September 16, 2016 Mile 2030.4-2062.1 31.7 Miles The rock under my foot turns and I curse and stumble uphill. This is at least the fourth time in the last five minutes. Roadside is muttering behind me and making his own rocky ruckus. Our depth perception is erased by the dim white of our headlamps and we cannot seem to find our footing in the dark this morning. To make matters worse, I’ve left my Arc’teryx down puffy on. It seemed like a good idea in the chilly damp morning, but now it seems like the height of stupidity—I’m doing a high-intensity lower-body and core workout, and I’m wearing a down jacket? It feels like a damned sauna. Whose idiotic idea was it to climb this messy trail at five in the morning? I’m angry at the world, roasting but too stubborn to stop, hungry but too stubborn to eat. And I have a headache. I finally stop to take off my jacket and my headlamp a little while after it gets light enough to see. When I turn around to see how far back Roadside is, Mt. Jefferson steals my attention. It has a halo of clouds, bright pinks and oranges trailing over the peak and brightly lit in sunlight that hasn’t quite reached the mountain itself yet. The snowfields on the barren northern and western slopes give the mountain a regal profile. I stand and stare for a moment while Roadside huffs up the last few yards to join me. Then I take out my phone to snap a picture. My phone is an iPhone 6SE, built small like the 5 and previous models, but with the same features as the 6 which just came out last year. I got it because it’s small and lightweight (every ounce counts when you’re doing 25+ mile days), but it still has a good camera. At least that’s what I was told. The pictures never do justice to the beauty of nature. The landscapes are too small, the zoom is too weak, the colors are always dull or washed out. That may be less an indictment of the phone than of my photographic skill, but even more I think it says something about trying to capture moments in general. Photographs, writing, memories—none of these can take the place of direct experience. All the more reason for us to practice staying present in the moment and enjoy it while it lasts. We stop every few minutes for the rest of our climb to enjoy the changing view of incandescent snowfields and glowing rock. The sky is an electric blue canvas. The mountain hums and buzzes with light like a neon sign. We top out at 6891ft at 7:08am, two facts that I feel required to note and that signify nothing. I might as well measure a smell or time a flavor. Civil habits die hard. To the north, a new view opens before us. Mount Hood, and faintly in the distance, Mount Saint Helens and Mount Adams, are arrayed to remind us how large this land is. The sky is nearly cloudless and the early morning sun illuminates the eastern flank of Mount Hood like greek marble. Layers of ridges fold and sweep across the land in bold strokes. I am going to walk all of this, I think, and beyond. Those hidden valleys, the waterfalls that I can only imagine, the ridges and changing light—I get to experience it all. I’m so overawed that I don’t even notice that my bad mood has completely evaporated. The descent is equally rocky, but now that it is light out, the obstacles are easy to avoid. Side trails and game trails criss-cross the PCT like stitches. The land passes quickly now. Rocky tundra gives way to forest and meadow, turquoise lakes float by in idyllic dreams. We zip along in quiet contemplation. A short side trail leads to Olallie Lake, where there’s a small store. We stop and look for lunch. Doritos, Oreos, ice cream, beer. There’s nothing that could be considered an actual meal at the store, so I’ll have to supplement what they have with food from my own supply. We check out and talk with the friendly shop owner for a bit. I’m curious how far away civilization, that sliding scale, is from here. He tells me an hour and a half, but I don’t know if that’s the nearest small town, big city, or something in between. Roadside and I go sit in wood chairs on the porch in front of the store, looking down at a small dock with several rowboats and out across the lake at the snow-flanked Mount Jefferson. The direction of the light and a gentle breeze keep the reflection off the water, but it’s still a memorable view, an archetype of sorts that will stick with me for years. A backpacker in his late twenties with long dreadlocks comes up the steps and we greet him. He gets some food from inside and sits on the patio with us. “Where are you from?” I ask. “I’ve been hiking for the last four years.” There’s something both exciting and frightening about the idea. I love the time I spend out here, but four years away from a community seems like it would damage me. I need solitude, but I also need society. “Where do you go in the winter?” I ask. “South,” he answers. It’s the most obvious answer in the world, but it’s not quite what I was asking. “No, I mean what trails do you go to?” “It’s different every year.” He doesn’t seem to be interested in talking about it. I ask him the other question that comes to mind. “What do you do for money?” “I have an income.” He says it with a touch of contempt on his face. I decide not to ask him anything else. If he wanted to share, he’d share. Our conversation is over. He says nothing else, and neither do we. Roadside and I finish our beers and head over to the picnic tables to cook our lunches. A few more hikers come and go, one and two at a time. We have short conversations with each of them, but mostly it’s just the two of us eating our lunch quietly. The afternoon takes us back into the tunnel of trees. Aside from a few scattered lakes and a clearing for power lines, we stay in the tunnel until evening. Once, as we pass over a rise, we can see Mt. Hood’s white bulk before us. But then we’re back into the trees. We finally reach our goal at Warm Springs Creek a little after seven p.m. There are several small campsites between the trees, zoned off from one another by fallen logs. Each is just big enough for a single tent.
There is a campfire going, with three people around it. I think it’s the first campfire I’ve seen since the Sierra. After we get unpacked, I tell Roadside I’m going to see if they’ll let me join them. Roadside says he’s just going to finish his dinner and go to bed. He’s not even cooking a hot meal. We’ve done nearly 32 miles today. The campers are friendly. Two of them are from Korea and the third is an American. The Koreans are a couple in their twenties. The girl is a little difficult to understand, but they are friendly and welcoming. After dinner it’s hard to walk away from the fire and their company, back into the dark woods
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September 15, 2016 Mile 2002.4-2030.4 28 Miles I peel off my longjohns in the dark. They are dry, but somehow sticky with sweat nonetheless. The cool air on my bare skin doesn’t phase me—the muscle tension I’m used to feeling when I change from sleep clothes to hiking clothes is no longer present. I don’t resist the cold, and therefore it doesn’t affect me. Much. We pack up in silence, as usual. We aren’t disturbing anyone, as there is no one around to disturb, but it seems better not to speak. Speaking would disrupt this ritual. Only after we have completed our tasks do we dare to venture a word. A time for packing up, a time for speaking. Each action in its place. Mixing actions leads to a lack of attention, and thus, confusion. The act of packing up is almost sacred, at least between us. Other hikers may have other rituals, but this is ours, and to me it seems good. We pass a tent early on. “Is that King Arthur’s tent?” Roadside asks. I think it is. The early morning climb goes quickly, and we have our ten miles in before I’m even fully awake. We stop for breakfast at a low col in the mountain, cool but windless. It’s a misty morning, and I can see the haze beginning to lift from the ridges and trees. It’s faintly purple, and naturally I start to hum Jimi Hendrix. We have an unobstructed view of Mount Jefferson before us, as well as an unobstructed view of the trail, many miles ahead. Some of the forest is burnt, some looks healthy. We will alternate between the two all day. I make myself a cup of coffee with breakfast and though it gets cold quickly, it is such a welcome treat this morning that I pour myself entirely into the experience of tasting it and feeling its warmth. In truth, I feel that I’ve never been as present for a cup of coffee as I am now. It’s instant coffee, and the mere fact of my attention makes it more enjoyable than the hundreds of cups of designer coffee I’ve had in the past. I can tell it’s lower quality, but how many cups of great coffee have I ignored past the first sip? How many cups have I discovered empty, with no memory of drinking them, disappointed and wishing I could go back in time to pay closer attention to each sip? We are stopped again a short time later, gathering water from a pond. The surrounding forest has been decimated by fire within the last year or two, tall toothpicks in the mud. I pump water and then sit on a fallen log to wait for Roadside to finish pumping his. The pond is still and perfectly reflects the wasteland and the hazy sky. A doe and her fawn are foraging for food across the way. It is another peaceful moment that I greet with full presence. Why this calm, meditative state today? Some days I am so much more present than others. I’d like to hold onto this all the time—what makes the difference? Is it a particular type of landscape, a food that I eat, the speed that I walk, or the temperature? I can bring it to mind with a conscious choice at times, but that is always short-lived. On the other hand, the more I consciously bring my attention, the more often and easily this state seems to arise. We continue along ridges, following a meandering path toward Mt. Jefferson. Where the forest has begun to regrow foliage, I notice that autumn colors are beginning to pop through in bright reds and yellows. It’s a good reminder that we need to hurry to the border. The nights will only get colder, and we could have an early snowstorm any time now. Lunch is at a spot marked on the map as a lookout. There’s a good view of Mt. Jefferson here, but not much more than we’ve seen most of the morning. It’s a little cold still, so I sit in the sun. A short while later I have to move to get warm again because the shade