September 23, 2016
Mile 2187.9-2216.1 28.2 Miles (No pictures today, sorry. I always forget to take pictures when it's raining) I emerge from my tent to find a brisk, breezy morning. I heard the trees swishing in the wind all night, but I was toasty warm in my bag. We pack in silence again, bracing against a piercing cold. When all has been packed away, we speak a single word: “Ready?” “Ready.” When the light emerges from the horizon an hour or so later, We are walking atop a ridge. There are berries on thick low bushes to either side of us, and fog blocks the view beyond a few trees. I wonder what type of berries these are. I’ve heard that Washington is filled with blueberries, but I don’t know how to identify them. They sure look like blueberries. We stop for water and see Pushup packing up his camp nearby. Another few miles, then a small descent to a piped spring where we stop for breakfast. A long, white pipe comes down out of the hillside to about chest level, where a thin stream of water slides out continually and falls next to the trail. We sit on a nearby log, cold and damp through the seat of my pants, to make breakfast. The hot oatmeal is gummy and overly sweet, but it’s hot. Right now, hot is all I need. Pushup catches up and passes us while we scrape our dishes clean. A light mist begins a few minutes later, which turns into a light drizzle as we hike. I dig my rain gear out, but can’t find my gloves in the black hole of my pack. As we hike on, I grip my hiking poles extra tight to try to get blood flowing to my hands. I try to sink into the feeling of coldness, stay present with it. As I do this, I notice that the aversiveness to the cold is a different feeling from the cold itself. As I stay with the feeling rather than distracting myself from it, the cold remains, but the aversiveness washes over me like a wave, then retreats. The cold remains, but I now I am at peace with it. I turn my attention to think about media culture to continue my thoughts from yesterday. This idea of shared, common ideas that we use to communicate has many results. For one thing, if the media we steep ourselves in is vastly different from others, we’re likely to see the world differently. The people who watch a lot of TV will have one set of references and beliefs, while the people who read books will have a completely different set. In our world, whole civilizations are built on different sets of ideas, such as communism vs capitalism. What does that mean for the good life? Is it better to steep ourselves in the dominant culture so we have the references to easily communicate with others? Or should we specialize in specific types of culture so that we can add different thoughts to the conversation? My instinct tells me that too far down either road is a trap. Someone who only watches the shows that everyone else watches and listens to the music to which everyone else listens will think the thoughts that everyone else thinks. The culture can’t progress that way; we will fall into the same traps, make the same mistakes, fight the same wars. On the other hand, someone who is too tightly specialized might have new ideas that could help move the culture in a positive direction, but they won’t have any common references with which to make their point. The truth is, we need a spectrum. Too many people on the fringes, and we’ll lose cultural cohesion and pull ourselves apart. Too many people in the center, and we’ll stagnate, and other cultures that adapt faster will quickly move to supplant us, in a sort “survival of the fittest” writ large upon cultures. If the culture is an organism subject to the laws of evolution, it would require people on the fringes to make it adaptable, but the majority of people should stay near the center, where they can help the cultural organism stick together. I visualize a large number of weakly magnetic balls, coming together and pulling apart depending on the beliefs and references they share. On the fringes and in the center, it’s impossible to move the mass, but somewhere in between, one magnetic ball can move a small group, which can move a larger group, which can finally move the mass. That, it seems to me, is the place of greatest impact. I catch up to Pushup, which pulls me out of my reveries. The landscape has changed. Oregon’s trees were often monothematic, possibly due to a long history of logging; Washington’s are wild and diverse. We are coming up on a lake with several side trails going in different directions. I don’t really want to stop in this rain, but it’s past lunchtime and we need to eat if we’re going to make any miles this afternoon. I fill up with water first, then stop at a campsite covered with trees a little ways from the lake, and Roadside and Pushup are right behind me. Pushup and I decide to make hot lunches, but Roadside just wants to eat some bars and go. He finishes eating right as my lunch is ready, and he waits around for me, shivering and wet, as we all are. There’s no reason for him to wait for me, but I appreciate the gesture. “Hey, do you want to keep going?” I ask. “No reason to sit here getting cold and wet, I’ll catch up.” “Yeah, thanks. I’ll see you.” Pushup finishes eating about the same time as me, but cleanup takes me much longer and he is long gone by the time I finally finish. My cold hands don’t quite want to do what I tell them, and it takes me some fumbling to get Zip-loc bags sealed, drybags rolled up, clasps clasped. I’m tired, but I’m also glad to get the blood flowing again. The afternoon passes quickly despite the continual drizzle. I catch up to Roadside quickly. Pushup has just passed him. The next ten miles are pretty—granite-framed lakes and rocky buttresses remind me of the high sierra, though the intensity of fall colors is much greater here. We arrive at Mosquito Creek and a campsite at about 6:30. Pushup has already set up his tent, and there are a few flat sites nearby. Roadside and I choose our spots quickly and begin to unpack. My gear is damp, but not soaking wet. I had feared the worst in this all-day rain. There is a pool of water in the bottom of my pack, but a drybag has kept it off of my sleeping bag. While I set up my tent, I drop the stakes and fumble with the cords. Finally I get everything settled and go to join Pushup and Roadside for dinner. We huddle under a fir tree with low, dripping branches. The ground is driest here. It takes me several tries to get a spark from my lighter, but I’m finally able to start the stove. I’m impatient and burn my tongue on the first bites of dinner, but I don’t care. I just need to get the hot food inside me. We barely talk through dinner. Nobody complains about how cold it is. Nobody wishes out loud for a sunny day tomorrow. We finish our dinner, scrape our pots, and wish each other good night before we turn in, Pushup, then Roadside, then me.
