September 25, 2016 Mile 2241.8-2271.0 29.2 Miles Sometimes you have to indulge with a little extra sleep. It’s not much, just an hour, but it makes all the difference in the world. When we leave, Rainbow is packing up. It’s not until we’re a half mile along that it occurs to me that we could have waited for her. Our first stop is at Lava Spring. It gushes out of the bottom of a large pile of lava rocks, where we pull water for breakfast. No matter how often I see water emerge directly from the earth, it never ceases to amaze me. We’re close to the end of breakfast when Rainbow passes by. The sky is crystal clear, with the exception of a few wisps to sketch out its enormity, a pillow over the crown of Mt. Adams, and a trail of clouds leading away from Mt. Rainier. The slopes are filled with huckleberry bushes, many of them turning the slopes crimson, and we graze as we go. The trail stays high on the slopes, giving us wide views for most of the morning. It’s a truly spectacular day. Why does an experience like this give me so much joy? Red bushes, white glaciers, blue skies, feel and taste of berries, cool air, warm sun. Each of these alone would be enjoyable, but there’s no doubt that the sum is more than the parts. I have no idea how Roadside is feeling, but he seems more talkative today. We walk and talk away the morning, seemingly unhurried but covering miles quickly nonetheless. It’s a thru-hiker conversation, filled with long pauses for contemplation between each slow, languid dialogue. Eventually I break away from Roadside and plunge back into my thoughts about society and culture. Society is a strange thing to pin down. It’s made up of all these individuals, and yet there’s a sort of ebb and flow to it, as if it were water, except that the individual droplets appear to have free will. Culture describes the waves, but society is something different, containing both the water droplets and the forces between them. When I think about those forces, and the waves, I begin to see the importance of the ideas we pass between us. We have ideas about morality, ideas about status, ideas about money, education, freedom. We have ideas about identity, too, both our individual identity and our group identity. Some of them change our behaviors, and some of them don’t, but all of them are contagious, and they help make up the culture and society we live in. Contagious. What an interesting idea. It makes me think of a parasite, with a mind of its own, using us to spread and replicate. How many of our ideas are we unwilling hosts to? Richard Dawkins brought this idea up in “The Selfish Gene,” where he calls them ‘memes’ and defines them as a packet of information. He points out that genes are also packets of information, and from their natural selection and replication we have created amazingly complex “replication machines” that have even produced consciousness. He was talking about us. If information can create conscious humans, could it create a complex, self-replicating meme structure? What would that look like? I come up with answers almost before I ask the question: the economy; religion; governments; human rights; the arts. And how would those structures interrelate and compete for resources? Oh shit. Resources. Human resources. Something about that gives me the chills. Almost before I know it it’s lunchtime, and then afternoon. We enter the Goat Rocks wilderness, which we’ve been told many times is the most spectacular part of Washington. I can’t disagree. Long, wide open slopes; sweeping hills; deep canyons; craggy mountains. We start a long ramp over a pass. A young woman coming the other direction tells me that there are mountain goats on the other side, just above the trail. We cross the pass and there they are, a tribe of the white, demonic-looking animals. They have moved further away from the trail, up close to a knot of hexagonal basalt columns that form the peak of this particular slope. The trail traces a wide sweep along the western slope of this valley and continues to climb toward another pass. As we make our way north, the goats parallel us, then flow downhill around us. Up close, they look powerful and fearsome. I feel a buzz of excitement and danger. They seem indifferent to us, but leave a berth as they pass to the grazing slope below. We cross over Cispus pass into another wide amphitheater on steep slopes, nearly barren of trees. The evening light casts everything in a golden sheen. A creek plummets down through broken white granite that resembles the marble chunks of greek ruins. A side trail cuts up near the creek to a campsite perched near the top of the amphitheater with wide open views. It’s one of those perfect, once-in-a-thousand-miles campsites. Sadly, it has already been claimed by three tents and their campers. We continue around the amphitheater, looking for sites, but they are few and mostly claimed. A waterfall sprays down over green moss, and we stop to refill our bottles. Rainbow shows up, and we’re both happy to see her. We talk about finding camping together again. Maybe the three of us will continue hiking together tomorrow. A half mile later, we find another site with a gorgeous view on a chunk of dirt that seems to be barely hanging on to the mountain. There are already people setting up camp, though, and it looks like there’s only room for one more tent. A little farther along, we find another camping area. This has campers too, and it’s surrounded by trees, but there is space for all three of us. We quickly set up and get started on dinner, then spend close to an hour talking about life, beauty, and the famous section we’re going to hike tomorrow—the knife’s edge—before we finally turn in. I feel well-spent. So well-spent, in fact, that when I get into the tent I struggle to make simple decisions about what goes where and what order things need to happen. It takes me about twenty minutes, but I finally lie down and try to get to sleep. My head spins with ideas about complex meme structures, and it takes me forever to get to sleep.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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