July 8-9, 2016 Day 45: 0 Miles I wake up early and drive my in-laws’ car an hour down the mountain to the White Mountain Ranger Station in Bishop. My PCT permit doesn’t cover my wife, so I need to get a new permit so she can hike with me. I sit outside on the sidewalk and wait for the office to open at 7. I am first in line, but before long there are 15 people. The group behind me startesasking questions about the PCT: how long have I been hiking, how many miles a day am I hiking, do I really plan to go all the way to Canada, did I have to quit my job? When we are let in, the ranger tells me I have to come back because they won’t be issuing permits for tomorrow until after 11. It doesn’t make much sense to drive all the way back up to the lodge. I have to resupply at the grocery store and do laundry, and it will take me an hour to drive each way. But there is no cell phone service up at the lodge, so I have no way to reach my in-laws. I cross my fingers and hope they won’t be too mad that I disappeared with their car for so long. In the meantime, I take care of my chores and eat as much food as I can at the local restaurants. I buy a big bag of monkeybread from Schat’s Bakkery to bring back to the lodge. I return to the ranger station at 11 and have no problems getting the permit, then drive back up the mountain. My father-in-law is walking up to the entrance of the lodge; he tells me he was getting ready to call me from the lodge phone (I wish I had thought of contacting the lodge itself, it seems so obvious in hindsight). I apologize profusely, but he isn’t mad, he was just a little worried. He and my mother-in-law drive up to South Lake to explore. I stay behind to sew up a pocket that has developed a hole and to pack food into the bear canisters. My wife Lindsey shows up at 6—I feel a release of tension that I didn't realize I had been storing up all this time—and then we all go back down to Bishop for dinner. Day 46: 13.1 Miles (Bishop Pass trail, PCT Mile 831-832.4) The lodge doesn’t offer breakfast until 8, but my hiker hunger is shouting me awake at 5:30. Luckily, I have a big bag of monkeybread. If you’ve never had monkeybread before, think of a cinnamon roll chopped into pieces and stirred into its icing. Now imagine a gallon-sized loaf of that. I had a couple pieces the day before and nobody else wanted any, so I still have most of the loaf. At 7am, I have finished it. At 8am, the lodge’s enormous breakfast is no match for me. Hiker hunger is real. Lindsey’s parents drop us off at the trailhead a little while later and wish us good luck. Tomorrow they will caravan Lindsey’s car to Yosemite Valley, where we plan to pick it up in a little over a week. Then she will drive me back down to Agua Dulce, where I will finish the section that I had to skip. We start hiking slow and steady. It’s a merciless slope all the way to the top, but Lindsey is in good shape and has no trouble. We reach Dusy Basin and have lunch close to where camped a week ago. We descend into LaConte Canyon and rejoin the PCT. A hiker is headed southbound with a stoner grin on his face and awestruck by the trees. “How’s it going?” I ask. “Amaaaazing,” he says. “Getting better all the time.” Lindsey and I find a campsite near the Backcountry Ranger’s station. I am unpacking the tent and Lindsey is taking her bear canister out when I look up and see a large black bear a hundred feet away. It is one of the biggest black bears I’ve ever seen. It is looking around for food (don’t look over here!) and pauses every few steps as it moves slowly southbound. Lindsey isn’t comfortable eating dinner and camping here, and if I’m honest, neither am I. We decide to press on a little further We start the climb up toward Muir Pass and find a windy overlook where we make Ramen—we need to get rid of the bulky stuff first so there is room for everything in our bear canisters. Lindsey is a little jumpy and keeps looking over her shoulder every time there’s a noise. We finish dinner and hike another half mile to a wooded campsite.
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July 7, 2016 Mile 1062.9-1076.8 13.1 Miles A light chill greets me in the morning and I am out before Badmash is stirring. I set my legs pumping, up out of the forest and into the sepia filter of morning sunlight on the mule ears and wildflowers. I wonder what it is that keeps these hills bereft of tree cover. Is it the soil, which seems sandier than usual? If so, why is this soil sandy? I find myself wishing I understood more about geology and botany. The trail just keeps cutting up and up this slope. Two large lakes are far below, so far that it seems I’m looking down at them from an airplane. A white van travels a dirt road along the rim, creeping along like it’s preparing a drive-by. Whatever sound it makes is swallowed up by the vast distance between us. A small powerboat is similarly silent. I feel like a voyeur, watching people from above like this. I stop for breakfast by a shallow lake. A thru hiker I met yesterday, a real chato, stops and wants to tell me about himself. He has a rolled ankle, but he never gives up, he just struggles through the pain. He’s going to hike so many miles today. He also tells me about what’s coming up on the trail (oh, have you hiked this section before? No, he just read it on the map, but he knows). In the three times we’ve passed each other on trail, I don’t think he has so much as asked my name. He leaves, and I decide that I’m going to start calling his archetype Redbeards. They start out as undistinguished brown-haired kids, but with the discovery that their facial hair grows in red, they realize that they must be incredibly special. Filled with new self-confidence, their every thought is imbued with magical importance, and they have to share it with the world. They can do handstands, which is something you learn about them because they feel the need to do them at every social gathering. They probably play a gourd drum. They have been to Burning Man, and it changed their life. I start to wonder why his type rankles me so much. I hike up over a pass and enter the world of the dayhikers. A chain of lakes stairsteps down toward the road, and it seems that people are everywhere. Some birders tell me that they just heard a very rare bird by one of the lakes. I have nothing to do with this information, so I just thank them and continue down until I reach Carson Pass. Once again, there is trail magic, provided by the docents at the Carson Pass Visitor Center. I am feeling spoiled. Indeed, I start to wonder if all this trail magic is starting to take something away from the experience. It is wonderful, all these generous people providing free food and drinks to hungry and thirsty hikers, but I consider whether perhaps the hunger and thirst are part of the point (as it turns out, there will be plenty of opportunities for me to experience both) After a root beer, gardettos, and applesauce, I make my way to the parking lot across the street to wait for my in-laws to pick me up and drive me down to meet my wife. I’m only waiting for fifteen minutes before they arrive. The windows come down as soon as I get in, despite the heat. They don’t tell me that I stink. They don’t have to.
