Mile 1737.4-1764.7 27.3 Miles I decide to sleep in a little so that there’s a chance for Roadside to catch up. Trying to be a good rational Buddhist means accepting things as they are, but that also means accepting the emotions I feel. I feel lonely. Trying to pretend I don’t will just make it worse. In the Buddha’s Discourse on the Second Arrow, he says that the stories we tell ourselves about a suffering are themselves a form of suffering. A buddhist who is trained in mindfulness, when shot by an arrow, will only feel the physical pain. Someone not trained in mindfulness will tell themselves a story about how unfair it is that they were shot, or worry that they will die. That causes emotional suffering, which is the second arrow, shot by the person at themselves. I think there are more arrows we can fire, and I sometimes make myself a pincushion of arrows—I tell myself stories about my stories. I have failed to remove emotion from myself, and therefore I am a bad buddhist, I am a failure at mindfulness, I am bad at life, and on and on. It’s better, I think, to just notice that I’ve already fired the second arrow and accept it. I am lonely. When I pay attention to the loneliness, it doesn’t even seem that bad. It’s uncomfortable, but not particularly painful. It seemed worse when I was trying to pretend to myself that I wasn’t lonely. At 5:40 I get up and start moving. It’s a cold morning. Much colder than it’s been since the Sierras. One of the guidebooks (Yogi’s, I think) said something about sudden cooler temps after the Oregon border. I wonder if this is a new normal. Before I’ve gone a mile, I pass a dirt road filled with RVs, and then a tent that looks an awful lot like Roadside’s. I consider stopping to check if it’s him, but it’s 6am and if it’s not him then I would feel bad waking some random stranger. The coffee yesterday is taking its toll today. I feel sluggish and bored, and none of my food seems to give me any energy. I take a lot of breaks, including a breakfast that takes me most of an hour because I can’t stop eating my snack food. If I keep this up, I won’t have enough food to make it to my next resupply. But if I don’t eat the food now, I might not have the energy to make it to my next resupply. I stuff my face with peanut M&Ms, about the only snack food that still tastes good. I’ll worry about rationing later. I’m strolling through pines, firs, and grassy rolling hills. It would be an easy hike if I weren’t so tired. Off to my left two tall lanky hikers come over a grassy rise, not following any trail. We greet each other, and I recognize Puma right away. I met him way back in the Sierra when I was hiking with Sprinkler! This whole hike I have only met two black thruhikers, so it’s not difficult to remember him. He’s hiking with Snooze Button, a hiker who I’ve never met. We hike together for a bit. They are as fast as Hoot and Chocolate Milk and I have trouble keeping up in my state of caffeine withdrawal. I finally lose them when have to stop to use the bathroom. I wonder why there are so few black thruhikers. Few non-caucasian hikers generally. It seems like escape from a sick society would be beneficial and desirable, but I wonder if a general anxiety about safety as a black person among white strangers would be exacerbated when they leave family and friends behind. Or perhaps the outdoor industry just hasn’t reached out to them in the same way it has to white people. It makes me a little sick to think that I might be out here because an industry has had better success reaching out to me. What does seem likely, though, is that culture plays a role. I enjoy nature because my parents took me to national parks and taught us to enjoy and care for the natural world. They did that because their parents taught them that way, and who knows how many generations that goes back. People of other races have been fighting for their place in society for all of U.S. history, and it seems likely that they haven’t had the bandwidth for this type of leisure. To leave home and quit job, and to know that you’re likely to find another job when you return, is a mark of privilege. To put yourself in the way of discomfort and consciously strip away luxuries is less desirable when you don’t have comfort and luxuries to begin with. I think about what Roadside said a few days ago about his difficulty hitchhiking, and I feel like an idiot for not realizing the extent of what he hinted at. My privilege permeates this hike, as it permeates everything in my life. In that light, my great adventure appears to be nothing but an extended vacation. That’s not quite right, though. It’s more accurate to say that it’s an opportunity for self-actualization. On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I have the opportunity to focus on improving myself and my thinking because my other basic needs, including safety, are being met. And yet, don’t I owe it to society to self-actualize? Doesn’t this fuller realization of cultural illness and privilege help heal the culture? Yes, I think. It’s more productive to see the illness and be part of the change than to hide and pretend I don’t have this privilege. I pass a small dam made of black concrete with water flowing over the top. It looks like the edge of infinity pool, but it turns into a creek and flows under a bridge that I cross. The dam is just high enough, maybe ten feet or so, that I can’t see over the top to the other side. A little later I come across Puma and Snooze Button at another bridge. They are chatting with another hiker I haven’t met, and I stop to join the conversation and snack a bit. It seems like there have been more hikers today, and I’m glad. It makes me feel more relaxed