of a tree has taken over my picnic site. When I have to move again, it feels like a little nudge reminding me that I’m on a planet that is turning in relation to the sun. I look around and take in all of the planet that I can see. I don’t know why that feels so different from before. The planet is the same as it was before, but my perception is different. Why don’t I experience the world like this all the time? It feels so much better to recognize my smallness in this great expanse of planet than to pretend like my little day-to-day concerns matter. It is almost like I can see myself from the sky, a tiny dot in a massive world. I wonder momentarily whether Roadside has ever had a similar experience, whether this is something that has arisen naturally from walking the land and spending all our time outside, or something specific to my own psyche and experience, but it seems like it would spoil my own perception to describe to him what I’m feeling. When we pack up and head on, I remain in a contemplative state. I watch the world slowly pass by under my feet. I watch lakes down below me and I imagine that I can see them collecting and draining water bit by bit as the living systems that they are and not as the static puddles that they appear to be. I watch creeks as they pass through the trail, carrying glacial runoff away to the sea, where they will evaporate, collect, and return to the snowcaps that I can see atop this mountain. I trace out my life, first like a string across the length of this trail, then further, piling up like yarn in the different places where I’ve lived and will live, until I reach the ends of the yarn and it starts to decompose and sink back into the earth. I see other yarn, tangled and braided with my yarn for long and short spans, and tangled and braided with other yarns in different states of decomposition until I finally see it: my life is not my own, and my home is not a place on the planet. I am intertwined so deeply with people, with culture, with systems of life that the only possible home I can call my own is the earth, all of it. The cities and the borders and the walls, they’re all a lie that obscure this simple fact—I am part of a system, and that system depends on every other part of the system, the living and the dead, the self and the other. There is no other, it is all my self. Equally, I reason, there is no self, at least not independently. What, then, to do about this story of self I carry around with me? Is that simply a set of cultural habits, or instincts, or is it something deeper? Is it something I can let go of? I decide to chew over what I’ve discovered so far rather than dig any deeper. I’ve left Roadside behind again. I descend into a canyon of glacial runoff, steep gravelly slopes scoured by fast flowing water. Some of the bushes and shrubs are splashed with crimson leaves, another reminder that winter isn’t far behind. At the creek, a man sits smoking pot out of a glass pipe. I stop to fill up my water, and Roadside joins us a minute later. The man is in his thirties, with hair buzzed short and a wide smile. He tells us he’s making his third attempt to climb Mt. Jefferson. The first time he ended up off-route and had to head back before it got dark, and the second time he got stopped by the weather. He’s trying a different route this time, and he thinks he’s going to make it this time. We wish each other good luck, and then Roadside and I charge up a steep hill. The climb is challenging, but it feels good. Everything feels good. The chill air, the smell of pine trees, the way my body pumps blood and radiates heat. Mount Jefferson feels like a friend. The late afternoon passes easily. We find a campsite in Jefferson Park, close to a swollen creek that rushes noisily through a grassy basin. The area reminds me of alpine meadows in the Sierra, peaceful and relaxing. We can see the peak from here, lit up with a bright pink alpenglow as we make our dinner. I wonder whether our friend will make it up there tomorrow. There are a few other hikers camped nearby. The whole area feels so safe and relaxed, and the rushing creek lulls me into a deep, comfortable sleep.
September 14, 2016 Mile 1981.2-2002.4 21.2 Miles Last night we called a trail angel in the area to see if we could get a ride back to the trail. She wanted to pick us up early, so we got breakfast at a small bakery-cafe close to the hotel, and now we’re in her little Toyota, riding back up hairpin curves to the Dee Wright Observatory. Her name is Blanche, and she is 72 years old. “My children don’t like it when I go out backpacking for three weeks at a time,” she says. “They think I’m going to get hurt. But I tell them I’d rather be living and hurt then sitting at home watching TV.” This woman is awesome. “I’ve hiked most of the Oregon part of the PCT,” she continues, “I’d like to do some of California next, but I probably won’t finish the whole thing. But who knows. I think hiking keeps me healthy. I think I’ve got a lot of years left.” I used to direct church choirs full of grandmothers, and I’m no stranger to the unexpected force of old ladies, especially the little ones, but this woman is at a completely different level. She probably only stands about five foot two, but you can feel the confidence and power emanating from her. She’s as nice as can be, but something tells me this is not a woman you want to underestimate or—god forbid—piss off. When she drops us off at the trail, I wish we had more time to hear her stories. I want her to adopt me as her grandson and teach me how to live. It seems so abrupt, going from lively conversation to this rugged, silent moonscape. When her little car gets turned around and drives off, the last sounds of civilization fade with her gurgling engine and we’re left with no sounds but wind and the crunch of the gravel under our feet. We take a second to get our packs situated, then we walk out into the ocean of lava rock. The trail is in a channel of the stuff, and often we can’t see beyond an arm’s reach to either side. Only occasionally do we climb out of the channel and get a view of the lava fields. After a mile or two, we do finally climb out of the channel. We’ve been climbing gradually uphill. Every once in a while we’ll pass an island of dirt and trees. They look like they would be the only possibility of a campsite in this ten-mile stretch of sharp lava, though I can’t see any impacted ground from where we’re standing. My ankles are exhausted at the end of the second mile. By the fourth, they’re burning. My brain is tired, too. I have to focus on every step, so I don’t step wrong and twist an ankle. Even so, sometimes my trailing foot catches a sharp rock and flips it up against my other ankle. This is a special hiker hell. A side trail goes a short way to a cinder cone, but I have no interest in spending more time on this terrain. I push on. Finally I reach soft, blessed dirt, and I’ve never been so grateful. As far as I know, the Buddha didn’t have much to say about gratitude, but it seems to me to be the exact opposite of craving. Metta, what is often called loving-kindness in the west, has a similar effect—it melts craving away. When I hear self-help gurus talk about the importance of gratitude it can feel disingenuous, especially when paired with words like “manifest” or “abundance”. Gratitude for the sake of manifesting more into your life is a complete sham. At its core it’s just another form of craving, and so it’s not really gratitude at all. Not to mention that it’s all bullshit. As I hike on this softer ground, I start to wonder whether what I feel is actually gratitude, or just relief. Real gratitude: this feeling of aliveness and peace that I feel when I am outside, even when lava rock is straining and stabbing my ankles. Perhaps gratitude is the wrong word altogether. Maybe the Buddha had it right—I feel loving and kind toward everything and everyone when I’m out here. I feel expansive. This is true abundance, though I carry almost nothing with me. The ground is soft, but the forest has been decimated by a fire. Dead trees are everywhere, scarred and scattered like an army in some terrible battle. But there is life, too. Small saplings emerge from between the fallen soldiers. Garlands of flowers adorn their bodies. The wind has disappeared without my noticing, and the sun is beginning to beat down. I’m taking it all in when a naked man walks around a turn in the trail. He sees me, quickly takes off his straw hat, and covers himself with it. “How’s your hike?” he asks as he passes by. “Not as good as yours,” I laugh. I decide to plug in to some music: Sufjan Stevens’ electropop album The Age of Adz. It’s one of my all-time favorites, a trance-inducing, intimate hero’s journey based on the apocalyptic artwork of a schizophrenic man. Stevens’ mother was schizophrenic, and you can hear raw anger, pleading, and tenderness throughout the album as he reflects on that. The album makes heavy use of synthesizer, treats the autotune like an instrument in its own right, and layers minimalist structures so deeply that you can listen to the album a hundred times and still hear something new every time. And I’ve never listened to it like this. There is nothing to distract me out here, and I can turn my full attention to the music. Unlike most times when I listen on the trail, I decide to use both earbuds—I haven’t seen a rattlesnake in weeks, and the music is in stereo, which demands both ears. From the first song, I realize what a mistake it is that I’ve never listened to this with headphones before. The trail crosses a paved road. There are quite a lot of cars coming through here; I can see why the map said we should use this road to hitch into Sisters. On the other side, there is a parking area with picnic tables and pit toilets. I stop for lunch and to let Roadside catch up. It feels nice to sit, I’ve been low energy this afternoon. After lunch, we start an uphill climb. My energy is better, and I enjoyed the first listen of Age of Adz so much that I decide to listen again. The forest is still decimated by fire, but there are even more wildflowers—purples and pinks and yellows clustered in perfect little bouquets. We pass the 2000-mile marker. Only 650 miles to go! I find a campsite about 6, and Roadside is right behind. As we sit crosslegged on the ground, scraping dinner out of our pots, I decide it’s time to learn a little more about my hiking partner.
