May 30, 2016 Michael has disappeared by the time we awake, his only trace a small rectangular patch of pressed dirt in the dusty campground. We start the morning with a climb, the first real climb since San Jacinto. Switchbacks cut through thick oaky bushes and trees. A silver rockslide slices a narrow scar down the olive slope, and as I look out across the basin, I can see two dogs playing in the bed of the dry lake, their owners walking out toward them nearby. I marvel at the enormity of it, and at the insignificance of the animals—both canine and human—in contrast. Even the mansions scattered along the shoreline are toy houses in this fantastic landscape. What are the great works of man against this expansive canvas? How meaningless are our furies and thrashings against the rivers of time? A few morning hikers greet us on our way to the top, but after we crest, there is nobody. An open, gently sloping forest leads us slowly downhill for miles. We talk occasionally, but mostly we are hiking inside our own thoughts. I spend half of my morning practicing my walking meditation, and half of it distracted by thoughts about returning to school. I have to go back tomorrow, for the final two weeks of class. I love my students, and I love my subject matter, but I have grown to hate teaching. I’ve always been ambivalent, but this year has been particularly difficult, and I’m not sure why. I try to figure it out as I walk. I think part of it has to do with particular challenges my students have faced: there was a lot of loss and grieving. Some of it has to do with this particular district’s culture, particularly the authoritarian style of the district administration. And a lot of it has to do with me. I was diagnosed with ADHD over the summer and started medication. While there is no doubt the medication helped me to focus, there were many side effects. I wasn’t sleeping as well. I stopped being as aware of my students’ emotional needs. I had so many good ideas that I was changing the classroom too quickly for my students to adapt. And I became more aggressive in dealing with behavior issues, to the point of becoming controlling. Eventually I realized the medication was causing problems and I stopped taking it, but much of the damage had already been done, and my relationship with my students suffered. For the past two months, I have dreaded going in to work every day. I know that it’s time for me to leave, but I’m not sure what else I can do. I start to talk to Lindsey about other options. We rest at a small island of volcanic rock surrounded by flat dirt and sparse trees. I check the maps. We are making great time, and we both feel strong. We’re supposed to meet Brian, Suzie and Jon at a dirt road at 2pm, but at this rate we’ll be there by 12:30. I have cell service, so I text Brian to tell him that we’re going to take a side trail, the Cougar Crest trail, down to the Big Bear rim road. That will allow us to hike a little longer, and will save them a couple miles of driving dirt roads. The trail, which has been following the northeast side of the crest, crosses over to the southwest side, and now we have a view of the real Big Bear Lake—the part of the lake with water in it. A hiker tells us about a shortcut down a dirt road, but it sounds like there's no view, and it’s not part of the PCT, so we decline. The trail all but disappears along some white rocky cliffs, and we have to scramble to the other side, but soon enough the trail is back and we have come to the junction with the Cougar Crest trail. About twenty people are milling about the junction, taking pictures and panting in the shade. We start a steep, eroded downhill, and the crowd doesn’t thin. I’m not ready to be around this many people again. I can feel their presence pressing in on me, like a headache but intangible. We hurry down the hill as fast as we can, but several times each minute we have to step off the trail to let the infestation of bright colors and loud conversations proceed uphill. When one group passes with music blaring from their backpack, I’m not sure whether I’m ready to explode or to withdraw into a cave forever. To me, blasting bad music on hissing, static-spewing speakers into the peace and mystery of the wild is one of the highest affronts of man against nature, short only of littering and deliberate desecration.
When we reach the bottom, the trail splits toward two parking lots, and we aren’t sure which one to follow. I call Brian, and we have some trouble figuring out which lot they are at, so we just take a chance. It turns out to be the correct choice, and all five of us pile into Brian’s Jeep and drive to the town of Big Bear to eat some pizza and beer.