I am a strange mix of emotions on the drive down to Bishop. A keen sense of loss as I drive away from the “bubble” of hikers, knowing that I am going to be far behind the pack when I rejoin the trail. Excitement that I get to spend the next week with my wife and that I get to revisit the most spectacular parts of the Sierra. Fear that she will hike too slow. A craving for civilization and its myriad pleasures. We get to the Bishop Lake Lodge at 6 and chat until 9, at which point I can’t keep my eyes open any longer and climb into the bottom of a pair of bunk beds. Tomorrow, I get to see my wife. Tomorrow, I get to see my wife. July 6, 2016 Mile 1038.3-1062.9 24.6 miles Earthcake is up first again; her footsteps wake me. My eyes scrape open. I want to go back to sleep, I know that I don’t have to hurry to keep up today, but guilt and hope only allow me a few seconds before I am sitting up in my sleeping bag and gathering up my midden. Guilt that I am wasting precious hiking time, hope that my calf will feel better today and maybe I can keep up. The trail slopes moderately downhill and feels easy on my calf, though it is still tender. Goat passes me, and a little while later catches up to me again. “I had to take a big dump,” he explains. I’m able to keep a decent pace for now, so we spend the morning in conversation. We talk about our bucket lists and what we’re going to do with our lives after the trail. He was a traffic engineer before traveling this ribbon of dirt, but thinks he wants a change. I was a music teacher, and definitely want a change (I loved the teaching and the music, I explain, but not all that goes with it). I think maybe I want to go into psychology and study the way people learn. I riff on about it for a while, and he seems genuinely interested. I’m going to miss hiking with him. We pass near a lake and a meadow infested with campers. Most of them have the casualness of thru-hikers (there’s an ease of motion that could be mistaken for laziness but is really an expression of comfort and safety. Weekenders and dayhikers seem high-strung by comparison, which of course is the natural byproduct of civilization. Shedding that, of course, is why they, and we, are out here), but they’re off to a late start. The sun-drenched meadow has been gang-trampled into a latticework of trails, and it is impossible to tell which one is “our” trail. Momentum spits us out on the wrong one, but the latticework paths allow us to pass through the mule’s ears and indian paintbrush that splatterpaint the dense green of the valley and reattach ourselves to the ticker-tape trail. At an incline, my calf re-irritates and Goat detaches to forge ahead. I am left alone with my physical pain and an emotional cavity. It is too beautiful a day for loneliness, so I am left with a pleasantly detached solitude instead. That gnawing hunger starts to twist inside me again, but momentum is everything. There is a road in a couple more miles—Ebbett’s pass. Maybe I can hitch to South Lake Tahoe. I fantasize about limping through buffet tables, piling up mountains of food and sitting in a soft booth where I can rest my calf and sate the beast devouring me from the inside. It seems like only a minute has gone by when I see a sign for trail magic. I’m already at the road! I follow the aromatic smell of fire-seared beef fat (even as a 25-year vegetarian, I still find that smell enticing. As I tell the carnivores that harass me with the same tired quips, it’s not for the flavor that I gave up meat.). A trail angel meets me in front of red and white checkered tables surrounded by hiker trash and shaded by portable canopies. Without so much as a hello, he hands me a paper plate full of every color of fruit and says “Hamburger, Hot Dog, or Veggie Burger?” Veggie burgers?! Oh, hope beyond hope, it’s a trail miracle. After he takes my order, he says “Grab a beer or a soda out of the cooler.” Goat and Earthcake are here, grinning from ear to ear when they aren’t masticating wildly, as well as three other hikers who I don’t recognize. There are 5 or 6 trail angels working together to provide this abundance of food. I have a couple brief conversations, mostly pleasantries and introductions, and then sit and listen as I devour my veggie burger and beer and the smorgasbord of snacks covering the table. I sit and listen, and I learn. -The trail angels have been doing this for several years now, and always bring enough to feed hikers for 7-10 days. -This year, they brought more, expecting more hikers. -This is day 3, and they are going to run out of food today because there are more hikers this year than they ever expected. I also learn that we smell bad, though the joking tone in which it is said causes no offense (besides, we know this already). One of the hikers, the only girl in the group, did the whole PCT last year. When asked why she’s doing it again, she responds “because I love it so much.” This comment infects me and will later remind me to pay attention, even during the hard parts, because I don’t know whether I will ever get this chance again. Stuffed and sluggish, I head back out into the wilderness, far enough behind Goat and Earthcake that I won’t see them again on the trail. My calf feels better, but not healed. I seem to have forgotten about hitching in to South Lake Tahoe. The trees evaporate. Low shrubs and grasses dominate and the slopes fall away to show distant peaks. There seems to be less snow than just a few short days ago. A ranger stands on the side of the trail, waiting. I expect him to ask me for my wilderness permit, but no, he just greets me and lets me pass by. With the longer lines of sight, I compulsively check for cell service. I eventually find a pocket and text my mother-in-law about tomorrow’s pickup at Carson Pass, but really what I want is to feed my social media addiction. After I spend 10 minutes staring into my phone to the exclusion of the expansive landscape around me, I wake up ashamed and begin hiking again. I cut diagonally across a long slope of grasses and wildflowers, wondering whether I might be able to catch up with Goat and Earthcake if I just hike long enough. But no, I need to take care of my calf and besides, tomorrow I am cutting back to Bishop Pass to meet my wife. Godspeed, friends. The trail just keeps cutting up and up this slope. Two large lakes are far below, so far that it seems I’m looking down at them from an airplane. A pickup truck travels a dirt road along the rim, but whatever sound it makes is swallowed up by the vast distance between us. Similarly a small powerboat on the water. I feel like a voyeur, watching people from above like this.