“Tell me about your family.” “Okay, well, I never really knew my dad, and my mom died when I was twenty.” I’m stunned. “Oh wow,” I say. “That must have been so hard.” “You do what you have to do,” he says. I have no idea what that means. I don’t ask, and he doesn’t offer any more. I go in a different direction and we talk about lighter things. Music, tv, things that don’t take too much effort and don’t expose wounds. Somehow we get around to pot, and it comes up that I was born on 4/20. Then, for the first time since I’ve known him, he offers a piece of information about himself without being asked: “I was born on December 25th.” It’s curious, the way he says December 25th instead of Christmas. But I quickly move past that and wonder how a birthday on Christmas day affects someone’s self-image. Does that make him feel special or overlooked? Or is it all the same to him? I respond with acknowledgement but nothing more to offer, and then we sit there in silence for a minute. “Okay, I’m going to bed,” he says. “Sounds good. 5:30?” “Yeah.” “Okay, good night.” September 13, 2016
0 Miles Roadside and I walk a quarter mile or so to a diner. The outskirts of this town remind me a lot of Flagstaff, Arizona where I went to grad school. Empty lots and the spaces between developed areas are filled with pine trees. The town itself is much smaller—a main street runs only about six blocks. It’s filled with chic boutique stores and small restaurants. The diner we choose is one of the more traditional restaurants. They serve all the standard breakfast fare that I’m craving with no strange twists. I love those places that serve omelettes with unexpected cheeses like gorgonzola, serve their french toast with honeybutter and elfberry jam, or add a fancy herbal cream sauce to a breakfast burrito, but sometimes I just want pancakes with butter and syrup, or good-old-fashioned scrambled eggs. As we’re finishing breakfast, we see PBR in another booth, talking to someone we can’t see. We pay and head over to say hi. “Hey PBR!” I say, “You headed back to trail today?” “Yeah, you guys too?” “Nah, we have to head into Bend.” “My pack broke,” Roadside says. “I need some new pants.” I gesture to my leg, where the tear up to my knee is obvious. I had actually forgotten to think about how weird it is to go into a restaurant with pants this ragged, but I realize it now. Do the other patrons think I’m a hippie, or a homeless person, or are PCT hikers so common here that this is normal? I don’t feel embarrassed about it at all, I’m just curious. The man sitting across from PBR speaks up. “Do you have a ride?” “No, we were going to take the bus.” “Well, if you can wait, I can give you a ride. I’m headed back to Bend after I take him out to the trail.” We take him up on his offer and give him my phone number so he can call us when he gets back into town. We swing by the post office to pick up our resupplies, then head back to the hotel to get our stuff. We’re planning to do laundry while we’re in Bend. A few minutes after we get back, Roadside knocks on my door. He just bumped into King Arthur, who is hoping he can take a shower. That’s fine with me, although I don’t understand why Roadside didn’t just offer his shower. King Arthur jumps in the shower and Roadside and I chat about the trail while I repack my resupply and get my pack together. King Arthur wants to ask the trail angel if he can get a ride too. And he has a friend, another hiker I haven’t met, who wants a ride too. It’s a little bold, but it can be difficult to get a hitch, and the bus takes twice as long. I don’t want to take advantage of the trail angel’s generosity, but I understand where King Arthur is coming from. We’ve exhausted an hour and a half, and we’re starting to doubt that the trail angel is coming back, so we all decide to head out to the bus stop. While we’re waiting, he calls and asks if we’re ready. I ask him if he can take four of us and he says it’s no problem. He picks us up from the bus stop just as we can see the bus coming down the street. It’s about a forty-five minute drive to Bend. Our driver wants to hear all about the trail—what parts we’ve enjoyed the most, what wildlife we’ve seen, what’s been hardest about the trail. We ask him about his life, too. He has kids, and runs a chocolate shop in bend. The time passes quickly, and soon we’re at the outskirts of town. He tells us about the way the town is divided—rich people have homes on the uphill side of town, the poor on the other side of the freeway. Then he offers us a ride back to Sisters when we’re done. This is generosity beyond belief. We thank him profusely before he drops us off at the REI. At the REI, I’m surprised to find that I have dropped a full waist size, and even that with some room to spare (after I finish the trail, I will regain that weight so quickly that I’ll never be able to fit in these pants again). I also get a new pair of sunglasses and a couple of runner’s energy packets. Roadside finds a new backpack, and King Arthur grabs a warmer sleeping bag. The other hiker has a couple big purchases of his own. We all get in line at the same time. I purchase my stuff first and then wait. When Roadside purchases his stuff, the cashier asks him if he wants to become a member. No, he says, there’s no REI anywhere near him in Canada. The cashier asks him if he wants to put his purchases on my member number, so I can collect the dividend—10% of whatever they purchase, toward future purchases at the end of the year. King Arthur and the other hiker, who are both from Europe, both put their stuff on my membership, too. When I get my dividend in a few months, it will turn out to be close to $500. Roadside and I head over to a camping and outdoor supply store that has a repair shop—he wants to see if he can get the zipper on his tent fixed. I wander the store while he talks with the repair person and decide to buy a new handkerchief—mine is torn. At the register is a hiker that I met way back in Agua Dulce. His name is Snot, and he had just finished a 43 mile day (at nine in the morning!) as part of his attempt to beat the record for fastest known time on the PCT. I ask him about his attempt—has he already finished? No, he says, he ended up with a foot injury only about sixty miles later and had to bail on it. A brewery next door serves us lunch and beer while we wait on the zipper, then we walk a couple miles to a laundromat that has a connected bar. It’s a pretty ingenious business model. There are about six of us hikers all drinking beers and waiting for our laundry to finish. Then there are just the four of us again. We finally finish our laundry and call the trail angel. When he picks us up, he has another