September 29, 2016 Mile 2344.5-2370.4 25.9 Miles The white tule fog has invaded the forest; everything is damp. Our headlamps brighten only the fog, a couple of tree trunks, and the ground. It is impossible to see more than a yard or two beyond my feet. We cannot seem to find the trail. We stop, check the GPS on our phones. We’ve passed it. Backtrack, try again. It is made more difficult by the fact that the ground here is disturbed everywhere. Everything and nothing seems like trail. On our way back, we pass something that seems like a dirt road, slightly depressed into the dirt lot. The GPS says we’re on the trail now, but who knows. GPS isn’t perfect. We try to follow it and check again. Still on the trail. We come across a half-circle of railroad ties that stand vertically in the dirt, a sort of forest road cul-de-sac to keep cars from entering the “camping area”. There’s a sign on the other side, and there it is: our beloved single-track line of dirt. Confidence gained, we pick up speed. Each morning stays darker longer, and this fog doesn’t help. It takes nearly an hour before there is any light at all, and another half hour before the first glimpses of color in the sky. There’s a big climb in the early dawn. I stop briefly to talk to three thruhikers climbing out of their tents. It seems like there have been many more hikers about the past few days. Have we caught up with the crowd? At the top of the climb I stop at a dirt road for breakfast. Below me, a fjord of fog fills lush green forest. A few ridges over, I can see the craggy peaks of the Washington Cascades, the final mountain range of my hike. My mind wheels ahead to the Canadian border, less than two weeks ahead. I am excited to return home, to sit on a couch again, watch a movie, see my wife and my dog. To have plenty of food nearby, and even more just a phone call away. I can’t wait to rest. Then what? A job search, I guess. Back into the culture. Back to the rules and the expectations of my various tribes. Back to the civilized pace of life, so frantic and harried, so noisy and meaningless. Just to think about it overwhelms me, makes me want to dull it all with a drink or a television show. I refuse. I refuse to let myself be browbeaten into mindlessness. When I return to civilization, I will take a piece of the wilderness with me. It will be a fight. The memes of civilization are nearly all attached to a piece of code that says “proselytize.” It’s how the memes spread, and how we gain safety in our tribes—If the others aren’t like you, make them change. If they won’t change, cut them out. Millions of memes, all fighting for dominance, all giving instructions for homogeneity within the tribe, all creating the monoculture. Live in a house. Watch TV. Get a job. Drive a car. There is variety, but only within a small range. If I decided to live in a tent for the rest of my life, or walk everywhere, what jobs would be open to me? If I spend my time reading books instead of watching TV, my memes will be different, and I won’t fit in with the culture. If I choose slow, careful regard over speed and productivity, will people think I’m thoughtful or just lazy? It’s a nice trap society has built for us: conform or face scorn. Roadside catches up while I eat my oatmeal. I realize that I’m lucky in comparison. As constrained as I feel, Roadside has it worse. There’s a reason why van life culture and full-timing (making an RV your permanent home) are primarily white middle-class phenomena. If I fear being seen as a lazy bum or an outcast, how much more scorn would he feel due to his dark skin and all of society’s memes that come along with that? Still, the fact that he has it worse doesn’t make mindless civilization any less of a trap. The three hikers we just passed join us at the dirt road. One of them tries to check his map to see if the road reconnects with the trail ahead. It looks like a flatter, more scenic route. The road doesn’t appear on his map, but they decide to try it anyway. We never see them again. After breakfast, we parallel a ridge through open forest with little undergrowth that reminds me of the higher parts of Oregon. I am left with my own thoughts again. Thinking about the return to civilization depresses me, so I plug into a podcast instead. A couple hours later, I stop at a sunny glade with a view to the east to snack and wait for Roadside. I unplug from the podcast and hear some rustling nearby. I look over and see another hiker, about fifty yards away, stuffing things into his backpack. He sees me and walks over. He’s young, maybe only nineteen or twenty, skinny, with sandy blonde hair.