Finally the trail comes around the other side of the butte-like mountain and descends into a rolling forest dotted with small lakes. I find a campsite next to one of these, a lily-pad covered beauty, and set up my tent close to where a thru-hiker called Badmash has pitched his. He is friendly, but seems high and disoriented. Conversation is stilted. When I get ready to go to bed, I put my bear canister next to his. He comes out of his tent after a few minutes and asks if he can move our canisters. They are too close to our tents and he is nervous about bears because he saw one a quarter mile before the campsite. I agree and fall asleep thinking about whether I will find new trail friends or if I will be too far behind and will have to hike the rest of the trail solo. July 5, 2016 Mile 1016.9-1038.3 21.4 miles Hiker time is different. Sleep with the darkness, wake with the light. It doesn’t seem like an unusual thing until we’re in towns or campgrounds with civilized folk. At 6am I am awake and ready to go, but last night our hosts told us breakfast was at 8:30. So I have two and a half hours to spend. I try to read, I try to go back to sleep, but all I can pay attention to is the horrible gnawing in my stomach. Finally 8:30 rolls around, and with it, mounds of pancakes and cups full of strong black coffee. We say goodbye to Renee and Mitch drives us back to the trail in his pickup. The trail is steep, but I am fortified with carbs and caffeine, so it’s fairly easy to keep up with Goat and Earthcake. Less than a mile in, two thru-hikers are using their cookpots to dig a hole in the snow next to the trail. “We’re building an igloo,” one of them says. “It’s on my bucket list to sleep in an igloo.” “Awesome,” I reply. I really do think it’s awesome, although I can’t conceive of spending a day doing that instead of making miles. We all have to get to Canada before winter. Of course, I still have three weeks of hiking to make up down south before I’m caught up. Maybe they feel like they have time to spare. “What else is on your bucket list?” Goat asks. “Push 3 people off a mountain,” he jokes. “Uh, I think I saw some day hikers back there.” He chuckles, and I’m pleased with my quick wit. Maybe it’s the trail, but I feel like my usual anxiety around people is starting to loosen. I spend the rest of the climb thinking about what’s on my bucket list. Hiking this trail has been on the top of it since I was 14, but what should be next? When we hit the top of the ridge, we have cell service. Earthcake continues on, but Goat and I stop to make calls. Then Goat is gone too. I call my dad to wish him a happy birthday, then my wife. By the time we get off the phone, it’s been an hour and I’m afraid I won’t be able to catch up. I haul ass along the ridge, then a long descent down a snowy slope covered with other hikers. I hike briefly with one of them, but he is too timid about the snow. I glissade briefly, but it’s too soft so I posthole most of the rest of the way. When I finish the slope, all of the hikers who started before me are still climbing down. I feel like I have superpowers. I’m in a canyon now, heading in a direction that feels like west but which I know must be north. Everything is vibrant again. There are waterfalls and bright sunny skies and yellow granite and wildflowers. I have superpowers, and I live in a super world. I am absolutely flying down the trail, thinking about how wonderful I feel and how wonderful coffee is when I suddenly catch up to Goat. I can’t believe it. He can’t believe it either when I tell him I was talking on the phone for an hour. We pass a strange looking mountain that resembles a big pile of dark rocks. It looks like nothing else around it. I suddenly wish I knew a lot more about geology The trail turns and starts to climb the canyon wall, steeply. I charge up it, pouring every bit of remaining caffeine into my muscles. I have superpowers, I think. Nobody can keep up with me. But Goat just stays right there behind me. Eventually there’s no juice left, and I have to let him pass.
Near the top of the climb my left calf twinges, then starts to hurt. Did I injure something? It’s still hurting when I reach camp seven miles later, just as it’s starting to get dark. There are a few campsites spread apart near the river, and Earthcake and Goat have already set up their tents. I have to hobble over some rocks and my calf lights on fire with each uneven step. After I finish setting up my tent, I join them for dinner. “I don’t think I can keep up with you guys anymore.” I’ve been thinking about it for the last few miles, and I know it’s the right decision, as much as I’ve enjoyed their company. “Really?” Goat says, “You were going so fast today.” “Yeah, it’s starting to take a toll on my body.” They both express regret, which makes me feel a lot better. Even after three days, I realize I’m still anxious about whether I’m an intruder, a tagalong. Their regret makes me feel welcome, even as I know we’ll have to part ways tomorrow. I go to sleep with the roaring sound of the river and the cozy feeling of being with friends Note: For those of you who are here for my PCT journals, this is not that. But I think you'll enjoy this too. I'll be back with PCT journals in the next few days.
I. It was like a baptism. It was like a baptism or spilled paint, the way the light transfigured everything at once, irrevocable. The lake before me glittered teeth and revealed cavernous depths. A premonition, beautiful and terrifying. I stared nervously down the lake’s gullet, hypnotized, searching my memory for a lost fragment that held some relationship to this moment. The mountain I had come to climb would have to wait. When I was young, we took a vacation to Lake Tahoe. I loved the place, but my dad had recently developed a passion for kayaking and now my sister and I were confined in a two-seated plastic tube, prisoners of my father’s enthusiasm, worried that we were paddling poorly, that we were going too slow, feeling tired, hungry, and most of all bored. I would have preferred to be back at the beach, where we could build sand castles and jump in the freezing water and run and play. Looking overboard, I saw a fish suspended, small ripples of light playing over its body. It was a thousand miles below, just drifting in invisibly clear water. I held it in my attention gently, afraid to break the thread that held it dangling in thin air. Without warning my awareness shifted from object to background—I was no longer focused on the fish, but on the emptiness between our kayak and the rocks far below. The surface we rested on was only a lacy membrane, a slip of a thing so sheer it was barely there. There seemed no reason it should be able to support our weight over all that empty space, except by the force of our belief. And now that I had burst the illusion, I felt my belief begin to jerk away from me in short fits. I held on with fervor, feverishly. I wrestled with all my mind to keep my faith in the laws of physics intact. My dad yelled to hurry up and I jolted into reality. The fever passed, the surface held. Today I was at the western end of Twin Lakes, eating semi-congealed instant oatmeal at a picnic table. The cold aluminum bench seeped into my thighs and a cool flow of air slowly penetrated my layers, patient as only nature can be. The sun spilled over the lake and stained the surface a platinum and bronze foil. All except for the small opening that lapped the shore next to me. I flinched, perched on a precipice as I stared again through the sheer membrane of the surface into the caverns below as I had so many years ago. I forced down another bite of oatmeal and tried to convince myself that there were some things that hadn’t changed. I turned my attention to the peaks above to see how the sun painted the Matterhorn. I was near the town of Bridgeport, California, looking up at an imposing peak just north of Yosemite National Park. This wasn’t “The” Matterhorn, it was Matterhorn Peak. An imposter. It was given the title by dint of a passing resemblance from a certain angle. It held no glaciers. Nor was it particularly famous—its most notable claim to fame was that Jack Kerouac once tried to climb it and wrote about it in The Dharma Bums. I was told it wasn’t even particularly