bounty for us—a grocery bag full of chocolates, caramel popcorn, and toffees. He tells us that they’re all rejects from his store, but I can see nothing wrong with them. We are agog. Back at the hotel, I spend the rest of the evening talking to my wife and friends, gorging on chocolate, and watching shitty movies on TV. September 12, 2016 Mile 1961.5-1981.2 19.7 Miles Last night we decided to wake up a little earlier this morning because the map tells us hitching can be a little difficult here. We start in full dark, bleary-eyed and headachy because of lack of sleep. Even in our protected basin, the wind shook our tents hard enough and often enough to wake us regularly. Our first hour is forested, with steep slopes and occasional switchbacks. Eventually we open onto meadowy slopes, but the wind is still raging. Several times it shoves me violently from the trail like an aggressive drunk, angry at some perceived slight. I don’t know what sin I’ve committed against the wind god, so I just brace myself and push forward. Dawn light emerges, but the Sisters have blocked any direct sunlight from where we’re standing. A sign informs us that we are entering the Obsidian Limited Entry Area. There are strict permitting rules, but our PCT permits apply and give us entry. I’ve been looking forward to this section. The black, glassy rock starts a short while later. Small chunks of it are embedded in the dirt all around us, including in the trail under our feet. My conscience engages in a battle with itself. I badly want to collect a piece of obsidian as a memento of this amazing place, but Leave No Trace principles forbid it. So does Kant’s categorical imperative. Bentham might be more forgiving, but I’ve never held much stock in utilitarianism. I wonder what the Buddha would have to say. I start out thinking about nonduality and the interconnection of all things, but there’s a much simpler answer: I’m craving, and that’s one of the roots of suffering. Even if I took a piece of obsidian without guilt, it wouldn’t make me happy. It wasn’t a real battle anyway; I would never do that. We come to Obsidian Falls. I was sort of hoping for cliffs of hard, uniform black. There is lots of obsidian in the cliff, but in many ways it’s just like every other waterfall I’ve seen. It’s beautiful, but not as interesting as I had hoped. I realize I’ve been craving again. A tough habit to break. Two older women are hiking just ahead of us. One stops to put something in her backpack, and startles when I approach to pass. Apparently the waterfall obscured the sound of my footsteps. I make sure to announce myself when I close on the other woman with a hearty “good morning!” The creek above Obsidian Falls makes a hard right straight toward the mountain, and the trail follows. I can see the midnight jewels in the bed of the creek. It seems like I should stop and shout for joy, it’s like I’ve found something out of a fairy-tale book. And I am in awe, completely geeking out on nature—it’s almost beyond possibility, that this exists in the world we inhabit—, but I don’t stop. The trail has momentum, and I’ve learned through the experience of months that to stop and try to hold on to this would make me just as unhappy and dissatisfied as if I were to try to eat these rocks. We cross the shallow creek on a series of stones protruding from the surface. A short way to the east, it flows directly out of the bottom of a rockslide. Is this real life? The obsidian increases. On my left side is a boulder of the stuff subsumed in the earth, a portal to another world, a black mirror, a glass darkly. On my right is a shallow pool of poison magic, lacking inlet or outlet, still and opaque. These, too, I must pass by without question, without pause. The obsidian ends abruptly, and now we find ourselves in a landscape of burnt gravel and igneous rock. Trees that I think are cypress and juniper line the edges of wide maroon channels of the cooled lava. The trees are bent over from an eternal wind, barely holding on in a hostile land, and many of them are stripped white like bones scattered about. The trail cuts across the channels of sharp rock, and every footstep holds risks—of turning, of tearing my pants further, of kicking up and biting against an ankle. One rock grabs onto my pants leg and tears it to the calf. A little later, another one splits it to the knee. The trail climbs up one of these magma channels, then around a ridge. The lava rock makes it difficult for anything to grow, so we have an epic view: cumulus clouds are widely spaced in the sky; Three-Fingered Jack and Mt. Jefferson form a line with some lower ridges away to the north. When we drop down again, the rock gives way to gravel, then black and red sands. The evergreens thicken in tufts and patches. Trails jut off in different directions across the sands. Some of them are marked. Others look like they were formed as the result of a single person who took a shortcut and left a scar. We start to see a lot of hikers, many of them backpacking, some of them day hiking, all of them cleaner and less weathered than us. I’m happy to see all the hikers—it should be easier to find a hitch into town. We stop for breakfast at a wind-protected turn in the trail and exchange niceties with the hikers that pass us. A few have questions about thru-hiking for us, but nobody stays to chat long. Then we’re descending, hurrying to get to the road and town and a shower and real food. The downhill starts gently—traditional dirt soil among fir trees. The dayhikers become more frequent and talkative, a sure sign we must be getting close to a trailhead, but then they disappear altogether. Later I’ll check the map and realize there was a side trail that went to a parking lot. We stick to the main PCT, and soon we are back in the lava rock. It’s uniformly gunmetal gray now, and despite the engineering feats that the trail crew used to build this section, nothing can make these rocks easy to traverse. Only a few minutes in, I feel a lactic burn in my ankles and shins, two places where I’m not used to feeling muscle fatigue. The trees drop away and we continue over vast fields of rock for miles. Eventually we reach the road. It’s a tiny road sunk into the rock, almost invisible in the lava fields until you are right on it. It lacks the center yellow line that would mark a two-lane road, and almost lacks the width, too. There’s no pullout area for cars, no place where a driver might stop to pick us up. For that matter, there are no cars driving by at all. Roadside shows up a few minutes after me, cursing the ankle-busting lava rock. When he finishes, he looks around and says “where are all the people?” I’m wondering the same thing.