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September 22, 2016 Mile 2159.7-2187.9 28.2 Miles 5:30 comes too early, and I reluctantly pull my body out from my warm sleeping bag into the cold damp air. When I step out of my tent to finish packing, I pause to consider what I will do about the yellow jackets, or hornets, or whatever they are that attacked us last night. There’s really not much I can do except hurry, I guess. It’s good luck that a thick fog sits on the land. The stinging insects are nestled away somewhere and don’t bother us. The morning hike is serene. We start with a steep descent through the fog. My headlamp reflects fog and my steaming breath back to me, and it’s sometimes difficult to see the trail. As the morning light begins to filter through, we’re walking along the side of a slope that falls steeply off to our right. There are some crashing sounds far off in the valley below, like trees being felled. They are followed by crushing, thrashing noises. I don’t hear an engine, but it seems like the sorts of sounds a tractor might make. We stop at Snag Creek for breakfast and then start a big climb through mossy forest. Roadside says it looks like Jurassic Park, and I chuckle. It’s such a common comparison that I hear it almost every time I go on a hike in forest like this. Many of the big trees are broken and lie across the trail. I’m struggling with energy this morning, probably a hangover from all the coffee I had yesterday. Over the top, big lookout. The fog has cleared, and it’s sunny and cool. We take a fairly long break. Another descent. Roadside falls behind, and I cross two roads and meet an older couple out for a day hike. I sink far into thoughts that go nowhere. In the early afternoon I come to an arched bridge over a wide shallow creek. There’s a thru-hiker sitting in the sun on a sandy bank. I cross and ask if I can join him. His name is Pushup. He tells me he is from Israel, and we don’t talk much beyond that. It’s nice to sit here in the sun while I set up my stove and make my lunch. Roadside is taking a long time, I think, and just at that moment I see him approaching the bridge. After a couple minutes, Pushup continues on. While I’m waiting for Roadside to finish his lunch, I strip off my shoes and socks and roll my pants to the knee. The river is cold to the point of pain when I step in, but it feels so good on my feet. I have to get out a couple times to let my calves and feet warm back up, and by the time I’m out for good, my feet feel so much better that they’re ready to hike another fifteen miles. The rest of my body is less sure about hiking, but I don’t give it a choice. I plug into my audiobook and start up another three thousand foot climb. So far Washington is nothing but a three-thousand foot walking roller coaster. The afternoon and evening pass in a blur of sluggish fatigue so bad that I hardly notice my surroundings. We find a campsite near the top of a ridge, with views west and south to Mt. Hood, which is mostly shrouded in clouds. There hasn’t been much water for a while, and I don’t have enough to make dinner, so I scrounge through my snacks and eat a couple of bars I’ve been avoiding, along with a big serving of peanut M&Ms and dried fruit. As I update my journal before bed, I’m surprised to see we’ve done 28 miles over this terrain. I’m disturbed that I noticed so little of it.
September 21, 2016 Mile 2144.6-2159.7 15.1 Miles 7am, a luxury. I know we should be hurrying toward the border, but right now I just want to lie here. 8am. The luxury is spoilt, now it feels like sloth. I force myself up and out of bed. I text Roadside. “Breakfast?” He answers by knocking on my door a minute later. We walk next door to the restaurant and take a booth next to the window-wall that looks out over the Colombia River. I drink four cups of coffee with my vegetable omelet and french toast. We agree to leave by 11. 9am. After breakfast, we split up to take care of our different errands. I head to the post office, then supplement my resupply at the grocery store. I grab a mocha from Jumpin’ Jax coffee shop. I’m already buzzing from the caffeine, but I have no self control and a mocha sounds delicious right now. 10am. Back in the hotel room. Put away your phone, Zigzag. You need to pack. What food should I take? Is this enough? Too much? Put away your phone. How do I pack my bag again? Oh crap, I forgot to brush my teeth, and I buried my toothbrush in the pack. Why are you on Facebook again? Put away the fucking phone. 11am. Knock on Roadside’s door. “Ready?” I ask. “Yeah. I need to run to the post office.” I’m a little annoyed, but there’s nothing to do about it. After the post office: “I need to hit the grocery store too.” We will never get out of town. What was he doing all this time? 12 noon. Lunch time. No way we’re going to leave town without one more meal. We stop in at a small restaurant just as they open. There’s another hiker who we haven’t met before, Quinn, who has been waiting outside, and we invite him to join us for lunch. He tells us he’s an ex-marine with a messed-up spine. I imagine that must make backpacking excruciating, but he says it helps to keep it moving. We talk for a long time, and it takes us a while to realize that we haven’t even ordered yet. We finally flag down the waitress and order our food, and then take a while to get it. 1pm. We leave Quinn, who is going to stick around for a bit, then cross the street to get some ice cream before we leave town. Man, the hiker we met a few days ago near Mt. Hood, is here, and we chat while we eat our ice cream and get ready to go. 1:15pm. Time to hit the trail. Space Cowboy gets dropped off by someone in a car. We greet him, tell him we’re about to leave, and he asks if he can join us. Sure! “Thanks. Just let me say bye to my friend.” Their conversation takes another fifteen minutes. I’m fuming, but I don’t say anything. I know it’s not his fault. We’ve already frittered away half the day, and can I really fault him for wanting fifteen minutes of society before we jump back into the wilderness? 