difficult to climb. A class 3 scramble at best. I had seen the Matterhorn for the first time two years ago while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. A week ago, I read Kerouac’s account and decided I had to give it a try. It was exactly what I needed: a chance to get my head straight, feel a little freedom, and stretch my legs. Now that I was here, though, I was tightly wound. It had been a long time since I had been at altitude and this was a mostly trail-free, 12-mile, 5000 ft. climb that I would try to day-hike, but I loved that type of challenge. I had done very little planning and research before this trip, but that was also fairly normal for me. If Kerouac could do it so could I. I had driven out across the spine of the Sierra Nevada the day before. I listened to interviews to fill the time. When I was full of noise, I listened to my thoughts instead. They were noisy too. My route crossed the Pacific Crest Trail and I stopped to pay homage. Some of my fondest memories flooded me before I even pulled over the car. Memories of life ritualized, untainted by civilized responsibilities, free from planning and choosing and deciding, they were my sanctuary in a world gone mad from overstimulation. When I stopped the car, I found some thru-hikers who needed a ride to South Lake Tahoe. I reveled in any chance to repay the innumerable generosities that I had experienced during my own PCT hike. As they piled into my car, I already knew that I would feel their loss when I inevitably had to set them free. This was my sangha, my trusted tribe. I might have responsibilities to face, but I could participate in some small way in their hike, and by so doing, some part of me was free to travel with them. Drunk with that spirit I shared a secret that I wasn’t supposed to share yet. I was in the mood to share it with the world, I wanted to shout it from the mountaintops, but for now, it was best to keep it to anonymous brothers and sisters whom I might never see again. It was dark when I got to the campground. RVs were lined up like tract homes and were fenced in with pinwheels and streamers as if claiming territory in the wilderness. They missed the point. I chose a spot in a hard dirt lot with few trees and little space between neighbors and set up camp by the light of a weak headlamp. My thoughts turned over the implications of my secret as one fingers a pebble in the pocket. As I finished putting up my tent, shouts from neighboring camps announced a visitor. A bear arrived. She was welcome in my camp, even though I was nervous and her arrival meant extra precautions. She explored the neighbor’s picnic table, searching for discarded scraps and crumbs. I watched from the darkness, detached. The window of the neighbor’s RV framed a portrait of faces, a family of five that stared out in fear. The bear lifted herself on the table with a pull-up that roiled masses of muscle and belied her small stature. A flashlight traveled down the hill from an adjacent campsite, headed toward my visitor. I ended my role as spectator and offered a word of warning. A familiar female replied: she had seen the bear, she was just getting water from the faucet. We watched the beast in awe and spoke quietly in the dark, unable to clearly see one another. She surprised me when she asked if I had just been at the hot springs—I had. In that labyrinth of RVs and dusty lots, I had picked my site because there was another tent nearby, and it just happened to belong to a Canadian couple I had met at Travertine Hot Springs a couple hours earlier. The bear went on her way to pick another camp clean and trespass their pinwheel fences, and I joined the Canadian couple at their picnic table for dinner. We ate by candle-lantern, brief flashes of faces flickering and illuminating in the thralls of conversation. We shared the sort of conversation that flows easiest under a night sky surrounded by pine trees, conversation that spreads like oil and flows freely over various terrain—careers and media, of course, but also philosophy and worries and joys and what we know to be true. It was a conversation unconcerned with status, which left us free to explore each other’s minds for gems, and to share our own treasures freely. It was only a matter of time before my secret came spilling out. Thoughts run like rivers to the deepest channels, and I had one that connected them all. My wife and I are having a baby. After the dam burst, there was only one topic of conversation. My new friends asked a hundred questions which I could not begin to answer and which sent me spinning in a thousand directions. It was all I wanted to think about, but a part of me rebelled, fearful that I would never be able to have a different conversation again. That every discussion of philosophy would be confined to the topic of parenting, every book discussion a conversation on what books I was reading to my children. Parenthood had opened new channels of interest, but now I wondered if the old channels would dry up and wither away, altering the fundamental landscape of my identity. When the eddies of my thoughts began to settle into small reveries, I took my leave and prepared for bed. My wife and I are having a baby. I don’t understand what this means. I am off-trail, in uncharted territory. II. Now it was a morning of spilled paint. I stared into my abyss, and as promised, it stared back. I finished scraping oatmeal from my pot, a Tibetan singing bowl with strep throat. I embraced the terror of the abyss and the sting of the cold. A father and son watched me from inside their parked car, prisoners to warm comfort. Somewhere near here was the trailhead; I doubted anyone else was hiking this early, but already I felt like I was falling behind, missing out on the day. I started to hurry, putting my pack in order before a higher self remembered that the future is an illusion. I relaxed into the task at hand, focused on the feel of each object as I placed it in my backpack, one by one. By the time I closed the hatch on my station wagon, I was fully balanced on the moment’s edge. I knew it wouldn’t last long, but it didn’t have to; I could return again. The sky was an unblemished blue. To the North and South stood enormous silver walls of granite, sealing off secret kingdoms. I started as I usually do, with a destination in mind but no clear idea where to begin except to begin. I made two false starts through the campground before I found an unmarked trailhead that seemed to go in the right direction. I crossed the inlet creek and followed the Southern shore of the lake. A short while later, a set of switchbacks set my blood pumping hot—all adventures, minor or major, should start with a strong effort. The switchbacks lent me a continuous view of the lake as I quickly gained altitude. The sun had finished painting over the surface, sealing off the depths with a reflective sheen. Down along the shore, the business of the campground carried on in miniature, a scattering of tiny people doing tiny things to keep the world moving. I climbed past Horsetail Falls and found myself in a flat subalpine wood. The creek meandered carelessly here, and the smell of damp earth seeped into parts of my mind that I had forgotten. Like a tableau, an antlered buck posed cautiously on the far side of the creek, watching me. I spoke to him gently in the hope that he would stay. In The