October 3, 2016 Mile 2432.1-2453.4 (+3) 24.3 Miles It’s only six miles to Cascading Creek, a distance I cover easily before breakfast. It’s a drizzly morning, somewhat of a regularity in Washington, it appears. Roadside woke at the same time as me, but I outpaced him within a few minutes and I’m left with my thoughts. This morning I’m back to thinking about ego. Well, first I start with my morning meditation routine as I walk. A hundred breaths, counted with as much awareness and focus as I can muster, then metta for all the important people in my life, extending outward to encompass all beings, then Thich Nhat Hanh’s mantra from Every Step is Peace: “Breathing in I calm my mind, breathing out I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know that this is a wonderful moment.” My mind wanders like a child during all of this, but when I reach the mantra, I stop trying to lead it back to focus so often. And that’s how I find my way to thinking about ego, via concerns about career and status and money. It is different to think this way, removed from the constant inputs of society, freed from the constant inputs of a busy mind. It allows me to see the repetition of my thoughts, the obsessiveness with which I revisit the same subjects again and again. Almost out of sheer boredom, I find myself digging deeper, looking for the root causes behind what I feel and believe. And this is what gets me to ego, that gushing oil well that both motivates and stains everything I do. I’ve seen it in each of the areas of my life. In my relationships, a fear of looking or feeling powerless; in my career, the need for esteem; in society, a need to show certain markers of class—a house, stylish clothing, a haircut that others feel is appropriate; a need to look productive; a need to fit in; a need to feel attractive. Four months free of showers, haircuts, and even most relationships has stripped me of the most basic delusions around ego. It’s not that they’ve disappeared, it’s just that I’ve learned what life is like when I don’t feed it. And I’ve discovered that life is a little better with less. What, I wonder, would a life free of ego look like? I doubt that I could master it entirely, but maybe if I can imagine a life without ego, I can live a little closer to that ideal and live a more genuine life. What if I could keep my ego appropriately tamed and channeled in directions that are meaningful to me? What do I value, not for the status it gives me, but intrinsically? What would still be important? I am surprised to find that mastery is still important. I thoroughly enjoy the learning process, regardless of whether it leads to status or not. Studying a musical score and unearthing its secrets and interconnections is a source of great joy, even if I never have the opportunity to conduct the piece with an ensemble, and no one ever hears what I have discovered. I play with the idea of mastery for a while and it slowly dawns on me that it doesn’t seem to matter what I am learning and mastering, it’s the process itself that gives me joy. Next I turn my attention to relationships. I perceive all the ways we play with power in relationships: fearing to give too much and lose status, seeking out people who increase our status, avoiding others who deplete our status. People who only associate with beautiful people are odious; people who make a point to love everyone are beautiful. I think of a friend in Flagstaff who had an easy rapport with the homeless in that town, who greeted them by name as they came by his front yard, invited them in and held long conversations, not as an act of charity, but in honest friendship. How much more I held him in esteem for that. I think of the ways I have been unwilling to give up power in my relationships, to be vulnerable. What if I dropped my need for any power at all? Would I be subsumed? Would I still be respected? It’s a more difficult question, and perhaps it’s one that can’t be answered without making the attempt. Perhaps the results would be different with each friend and family member. I look closely at my marriage through this new lens, and I am glad to see that it is not based in ego but in love and mutual growth. I look at the trappings of civilized life and wonder about alternatives. Could I forego a job and live the live of a hobo? Perhaps if I were on my own, found challenges worthy of mastery, and relationships to pursue. But I care about the relationships I have now, I enjoy challenges of an intellectual type, and I doubt that my wife or my friends would be willing to join me on such a journey. No, that’s not for me. Other ideas seem more attractive: perhaps we could work remotely, live out of a camper van, keep our expenses low and spend more time outside; maybe we could get a tiny house, simplify, get rid of the TV and spend more time reading. One thing is clear: I’m sick of working myself to death in order to keep up with the Joneses, running faster and faster just to stay in the same place, like Alice and the Red Queen. That game is rigged, and I can never win. I have crossed a couple more creeks by now, but it’s been chilly and wet and I didn’t want to sit in the drizzle so I kept hiking, back up a long climb. I’m starving now, it’s after nine, and I haven’t had breakfast yet, so I need to stop soon. At the top of the hill is a wide trail junction with some tree cover. I lean against a tree while I make my breakfast. The cold seeps up through my insulated pad and I burn my mouth on the oatmeal in my impatience to get something warm into me. After breakfast, no Roadside. I wander off to use the restroom, come back, no Roadside. I make a cup of coffee. No Roadside. I’m shivering. Time to go. He’ll catch up later, I assure myself. He always catches up. I plug into an audiobook and try not to give the cold more than its due. I focus on the strange beauty around me—rocks that glow with bright lichen; dark trees, ghostlike in the mist; the feeling of being outside of time and space, directionless and preternatural. If there are other worlds close to this one, surely