1:30pm. We start walking toward the Bridge of the Gods. Walking makes everything better. We cross the street and climb up a steep embankment to get to the toll plaza. The lady in the booth tells us to stay on the left side of the bridge. I lead the way. The mythic name actually comes from the natural land bridge that preceded it. A huge landslide from the North dammed up the river temporarily, and then the water punched a hole under it, leaving a large land bridge. It eventually collapsed, and when they built a bridge for car traffic, they kept the name. The new bridge is a green, steel truss cantilever bridge. It is a narrow two lanes, and spans 1858ft. It’s also the lowest point on the PCT, which is hard to believe when you look straight down through the cheese-grater roadway at the intimidating drop to the river. A car comes toward us over the bridge, slowly, and forces us closer to the guardrail, a broad strip of thick metal with a large gap beneath it. It seems completely inadequate. We make it across, and follow a junction West, where we find a big green sign that reads “Pacific Crest Trail”. Then we’re back home in the trees, the noise of traffic and the myriad distractions of civilization quickly receding to a muffled lull. No easing back into it, it’s time to climb. The forest is cool, the canopy complete. I’m eager to move, and I do. Five cups of coffee power me up the slope and quickly away from Roadside and Space Cowboy. I’m left to myself to think, and although I still have 500 miles to walk, it feels like I am close to the end, so I begin to think about that. What am I going to do with my life after the trail? I’d like to try something different for a change. Something more creative, that builds on my strengths. I play for a while with being an architect. I’ve cycled through enough fantasy jobs that I try to dig a little deeper upfront with this one. What would the day to day look like? I probably wouldn’t have my own architecture firm right away, so I would probably work in an office doing architecture stuff. What sort of stuff? Probably a lot of math stuff. Ooh, that’s probably not a great idea for me. I always understood math concepts easily, but I always wanted to do steps in my head instead of tediously showing my work. When I would make mistakes, I usually wouldn’t notice, and even when I did it would take me forever to find them (usually it was forgetting to carry a negative from one step to the next). An error like that could cause a whole building to come crashing down, it seems. I’m not willing to throw it out yet, though. The idea of creating a beautiful building just has too much appeal. I move on through my mental checklist. What sort of investment of time and money will it take? This is more of an obstacle. I don’t have to look it up to know that architecture school is expensive, and probably requires some sort of 4-year degree. That’s two counts against. I don’t relish the idea of adding several tens of thousands of dollars onto my current college debt, and the education would make it difficult to start a family in the next four years. I go through several more career ideas this way, and notice a pattern: almost any job I’d like to switch to either pays too little, at least at first, or requires a new, expensive degree. I feel trapped. A career change is almost impossible. Perhaps if I were single and didn’t want kids, or didn’t have any compunction about taking on a massive load of debt, I could make a switch. But even if that were the case, it’s an awfully big risk for something that might not work out. Thinking back to my high school history classes, I realize there’s a name for this financial prison: indentured servitude. The shape of it has changed, and there is a little more leeway, but the effects are much the same. It’s true, I’m not indentured to a single landowner, but I seem to be indentured to the whole economic system. Even bankruptcy wouldn’t help, since student loans are exempted from bankruptcy proceedings. My thoughts spread out from there and begin to explore the contours of free market capitalism and the education system. Eventually they start to loop back into a bit of a tangle and I become frustrated. I stop at a stream for water. The music of the stream is so gentle and pure, it cuts through the tangle of my thoughts like a scalpel, bringing me back to the present. This side of the Columbia River gorge has less volcanic rock, and the forest seems less like a rain forest and more like the national parks in California. It is so quiet. The dirt is claylike and cool on my legs as I sit and squeeze water through my filter. When I start hiking again, I’m quickly stopped by voices behind. I can hear Roadside and Space Cowboy talking, so I wait for them. I keep waiting for several minutes, but they don’t catch up. They must have stopped at the stream for water. I call back to them, but it seems they can’t hear me like I can hear them. A strange trick of forest acoustics. It’s not all that far to go back down to them, but it’s downhill, and I can’t stand the idea of hiking up what I’ve already hiked up. I decide to push on—they’ll catch up later. I plug into an audiobook—Grit, by Angela Duckworth, which is about the benefits of developing persistence over a long period of time (ten years or more)—and let my thoughts run wild. The hours fly by. In the early evening I get a fantastic view back to the Columbia River gorge and a little later, towards Mt. Adams to the north. The light is falling quickly. I reach a junction to three-corner spring, a fair ways off the trail. I’m low enough on water that I’ll need more for dinner, but I’m a little worried about leaving the main trail for so long in the falling light. Even if I leave a note in the trail for Roadside and Space Cowboy, it’s likely they’ll miss it. There’s really no choice but to go get water. I can only hope that they’ll need water too. I head up the hill. The spur trail intersects with a dirt road that takes me to the spring. The light is failing as I fill up one of my platypus bladders. I decide to fill up my other bladder, though I don’t need that much water. Maybe I can save them a trip up to this spring. While I’m filling up, I occasionally shout to try to let them know where I am. My voice seems to disappear immediately into the darkness. On the way back down, I have to use my headlamp, and I almost miss the turnoff trail in the dark. I stumble down rocky, eroded trail back to the main trail, and when I get to the junction, Roadside is standing there.