On a hunch, we decide to follow the road uphill. My maps didn’t download correctly at the last town, and I sent myself the wrong set of paper maps in the last resupply, so I’m left with just the trail information and an empty grid on my phone. Luckily we don’t have to walk very far before we find cars. There’s a small parking lot with space for about 10 cars, and on the other side of the road, a small castle built out of lava rock. We’re at the top of a pass now, and we can see that the lava flows extend for miles in every direction. It truly looks like a different planet. People are wandering the castle hurriedly in the cold wind. We read a sign about the castle—it’s called the Dee Wright Observatory, and it’s built so that you can look through slots in the walls to see each of the high points around the area. We opt not to go into it in the hopes that one of these people leaving will be able to give us a ride. Roadside stays with the packs while I wander about and ask people for a hitch into town. I come up short. It seems like everyone is either going the other direction or has no room left in their car. So we sit in an empty space at the end of the parking lot and wait for more cars to come by. A new car shows up about every five minutes, but each one has some excuse for why they can’t take us. A guy in a 4-door pickup truck parks right next to us and asks us if we’re PCT hikers. This is it, I think. Even if he doesn’t have room in the cab, we can always pile into the bed of the truck. We chat with him for a minute while his family is unpiling from the cab, and he’s friendly and impressed by our hike. “Hey,” I venture, “after you guys get done looking around, do you think you could give us a ride to town?” “Oh, um, I think we’re headed the other direction,” he says. “Sorry.” Five minutes later they pile back into the truck and leave to the east, in the direction we wanted to go. My hiking furnace has died down, and I’m getting cold. This stupid wind is miserable. We continue to ask every visitor that looks like they might have a seat—we’ll hitch down in separate cars if needed. For over an hour, each of them says no. Finally, a guy in a small car pulls up from the east and rolls down his window. “I felt bad and decided to come back,” he says. I don’t remember talking to him. “I don’t have a passenger seat, so you’ll have to lie down, is that okay?” I’m not sure what he means by that, but we assure him that we’re grateful for the ride, however it works. He pulls around and opens up the car to rearrange his stuff and make room—the passenger seat has been replaced with a mattress that runs to the back of the car. He tells us he is living out of his car for the summer, traveling around the west to explore. It’s an ingenious setup, and he’s brought everything he needs with him, including his cat, who is in a carrier. He asks me to hold the kennel up on a shelf behind the driver’s seat so it doesn’t fall over while he’s driving. We pile our backpacks in and squeeze together into the tiny car. On our way down the mountain, we exchange stories about traveling. I’m trying to brace myself and the cat kennel against the turns in the road, so it’s up to Roadside, who is closer to the front of the car anyway, to do most of the talking. It’s the most I’ve heard him talk since I met him. He seems especially interested in the car setup, like he’s thinking about doing something similar. Something in his questions makes me think he’s trying to escape going home after the trail. My stomach is doing somersaults around the turns. I strain to position myself so I can see out the front window, then I ask for someone to crack a window. Just when I think I’m going to have to ask them to pull over so I can get out and vomit, we hit a straight section. And then we’re here, on the outskirts of Sisters, Oregon. Our driver drops us at a restaurant called the Hop & Brew, and just like that, he’s gone. I think to myself how amazing that there are so many people in this world willing to help others with no thought of recompense. I have never once picked up a hitchhiker, and now I’m aware of it as a lack of character in myself. I vow to start after I finish this hike. Maybe not every hitchhiker, but whenever I can help out, especially if it’s a hiker. After lunch, we find a hotel with decent rates on the west end of town. I make plans for dinner with a friend from college who lives about an hour away and who I haven’t seen in fifteen years. Then I take a long shower and a longer nap. September 11, 2016 Mile 1923.8-1961.5 28.7 Miles My dreams are filled with trees. My waking life is filled with trees. Trees, trees, trees. Every one of them different, every one of them essentially the same. I am sick to death of trees. Give me a view! As we walk through the trees, I am struck by the strangeness of life. Animals are born with very little structural variation. A human has one head, and with rare exceptions, two arms and two legs. Whatever variations we have are relatively small. A tree, on the other hand, has infinite variations, and many of them are rather large. Its branches and roots can vary in number, shape, and size. It can even have two trunks! It seems to me that a tree has a fundamentally different DNA algorithm than a human. It can change the structure of the tree based on the environment it finds itself in. A human’s DNA algorithm, on the other hand, is much less flexible in creating the structure, but it leads the human to be far more adaptable in other ways, like inventing an umbrella and choosing to use it only when it rains. We are still in tree limbo for much of the morning. At one point the forest spreads out a little and we can see farther, but the only thing that farther away lets us see is more trees. Many of them are draped in Spanish moss, a pale goblin green that hangs lazily over everything like Dali’s clocks. There are a few lakes, but it’s all much the same as yesterday. At one point I pass a small pond called Island Lake. The eponymous island is a round hump that reminds me of the giant turtle in The Neverending Story. In a couple of days, a couple friends of mine will come to this exact lake on their way back from Burning Man. When they post pictures of it on Facebook, I’ll recognize it immediately. By 11am, we’ve done 17 miles. The Oregon terrain is easy that way. There’s a burn area with a view to the east, and it has service. We’re making good time, so we decide to do a mile long side trip to Elk Lake Lodge. I stay at the junction to talk to Lindsey for a few minutes while Roadside goes ahead, but the call drops after a few minutes and I hurry down after him. I catch up right before we get to the restaurant. There are cars everywhere. People, too. I’ve lost track of the days of the week, but I’m certain it’s got to be a weekend and this is a popular brunch spot (when I check my phone at the restaurant, it turns out today is Sunday). There are families and groups of friends. There’s a short wait at the restaurant. It’s cool enough that we decide to sit inside. There’s a longer wait for the patio, and the restaurant has big windows so we can look out on the lake. The view is a relief. It’s nice to be out of the trees, if only for a little while. At the bar, PBR and another hiker sit watching football on TV. They’re rooting for the Seahawks intently and I gather they’re both from the Seattle area, though I don’t think they knew each other before the hike. Possibly even before today. I’m envious of the instant rapport that sports can create between fans, but I’ve never been all that interested. Roadside has a little crush on one of the waitresses, an athletic brunette. She’s not our server—that’s the bartender—, but we’re seated close to the entry of the kitchen so she walks by often during our meal. It suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t seen many female northbound hikers since the Sierra. In Southern California they outnumbered the men, but now they’re rare. I wonder why that is. The first explanation that comes to mind, that many of them quit, doesn’t seem right. Women are better adapted for endurance, and besides, I’ve seen plenty of them finishing the trail on instagram. That brings to mind a different theory—perhaps they’re just better planners. They’ve finished the trail already, or are up in Washington about to finish. Maybe I saw more women in Southern California and the Sierras because I was skipping around the trail. Now, I’m behind the pack, so the people who are left are those who have been taking their time (or, like me, got a late start). This seems to fit better with another piece of evidence—most of the thru-hikers remaining are young, in their early twenties. Less likely to be worried about the coming winter. I haven’t seen another thru-hiker in their thirties for weeks. When we leave, a couple with a young kid is waiting for a table outside. While we’re packing away some snacks we bought for later, they ask us questions about thru-hiking. All the questions that we’re used to: How do you filter water? Where do you get your food? How many miles are you hiking every day? Do you worry about bears? They express admiration, even a little envy. It puts a spring in our step as we head back up the trail. The climb back up to the trail passes in a flash, and soon we are back in the trees. They seem to be getting shorter. That means there’s more sky and sunlight to enjoy. After three days spent almost entirely in the trees, it’s like someone has lifted a weight off of me. And then the terrain changes completely. We find ourselves on a pumice plain, battered by a chill wind that rose up suddenly from the west. A wide, squat mountain that resembles a purple quarry heap dominates the view ahead. It is South Sister, one of a trio of closely spaced volcanos. In 2000, the US Geological Survey discovered tectonic uplift, a potential precursor of an eruption. Of course, tectonic movement is slow until it isn’t, so it could be another two thousand years before it blows, or it could be tonight. I’m going to hope for another two thousand years, since we’ll have to camp soon. We can see two other hikers across the plain, but they disappear out of sight into some dip of the land that is invisible from where we are. Another pair of hikers pop up from a different hidden seam. As they pass us I can tell they aren’t thru-hikers. They don’t have that gaunt, weathered look, and they’re too clean. We don’t stop to talk—the wind is brutal and we all just want to get past it, back into the trees. I can’t believe it—almost the first moment out of the trees, and I want to be back in. We humans sure are good at being discontented in all situations.