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May 29, 2016 I am curled into a tight ball, muscles taut, trying to convert tension into body heat. My ears feel brittle, the tip of my nose like a hard cold point. The sleeping bag is warm, but not warm enough, and I dread the moment when I will have to get out of it. But there is nothing to force me out, except for my own sense of urgency to make miles, so I wait for my impatience to overwhelm my desire for warmth, and I wrestle my way out of the tent. The others get up when they hear me moving about. I start up the oatmeal and warm my hands around the little camp stove. Brian and Jon dance to stay warm in a beam of light that streams down between the trees. We start our hike by following the creek downstream. There are no waterfalls or rapids, just a small trickle about six inches wide. The valley slowly deepens, and tall ponderosa pines keep us shaded throughout the morning. We follow Brian down a wrong turn—straight when we should have turned right down a dirt road—and dead end at a No Trespassing sign. It’s a quick quarter mile back to the trail, and before long we are climbing back up out of the canyon. Brian and I take turns leading for a while. When he is in front, he takes a nice pace, but every time I’m in front he seems to want to go faster, and I’m not feeling a desire to hike fast today. I decide to go last. The group hikes slower than me, but I decide to just relax into that and take my time. We spend much of the morning walk in silence, and I adapt a walking meditation to hiking. I focus on the feeling in the soles of my feet, and slowly scan upwards through my body to feel the movement of each joint and just be aware of how my body moves. After, I try to focus on my breath for 100 breaths. I fail miserably, but the process has its benefits. I feel light and pleasant, and the woods around me seem more real. I shift my perspective, and I’m no longer standing upright on the top of the ground. Instead, I’m standing sideways on a giant planet. All these trees and plants are sideways, too, held on by a magical force that no one can fully explain. I am tiny and insignificant, and somehow that’s relaxing and amazing, and I am filled with awe for the world around me.. This sort of mental game has a way of making my problems seem smaller. If I am a tiny, insignificant being on the side of a huge planet, only here by some miracle of infinitely small probability, then how important is that email? Does it matter if I do the dishes? All the actions I take for prestige, power, or money—what little effect will they have upon the world? How little does all that stress matter! These are the thoughts I am thinking as the ecosystem changes around me. The lush green valley turns to dry desert forest, with joshua trees and cactus among the pines, and loose gravel to replace the compacted dirt. Dirt roads crisscross the trail. The scenery shifts again, and now short shrubs are dominant. We come over a rise, and we can see a dry lakebed to the north. The trail turns us east along the ridge. After a short stop at some rocks to rest and snack, Brian stops us and points out a snake in the trail. We move towards it carefully, so as not to disturb it, but it doesn’t seem to care that we are there. It’s a pale orange with black band and a narrow head—not poisonous. It slowly moves into the bushes when we get close enough. It’s my first snake of the trip, and I’m happy to have seen him. We stop a little while later for lunch, and now the ridge affords us distant views of the desert to the east. I can also make out a lower shelf of mountains far below us, where a couple of off-road vehicles are kicking up dust. We sit and chat for a while, and I ask Jon questions about a meditation retreat he attended. Ten days! That’s something I’d like to do, but I don’t know when I could find the time. What a shame that our jobs give us such limited time to spend life the way we see fit. Especially when all of our thrashing about has so little effect on the world. The trail dips in and out between desert trees and distant views. Then we are back in the desert forest, surrounded by red dirt. A group of riders on horseback come from the other direction, and we step off to the side of the trail. One of the horses is spooked by us, so we move farther and farther off trail to let it by. The rider is an expert, but she is still barely able to manage the horse, who whips his head back and forth to try to escape. When they finally get past us, the horse takes off in a short gallop before the rider is able to get him back under control. In the afternoon, we pass large houses overlooking the dry lake we saw earlier. We get glimpses of Big Bear Lake further north. The trail is flat and even, and day hikers are plentiful. We cross two roads, and then find a dusty campsite a quarter mile past the second road. Brian’s girlfriend Suzie comes and picks up Brian and Jon, who will stay in a hotel tonight and pick us up further down the trail tomorrow afternoon. Lindsey and I read our books for a while, and then talk with a thru-hiker who joins us at the campsite. His name is Michael, and he has just taken a week off from the trail to recover from a foot injury. I ask him about his time on the Appalachian Trail and pay attention to his ultralight practices, to see what knowledge I can glean and how I can shed some weight from my pack. When we finish dinner, he lays out his sleeping pad and sleeping bag—no tent—and is asleep before we can climb into our tent.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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