“Did you hear me yelling for you?” he asks. “No, did you hear me?” “No. I yelled just like thirty seconds ago.” “Yeah, I didn’t hear a thing,” I say. Then “I got some extra water if you need it. Save you a trip.” “Thanks.” “Where’s Space Cowboy?” “I lost him about an hour ago. I’m sure he’ll catch up.” He won’t. “There’s supposed to be a campsite up ahead.” We hike through the dark trees. Where are GPS says there are campsites, all we see are more trees. There’s an area that looks like it might be flat enough, but it doesn’t look like a real campsite. We look a little further ahead, but quickly come out to a steep slope—there would be a view here if it were light out. The next listed campsite is a couple miles ahead, and neither of us wants to hike that far right now. We head back into the trees. If there are campsites here, we can’t find them. We make do with some small sloped, pine-needle-covered clearings. As we’re setting up camp, large insects keep flying directly into our headlamps. It’s annoying at first, but then Roadside gets stung. Yellow jackets? Hornets? It’s impossible to tell in the dark, but we’re already halfway set up, so all we can do is hurry to finish. When I climb into my tent, it occurs to me that if we’re close to a hive or a hornets nest, the morning might be worse. PCT Day 109
September 20, 2016 Zero Miles We’ve decided to take a zero day. Roadside needs a new backpack, I need new hiking poles (one of mine has broken along the way), and the nearest REI is in Portland. Despite the approaching winter, despite the feeling that we’ve been taking too much time anyway, we just want to take a zero day. First things first. Breakfast. I hit up facebook to see if any of my friends are willing to drive us there or back so we don’t have to hitch. I’m surprised to find that I actually have a lot of friends living in Portland, though I’ve never lived there myself. Then we check into the Best Western across the street. It’s a nicer hotel and doesn’t cost all that much more. Our rooms aren’t actually available yet, so the lady at the front desk lets us keep our packs behind the counter. My friend Nathan’s partner Tanya has generously offered to give us a ride. I’ve only met her once before, when Lindsey and I stayed with them for a week last January. It’s incredibly nice of her to take time out of her schedule to do this, knowing me as little as she does. We help ourselves to the lobby coffee while we wait. When she shows up she greets me with a warm hug. I’ve showered this morning, but my clothes have captured months of hiker smell and I’m self-conscious. Riding down in her car is surreal. We talk about Nathan, who is one of my oldest friends and is away on a work trip, and her kids. It doesn’t feel at all like I’m on a Grand Adventure, it feels like I’m just riding in a friend’s car on our way to go grab some lunch. I forgot how easy this feels, to sit in a car and talk. Soon this hike will be over, and I can get back to this easy life. But is that what I want? Tanya drops us off close to the REI. They aren’t open yet, so we walk a few blocks to Rogue brewery for an early lunch. When we return to REI, it’s open but nearly empty. I find a pair of lightweight aluminum poles quickly, but Roadside takes a little longer to try on different packs and get the fit right. I take a seat on a bench near the window and look through the glass at people walking by. I imagine that I am at a zoo or an aquarium, looking at the strange creatures behind the glass. There are only two species that I see: the ones that are in a hurry, and the ones that are walking with their heads down, buried in their phones. I can’t find a single person who looks like they are enjoying themselves. Emerson said “Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial.” Hustle is just another form of artificiality. We hustle to avoid despairing at the artificial world we’ve constructed around us, to rush through the discomfort and get on to the next thing. The problem is, once we get ourselves into that habit, we begin to rush through the enjoyable parts of life, too. To slow down would force us to look at the deep scars we’ve allowed into our lives. Yet that same hustle only serves to dig the scars deeper, build the walls around us higher. The only way out is to stop and let ourselves heal, to confront the damage we have done to ourselves and refuse to inflict it any more. How is it, I wonder, that I see this so clearly now, when I spent so many years thrashed about by the tides of civilized society? I come up with two answers: solitude, which allowed me out of the status trap, and wilderness, which allowed me to see the connectedness inherent in the world. Disconnected, it is easy to forget our own value, but in a truly efficient system, every piece has value. If we can focus on our intrinsic, underlying value as human beings, I think, it makes it more difficult to return to the self-harm that civil society tricks us into thinking is “normal.” We begin to see the lie when we do things like work ourselves to the bone, consume as much as possible, and entertain ourselves into oblivion. Roadside startles me out of my reveries and asks if I’m ready to go. We check out and step outside. “What do you want to do now?” he says, as we begin to walk without purpose or hurry. We have a couple hours until my friend Chris can meet us. I try to think through options. It seems like we should have many, in a big city like Portland, but all I can come up with is the bookstore, and I don’t want to carry more books. “How about food?” I suggest. I’m not hungry yet, but I know I will be soon. We find another nearby brewery called Ten-Barrel where we eat and drink and talk about nothing. Nowhere to be, nothing to do. Chris calls and invites us to meet us at Trinity Episcopal Church, where he works as an organist. He needs to do some practicing for an upcoming recital, and his girlfriend is going to meet us in an hour; do we mind the wait? I met Chris when my wife was getting her Master’s degree in early music from Indiana University. He was getting his doctorate in Organ Performance, and had started dating a soprano who was a good friend of my wife. The four of us often got together for drinks after concerts and recitals, and we enjoyed their company. Chris was affable and genuine. He was also an incredible organist. I don’t mind the wait at all. In fact, I am looking forward to the private concert. We walk several blocks to the church, where Chris unlocks the gates and lets us in. He takes us on a brief tour of the old church. I am tempted to walk the labyrinths, a particular type of walking meditation that I have always loved, but we continue on into the sanctuary, where he invites us to take a seat while he finishes practicing. The organ takes up an entire wall of the massive sanctuary, and fills it with bone-shaking sound. We are treated to Bach, Buxtehude, and several modern composers who show off the incredible power and beauty of the instrument. Recorded music has the same relationship to live music as a picture of a landscape does to walking it, to feeling the rocks and roots under your feet, smelling the pine and dirt, enjoying the fire in your muscles as you work to climb a hill. No recorded music, no matter how well-produced, will ever scramble reality, seep into your cells, vibrate your soul, juice your emotions, and turn the world upside down like a live performance. Listening to a practice session can be especially enjoyable, because you can hear the truth behind the notes, the ethereal something