“Hey, do you know what kind of mushroom this is?” He’s holding a bright red mushroom with spots. It looks like the archetype of the poisonous mushroom. “No idea, sorry.” I pause for a beat. “I’m Zigzag.” “Oh, I’m Blackout. I’m pretty sure this is the mushroom that was the first recorded use of hallucinogens, but I’m not sure. It’s supposed to make you feel pretty ill, though. I was considering taking a small bite.” If he’s asking me to give him permission, I am completely the wrong person. “Yeah, I’m sorry, I know nothing about mushrooms. It looks like straight poison to me.” “I think I’ll wait until the next water source.” Maybe what he’s really looking for is recognition of his bravado. I chuckle and express my disbelief, kindly tell him I think he’s crazy, and this seems to be enough. We chat a little more about the trail, and he heads on before Roadside arrives. An hour later I find Blackout’s backpack lying at the end of a switchback. A side trail cuts a ways across the mountainside to a brook. I expect to find him there, but no. I fill my bottles and worry a little. This kid was thinking about trying a wild, poisonous-looking mushroom and now he has disappeared and left his pack behind. He’s probably just using the restroom somewhere, but maybe he’s on a wild hallucinogenic trip, lost in the woods. The last time I came into contact with someone on psilocybin mushrooms, it was a bad scene. My friend Jay was going into the woods near Flagstaff to do them with a friend. I was dating his sister at the time, but I considered him a good friend, too. On his way out of town, I told him to give me a call if anything came up. A couple hours later, he called to tell me his friend was freaking out. When I arrived, Jay’s mouth was all bloody. We found his friend up on a hill, walking barefoot over lava rocks, his jeans around his ankles and torn to shreds, penis hanging out of his boxer shorts. He was completely incoherent, and stared at me with confusion and malice. He moved like a stork over uneven shallows, bobbing and stumbling, arms wildly akimbo. He got in my face and squawked at me, then took a wild swing. I stepped back out of reach as he tripped over his pants and opened his knees on the sharp rocks. Jay and I weren’t able to get him into the car, so we had to get two of his friends to help us. “Man, that kid can’t handle his drugs,” one of them said after a massive bong hit. By the time we got back out, all that was left of the stork-man was his tattered jeans. Eventually someone saw him walking at the other end of a lava field, at the edge of the trees. He was beginning to come down, and as we walked him back to the car, he kept muttering “I hate you guys.” On the way into town, all five of us crammed into a little Toyota Corolla, we were followed by a police officer for several miles. I still remember the tangible release I felt when he turned off down a side road. Before that day, I had always thought of psilocybin as a fairly harmless drug. The mushroom Blackout took might be much worse than that, and we’re in the middle of nowhere. I finish pumping my water and carry the bottles back to my pack. Blackout is there, talking to Roadside. He must have just stepped into the woods to use the bathroom. Roadside doesn’t need water right now, so we continue on. A few minutes later, Blackout flies by in a downhill run. Another couple hours, and we run into him again at the top of a hill, eating lunch. We join him. “Hey Blackout, did you end up trying that mushroom?” I ask. “Yeah. I took a little nibble. I feel a little queasy, and all the colors seem a little brighter, but that’s about it.” I just hope it doesn’t get any worse. The afternoon is an endless forest and blurs by. We see Blackout one more time, at a spring in the evening, and then he is gone, another temporary friend in this temporary world. We find a wooded site between two steep hills. A couple hikers come by while we’re eating dinner, looking for a campsite. They explore near us for a bit, then tell us they’re going to head on to an abandoned power station a few miles ahead and see if they can camp inside. It sounds horribly uncomfortable to me—a hard floor, stale air, the likelihood of mice or insects. Probably beer cans and broken glass, too. No thanks. Give me the interconnected, efficient forest, the naked night sky. Give me flowing rivers of cleansing air, living walls of wood and leaf. Let the soft earth hold me in her bosom. Let me sleep under the billion billion worlds, and know that I am alive.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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