Dharma Bums, Kerouac mentions this glade so briefly that I missed it the first time I read it. I wonder why. Every moment of life that I’ve missed, lost in my own thoughts or my mind muddied and tired, feels like a small failure, a missed opportunity. “Enjoy every second,” goes the advice, “they grow up so quickly.” Sometimes I wonder if the pressure exacerbates the problem. With one eye regarding me carefully, the buck resumed his grazing. I moved closer to take a picture. I hunted, he tensed. I paused, he resumed. In the dance, I felt alive, present. I am here. As I framed the shot, though, the moment of presence ducked away from me. I captured the photo and felt the dopamine hit of another piece of life traded away for a cheap consolation prize. He paused and turned to look at me, then cocked his head questioningly: “are you ready?” I considered what he meant. Ready for the climb? I was always game for a hike, but something frightened me about the Matterhorn. Ready for parenthood? I was even less certain. I was excited and had started to prepare, but parenthood was more consuming, more extensive, than any preparations could be. I stepped into a pocket of shadow and another question sprang to mind, as if the buck was testing me. “Do you have the strength?” Again I floundered, unable to separate the tangled threads of my thoughts. On long, multi-day hikes I ease into longer miles, using the strength built the first day to catapult me into longer days and a faster pace. Would the same work with parenting? It seemed doubtful. Then how would I find that strength? Before I had come to grips with the buck’s second question, a third arrived: “Are you willing to accept failure?” I had no answer, only trepidation. I scanned the forest, unsure of the way forward and already so tired. I considered turning back. My senses came back to me a short while later as I climbed through rocky fields and tried to find remnants of trail in the shrubbery between rocks. It was slow and tiring. Several wrong choices led to heavy bushwhacking. Convention says that it is too soon for us to tell friends and family about the pregnancy, which means that our only guides through this wilderness are clichéd scraps of advice that proliferate like bad music through supermarkets. Not that anyone could give us coherent directions anyway. Talk to any parent about what it means to raise a child, and they’ll give you a mix of hyperbole filled with awe and terror. It’s not their fault. I imagine I will face the same difficulty when I am in their shoes, as when I attempt to explain what Bach is like to someone who has never prepared a performance, or discuss a mushroom trip with someone who has never taken a psychoactive substance: the words will slip sideways and reveal that language is an inadequate substitute for direct experience. The map, as they say, is not the territory. The boulders and bushes gave way to thick grasses splattered with indian paintbrush and columbine. A steep slope into the creek made it difficult to negotiate the uneven ground. It required less exertion, but greater care in placing my feet. A daughter: my map feels especially inadequate. I am supposed to be her guide through this world, to teach her how to navigate and plan her routes and choose her destinations. I can teach her, but as a man, I am familiar with entirely different territory. It is as if, brought up in the mountains of California, I am tasked with teaching her how to survive in the jungles of Costa Rica. The creek slowed, the terrain flattened, and I had a chance to look up. The next climb faced me aggressively with rocks and dirt, eroded and devoid of vegetation. There was no room for a diagonal approach. I would have to climb straight up the face. My wife will have a more useful map to share with our daughter, one that reflects her experience as a woman, but even that experience will be outdated by the time she begins to experience the world. Within our lifetime, shifts in culture and technology have already created a redesign of the landscape that is tectonic in scope. The maps we grew up with are outdated and inadequate. I braced myself and started the sharp climb. It took me most of an hour. When I finally crested the top, I found myself in a large basin where scree funneled from all directions to the edge of the creek. The tip of Matterhorn peeked over the ridge, as if taunting me. Another climb ahead. I crossed the bottom of the basin quickly and found a sunny rock to sit on, catch my breath, and eat some lunch. I checked the map obsessively while I ate, matching topographic folds with the actual terrain around me. It was difficult to decide exactly where I was because valley walls closed in on all sides. It seemed like I was close to where I would need to depart the creek and start up the right slope, but if I was too early, I’d end up with a hard climb to a dead end. If I waited too late, it would also add a significant leg onto my hike. I had to choose. As I scanned the valley, I noticed another buck eyeing me from a stand of trees near the creek. It added vibrance to the leftward route, so I continued in that direction. The creek turned and my view opened up to the top of the ridge: I had chosen the right path. I started a long, rocky ascent. My breathing was labored, each breath like trying to pull-start a lawn mower. The altitude was taking its toll. I reveled in the burning in my legs and lungs. This wasn’t a child’s hike. No infant or toddler would be coming this way. My impending responsibilities weighed on me as I struggled upward. Once, when I was too young to be thinking about children, I told my grandmother that I was going to be smart and wait until I was completely ready before I had children. I would make sure I had saved enough money, and put my career in order, and knew enough about parenting that I could be the most effective parent possible. She was a wise, thoughtful woman, and I thought this would impress her. Instead, she told me that if I waited until everything was perfect, I might be waiting forever. To the right of the gully was a small flat area that created an overlook. Kerouac and Japhy probably camped somewhere near here. It was rocky but flat enough to roll out a sleeping bag and have a fire. There was a view down to the basin, which would have allowed them to see their friend Morley as he climbed up after them. Not much else I had seen had fit his description. The creek had all but disappeared, just a thin trickle that appeared sporadically between rocks, to the east of my route. I was carrying plenty of water—too much, really—but I wondered when it might be available again. In the civilized world I find it difficult to stay focused on essentials, but in the wilderness, it becomes second nature. When options overwhelm and priorities get confused, the wilderness helps us simplify. The froth of life rises to the top and can be poured away like foam from a beer. What is truly important as a parent? To keep your children safe from harm, to give them tools to think and process the world effectively, to give them a chance at creating a life that has meaning. What is just froth? III. As I left Kerouac’s terrace behind, the slope steepened precipitously. Each step was accompanied by a miniature rockslide. I wheezed and gasped. My legs trembled. Kerouac decided one day to go climb a mountain. He set off without