that the player is reaching for, better than if they play the passage only once. Participating in the music is best of all, of course, but the next best thing is listening to a solid musician truly practice. While we sit there in the pews, I realize that Roadside probably doesn’t have access to this level of listening, and I am sad for him. He likely has his own masteries that I can’t access in the same way he can, and it doesn’t make me better than him in any way, but I can’t help but feel like he must be missing a piece of life. Chris finishes his practice session and we meet his girlfriend Kate in the parking lot. Roadside is mostly quiet on the way back, but the conversation among the rest of us makes the drive pass quickly. When we arrive, Roadside goes back to the hotel and the three of us go down to Thunder Island Brewing company for dinner. We have a great time talking and listening as a nearby table asks another thru-hiker, who I haven’t met, all about his hike. When it’s time for Chris and Kate to go, I’m sorry to see them leave. I walk back up the hill to the hotel and spend the rest of the evening talking to Lindsey on the phone. September 19, 2016 Mile 2111.7-2125.1 (+14.5) 28.9 Miles Space Cowboy isn’t ready to wake up when we leave. Roadside and I pack up as quietly as we can so we don’t disturb the other campers. I wonder who they are. There’s no way of knowing whether they are thru hikers we’ve met before, NOBOs we’re passing without ever meeting, SOBOs, or just local backpackers. How many NOBOs have we passed this way, without ever meeting? There’s a misty fog permeating everything. My hands are cold from packing up my wet tent, and I can’t dry them on my clothes, because they are damp too. We start our hike by crossing a strip of forest that has been cleared for power lines. I look back at the far end of the clearing and I can see the imposing eastern flank of Mt. Hood among swirling mists where some clouds have lifted. It looks like a Japanese painting. Then I turn and plunge into the forest. All morning it is overcast and misty. As the sun rises, a kaleidoscope of color punches through the trees in great beams of prismatic light. The beams turn and flash between the trees as we walk through the hushed forest. The smell of wet soil and pine needles hangs in the air, and a flash of memory contrasts this with the stale, dry smell inside my rental house in Santa Maria. Given a choice, I will always be happier with the discomfort of my chilly, wet hands and the smell of this living, breathing earth than I will with the dead, dry comfort of the indoors. And yet I know that if a lodge appeared around the corner serving hot food and a warm, dry place to sit, they would have my business in an instant. We are poor custodians of our own happiness. We climb. I pull ahead of Roadside and enjoy the quiet, overcast morning. It’s a morning for contemplation, and I spend it thinking of how a life within civilization could be different. What scorecard would I prefer to live my life by, rather than the status and success metrics that the media culture feeds us from childhood? Relationships are one metric, I decide. Appreciation is another. Growth is important, but not financial growth. If I can live five months out of a backpack, financial security does not require largesse. Personal growth is what I seek. New perspectives, new paradigms to see the truth of the world around me. The trail has shown me just how constricted a civilized perspective is. We can wall out small portions of the world, but nature finds a way back in. Nature always finds a way. I begin to realize that I’ve always believed in keeping a different scorecard. The problem is not one of recognizing higher values, but in holding to those higher values in the face of culture. We float in currents of culture that ferry us along to predetermined roles. Culture’s toxic brine seeps into our pores and deadens our awareness of higher values. The solitude and slow, quiet pace of trail life have allowed me to get away, recapture my senses, and begin to see the poison of the world for what it is, but how can I reenter society and keep my wits? Will my refusal of roles be seen as anti-social or even sociopathic? I have spent most of my life as a loner, though I ache for human connection; will the rejection of cultural norms simply take me farther away from connection? Perhaps it would be easier to jump full-fledged into the poisonous culture and spend my Sundays getting drunk on cheap beer in front of a football game, but I can’t see myself doing that either. Escape from dystopia seems to be hard-grained into my being. I set the questions aside for now and focus on hiking. I find myself high on the rim of a canyon. There would be big views here, if not for the low-hanging clouds and fog. There are trees below, and trees to my right, but right here is rock and grass. It reminds me of the deep gorges in the Trinity Alps and Marble Mountain Wilderness. I catch up to another hiker, a small Korean girl. The Korean couple with whom I shared a campfire a few nights ago mentioned that they had a companion who had gone ahead; I ask her if she knows them, and she says yes, but not much more. Her English is good, but I can tell she is nervous about it, and we don’t speak much. She pauses to let me pass, and I leave her to her hike. I reach a clearing with a picnic table and stop to snack and wait for Roadside. I check my map, and it appears that I’m at the junction to the Eagle Creek Alternate, one of the more popular side-trails on the PCT. Roadside and I have already agreed we’re going to take it. I don’t see the side trail, though. The Korean girl catches up and stops for a little more conversation, stilted but friendly. She says she’s going to continue on, and then disappears behind a bush at one end of the clearing. I suppose the alternate must be somewhere over there, but I’m not sure how she was so confident. Roadside shows up a little while after she leaves, and we stay a little longer to eat an early lunch. We begin the descent into Eagle Creek. The Korean girl was spot-on; when we turn behind the bush, the trail is there. It descends quickly between trees, at times so steep that we have to slow and place each foot just so, or else we will slip and fall on the muddy slopes. It seems like we are descending for hours. The trail flattens out and turns south. I worry for a minute that we’ve taken the wrong trail, but a quick check of the GPS tells us we’re on track. We follow the Canyon south, still descending toward the floor as the forest around us grows more dense with ferns. Water is streaming down small waterfalls and creeks. This is a classic rainforest, dripping on us and all around us. The trail switches back, and soon we find ourselves next to the creek itself. The trail is hewn unevenly from rough stone, trying to turn our ankles and jabbing aggressively at our soles with each step. The creek descends in stages, a placid flowing stream that funnels into narrow dark folds in the rock and plunges far below us, only to return to a gentle meander. After these plunges, the trail sticks to the mossy cliff as a narrow walkway without guardrail. The cliff turns a corner, and suddenly before us is Tunnel Falls. There are a few day-hikers taking photos and videos of the falls. It is so-named for the rock tunnel that passes behind it, through which the trail passes. I take my phone out and start recording. This doesn’t seem like a great idea, staring into my phone’s screen as I walk beside a forty-foot drop