I decide that I’ll camp by myself if I don’t see anyone by the time I reach the spring ahead. Lucky for me, there is a tent at the spring. A light shines out from it as I come into the clearing. “Just a hiker,” I say. “I’m gonna camp over there.” The light goes out. I set up my tent, relieved for safety in numbers, and climb into my sleeping bag. The second my head hits my inflatable pillow, I hear rustling near the other tent. A woman’s voice shouts “Get out of here, you fucker!” Shit, I think. A bear. I don’t want to deal with another bear. “What is it, a bear?” I ask. The woman yelps. The man responds “no, just a mouse.” Just a mouse. I settle back down and fall quickly asleep. August 22, 2016 Mile 1394.3-1416.5 22.2 Miles My sleep is deep and restful. I wake before sunrise to a stillness in the world that reflects a stillness inside. I am not completely devoid of thoughts, but they are clear and separated by space for perception. The normal churning of emotion and monologue has disappeared. It feels as if a haze has evaporated. I pack up in relative silence, taking in the feel of the fabrics and the smell of the warm morning. I hold on to the stillness as I begin to hike. No podcast this morning; it feels like a distraction. I have no particular place I want to lead my thoughts, I’d just like to hold on to this stillness for a bit before it inevitably leaves me again. My attention rests on the trail ahead of me and the view off the lip to my left. The path is rockier today, big sharp lava rocks that I can only imagine are connected to larger flows just under the dirt. Is this all from Mt. Lassen? Was it just the most recent eruption, or has this landscape been here longer? The massive river valley to my left could not have been carved out in the past hundred years; perhaps this lava is an overlay on a more ancient valley, a thin layer of icing. More likely these are older flows, I think, and Lassen’s most recent flows are elsewhere. The floor of the valley slowly rises to meet the descending lip and the trail cuts across to the west. I clamber over a crowded desert landscape jumbled with rocks and spiky plants. Something in my peripheral vision cuts through an increasingly noisy mind. I back up a few steps and scan the ground next to the trail. There. Someone has arranged small lava rocks into numbers. 1400. I’ve reached the 1400-mile marker. Only 1250 miles to go. I celebrate silently, but with no one around to share my celebration, there’s not much else to do but continue hiking. The floor of the valley is even more desert-like than the rim was—yucca, creosote, and small cacti are scattered in a tepia landscape. I start to notice boredom tugging at me. It feels like an itch or a hunger, it makes me want to check my phone. Perhaps all that boredom is, that craving for a dopamine hit. The buddha says that there are three dangers that keep us from enlightenment: craving, aversion, and delusion. I’ve always thought of boredom as aversion, but it feels more like craving right now. Craving someone to talk to, something to entertain me. The craving is understandable and I can hold it without judgment; what’s surprising to me is the clarity with which I see it. I’m not lost in the craving. It’s strong and persistent, but I am in a wider space in which I can examine the boredom like an object and choose to act or not to act. I let it pull at me for a long while and I study it with a fascination that does little to lessen the strong need I feel. Finally I feed the craving. I sit on the floor of the desert in the shade of a tall bush and turn on my phone. There is service here, so I find a music video on youtube and watch it, noticing the arousal of dopamine like watching the wind blow through a valley. When I get done with the first video I want to watch another, but I refuse to be taken in by my own craving. I decide to sit and notice whether the craving feels any different. It does, but not how I expect. It is less potent now, duller, but it seems to have spread farther out and permeated different parts of my mind. It’s easy to see how we sell out our free will to this subtle, sneaky force. It’s turned from the force of a wave into the force of the current. Luckily, I know a trick to keep me from succumbing to the current. I get up and walk away. I don’t leave the cravings behind entirely, but walking lets me watch them without falling into their trap. A car drives by. Strange. I had thought I was far in the wilderness, far from roads. I’m not sure if this makes me feel like I’m no longer in the wilderness. I’ve always been fascinated by subject/ground juxtapositions, like in some M.C. Escher drawings. Is the wilderness or the civilization the ground? I think in our regular lives we assume that the civilized world is the reality—we go to the wilderness as a vacation from the busyness of civilized life. Out here, though, after nearly three months of wilderness walking, I am starting to see the wilderness as the reality of life, and civilization as an artificial exception. The road doesn’t make this wilderness any less wild, and eventually the wild will reclaim this narrow strip, in a hundred years or a hundred thousand. It’s comforting, in its way. I hike for a long while, and eventually plug in a podcast again. Before I realize it, the terrain has turned green and pastoral. Strange, I didn’t notice this happening. A river flows here and pine trees frame a meadow. I am crossing over water on large stones and I find myself among buildings—the Baum lake powerhouse. There are lakes and oak trees about, and I am so lost in the sudden change in beauty that I make a wrong turn. It’s only a brief detour, and then I am back into dry forest and yellow grasses. A picnic table with coolers and umbrellas—trail magic! There are red vines and sodas—stale and warm, respectively, but I’m not choosy. I sit and chew my way through a handful of red vines while I read a trail journal and the heavily graffitied table. I find Chocolate Milk and Hoot in the journal only two entries ahead of me. I can tell Milk wrote the entry because of the audacious bravado. Apparently they night-hiked through Hat Creek Rim and did 53 miles in 24 hours! Impressive. I can’t imagine how badly my joints would hurt after that.
The woods thicken and I struggle to keep myself going through the last few miles before Burney Falls State Park, but the promise of food and beer are always good to pull me through the lowest of slumps. I guess craving is good for something after all. When I arrive, I’m a little worried that the store will be closed, so I hurry over without taking a picture of the spectacular falls. It turns out I have plenty of time, and I pick up my resupply, a beer, ice cream, and potato chips. Another hiker gets his resupply shortly after me and joins me at the table. His name is Habit and he’s a southbounder. He tells me outlandish and hilarious stories, including one where an older lady gives him a hitch and then throws herself at him. We walk together down to the backpackers campground and continue chatting with the brother and sister, northbound section hikers who are already camped there. The four of us stay up until hiker midnight (about 9pm) chatting easily until we’re all too tired and retire to our tents. |
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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