preparation or forethought. When he wanted to visit another city, he hopped on a train. No need to save, no need to plan, no need to trade one precious hour of life to try to make another hour a little more comfortable. Life like a scroll, passing continuously from one line to the next without end. I was never quite that free, except perhaps while I was hiking. I worry that having a child will collect up whatever freedoms I have had and relegate them to an attic somewhere, to visit once a year. Many of my friends have decided it’s better not to have children at all. In many ways they’re right, of course. The world is too full of people, doing our tiny things as quickly and noisily as we can and demolishing our environment en masse. We decided to have a child anyway. We have a number of logical reasons why it was the right decision for us, but at heart it was an emotional decision. At least we decided with our eyes open. The loss of freedom had been well considered, too, and although I had entered into that contract in sound mind, it had been more of an abstract concept than a hard truth. Now, I was faced with the intermingled joy and heaviness of that commitment. My grandmother had been right. All that planning, all that preparation, and still it seemed as sudden as a landslide. As I reached the top of the pass, I glimpsed snapshots of Yosemite backcountry through notches in the granite. I climbed to the top of a flat, rocky area. Mountain tarns glittered like scattered gold coins among jade valleys and pearl basins. Snowcapped peaks and vermeil ridges defined an ever-changing labyrinth that would require a lifetime to explore; a lifetime I would gladly give, were it mine alone. To Kerouac, life was a scroll to be written spontaneously, a ragged dance tapped out across the boulders. I’d always envied that, tried, if not to emulate it outright, at least to bring pieces of that freedom into my life. As I stared down the deep maw of parenthood, though, life suddenly seemed more like walking a cliffside path. It was the sort of contained terror that one feels lying on one’s back, staring out at the night sky and realizing with a jolt: this is down too. The sudden gravity of gravity; the spacious dimensionality; the irrational fear of falling up with nothing to slow or stop you. The ragged dance and the carefully mapped plan were both wrong for me. I needed a different approach. I traced the ridges with my eyes. Clean lines separated snow from sunlight and dark lines of water streaked down cracked granite like an angular Rorschach test. I wondered whether I would ever be able to soar and dance again. When I would tell other parents about my latest backpacking trip they all seemed to agree: they couldn’t do that because they had kids. Was it true? Or had their comfort zones simply ossified into hermit crab shells from which they feared to venture? Would Lindsey and I decide that it was too much work, too much hassle to get out into the wild world? That a two-week vacation once a year, maybe even with a mobile home and a temporary pinwheel fence, was enough life for us? For our daughter? I broke away from the predetermined climb and wandered out on a ledge. I faced the sun and a thousand-mile view and peed off the rock. I am here, now. There’s a line in The Dharma Bums. “Japhy Ryder, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha.” Equally a coming Buddha. This is what I must give my daughter: everything the wilderness has taught me about emptiness and presence and freedom and love. That these are intertwined: ego and mindlessness are prisons that will snuff out any freedom, but with full attention, even the heaviest responsibilities open to love like a bloom. I lingered for a moment in the glow of awareness, then turned North and began to climb up a long scree-slope. A few bushes hung to one side, and I stayed close in the hope that they would hold some purchase, but the only advantage I found was that they helped me measure my slow progress. I climbed for glacial eons against burning, leaden muscles. The back of my neck tightened as I scanned the endless scree above, again and again, looking for a stabler path. These minor pains are my secret delight. They remind me that I have a body, alive and present in the world, that I am not my thoughts alone. How does one help a child to see the world as it is? If I brought my daughter here, would it be like the beach, or like kayaking? Will my daughter learn to appreciate the subtle pains and joys of the body and the outdoors, or will she reject them out of hand and retreat into civilization’s RVs and pinwheel fences? My father was trying his best to put us in the way of beauty, but I was out of my comfort zone and didn’t see it at the time. Yet here I am. Perhaps I hadn’t missed the point entirely. I continued to climb, and now I knew that I had gone further up the mountain than Kerouac. I had finally reached the top of the ridge. Through a gap between two jagged spires, I viewed a spacious expanse to the North. I could see the basin where I had rested, thousands of feet below me. Horsetail creek curled in a thin dark line through the middle, then disappeared into a mossy forest far below that. Like massive footprints in the earth, the basins stair-stepped down to the valley where I began, so far away now that I couldn’t see the lake where I started, only the mountains that framed it. Dark specks flickered in my peripheral vision until my attention was drawn away from the distant beauty and into my immediate surroundings. They flashed through the gap like black snowflakes, whipped past my head, and disappeared out of sight behind me. It took me a minute to hold one in view long enough to realize that it was a butterfly. They fluttered by the hundreds, each on a personal pilgrimage. They danced and cavorted like drunks and children, heedless and unrestrained, carried on the wind like leaves in a river. Some paused on the rocks, single and grouped, between dances. Each had its own flitting path, yet the stream carried onward in a single direction up over the crest, past my observing body, and out over the majesty of the Sierra. A silent joyful laughter welled up within me as I remembered Japhy Ryder’s advice. “When you get to the top of the mountain, keep climbing.” As I started the scramble up the final, most difficult portion of the Matterhorn, I remembered something my dad used to tell himself after I was born, but which I only learned about much later: “I’ve only been a parent for as long as you’ve been a child, so we’ll figure it out together.” July 4, 2016 Mile 987.4-1016.9 29.5 miles Earthcake is moving first again. I wish she wouldn’t; I’m bleary and not ready to get up yet. I roll over and close my eyes. Goat is up now, too. If I sleep a little more, could I catch up later? Probably not, I realize. I can hear the hum of mosquitoes and it’s only 5:15. I rouse myself and start to pack up. Thankfully, the mosquitoes aren’t biting yet, though they swarm so thick it’s difficult not to swallow them. I beat Goat out of camp. I’m feeling good once I get going, and after a while I pass Earthcake. I will never do that again, I’m sure. I don’t understand what strange German magic she uses to move so fast, but this morning it seems my magic can compete. The trail cuts straight through several miles of bog. I’m approaching a pass of sorts, but its more of a