on uneven ground. One of the dayhikers seems very uneasy and is sticking to the wall side of the trail. When I go to pass her, I step awfully close to the dropoff, and decide that maybe I should start looking at where I’m stepping. I keep the phone recording, though, and safely navigate my way back behind the falls. I wait for Roadside to make the passage, and then we’re off, covering the last miles toward Cascade Locks and food. From here until the trailhead, there are tons of hikers. The sun has finally come out, though it only reaches us in splashes and splatters of light. I dodge dayhikers and race downhill over the rocky ground, covering miles in the blink of an eye. There are several more waterfalls, and I enjoy them all on the fly. At one of the waterfalls, teenagers are cliff jumping into a pool below. The crowds thicken the entire way, until I am surprised by the trailhead. I fill up my waterbottle at a faucet and guzzle it down, then fill it again and sit nearby to rest my tender soles and wait for Roadside. It’s a good half hour before he arrives. We ask a few people for rides into town, but they’re all going the opposite direction, back toward Portland. We decide to walk to town on a bike path that covers the last two miles. To get there, we first have to walk from the parking lot to the main road on a small road that parallels Eagle Creek. Something large is splashing behind a bush, and we half expect to see a bear or some other animal, but when we pass the bush we see nothing. Then we hear it again and take a closer look at the river. Salmon! Huge salmon, the length of baseball bats and the width of newborn babies are lying still in the shallow creek, facing upstream and only occasionally slapping a tail. We take a couple of pictures and continue on our way, that mystery solved The bike path is quiet, a nice relief after the anxious noise of all those day hikers. To them I’m sure it was a day of quiet and peace, but to me it felt like we were at Disneyland. After a few minutes of walking on the path, I have to start walking on the dirt beside it. My soles are just too tender after the pulverizing rock of Eagle Creek.
We pass under the Bridge of the Gods, where the PCT will cross out of Oregon, over the Columbia River Gorge, and enter Washington. Directly on the other side of the bridge, the town of Cascade Locks begins. We find ourselves two rooms in a motel and then make our way down to the Columbia River for dinner—nachos and beer—at the Thunder Island Brewing Company. It’s a fitting way to finish Oregon. PCT Day 107 September 18, 2016 Mile 2094.4-2111.7 (+.8) 18.2 Miles Between the snoring and the hot, stuffy room, I didn’t get much sleep last night. But that’s okay because this morning we get to enjoy the famous Timberline Lodge brunch. It’s a fancy affair with plenty of fresh fruit and veggies, two things we have been lacking on trail, as well as an omelet station. I go back for seconds, then thirds, then fourths, downing little cups of coffee the whole time. My final trip is to the Belgian waffle station, where I cover a carb bomb with a heaping pile of whipped cream, strawberry compote, blueberries, and chocolate chips. After breakfast we go down to the WY’East building to get our resupply packages. It’s like a small shopping mall with a food court. The place is empty and most of the stores are closed, except for one employee in one gift shop who leaves us alone in the store so she can track them down for us. We take them back to the hotel room and repack them into our pack, then decide to get the most out of our $274, one-night rental. We go down and spend some time soaking in the hot tub in our hiking shorts, then wrap ourselves in towels and throw our shorts in the dryer. Across the hall is a sauna, where we sit and stew. My calves and hamstrings are tight, hard as rocks, but they’ve been that way for so long that I hadn’t noticed until now, when I feel them start to soften, just a little. “This is what I want to do after the trail,” Roadside says. “Sit in one place for a week, maybe by a pool in Vegas. Pay someone to bring me food so I don’t have to move.” “Hell yeah,” I say. I know that’s not what my post-trail will look like, but I enjoy the fantasy. To everyone I know back home, this trip is already a vacation, and I’ll be expected to get back to work finding a job. And maybe they’re right. Maybe all the hard work and loneliness and self-reflection and overcoming of fears, maybe all of it was just a different way to escape. But I don’t think so. I think the work I’m doing out here might be some of the most important work I’ve ever done. For the first time in my life, I’m starting to see that the mismatch between society and me is not entirely my fault. The horrible feeling of inadequacy that has made up most of my life is actually the result of playing by the wrong scorecard. And I’m starting to get an inkling of what a better scorecard might be. We check out at 11am on the dot. Before we leave, we each take a picture with an axe that has “Here’s Johnny” written down the side of the handle. We have to go back to the WY’East building to see if we can get some canister fuel. I’m running low. They don’t have it, but there is a small restaurant open in the food court, so we get lunch before we leave. Another hiker stops by and starts up a conversation. He’s an older guy, maybe in his sixties, with the trail name Space Cowboy. After some conversation, we tell him our fuel problem, and he says he has plenty if we want to hike together and borrow his canister for a meal or two before we get to Cascade Locks. It’s a generous offer. We pull our stuff together and head out together, all three of us, then we’re back out onto the trail, back in the rain and the wind on the side of the mountain. The rain is a light drizzle, not like the whipping sheets from yesterday. I don’t find it all that unpleasant, despite the cold air. We hike fast under ski lifts and past a number of junctions. We find ourselves on a sandy cliff above a glacial creek. There is a small trail along the edge, but it is crumbling, and we have to hold on to bushes to get across certain parts. This doesn’t seem right—there’s no way hundreds of backpackers have come through here. The trail works its way down along the cliff, then cuts down steeply through thick vegetation and lets out onto a wide, well-groomed trail. We must have taken a wrong turn, because this seems much more like the trail I’ve gotten to know. I check my gps, and sure enough, we’re back on the PCT. We cross the glacial runoff by following a number of misleading cairns and find the trail on the other side. Then we take a side trail to Ramona Falls. It’s a towering two-story waterfall that fans out over mossy rocks. A few people are sitting nearby. I clamber onto the wooden bridge that straddles the runoff from the falls, pull out my camera, and snap a photo. I stand there and gaze at the falls at what seems like an appropriate amount of time, then start hiking again. I’m sure it seems to the day hikers that I’m not appreciating it adequately, and perhaps they’re right. But I gave it my full presence while I was there, and now I have miles to make. I have pulled away from Roadside and Space Cowboy, so I plug into a podcast about Myths and Legends. It ends with a section about a folk monster with long, oily black hair that comes and takes away children in the night. I look around the dark forest and peer between the trees. This seems like the sort of forest that would hide a folk monster. I chuckle to myself.