this is a place and time where the veil between them is thinnest. Perhaps I need only step off the trail and wander off into the woods to find myself in an entirely new land. Perhaps, perhaps. The momentum of my feet carries me along the thin line, and the moment passes. In the late morning I am descending switchbacks in a valley of rockslides, zoned out on an audiobook, when I’m startled by a shout. I pull out my earbud. “Zigzag!” It’s Roadside’s voice, but I can’t see him. It sounds like he’s way off to the side. “Roadside? Where are you?” “Down here!” I’m able to make him out, a small dark figure in a sea of wheelbarrow-sized rocks. It looks like he’s climbing straight down a rockslide with no trail. “I’ll meet you at the bottom.” I reach the bottom first, though he has the head start and the direct route. My switchbacks are easy compared to his boulder hopping. “How did you get over there?” I ask when he gets to the bottom. “How did you get ahead of me?” “I took a wrong turn on some other trail,” he says. “I thought you’d be way ahead by now.” It was pure luck that the other trail was shorter and came close to the PCT right here in this valley. We stop for a late lunch an hour later in the day’s first patch of sun. A small creek forms a tarnlike pond next to the trail, and we rest on warm, glacially-smoothed granite. The lulling waters and sunshine have me feeling lethargic. While we eat, we check the maps. We have about ten miles left until the road. By then, it will probably be too dark to hitch into town. Or, we could cut off about 8 miles by taking a side trail out to the road. I’m not thrilled about cutting off miles of the trail, but Roadside says he’s pretty miserable in all this rain and really wants to sleep in a bed tonight. It hasn’t rained in a couple hours, but I understand what he means. I’m not a footpath purist, and I’d kind of like a good meal, so I agree. “I’m packing up my rain gear now,” I tell Roadside, “I bet it’ll start raining in a second.” It’s mostly away when he laughs “Look at the pond.” Small circles spread on the surface from the new raindrops. I take off at speed, try to keep my feet on the muddy trail, open up my breath and my awareness to the cool, rain-scented air, and watch the world stream by. This part of Washington is like a garden, filled with small ponds, putting-green-sized meadows, low bushes and tall trees. This part of Washington is like a labyrinth that creates distance and protection from troubles and worries with each twist and turn of the narrow and singular path. This part of Washington is like an island, isolated and surrounded by a sea of wilderness, cut off from civilization and all of the concerns of society. The Southbound hikers seem to have disappeared, and I am all alone in this garden, this labyrinth, this island, until I’m not. A large group emerges from the garden ahead and each member carries large tools and implements to move earth. A trail crew. This trail is in bad need. Again and again it forms muddy chutes, dangerously slick, and the surrounding vegetation is trampled down with the impact of all the hikers who have sought the safety of a sure footstep. I greet the trail workers as we pass each other. I pass their camp after a mile or two. It’s a collection of small teepees and lightweight backpacking tents collected into a small city between the trees. A part of me aches for the sense of community that I see in this collection. Another mile and I encounter another platoon of trail workers. They are digging out one of the mud chutes and I have to step around them on the vegetation to climb up the hill. A guy in his forties—who must be a supervisor since everyone else is in their twenties—says “We’re fixing that.” I pass a junction and don’t think much about it until a couple hundred yards later when I remember that I’m supposed to be looking for a junction. I head back to see if it’s the right one, and it turns out I’m lucky that I stopped. The sign reads “tunnel creek trail”. It is a steep downhill into a side valley held together by exposed roots and faith. I descend a couple hundred more yards before I think “What if Roadside misses the junction?” The climb back up is far more difficult and my lungs burn to the top. “What if he already passed by?” I think as I sit on a wet log and wait. But no, he’s only a few minutes behind and he’s thankful that I waited—he says he probably would have missed it. We both fall more than once on the muddy, rooty descent. When Roadside emerges onto the dirt road at the bottom, he tells me he hurt his shoulder on one of those falls.
It’s another mile or more to the main road, where we try to hitch. It’ll be dark in another hour or so. The road is highway 2, a 4-lane freeway with a center divider and railings to keep cars from plunging into the canyon of the Skykomish River below. The highway comes down a steep hill and makes a big turn, both before and after us. This is a terrible place to hitch a ride. After a half hour of waiting, I get the idea to duct tape “Hikers to Town” onto a spare trash compactor bag that I have on hand to replace the one I’m using as a pack liner. It takes about ten minutes to complete, and only about ten minutes after that to get a ride. In town the hotel is locked up, but there’s a phone number. Thirty minutes later someone shows up to check us in and gives us keys. We unload our stuff and head next door to the bar for some food and beer. The townsfolk glance our direction, but they are used to hikers here and they quickly ignore us. While we eat our food and drink our beer, another hiker named Squatch shows up and joins us, followed by his friend Saltlick, who offers us a ride back to trail tomorrow. Back in the hotel, I talk to Lindsey and my friend Brian before I go to bed. Brian is supposed to join us in Stehekin in a few days and hike the last eighty miles. I’m concerned that he won’t be able to keep up, but he assures me he has been training. I guess we’ll see.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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