I haven’t noticed much in the way of altitude change, but as we get closer to the mountain, it starts to seem as if we are on a high mountain plateau, an effect that’s reinforced by the wind and the scoured land. The top of the mountain doesn’t look all that far away. If we weren’t racing winter, a side trip to the peak would be completely reasonable, or at least it seems that way from here. Mountains have a way of defying expectations about the nearness of their peaks. The lack of comparative features at the top and the tapering to the top creates an optical illusion that makes it seem like peak is much closer than it is. There’s also a tendency for the tops of mountains to be much steeper and covered in scree, both of which slow the pace to a stumbling crawl. A side trip would probably take much longer than I expect. We make a slight climb to a ridge with tall firs, and a wooded valley drops away to our left and drains westward. The trail skirts it and then plunges inside the eastern side, then climbs back out to the north. It’s another complete change of terrain, as unexpected as any we have seen so far. Will all of Oregon be like this? As we come up over the northern lip of the canyon, we see a small pond with no outlet at the bottom of a deep round basin. Tall trees line the upper edges of the basin—they are thrashing in the wind. It looks protected down there. It might be the last, best chance we have for a campsite out of the wind. We decide to take it. Dinner is a cold, hurried affair, but we are grateful to have the worst of the wind passing above us. From the looks of the writhing trees, it could be much worse. We could be worrying about the structural integrity of our tents, chasing pieces of gear, and bracing every few seconds to keep from getting knocked over. Down here I may be cold, but I’m removed from the violent whipping so I can watch the trees dance—they make the wind visible. I can see individual gusts race across the wall of pine needles like a shock wave, then the reverberations as the branches spring back into place. There’s something peaceful in the midst of all this violence, but only because I am removed from it. I’ve noticed something similar in my own mind recently. All of the emotional and physical thrashing that my human body does, I am able to look at as if detached from it. Hunger, fear, tiredness, soreness, worrying what people think of me—all of these things are still present, but it feels like I’m separate from them. I’m looking at them from a place of peace and protection, as if I'm watching through a window. As we climb into our tents, I start to wonder whether I’ll be able to keep this detachment when I return to civilized life, or if it’s something that I’ll only get to experience on the trail. I certainly hope I can keep it. September 10, 2016 Mile 1904.1-1932.8 (+2.2 alternate trail) 30.9 Miles When the alarm goes off at 5:30, I have to force myself up. I never heard a train all day yesterday, so I assumed the tracks next to our campsite had been retired. About an hour after I went to bed, I learned different. All night there were trains, and they always shocked me awake so that with adrenaline coursing through my veins, it was difficult to fall back asleep again. I start packing up, but I’m close to finished before I hear Roadside starting to stir. I waited for him and then we hiked out through a lush forest and up a quick climb. A campsite is perched on an overlook above the lake we’ve just left, and I once again find myself wishing we had gone just a little farther last night. We could have avoided the trains and enjoyed the lake from this magnificent site. But would I have had my transcendent experience of detachment? Maybe the creek and the immersion in the forest were vital. Or maybe starlight and a grand view would have served as well. It’s impossible to know. I can say this, though: an experience like that would keep me searching for big views in order to access that state. The forest and creek were beautiful, but they left me feeling that the experience was something in me rather than something out there, and therefore, something I can access from anywhere if I only look. The trail is poorly marked, with a few junctions that we have to stop and check against the map. We return to the official PCT, east past hwy 58, and then make a turn back north to the Rosary lakes, where we stop for breakfast. There are a few people camped around the lakes, but most of them are still asleep. A whisper of a breeze stirs up ripples that lap at the shore. After breakfast, we remain in a tunnel of trees for hours. I plug into a podcast and chug along with Roadside somewhere behind. At Shelter Cove, he found a bear bell in a hiker box and decided to strap it to his backpack. He must be more worried about bears than I thought. I find the sound obnoxious, but I’m pleased to discover that I only need to be about fifty yards away from him before the sound disappears in the trees. Some mountain bikers ride by—I’m pretty sure they’re not allowed anywhere on the PCT, but I’m not about to get into an argument with a group of people in the middle of the wilderness. I remember hearing that Chuck Palahniuk came up with the idea for Fight Club after he had the shit beat out of him while camping—he decided to tell some noisy campers to shut up. Maybe I’m a coward, but I decide to keep my mouth shut. It’s forest forever. It’s pretty enough but it’s monotonous. I feel like I have been hiking in this forest for my entire life. For several lives. I lose all sense of direction, all sense of time, all sense of the world beyond these forested walls. I just have to trust that the trail will eventually lead us through and spit us out somewhere on the other side. It feels more like a mobius strip of infinite forested wandering. I’m looking for a good view, somewhere I can stop for lunch and feel some sense of progress, but it never comes and I’m starting to feel sluggish and low energy, so finally I just sit down in the forest and eat my lunch in a silent limbo. Roadside appears as I am packing up. It feels a little better to know that I haven’t turned down the wrong trail somewhere. We emerge into a burned-out area. There still aren’t any views, but it feels open enough that I decide to check for cell service. Just a little. Not enough for a phone call, but enough to send a text. Roadside heads on while I text back and forth with Lindsey. This little bit of connection to home and the outside world grounds me, makes me feel alive again. It’s only a few minutes, but it gives me energy and I’m ready to haul ass again. I’m tearing down the trail, which quickly dives back into deep forest again. I fully expect to catch up with Roadside any minute, but it’s a couple hours later before I finally catch up. He seems pissed about something, but he’s not offering and I’m not asking. I wonder what it is. Maybe the endless forest is affecting him, too. We pass lakes. It seems like there are hundreds of them, and we never see them until we’re right up against them. The other side of every lake is just more forest. I ache to see something else, anything else. Some of the larger lakes have mythical names: Brahma, Jezebel. We finally stop at Stormy lake to camp. While we make dinner, I finally ask Roadside what’s going on.
“Are you alright? You seem kind of pissed off.” “I’m fine. My backpack broke and I didn’t eat lunch.” That’ll do it, I suppose. He tells me he hadn’t seen me for so long after breakfast that he was afraid he wouldn’t catch up if he stopped for lunch. I figured he had already eaten when he caught up. The backpack is intact and still works, but one of the framing supports broke, so it’s unbalanced and leans off to one side. Not a comfortable way to hike. He needs a new pack. I need to replace a few things, too—my sunglasses, which broke about a week ago, and my pants, which are torn open along the seam near my right ankle. The pants are particularly annoying—they are flapping around and catching on things, which causes them to tear further. At this point, they’re open about halfway to my knee. There’s an REI in Bend, which we can hitch to from Sister, Oregon, a few days hike away from here. We make plans for another zero day before we go to bed. September 9, 2016 Mile 1871.7-1875.7 (+20.8 alternate route) 24.8 miles Less than ten minutes after packing up and beginning to hike, we’re greeted by gorgeous pre-dawn views to the east. This is one of the greatest draws of hiking, and it’s what often keeps me hiking long after I’m tired: what’s around the next corner? Food breaks and campsites are often put off for the promise of a better view or better site that’s always just out of view. When it doesn’t materialize, it’s only a little farther to get around the next corner. It also holds a lesson to appreciate where you’re at and not to run yourself ragged trying to get to a place that is likely only nominally better. It’s a lesson I’ve learned over and over again, as I starve and exhaust myself for that next view, only to find myself twenty “around-the-next-corners” away in a place that looks much the same as the first spot I thought about breaking. But a view like this morning is why I never quite learn the lesson. If we had hiked ten more minutes, we would have gone to bed watching the light show and darkening lakes over this enormous view. We pass a hiker that we met last night named Gazelle. He was trying to catch up with another hiker named Old School, who Roadside remembered was one of the guys by the spring. It looks like he didn’t catch up, because Gazelle is by himself, in a ragged-looking sleeping bag sprawled in the dirt. For some reason I haven’t done much cowboy camping on this trip. A tent always seems like it will make me feel safer, but when I hear something crunching in the middle of the night, it’s reassuring to look over and see a deer, or