Back on the main PCT, I come to a river crossing that I’m not willing to do by myself, so I wait for Roadside to catch up. The river itself is down in a gully about fifteen feet. The crossing requires balancing my way across on a fallen tree. Normally no big deal, but this tree has two trunks, and the top one blocks passage for the last part of the bottom one. And they’re both wet from the rain. Roadside arrives, and Space Cowboy just after him, and I start across. I try not to look down at the rushing river below, or the rocks. At the halfway point, I grab onto the upper trunk and press myself to it while my backpack tries to pull me away into empty space. A sideways shuffle gets me to a point where I have no choice left but to climb up to the upper trunk. Someone has fastened a yellow rope here to help with the climb, but I don’t trust it. I pull myself up the wet wood, heart thumping, and work my way across the last section with special sensitivity to the grip on my shoes. They hold. I make it across. Roadside and Space Cowboy follow, slowly and carefully, and I am at least as scared for them. Once everyone is across, we start an evening climb up lots of switchbacks. At the top, we meet another hiker, “Man”, in his twenties or early thirties. The four of us rest for a bit after the hard climb, then start down the switchbacks on the other side. We lose Man in a hurry. We’ve planned a campsite, but when we get there we realized that we missed a water stop. The next water is a half mile on, so we plod on hoping that there will be a campsite there. There is, but it’s tiny, enough for a single bivy and not much more. We fill our bottles in the fading light, then discuss whether we should continue on or turn back. I hate turning back. I’d rather hike nine more miles in the dark than go back a half mile. I’m convinced we’d find another site quickly. Space Cowboy is adamant we should go back. There were plenty of spots where we said we were going to stop. Roadside agrees. I’m grumpy about it, but I concede. The three of us walk back in the dusk and set up in a grove of small trees. There are a couple other tents set up, but nobody makes a sound and we try not to disturb sleeping hikers. We make dinner and talk about departure. “What time do you start hiking?” Space Cowboy asks. “Usually up at 5:30, hiking by 5:45,” I say. I really hope he’s not going to try to negotiate us into a later start. We can’t afford it this close to winter. “Okay,” he says. “Wake me up.” September 17, 2016 Mile 2062.1-2094.4 32.3 Miles I’m hot and sweaty when I reach the first ridge of the day. It’s a low ridge, but it was a steep, fast climb away from the creek, and now I’m hot and sweaty despite the cold. It was so cold when I woke that I left my thermals on, but now they are damp and clinging to my skin, so I stop to peel them off. Roadside catches up. He is remarkably consistent with his clothing no matter the weather. I never see him wear a jacket or need to change out of longjohns. I wonder whether he even has them. We start the downhill, and my skin temperature plummets. So does the outside air. It’s bitingly cold now. I know the thermals will be wet and will probably make me too warm again, so I stay cold and hike faster to try to warm up. As light begins to filter through the trees, I see colors. Reds and oranges and yellows that have become more intense overnight. Or perhaps it has more to do with geography than time, I have no way to parse the two anymore. There is no question now that we have intersected autumn, and winter will be close on its heels. No more dicking around, it’s time to make miles. The trail passes along the shore of Timothy lake, an endless shoreline. A light breeze comes across from the west, stirring up waves that lap the shore in polyrhythmic counterpoint with my insistent footsteps. It is an overcast morning, dotted with light drizzle. It is a good morning for solitude. I’m glad to be among the trees, sheltered from some of the wet and the wind, listening to the lapping of the lake and the limpid grey patter of the damp forest. Sometimes I try to stomp feeling into my numbing toes, or shake warmth into my aching hands. I am uncomfortable, but I am content in my discomfort. I don’t expect or need to change it. This is real life, and I can bear a little discomfort without gritting my teeth. I stop for water at a brook where it enters the lake and Roadside catches up again. He has been hiking to outpace the cold, too. We talk about hunger, we talk about cold. We talk about the buffet at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood, only twenty more miles away. Past hikers call it the best breakfast buffet on the trail with nearly one voice. Can we make it tonight? Their dinner is probably good, too. That would be a 32-mile day. With a steep climb at the end. Not undoable, especially when there’s food involved. “I’d like to sleep in a hotel room tonight,” Roadside says. That settles it. I would too. We continue with renewed vigor. I imagine the food ahead and the gnawing in my gut is more insistent. I imagine the warmth and the stinging in my hands feels louder. I start a podcast to distract myself. My wet fingerprint can’t unlock the phone at first. I worry a little about electrocution from the earbuds, but not enough to stop. Miles fly by in a passive mindless haze. We stop for lunch at a trailhead parking lot. There are a couple of cars parked here, but nobody around. The drizzle is more insistent, but there is a dry patch of ground underneath some thick fir trees, close to the ground. We sit and make hot meals in the rain. The cold and wet makes us want to hurry things along, but if I’ve learned anything these past few months, it’s that hurrying only tends to slow me down. There is a ritual that I must follow. One thing at a time, step by meticulous step, with focused attention. There’s something new, too: when the rain drips into my face, I don’t try to avoid it. The bend in my neck from trying to keep my face dry quickly becomes more uncomfortable than the momentary shock of cold water. It’s better to let it strike. I eat my Knorr’s Spanish Rice while it’s still too hot. It burns my mouth, but it feels so good inside me. I can almost feel the warmth and nutrients spreading down to my sore leg muscles. We scrape our pots clean, though it’s tempting to just pack up and go. Then we start the uphill climb, up the base of Mount Hood. It is steep almost immediately, and the rain increases with the rise in elevation. It begins to come in sideways, as much water blowing down from the trees now as is falling from the sky. I fight against my aching legs—they want me to slow, they want me to rest, but the more they ache, the warmer I am, and the closer to food. I promise them a good rest tonight after they carry me to the Timberline Lodge. Roadside disappears behind as I steam engine my way up the hill. I pause to cross a busy road and Roadside catches up quickly, though I haven’t seen him in over an hour. Across the road, the trail steepens further. Another hour in cold, miserable rain, and then I come up out of the trees. The rain is whipping now. There are a few shrubs here and there, but nothing to block the long whips of wind and water. Each footstep sinks into the glacial sand as the trail turns directly up the slope. It seems that switchbacks would simply erode here. The trail itself is not well defined—the trail’s three-cornered insignias are posted in regular intervals to guide us up the wide sandy slope that shows several sets of footprints, some of which appear recent. My legs are screaming. My face is stinging. My back is furious. My lungs are burning. My hands grip the handles on my hiking poles as if they could squeeze the cold out and stab! stab! stab!them into the sandy ground.