muddy valley. Lakes—Dorothy, Stella, Harriet—are strung together like a pearl necklace. A snowy peak reflects off of their surfaces, and an island with purple flowers stuns me from the middle of Stella. I take several pictures of it, but when I return home they will be missing, imagined and mythical like the island of Rigadoon. I am focused on the squishy trail, trying—unsuccessfully—to keep my shoes from collecting more of the heavy clay that weighs them down, or to keep them from sliding sideways and spilling all of me into the mud. It’s exhausting work, but it’s a mental puzzle that consumes my attention and puts me into a flow state. I’m so consumed by the challenge that I’m not even particularly aware that I’m enjoying myself until someone says “Hi! Isn’t this fucking beautiful?” He’s loud. His clothing is loud (Purple and pink camouflage shorts, a bright orange shirt that says “Let’s Get Weird”, and a workout headband). Even his smile is loud. His aggressive enthusiasm is both disarming and discomfiting, and all I can do is agree. This is fucking beautiful. The trail turns from mud to dirt, the lakes channel into a creek, and the streams that feed the creek all but disappear. The exuberant flowers and meadows of the High Sierra give way to a puritan forest. I have entered a sober land. Earthcake passes me, of course. I’m surprised I’ve stayed ahead of her this long. We cross the 1000-mile marker. It feels like it calls for a celebration, but I haven’t actually hiked all 1000 miles yet, so I feel like a fraud. I promise myself I’ll wrap up the rest of those miles before I finish We reach a large wooden bridge and stop for lunch. Earthcake is hiking stoveless, so I decide to try my instant mashed potatoes without cooking them. I might as well be eating wet cement. I want to vomit. I try to coax saliva out of my glands with big handfuls of peanut M&Ms and dried mango, but nothing can cut through the cold nihilism that is coagulating in my belly. As we eat and talk, each silence creates a vacuum filled by the same question: Where is Goat? He should have caught up while we were still hiking, or at least by now. As we wait twenty, thirty minutes, we start to make up explanations to push away the concern: Maybe he’s pooping. Maybe decided to stop for lunch. Maybe he stopped to talk with “Let’s Get Weird.” We’re just packing up when he strolls out of the woods, relaxed and grinning. “I wish I still had my Toblerone,” he says. “I think we can make it to Kennedy Meadows North today,” Earthcake says. “It’ll only be 30 miles." I lead again. Trees blur by like highway mile markers. The forest is dilapidated, the mountains are crumbling. Homesickness and apathy creep into my thoughts. I already miss the vibrant colors of Yosemite. I miss my wife. I miss my dog. I want to eat real food again. A rusty fox darts across the trail and lifts my spirits briefly, but then it’s back to a utilitarian sort of walking—just get the miles done in faith that it will get more enjoyable later. The trail makes a hard left and I am facing a bare mountain, bereft of any trace of vegetation. I know it’s where I’m headed because snow has stuck to the long slashes of switchbacks Somehow I stay ahead of Goat and Earthcake—perhaps the Northern California doldrums have hit them, too. I pass a hiker named Boy Scout, cross a creek by tightrope walking a fallen sapling, and climb and climb until I’m out of the few remaining trees and facing the switchbacks I’ve been looking at for an hour. They are made of talus, just like the rest of the mountain. I have to thoughtfully place each foot so that I don’t twist an ankle, and when I pick up a foot, it often sends a piece of sharp rock flying into my other ankle. It’s exhausting. I climb until I just can’t climb anymore, and then I sit down at a junction to eat a poptart. Earthcake passes me, then Goat. I lift myself and plod onward up to the ridge. From the top, there is a magnificent view across the top of the Sierra. Goat makes a video for his friends at home—he’s goofy with it, vulnerably funny in a way that I envy. We find a pocket of cell service and I call Lindsey for a bit, tell her my plans to hike further than Sonora pass. I won’t make it to South Lake Tahoe, but I’ve checked the maps now and Carson pass has a road where her parents can pick me up. We continue across a never-ending talus ridge. The wind is wicked. Three tents are clustered behind a clump of wiry-looking bushes. It doesn’t look like a spot I’d ever want to camp, and if there are people here they are already hiding in their tents. We cross over into a snow-filled basin. Goat and I glissade down a steep chute, whooping and laughing. We cross below butte-like cliffs to another snowy basin and begin our descent. We lose the trail in all the snow and start cutting down steep snowy slopes. We slip and slide, and one of my accidental glissades ends with me sliding roughly across rocky soil. It’s painful, but doesn’t tear my clothes or my skin. We finally make it to the road about 6pm, and find a ride from a guy who was out snowboarding for the 4th of July. His girlfriend has come out to meet him and gives us each a beer from a cooler in the back of her car before she drives off in the opposite direction. We are so grateful. The snowboarder asks Goat and I to lie down in the bed of his truck so he doesn’t get pulled over, and Earthcake sits in the cab. We ride down through the canyon on our backs, sipping our beers as the majestic trees and canyon walls kaleidoscope around the sky. It’s surreal and I marvel at the life that brought me here. We arrive at a campground resort with a store and a restaurant. We hit the restaurant first, along with the snowboarder who gave us a ride. He’s a brewer and he’s excited to tell us about the brewery he is opening. After dinner we go to the store, which is mostly empty shelves but I don’t need a resupply yet anyway so it’s fine. They have ice cream (and Goat gets to replenish his chocolate), which is all any of us cares about. When I walk outside there is a twenty dollar bill sitting on the ground.
We walk down to the campground and a man asks us if we’re hiking the PCT. He tells us he and his wife have space for us in their campsite next to the river. They provide trail magic every year, and this year they haven’t seen many hikers. They offer us chicken stir-fry (which Goat devours as if he hasn’t just had dinner ten minutes earlier), beer, and smores. In the morning, he says, they’ll make us pancakes and coffee. Somehow we discover that we have both marched in a Drum and Bugle Corps, a specialty within a specialty. My tribes are legion. We talk for hours. When I finally crawl into my tent, it is with a heart full of gratitude and wonder at such a full day. Thank you, LetsGetWeird. Thank you, brown fox. Thank you, snowy glissade. Thank you, snowboarder and girl with beer. Thank you, whoever dropped money. Thank you, trail angels. Thank you Goat, thank you Earthcake. Thank you PCT. July 3, 2016 Mile 962.8-987.4 24.6 miles I wake up to Earthcake’s footsteps as she leaves camp. Goat is packing, but it looks like he’ll be a while yet. I check the time: 5:30am. I can see bright blue patches of sky, but there’s enough tree cover that it feels overcast. I depart a little while before Goat and face the first of three big climbs for the day. Benson pass is the first, and I am already struggling