about finishing the trail, knowing that they are just as behind as I am. The weather doesn’t care, of course. It will snow on a hundred late thru-hikers just as easily as it will snow on one. Still, it’s nice to know we’re in it together and I can’t really push myself any faster today, and the weather is so warm right now that it doesn’t seem like snow will ever arrive. In the afternoon I cross a meadow with wildflowers splattered across it like a Jackson Pollock canvas. A side trail to a spring crosses a dirt road and then follows a platform of wood planks over the marshy meadow. The spring is in a copse of aspens, and there are three hikers getting water. Two of them depart as I arrive, but the third one is still filling up. I introduce myself, and he tells me his trail name is Bubble Boy. I know that name! Bubble Boy is one of the people that Mr. Tea—Ed—mentioned hiking with for a short time. He got his trail name from a series of mishaps and injuries on trail. Things like tripping over a root and face-planting, spraining an ankle… I think there was even a broken bone in there somewhere. He’s not around long enough to ask him about his story, or at least I don’t feel comfortable asking him about it this soon. He finishes getting his water and I’m left alone in this pretty spot. I fill up water and pull out lunch and my book. I’m reading The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. It’s about a butler at Darlington Hall in England who reflects back on his life during a long car ride. The reader gradually becomes aware that his life was not as well-lived as he thinks it was, and perhaps he realizes it too but is still in denial. It’s an engaging book, and I’m tired today, and it’s a warm day and it’s so pretty here—butterflies are flitting in and out of the shadows between the aspens, the spring is burbling quietly, every other sound is muted and distant… I just laze about and read, and read some more. I’m there for an hour or more, dabbing my attention into the book and out into this natural pergola like a handkerchief blotting at sweat, alternating between engagement with the story and thinking about what makes a life well-lived. The book and I come to no conclusions, though we agree that some things don’t work. The main character does his best work, but never takes moral responsibility or judges the purpose of that work, as he serves an odious man. It reminds me of Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, where he argues that no one is exempt from the responsibility to their own conscience. Our work is where we are most prone to ignoring our own conscience. There was a time when I worked for a large bank and watched as the wealthy had their fees forgiven, but the poor were not given the same treatment. I didn’t have the courage to speak out about it, and made excuses to myself that I needed the job. I wonder whether I would have the courage now. Eventually the pull of the trail overwhelms the feeling of torpor, and I rouse myself to action. I take a final look around at this magical spot—the flitting butterflies, the silent aspens, the murmuring spring—and depart with a feeling of gratitude. When I get back to the junction, an older couple asks me my trail name. “Zigzag,” I reply. “Oh, there’s a hiker just ahead looking for you.” Could it be? I thank them and wish them a good hike and then hurry ahead. Not a quarter mile past, I see him stopped by the side of the trail pulling something out of his pack. “Roadside!” I shout. He grins back at me in his understated way. “Hey Zigzag.” We take a minute to catch up on how we missed each other yesterday. The best we can figure out is that he must have passed while I was setting up my tent or talking to the car camper. The tent I passed this morning was his. This conversation is creating an unspoken agreement that we have become hiking partners. We’re not quite able to say it directly—to make it explicit would seem both needy and restrictive. We both still have to hike our own hike, and if either of us can’t keep up, this agreement will have to end, but for now it’s nice to finally have a friend. We start a long downhill and chat along the way. He’s keeping up a good pace. Near the bottom we topped at a cabin with a big farm-style water pump. There’s a whole group of hikers here, including Bubble Boy and a few day-hikers that have a bunch of questions about thru-hikers. One of them is a dad, and you can tell he’s just itching to get out for a thru-hike of his own. I don’t know any of these other thru-hikers, but we all have the same answers and similar stories. His questions and his envy make the rest of us feel a brotherhood.
We slowly peel off one and two at a time as each of us finishes getting water. Roadside and I are among the last to leave. We move a little slower now, in part because I’m feeling strain in my right heel and achilles tendon. I also have a blister for the first time in weeks. Two zeroes in a row was enough to turn my rock hard foot flesh into a soft pulpy mess. The last hours of the day are hiked over big chunks of gray volcanic rock. They have been arranged carefully by trail crews to create an evenly sloped line of trail through long fields of these rocks, but the makeup of the rocks themselves is so uneven that they are treacherous to the ankles. We find our campsites shortly before sunset in a clearing a couple hundred feet from the trail. Bubble Boy arrives shortly after, and we invite him to join us at a space nearby, but he decides to set up on the other side of the trail and he keeps mostly to himself for the rest of the evening.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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