The trail makes a turn to a more moderate slope, directly into the rain. Muscles are clenching where I didn’t know there were muscles—ribs, hips, scalp—in a fruitless attempt to warm me up. I know the Timberline Lodge has to be close. It has to be. The trail is cutting directly across the mountain now, barely sloped upwards at all. That means I have to be close, right? I turn around a gravelly shoulder and there it is, windows lit up in the dark storm, barely visible through the sheets of rain. A safe haven. It looks so warm, so incredibly warm inside. It is a huge building, and yet it seems so tiny compared to the distance I have to cross. A chasm lies between us, a chasm so deep that I cannot see the bottom, or perhaps not deep at all, but simply obscured by the darkness and the rain. I try to hike faster, but I have nothing more to give. I have been maxed out for hours now. The trail turns in and intersects the chasm on its uphill end. I fear a rushing torrent, but I only find a small creek. I’m able to pick my way across on a few boulders that have fallen in, and then I’m headed back up the other side, straining against everything to get out of this horrible rain and into the warm ski lodge. I look back across the chasm as I climb. Where is Roadside? Over the lip and back onto open slope, the wind reminds me of its full force. When I look up to the lodge, it is almost as far away as it was before. But what can I do but keep going? There are a few tufts of trees, and I can make out the distinctive shape of campsites, but each one flooded with water. What if there isn’t room in the hotel? Will we camp in this? Can we? The distance to the hotel begins to close. It is even larger than I first thought. Finally I find myself staggering alongside it and then climbing the stone stairs to the entrance. I push open the doors and enter the 1930s. My first thought is of relief. I stomp and shake in the entryway to get some of the water and mud off. I stand and look around while a little more drips off. It looks much like any old-time ski cabin—stone fireplace, banisters and columns made from sanded and lacquered logs—except it’s huge. The fireplace is an enormous three-sided stone column in the center of the room, and big fires are blazing in both of the sides that I can see. All the signs are brass panels, and there are stylish designs that remind me of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Timberline Lodge was a construction of the Works Progress Administration, one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that was intended to create jobs during the Great Depression. This building has an architect, Gilbert Stanley Underwood, in common with some of the most iconic buildings in the National Park System—the Ahwanee hotel in Yosemite National Park, lodges in Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, and the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone National Park. The Timberline is most famous for its exterior, which was used in Stanley Kubrick’s horror movie The Shining. The inside is elegant, but there’s something I care about even more right now: it is warm and dry. My second thought is that I should get a room. I dread the answer, but I approach the desk anyway. The “Hi, I’d like two rooms, please.” The three people at the desk are wearing matching 1930’s-era bellhop uniforms. On the desk are push-button phones, triplicate tickets, and modern computers. The lady to whom I’m speaking looks at my dripping rain gear and gives me a kind grimace. “I don’t think we have any rooms left, but let me check,” she says. “Sometimes we get cancellations.” She checks her computer, and then turns to the man at the next desk. She points at the screen and quietly asks “can we give him that room?” He comes over to her computer and clicks a few times, then looks up at me. “This is our last room,” he says. “It’s a single queen bed. It’s $274 a night. Do you want it?” “Yes,” I say. They run my credit card, tell me where to find the pool, hot tub, sauna, and laundry, and hand me two metal keys that are each attached to a brass diamond with the room number. Roadside comes through the doors a moment later. We go find our room, lay out our wet stuff, and make our way down to dinner. The food is expensive but worth it, and we stuff ourselves. We finish the evening with a couple of drinks at the hotel bar. Roadside is chattier than usual, and he starts to talk about what he might do after the trail is over. Maybe it’s just because it was a rough day, but he seems like he’s ready to be done with the trail. He wants to go to Vegas for a week and just sit by a pool. I have to admit that sounds pretty good, but I’m eager to get home to my wife and my dog. I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do after this. I don’t want to go back to teaching. Roadside doesn’t seem to worry about what he’ll do next, even though he’s out here in part because he got laid off and the economy in Canada isn’t doing too well. We finish our drinks—beer for Roadside, scotch for me—and walk back up to the room, where I offer him the bed. Hotel beds have been too soft and stifling for me the past few times, and this one looks particularly soft. I’ll sleep on the floor. As I wrap myself in my sleeping bag and listen to Roadside begin snoring almost immediately, I find myself thinking about breakfast. I am hungry again. 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 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.” |
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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