up the switchbacks. The top of the pass is three-tiered: granite over bare dirt over meadows. A few remaining patches of snow melt in the sunlight. It’s striking, the barren openness of this pass after all that forest below. This isn’t a particularly high pass compared to the landscape around, and the views aren’t all that spacious, but what views I do have make me feel like a castaway. It’s not a feeling I’m used to, or with which I am entirely comfortable. Dropped almost anywhere, I can sense where a road or a town should be. Where there’s a large enough depression or a steady enough slope, humans always seem to find a way to stake their claim or cut a road. Here, the mountains themselves feel tangled and inhospitable. Whatever logic the planning of human structures follows, that logic is lost here. It feels as if this is the first truly wild place I have found. Civilization isn’t simply absent, it no longer exists. We have breakfast near the top of the pass. I can’t eat enough to replenish my depleted energy. We descend back into the trees and increasing amounts of water. The creeks are faster and louder now, and finding places to cross is more difficult. We reach a creek with no dry crossing point, only a broad, flat ford. Goat and I find a spot where we might be able to jump across, but it’s quite a leap across a dangerous torrent. On the other side is a near-vertical surface of granite with only a few small edges for our feet to get purchase. It looks sketchy, but I’m fairly confident that I can make the leap and get a foothold on the other side. Goat and I eye it together while Earthcake is looking for another spot to cross. “What do you think?” I ask. “Looks doable.” “Yeah, might be our best bet.” I fail to consider just getting my damn feet wet at a safer spot and start to line up the jump. I take my first running step when I realize that the foothold is higher than the ground I am leaping from. There’s a moment when I think I’ve misjudged it—misjudged the weight of my pack and the force it takes to shove myself out across the furiously churning water, misjudged the power of my muscles and the flexibility of my tendons and my ability to stretch that leg out and catch a hold, misjudged the depth of my fatigue. But my momentum is too much to stop now, and all I can do is jump, hard. My right hip cries out in pain as it stretches too far on the pushoff and I am out over the water and reaching for a ledge that seems smaller, smoother, and wetter than it did before I left the ground. The tendon in my left hip doesn’t want to move that far, but it does, and I catch the ledge with the ball of my foot, toes smashed up against the impossible angle of the granite. My sole finds purchase, and I spring up, over the top of the rock where I crash into the bushes behind. Goat comes next, and makes it look easy with his praying mantis legs. Earthcake has shorter legs, and can’t come to terms with the jump. Goat positions himself to grab her arm and pull her across as she jumps, but from my angle it looks like he is more in her way than anything. She tries to work herself up to it twice, but finally decides it’s too much risk for her. She crosses at the ford, soaking her feet. While we’re waiting for her, I start to notice how much my hips hurt. In my desire to avoid wet feet, I realize, I may have just caused myself an injury. We catch up to a couple hiking in the same direction, and after another creek crossing, all five of us lose the trail. I check my phone’s GPS, and although it says we’re right on the path, we can’t see any trace of it. After a few minutes of looking, we start to cut up a shallow basin to where the map shows the trail will cut across, and where we’re sure to run into it. A few steps later, the guy in the couple finds it. Apparently I’ve walked right over it without noticing. Great outdoorsmanship. We start our second big climb, and it’s hard but it’s over before I know it, and we’re back in the land of the hole-punched sky again. At Small Lake, a group of hikers is jumping in from the far side and we decide to go join them. Camaraderie! Getting there takes some climbing over the boulders, but we find our way to a little grassy notch on the lake’s shore. Goat and Earthcake both jump off one of the high rocks into the water, but I’m more cautious and jump in from the grassy edge. The water is ice-cube cold and knocks the wind out of me. I tread water for a minute, then decide I’ve had enough and get out. Maybe I’ll go in again before we leave. A garter snake starts to swim toward me on the surface of the water and I decide that I won’t. I make lunch and decide I’m sick of my trail food. One of the other hikers swims out to a small island in the middle of the lake. I wonder how he can take the cold. The group isn’t really talking to us, and we aren’t really talking to each other. Jumping in lakes with other hikers sounded like so much fun, but now I feel so isolated. It’s not a new feeling but somehow I expected the trail to be different, and it hurts worse. A couple more hikers go skinny dipping on the far side of the lake. They look like they’re having more fun, but I realize that I would probably feel just as isolated over there. Earthcake leaves first and Goat and I are not too long after her, but she’s out of sight almost immediately. On our way out, we find a pair of trekking poles that look like hers, so I grab them. 20 minutes later, Goat realizes that they’re not hers. They probably belonged to someone from the other group. I feel bad. I set them in the middle of the trail knowing that they’ll be right behind us. The rest of the day is exhausting. Eventually I can’t keep up and Goat disappears ahead of me. On the final climb I bonk out. It feels like I’m hiking uphill through molasses. I’m left alone with my thoughts, which mostly revolve around whether or not I can continue to hike with my new friends. It doesn’t look hopeful, and I am so lonely I am eventually rescued from the downward cycle of my thoughts by thick clouds of mosquitoes. Fucking hell. I turn a corner and they are there, everywhere. I pass five or six lakes like this, trying to outpace them, trying to breathe through my nose, trying to make my legs faster than the leaden weights they seem to have become. I cross a river and begin to look for a campsite among the buzzing clouds. We had agreed to camp here, but I wonder if they decided to press on because the mosquitoes were so bad. I’m not sure I can go any farther. I’m passing tents on the left, then Earthcake calls out to me from the right. I somehow missed their tents and almost passed them by. I set up in a frenzy, trying to get inside before the last of my blood is sucked from me. When I am finally in, Goat is audibly wondering whether he should eat his Toblerone bar. This is in addition to the other two chocolate bars he’s just eaten, and it’s the last of his chocolate. Earthcake is trying to convince him to be rational and save it. I am laughing hysterically because it feels like the conversations I have with myself every day on this trail. And I know what choice Goat is about to make, despite his better judgment. Because I know it’s the only possible choice right now. The Toblerone bar is gone seconds later. I am with friends. I feel okay again.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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