August 22, 2016 Mile 1394.3-1416.5 22.2 Miles My sleep is deep and restful. I wake before sunrise to a stillness in the world that reflects a stillness inside. I am not completely devoid of thoughts, but they are clear and separated by space for perception. The normal churning of emotion and monologue has disappeared. It feels as if a haze has evaporated. I pack up in relative silence, taking in the feel of the fabrics and the smell of the warm morning. I hold on to the stillness as I begin to hike. No podcast this morning; it feels like a distraction. I have no particular place I want to lead my thoughts, I’d just like to hold on to this stillness for a bit before it inevitably leaves me again. My attention rests on the trail ahead of me and the view off the lip to my left. The path is rockier today, big sharp lava rocks that I can only imagine are connected to larger flows just under the dirt. Is this all from Mt. Lassen? Was it just the most recent eruption, or has this landscape been here longer? The massive river valley to my left could not have been carved out in the past hundred years; perhaps this lava is an overlay on a more ancient valley, a thin layer of icing. More likely these are older flows, I think, and Lassen’s most recent flows are elsewhere. The floor of the valley slowly rises to meet the descending lip and the trail cuts across to the west. I clamber over a crowded desert landscape jumbled with rocks and spiky plants. Something in my peripheral vision cuts through an increasingly noisy mind. I back up a few steps and scan the ground next to the trail. There. Someone has arranged small lava rocks into numbers. 1400. I’ve reached the 1400-mile marker. Only 1250 miles to go. I celebrate silently, but with no one around to share my celebration, there’s not much else to do but continue hiking. The floor of the valley is even more desert-like than the rim was—yucca, creosote, and small cacti are scattered in a tepia landscape. I start to notice boredom tugging at me. It feels like an itch or a hunger, it makes me want to check my phone. Perhaps all that boredom is, that craving for a dopamine hit. The buddha says that there are three dangers that keep us from enlightenment: craving, aversion, and delusion. I’ve always thought of boredom as aversion, but it feels more like craving right now. Craving someone to talk to, something to entertain me. The craving is understandable and I can hold it without judgment; what’s surprising to me is the clarity with which I see it. I’m not lost in the craving. It’s strong and persistent, but I am in a wider space in which I can examine the boredom like an object and choose to act or not to act. I let it pull at me for a long while and I study it with a fascination that does little to lessen the strong need I feel. Finally I feed the craving. I sit on the floor of the desert in the shade of a tall bush and turn on my phone. There is service here, so I find a music video on youtube and watch it, noticing the arousal of dopamine like watching the wind blow through a valley. When I get done with the first video I want to watch another, but I refuse to be taken in by my own craving. I decide to sit and notice whether the craving feels any different. It does, but not how I expect. It is less potent now, duller, but it seems to have spread farther out and permeated different parts of my mind. It’s easy to see how we sell out our free will to this subtle, sneaky force. It’s turned from the force of a wave into the force of the current. Luckily, I know a trick to keep me from succumbing to the current. I get up and walk away. I don’t leave the cravings behind entirely, but walking lets me watch them without falling into their trap. A car drives by. Strange. I had thought I was far in the wilderness, far from roads. I’m not sure if this makes me feel like I’m no longer in the wilderness. I’ve always been fascinated by subject/ground juxtapositions, like in some M.C. Escher drawings. Is the wilderness or the civilization the ground? I think in our regular lives we assume that the civilized world is the reality—we go to the wilderness as a vacation from the busyness of civilized life. Out here, though, after nearly three months of wilderness walking, I am starting to see the wilderness as the reality of life, and civilization as an artificial exception. The road doesn’t make this wilderness any less wild, and eventually the wild will reclaim this narrow strip, in a hundred years or a hundred thousand. It’s comforting, in its way. I hike for a long while, and eventually plug in a podcast again. Before I realize it, the terrain has turned green and pastoral. Strange, I didn’t notice this happening. A river flows here and pine trees frame a meadow. I am crossing over water on large stones and I find myself among buildings—the Baum lake powerhouse. There are lakes and oak trees about, and I am so lost in the sudden change in beauty that I make a wrong turn. It’s only a brief detour, and then I am back into dry forest and yellow grasses. A picnic table with coolers and umbrellas—trail magic! There are red vines and sodas—stale and warm, respectively, but I’m not choosy. I sit and chew my way through a handful of red vines while I read a trail journal and the heavily graffitied table. I find Chocolate Milk and Hoot in the journal only two entries ahead of me. I can tell Milk wrote the entry because of the audacious bravado. Apparently they night-hiked through Hat Creek Rim and did 53 miles in 24 hours! Impressive. I can’t imagine how badly my joints would hurt after that.
The woods thicken and I struggle to keep myself going through the last few miles before Burney Falls State Park, but the promise of food and beer are always good to pull me through the lowest of slumps. I guess craving is good for something after all. When I arrive, I’m a little worried that the store will be closed, so I hurry over without taking a picture of the spectacular falls. It turns out I have plenty of time, and I pick up my resupply, a beer, ice cream, and potato chips. Another hiker gets his resupply shortly after me and joins me at the table. His name is Habit and he’s a southbounder. He tells me outlandish and hilarious stories, including one where an older lady gives him a hitch and then throws herself at him. We walk together down to the backpackers campground and continue chatting with the brother and sister, northbound section hikers who are already camped there. The four of us stay up until hiker midnight (about 9pm) chatting easily until we’re all too tired and retire to our tents.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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