even nothing, than to sit inside my tent wondering if it’s a bear or a mountain lion. And when I wake up in the middle of the night, I would much rather look at the stars and think about the enormity of the universe than to lie in my tent replaying old regrets and wondering if I’ll be able to get back to sleep. Nonetheless I’ve spent most nights, especially cold nights, in my tent, both to break the wind and to keep the dew off my down bag. Has that tradeoff been worth it? It’s hard to say. After four miles we hit a junction with Windigo Pass Road. The PCT continues forward, but Roadside and I have decided we’re going to take the road down to the Oregon Skyline Trail. It’s a little shorter and lower elevation, but it has water, so we won’t have to carry twenty extra pounds of water with us through this dry stretch of PCT. I’m grateful that it’s a dirt road rather than a sole-pounding, soul-draining asphalt roadwalk. We follow it down for a couple miles, then turn onto the OST, where we cross paths with a couple of Southbound hikers taking the same shortcut. After a few miles in dark, canopied forest with the occasional glimpse out toward small lakes, we emerge into a section of seven- and eight-foot-tall firs, probably replanted after a clear-cut. We reach an unmarked split in the trail. The map doesn’t show a junction here, and the two paths are so close to the same direction that the GPS is no help in telling us which one to take. I think through the possibilities. If the right fork is the wrong way, it will spit us onto a road next to a lake, which connects up with the OST ahead. If the left fork is the wrong way, it will take us to some unknown place in the forest. I actually have a feeling that the left fork is the true OST, but the right fork is the safer choice. Five minutes later we’re lakeside, on a paved road headed north. All of my fatigue from yesterday’s 30-miler rushes into my arches and calves, all of my distaste for roadwalking coalesces as a nausea that runs throughout the rest of my body. The roadwalk is a few miles, and we’re passed by one silver truck, headed the opposite direction. We discuss asking for a ride if the truck returns this way. We pass an inlet to the lake, and I’m struck by the lack of life. It seems like there should be ducks and other birds around, but it is perfectly still, not even small ripples from bugs alighting on the surface. We find a campground with pit toilets, trashcans, RVs and horse trailers. Across from the pit toilets, there’s an empty campsite with a picnic table in the shade where Roadside and I stop to eat lunch. The campsite next to ours is occupied by two ladies in their late fifties, two horses, and a dog. One of the ladies comes out to groom her horse and strikes up a conversation. “Are you guys hiking the PCT?” “Yeah,” I say, “have you seen a lot of hikers come through here?” I’m curious who else has come by, but I’m also looking for reassurance that we aren’t the only hikers taking a shortcut. “Not a lot, but there were a couple guys that came through here this morning.” From her description, it seems like one of them was probably King Arthur, though she doesn’t mention the crown, so who knows. “We were surprised to find campers here,” I tell her. “Every other campsite we passed on the way here was completely empty, and we only saw one truck on the road.” “It’s not a very popular place,” she says. “This campground is a little more popular because there are horse trails here. But other than that, there’s not much to do.” I’m not sure what she means by that. Much in the way of civilized activity? Maybe she means boats aren’t allowed, or there are no fish in the lake, or something like that. After lunch, Roadside and I empty our ziploc bags of garbage into the trashcans—every ounce counts—fill up our waterbottles at a spigot, and start back up the trail that begins again at the back end of the campground. It’s a grueling, hot, sandy trail that has been pulverized by years of heavy horse hooves. We huff our way slowly uphill for eight miles between tall, half-barren trees. The forest changes again near the top of the uphill, and now we’re in lush, night-dark forest. The downhill is much steeper, and the deadfall obstacle course begins again. This time it’s a tangled mess. Trees lay upon one another four and five deep in every direction. Root systems have torn huge clumps out of the earth, and the craters left behind have demolished all but a few dots of trail. We are so close to Shelter Cove Resort now, and I’m frustrated by the slower pace at first. But as I’m climbing over trees, balance-beaming from one cluster to another, staring down at an eight-foot drop into a black root crater, trying to pick out a path to the next balance beam, watching that I don’t trip over broken branches, fall headlong, and meet the same fate as these broken trees, in the middle of all that, I realize that I’m enjoying myself. At the end of one of these jungle gyms, I realize that I have been in a flow state. A perfect match between the challenge and my skill set, to the point where I lose all sense of myself and become one with the task at hand. A few days ago, I don’t know that I could have handled this with the same comfort and lack of fear. The past few days, though, I’ve been immersed in practice sessions with these skills, balancing and identifying unlikely paths through all the other deadfall. There’s a certain pride and self-confidence that I feel from it, even if the only other person around to see it matches my skill with equal capability. In fact, there’s a certain camaraderie that comes from that fact: these skills are rare, even if they aren’t particularly useful outside of this specific context, and it’s something we share that the mass of humanity does not. Out of the belly of the beast, we cross a railroad and find ourselves walking between manicured lawns dotted with wood buildings, picnic tables, and campfire rings. The canopy is still total, but it is less thick here and green light filters through. We walk toward the brightest lawn, which is at the shore of a large lake. Everything is so well-kept here. Retirees and vacationers stroll slowly along the lake; others sit in adirondack chairs on the lawn, under a tall flagpole. Further along the lakeshore, at the far end of the lawn, is a building that looks like a store. A tarp-shed stands nearby, with a picnic table and several backpackers. We stop there first and drop our packs, introduce ourselves to hikers we don’t know and greet the ones we do—PIF and Hard Way—then head into the store for food, beer, and resupplies. Inside, a few rows of camping gear and thruhiker staples—Knorr’s sides, Pop Tarts, Idahoan instant potatoes, and Top Ramen—take up one side of the store. The other side is fishing tackle and gift shop paraphernalia. I scan the gift shop for anything that looks useful, but like most times I’ve looked for gear, nothing seems worth the weight. Curiosity satisfied, I head back to what I really want. Food and beer. There’s no restaurant at this lodge, but they do have an oven and an assortment of frozen pizzas. It’ll be about 15 minutes until our pizzas are ready, we’re told. We should come back in because nobody will chase us down or call out our names. We head outside with our beer, our resupply boxes, and a few snacks.
There’s a charging station (outlet splitter) at the far end of the picnic table, and while we wait I plug in my battery pack. The other hikers are engaged in thruhiker activities—packing and repacking their backpacks, consuming as many calories as possible, and trying to expend as few of the same. We pass a lazy conversation back and forth with Hard Way and PIF, with pauses and silences interspersed liberally. The usual topics: where we’re from, when we started. The answers are forgotten as quickly as they’re spoken. That’s okay. The conversation is about enjoying being in each other’s presence, not about getting to know one another. We don’t really expect to see these people again, and even if we do, the questions and answers will come up again. The other hikers seem nice enough, but they’re a little ways away, doing their own thing. Roadside goes in to check on the pizzas and a minute later brings them out. They aren’t anything special, but they sure taste amazing. I finish mine and go back in for a pint of ice cream and another beer. Someone comes by to ask if we’re staying in the campground and to collect money, but we decide not to. There were a few sites on the other side of the railroad tracks that we can use for free. Besides, if we camp here, we’ll stay for breakfast, and then we’ll start late. We have a winter to race. Evening is getting close, and we’ve all had several beers. The quest for calories makes it all too easy to justify drinking far more than we should. Usually, the furnace in our bodies burns the alcohol away so fast that we don’t even feel a headache the next day as long as we’re drinking enough water. But I’m a little buzzed now, and when we’re halfway back to the trail I realize I’ve forgotten my battery pack. I leave my pack with roadside and speedwalk back. Then we find a place close to the railroad tracks and a small creek racing toward the lake. Setting up my tent is a pain in the ass. I’m exhausted and buzzed and even a little overstimulated from being around so many people. After I finish, I sit down on a bank above the creek and look at the lush ferns and forest across the way. The creek is noisy but relaxing as it rushes over spherical and oblong stones. The ferns and fir branches sway in the breeze, away and apart from me. Emanation of earth, piquant pine. The light dims, but I stay and watch, a sentinel in the dusk. Somewhere behind me, in some other era, Roadside has retired. The stones on which I sit dig into my backside, and still I sit. Something essential, primordial, ritualistic even, roots me and insists that I not budge. I watch the world move about me and become aware of my own awareness, detached and observant. I am aware of the wind moving on my skin, of the raised hairs on my arms and neck, and the gooseflesh that washes over my body. I am aware even of the currents of alcohol within my awareness, but even that doesn’t touch this deeper awareness, this perfect stillness inside me. I sit and watch for eternities, worlds dying and reborn again with the same perfect imperfections, and I see my own place within those worlds, affected, affecting, and yet apart. Eventually even this passes and I sink back into my flesh, the cold numb pain of my buttocks, the chill on my skin, the fatigue in my eyes. The alcohol has pulled back and left a minor wound in my temples, which pool with a weak throbbing pain. I shift carefully and shake out my legs (pinpricks and stabbing aches from the rush of blood), brush off pine needles and dirt from my pants, look around me to get my bearings, and enter the dark safe womb of my tent. September 8, 2016 Mile 1841.2-1871.7 30.5 miles 5:30am feels like a luxury. It was the first warm night of sleep I’ve gotten since entering Oregon, and we only hiked twelve miles yesterday, so I’m rested and ready to fly. The landscape is desktop-flat, and I get to the first road in under an hour. I check my map to see how far I’ve gone. 4.2 miles! Someone has cached water and mandarin oranges in an ice chest with a sign above it that says “PCT Thruhikers”. Don’t mind if I do. Roadside catches up while I’m peeling my second orange. Then it’s on, on and up the long flank of Mt. Thielsen. It’s a volcanic plug, a sharp spire of rock left over from hundreds or thousands of years ago and partially crumbled into rock piles along the western slope. We pass several campers along the gentle incline. It must be a weekend (later, I’ll figure out that it’s a Thursday—people just camp more in Oregon, I guess). One of the campers is leaning out of his tent door, cooking breakfast from the warm comfort of his sleeping bag. I’ve lost Roadside again, though I can’t see far behind me because of the winding trail and the thick forest. The smell of coffee catches my attention, but I don’t see anyone around and I keep going. A few minutes later a camp with a man and woman in their forties comes into view, and I stop to chat, secretly hoping that they’ll offer me a cup of joe. They don’t, but the man tells me there’s a long water carry coming up—about ten miles. Water has been so common since California that I rarely think to check the water report anymore. It’s almost become a given that there will always be plenty whenever I need it. It’s a form of entitlement, I suppose, this belief that nature will provide whatever I need. A dangerous belief. At 9, I stop for breakfast at a junction with a view. Two branches are PCT, the other two come steeply up the shoulder and continue up toward the peak. It’s cold and windy here, but I don’t want to go too much farther before eating—I’ve learned the hard way that once I’m low on energy, it never really gets better until I’ve slept. I have service, so I call Lindsey. She’s at work, but she’s able to talk with me for about twenty minutes before she has to go. It’s nice to hear her voice. Roadside shows up during the call and makes his breakfast quietly nearby. After I get off the phone, I note that this cold would have been miserable to me a few months ago—it’s the sort of cold that I might have canceled a camping trip over. But now, it’s a minor nuisance. I’m so immersed in the thruhiking experience that it barely even occurs to me that there’s a choice in the matter. And without a choice, it doesn’t occur to me to complain, not even to myself. To be completely honest, I revel in the suffering a little. It makes me feel alive in a way that warm comfort does not. I share all this with Roadside, and he seems unimpressed. “Yeah” is all the response I get from him. It’s a little strange to me that after a week I still know nothing about him aside from his ethnicity and where he’s from. He never shares stories about himself, and his responses are limited to a few short phrases. It suits me, but I start to wonder whether he’s hiding something or if he has some sort of trauma in his past. It’s a short ways to the last stream, which cuts a steep, straight, eroded line down from the mountain. It’s warm here, out of the wind, and the knowledge that the stream is our last one for a while helps me to appreciate it. Why do we do that? Why can’t our minds appreciate beauty when it’s ubiquitous, instead of only when it is about to disappear? The trail cuts down around the other side of the mountain, and then starts back up toward the highest Oregon point on the PCT. I’m sick of listening to podcasts; it’s time for some tunes. I plug into my iPhone and look for some good hiking music, something that I haven’t already played to death. Bruce Springsteen—now there’s someone I haven’t listened to in a while. It’s perfect music for hiking. Apart from the occasional ballad, the tempos are upbeat and energetic, the raw vocals and wailing saxophone fill me with the urge to drive forward, pumping my quads and glutes like pistons. I’m immersed in the physical body, not particularly connected with the land around me, but enjoying myself nonetheless. There’s more than one way to enjoy a hike. I’m chugging along through meadows, jamming to Bruce, when a southbound hiker comes around a corner. I pop my headphones out to say hi, but he doesn’t even make eye contact and blows past me as if he doesn’t even see me. I’m a little offended at first, but as I hike on and think about it, I start to get it. I saw about twenty hikers all leaving Crater lake the same day as Roadside and I. I haven’t seen any of them today, but he probably has. And probably twenty or thirty more hikers the day before. And the day before that, for maybe a month or more. How many of them want to stop and chat? How many hike-stopping conversations before someone says “enough, I need to hike now.” It gets me thinking about distraction. I once read that the novelist Haruki Murakami refuses most interviews because they take away from his writing time. Many famous composers and artists were considered cold and distant because they were so immersed in their work. The archetype of the absent-minded professor has something to it: to do great work requires great focus, and sometimes that requires tradeoffs that many of us aren’t willing to make. A few minutes after passing the hiker, I get to a sign for the highest PCT point in Oregon, elevation 7560’. I’m at the edge of a field of dirt with a few sparse grasses holding the topsoil down. It’s barely a meadow, much less a mountain. Compared to California’s high point, Forrester Pass (elevation 13,200’), this is barely worth noting. I stop for lunch a little while later on a sunny slope looking out to the northeast. Roadside shows up a few minutes later. We’ve gotten ourselves into a rhythm: long stretches of hiking alone, followed by breaks and camping together. It’s a perfect combination for me: I get a lot of time with my thoughts, and I get to soak in the beauty fo the trail without the distraction of conversation (I’ve noticed over many years of hiking that even the best conversations take me out of the world around me, and I end up focusing all my attention on the subject), and I get some company during my breaks. For me, it’s the perfect balance between solitude and loneliness. I wonder if Roadside feels the same. The downhill after lunch is wooded but open enough to let the sunshine through. It’s an especially winding path that occasionally affords an overlook of Maidu lake to the east. We descend for a few miles and immediately start back uphill. Despite the occasional view, we’ve mostly stayed in a trench of trees all day, and I’m beginning to feel a little claustrophobic. I miss the wide California views. I’m alone again when I reach a wide clearing with five hikers who I haven’t met before, all young white men with light colored hair. I don’t catch all of their trail names, but some are easy to remember: there’s PIF (pronounced as one syllable), short for Pay It Forward, who greets us with an open-hearted smile. King Arthur is tall and has a silver crown attached to his pack. PBR is named for his favorite beer (this is an assumption on my part, which will be strengthened later when I see him drinking a Pabst at the next lodge we stop at). The other two hikers tell me their names, but they are quickly forgotten.
They are stopped here because of water, of which I am in need. The water is down a steep side trail, and I don’t want to bring my pack down there (and more importantly, back up) with me, so I ask if they’re going to stick around for a few minutes. I don’t want to leave my pack up here unattended. I grab my fold-up bucket and head down the steep switchbacks. The sound of the group is quickly muffled by the forest. The trees are widely spaced, but the canopy cover is complete and dark. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been walking by myself for much of the day, this feels ominous. At the bottom of the switchbacks there are a couple of small ponds. Bugs and pine needles are scattered on the surface and the depths are obscured by floating pollen or stirred-up mud. I scan around me in an attempt to make myself feel more comfortable, but it doesn’t work. It feels like something is watching me. I scoop up a bucketful of murky water and hurry back uphill, carefully, so as not to spill the bucket, and away from this dreary place. When I reach the top, the other hikers have left my pack unattended, but Roadside has arrived. We filter the water into our bottles and hike on the last two miles to our campsite. |
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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